White House Releases “Principles” for Permanent Iraqi Presence
Spencer Ackerman – TPM Muckraker
So it begins. After years of obfuscation and denial on the length of the U.S.’s stay in Iraq, the White House and the Maliki government have released a joint declaration of “principles” for “friendship and cooperation.” Apparently President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed the declaration during a morning teleconference….

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Dahr Jamail, How to Control the Story, Pentagon-style
Iraq Has Only Militants, No Civilians
Dahr Jamail
Name them. Maim them. Kