The Real Face OF The Occupation’s Surge
piglipstick
One thought that has stayed with me for decades, and seems to be more true today than ever before, is if an american wants to see the future of the US all she has to do is take a look at american client states. You know, those foreign spheres of influence occupied by troops, controlled by american corporations or simply run by an installed tyrant (…) The wreckage in Iraq is a splendid opportunity for our overlords to practice their upcoming high tech tyranny at home. Criminal MSM will dutifully chirp away with their happy face fantasies while real stories should be about the biometric databases, surveillance drones, crowd dispersal weaponry, and other goose stepping means of total control. The nazis didn’t waste their splendid opportunities to study populations under their control; all kinds of information is available about those well documented activities. Is that much different than the US military testing all forms of exotic weapons on the people of Fallujah?…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38547

No Relief for Camp Kids
Basic needs of many displaced children still not being met.
By an IWPR reporter in Baghdad (ICR No. 238, 23-Nov-07)
…Hundreds of thousands of families remain in camps throughout the country, where young Iraqis do not have access to education and are vulnerable to disease, according to aid agencies. According to the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, 15 per cent of Iraq’s population – about four million people – has fled their homes since 2003. Fifty per cent are children. The IOM in Iraq reports that 2.25 million Iraqis are internally displaced. In September 2007, Amnesty International said that Iraq had the “the fastest growing displacement crisis in the world”. “Inside Iraq, conditions for displaced children and the communities hosting them are grave,” UNICEF maintained in a report earlier this year. “The need to act is urgent.” The camps lack basic services such as clean water, sewage and electricity. In one camp in the capital’s al-Madaen neighbourhood, 65 families are living in mud houses and children are suffering from diaorreah, skin diseases and malnutrition, according to the IOM. Children are working to support their families and are not attending school….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38551

Palestinian Youth See Little Hope in Upcoming Summit
Ben Lynfield
In the town of Anata, bordering Jerusalem in the Judean desert hills, Palestinian youths can summon scant enthusiasm for the upcoming Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland. “We are like birds in a cage,” says Ahmad Dawahik, 19, who was released from prison eight months ago. What is taking place around their home town does not inspire faith in President Mahmoud Abbas’s declarations that Palestinians may be on the brink of a historic opportunity to gain independence. In a valley beneath the town, Israel is completing a controversial highway with a five-metre-high wall in the middle to separate Israeli and Palestinian traffic, with the latter having no exits to Jerusalem. There are also plans to expand the nearby Alon settlement on land expropriated from Anata residents….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38550

Lebanon’s president hands power to army
Clancy Chassay, Guardian
Lebanon was again plunged into uncertainty yesterday after parliament failed in a fifth attempt to elect a president, and the former Syrian backed-president Emile Lahoud, whose term ended at midnight, passed control of the security services over to the army, declaring a state of emergency. The US-backed government of Fouad Siniora rejected the declaration. “It is as if the statement was never issued,” said Siniora. The constitution says a president cannot call a state of emergency without government approval, but Lahoud and the Hizbullah-led opposition view the cabinet as unconstitutional following the walk out of its Shia ministers last year. The country is now in a presidential vacuum, with thousands of troops deployed across Beirut, and is likely to stay that way until the elections, postponed until next Friday, are attempted again…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38549

Q&A: ‘U.S. Politics Turning Communities Against Each Other’
Interview with Gilbert Achcar
IPS- Inter Press Service
IPS: Would the absence of U.S. forces in Iraq result in an interethnic conflict of total annihilation? GA: There are many signs to the contrary. Civil conflict has been going on anyway. It peaked some months ago and has subsided recently, but still the U.S. politics of turning the communities against each other has sharpened tensions between ethnic and sectarian groups. The only undisputable fact is the correlation between the occupation and the level of violence (…) IPS: What is the extent of the failure of the George W. Bush administration’s foreign policy? GA: It is a disaster. It is a total mess for U.S. foreign policy. Apart from Iraq – – where they also face a contradiction between their Turkish and Kurdish partners, which could cost them a lot politically — it is becoming clear that the operation in Afghanistan is a total disaster and the Taliban are back and are quite strong. You take Pakistan, the situation is destabilising. Washington fears [President Pervez] Musharraf and their fears are compounded by the fact that Pakistan is a nuclear power. I hope for some compromise in Lebanon but that might turn very serious there as well. And there are efforts of the Bush administration to do something about the Israel-Palestinian conflict in order to say they are achieving something. But there are no real conditions for a compromise or any concessions made by the Israelis….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38545

Friday: 1 U.S. Soldier, 50 Iraqis Killed; 107 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
Although the prayer day is often the quietest day for news, this Friday has been markedly violent with an attack on a weekly pet market in Baghdad and more bombings in Mosul among the numerous incidents. Meanwhile, a shrine and a mosque were also attacked, and Khalis was taken over by gunmen. At least 50 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 107 more were wounded in the latest attacks. Also, the DOD reported that one American soldier died in an accident on Wednesday….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38554

GI Special 5K18: Head Fake – November 22, 2007
Thomas F. Barton
[Lying Pro-Occupation Propaganda Award For 2007 Goes To:] “Thousands” Of Happy Iraqis Return Home From Syria; [See See! The Surge Is A Success!!] [You have to read half way through this long, long report from BBC to get even a hint of what was reported on CNN yesterday: All these “Happy Iraqis” are going back to Iraq because the Syrian government has cancelled their visas and kicked them out. And BBC doesn’t make that clear here either. But why spoil Bush propaganda with reality?] 21 November 2007 BBC NEWS [Excerpts] An estimated 1,000 people a day are returning across Iraq’s borders having previously moving abroad to escape the violence, Iraqi authorities say. Most of the returnees are coming from Syria – and very few from Jordan, where better-off refugees tended to go. [Huh? If everything is just peachy keen and wonderful back in Iraq, why wouldn’t those with the cash to make the move more easily just rush back to claim their abandoned property? Get the stench coming off this fake good news report?]

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38541

UNHCR says time not right for large-scale Iraq repatriation
UNHCR
Amid media reports that thousands of refugees are going back to Iraq, the UN refugee agency said on Friday that while improved security conditions were welcome it was not yet time to promote, organize or encourage returns. Spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis told journalists in Geneva that UNHCR was ready to assist people who have decided, or will decide, to return to Iraq voluntarily, but the agency believed that large-scale repatriation would only be possible “when proper return conditions are in place – including material and legal support and physical safety.”….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38540

Israeli settlers claim they will not budge, no matter what’s decided in Annapolis
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
“We know the Arabs say this is their land, but nobody can stop the will of God. We are growing and growing and all the other nations are going out”, roared the Mayor of Beit El settlement, near Ramallah. And Mayor Moshe Rosenbom, who was one of sixteen families that seized the land to create Beit El on Palestinian land sixteen years ago, is not alone in his fervor. Dani Dayan, head of the Yesha Council, which speaks for the settlers, said he is “optimistic” that the talks will fail. “The experiment of trying to create a Palestinian state was already tried in the Gaza territory two years ago. It became a de facto Arab state and we all know what happened with that.” …

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38543

Richard Perle: ‘I Don’t Believe I Was Wrong’ About Iraq
Think Progress
Appearing on BBC’s Hardtalk with Stephen Sackur this weekend, Iraq war architect Richard Perle attempted, on the one hand, to distance himself from the failures of the Iraq war, and on the other hand, to claim it was a fantastic success. “I’m not happy about the way events have unfolded in Iraq,” Perle began. But when asked whether he felt a “sense of personal responsibility” for what has happened in the aftermath of the invasion, Perle said “I certainly don’t consider myself responsible” for the disastrous post-war occupation of Iraq. Asked whether he was wrong on Iraq, Perle gave this response: Well, I don’t believe I was wrong…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38539

Iraqi Children Bear The Burden of An Uncalled-For War
César Chelala
Looking at photos of Iraqi children maimed by the war makes the conflict unforgettable. Reflecting on the causes that led to that war makes it unforgivable. Slowly but steadily new information is coming out on the effects of the war on children, and how it has affected not only their health but also their quality of life and prospects for the future. One child dies every five minutes because of the war, and many more are left with severe injuries. Of the estimated 4 million Iraqis who have been displaced in Iraq or left the country, 1.5 million are children. For the most part, they don’t have access to basic health care, education, shelter or water and sanitation. They carry on their shoulders the tragic consequences of an uncalled for war….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38538

Chaldean Bishop to visit London to highlight plight of Iraqi Christian refugees in Syria
ICIN
Bishop Antoine Audo SJ is to visit London to call for urgent assistance for Iraqi Christians who are now refugees in Syria. Bishop Audo, who is based in Aleppo, is responsible for Syria’s Chaldean Catholic community. There has been a huge rise in the Chaldean population in Syria since the US-led invasion in 2003. At 12 midday on Thursday, 29 November, he and Suha Rassam, author of Christianity in Iraq, will be giving a press conference at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, 39 Eccleston Square, SW1. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has reported that 44% of asylum seekers reaching Syria since their register started in 2003 are Christians, despite the fact that Christians form only 4% of the Iraqi population….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38532

An endless pool of prisoners
Haaretz Editorial
Why is Israel releasing 440 Palestinian prisoners specifically ahead of the Annapolis conference, and not 500 or 300, or 2,000 as the United States had expected? The impression is that no one is exercised by the security risk entailed in releasing prisoners – aside from politicians who want to make political capital off of it – and that all the wheeling and dealing revolves around the question of how many prisoners “are worth wasting” on this or that event. This regular game with the fate of people – some 10,000 of them – who are incarcerated in Israel, taking no account of the length of their prison sentences but only the political utility their fate can serve, warps Israel’s image as a law-abiding state. If at any given moment there is a pool of candidates for release, it stands to reason they could have been released long ago…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38544

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 23 November 2007
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
…In a dispatch posted at 6:30pm Baghdad time Friday night, the Yaqen News Agency reported that the US-installed puppet “President” of the Kurdish separatist region in northern Iraq, Mas’ud Barzani had been wounded in an assassination attempt carried out by one of his aides. Yaqen reported informed sources in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil as saying that the attempt took place near Barzani’s headquarters in the Salah ad-Din section of Irbil. A source close to the so-called Kurdistan Democratic Party – the separatist Kurdish party of which Barzani is the head, disclosed that Barzani had been taken out of Iraq on Friday in order to receive medical treatment, but refused to confirm or deny reports that Barzani had been wounded in an assassination attempt. The source also refused to indicate where Barzani had been taken for treatment….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38542

Iraq: Iran’s ME role ‘significant’
PRESS TV – IRAN
Iraq’s IAEA Ambassador Tariq Aqrawi has urged world powers especially the West to respect Iran’s important status in the Middle East. Western powers should admit Iran plays an effective role in the volatile region, the envoy said in an interview with the IRNA in Vienna. “Iran is not Iraq and its condition is not comparable to that of Iraq before the American invasion,” Aqrawi said regarding the US war threats…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38531

Iraq invited to attend Annapolis conference
Voices of Iraq
Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Friday said that it received an invitation to attend the Annapolis Middle East peace conference, to be held in the United States on November 27. “The ministry received an invitation sent to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zibari from his U.S. counterpart Condoleezza Rice to take part in the conference,” the ministry’s deputy minister for political affairs Labied Abbawi told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). “The government will discuss this invitation and our participation will be a political and moral one,” he asserted….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38530

The Taliban’s northern front
Taliban insurgents are building their network in the province of Badghis, in an attempt to open a gateway to Afghanistan’s north.
Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, IWPR
While the attention of the Afghan government and the media is focused on major battles in the south of the country, the Taliban are making major headway in a northern region. Badghis, a north-western province wedged between Herat and Faryab, has been the scene of heavy fighting for the past two months, and the insurgents have occupied three of the province’s seven districts. They have also established intelligence and operational networks in most district centers….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38527

Taliban recaptures district in W Afghanistan
Xinhua
The Taliban insurgents recaptured Gulistan district of western Afghan Farah province Friday, provincial governor Mohaidin Baloch said. While confirming the news with Xinhua, the governor said the government forces have moved out of the district to prevent war with the militants and the ensuing civilian casualties and property damage….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38526

Facts regarding Israel’s Fuel and Electricity Cuts to the Gaza Strip
Gisha
Regarding the fuel cuts: * On Sunday, October 28, Israel’s military ordered the private fuel company, Dor Alon, to provide 15% – 20% less fuel than the quantity ordered for Gaza residents.Gaza residents purchase fuel from Dor Alon via an agreement with the Palestinian Authority, and the fuel is transferred through Nahal Oz, on the Gaza-Israel border. Israel does not permit fuel to enter Gaza via the sea, the airspace, or the border with Egypt. * Essential services, including purifying and pumping drinking water, treating sewage, operating garbage collection trucks and ambulances, and operating the generators that power hospitals and other public buildings depend on fuel and the electricity generated by fuel….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38534

The Myth of Middle East Peace
Decpetion as Truth
WILLIAM A. COOK
…How can any serious person consider the probability of peace in Palestine when the Olmert government includes the racist party of Avigdor Lieberman who advocates the expulsion of Palestinians from their land, and has, in effect, achieved a “Targeted assassination” of the summit before the invitations went out (Ha’aretz, Yossi Verter, “Assassinating Annapolis,” 15/11/07)? How can any serious person consider the probability of peace when the broker of record is the United States, the erstwhile Godfather of the Neo-con Zionists that control both Israel and the multitude of AIPACs that own our Congress? And even now, as the world waits with baited breathe the possibility of peace, the racist government of Olmert cuts off electricity to the already decimated people of Gaza because he does not accede to international law but only to his own. In brutally blunt terms, the peace process overseen by Condoleeza Rice is a joke…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38525

Bombs Kill 26 in Baghdad, Northern Iraq
BUSHRA JUHI
Two bombs exploded hours apart Friday in a central Baghdad pet market and a police checkpoint in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing 26 people and wounding dozens, officials said. The attacks were among the deadliest in recent weeks, underscoring warnings by senior U.S. commanders that extremists still pose a threat to Iraq’s fragile security despite a downturn in violence since a U.S.-Iraqi security plan began in mid-February. The blast in the capital’s popular weekly al-Ghazl animal bazaar occurred just before 9 a.m., shattering the festive atmosphere as people strolled past the stalls….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38533

Assassination attempt against Al-Hayat reporters for revealing forgery
Roads to Iraq
An explanation of the failed assassination attempt against Al-Hayat corespondents “Abd Al-Wahid Tuma” and “Soudad Al-Alihi” yesterday as reported today by the “Iraqi Assembly for the Defense of the Journalists Rights” after they revealed today to Al-Hayat that 9,000 government officials are holding false school-graduation certificates among them Maliki’s top advisors and two ministers….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38535

Institutionalized Glorification of our Greed and Gluttony: Thanksgiving Reflections of an Anti-Capitalist
Jason Miller
Another propaganda-driven greed-fest has nearly passed in the land of the corporatized and the home of the subservient. Obedient little wage slaves and consumers that most of us are (to varying degrees of course), we have once again dutifully greased the wheels of the monstrous capitalist machine and made our proper sacrifices at the altar of Mammon. Between our voracious inhalation of all manner of edibles to our obscene spree of rapacious spending using money eagerly fronted by the usurious kings of finance capital, Thanksgiving and Black Friday are celebratory days indeed for the moneyed elite comprising the allegedly non-existent ruling class in our “egalitarian” and “democratic” nation….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38537

Cholera remains a threat in Iraq
Extemporaneous Discourse
Cholera has been an issue in Iraq for months now. It would seem that all of that “progress” in Iraq doesn’t include having drinking water that won’t kill you. Now, a lot of Third World countries seem to be able to provide potable water, and they haven’t had $500 billion poured into them by the U.S. What does it say when “six governmental hospitals” have water that is “unsafe”? It says that Iraq is a failed state and that the Bush Administration’s claims of improvement are selective and misleading, to say the least….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38524

Three Palestinians killed by the occupation in Gaza
Palestinian Information Center
Three Palestinians were killed on Thursday by the Israeli occupation, two were killed when they were fired on by the IOF and the third died as a result of being denied to seek medical treatment abroad. Palestinian medical sources stated that Salem Abu Sa’da (27) was killed when IOF troops manning the Mintar (Karni) crossing opened fire at the young man hitting him with several bullets in the top part of his body. Dr. Muaweyah Husain, the director of emergency services at the PA Health Ministry told PIC correspondent that they were alerted by the civil liaison office of the death of the Palestinian man, but they were not told of the circumstances of his death and that his department recovered the body of the victim….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38523

Syria cancels the Palestinian factions meeting in opposition to Annapolis
IMEMC
A high-ranking Palestinian source reportedly revealed to Al-Quds Al-Arabi on Thursday that the Damascus regime barred the opposition Palestinian factions’ meeting. The unnamed source added that the Syrian authorities succumbed to pressure imposed by the Americans, Arabs, Europeans and even Palestinians. A member of the Hamas political office reported to Al-Quds Al-Arabi that the meeting was suspended until it is clear what the autumn meeting in Annapolis will entail. It is necessary to know if the meeting will be held, what the schedule will be and which countries will participate. In the light of all these facts the decision of holding the Palestinian national conference will be taken…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38522

Unconstitutional Ramallah Government Wage War on the Poor and Needy
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
On the WestBank the care-taker government of Fatah has made a decision to disband the Palestinian aids giving committees.Hamas described these measures as – “a war on the poor.” Salam Fayyad, said Thursday – that his Ramallah “government” ( Fatah affiliated, illegal and supported by USA) were disbanding and restructuring the aid – giving committees to eradicate factional partiality, Riyad Al-Maliki the Fatah, “information minister “ – said, the reason for the decision to destroy well established social aid programs, is to “restructure the committees to be able to exclude committee members, whom were elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council and to local councils”…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38536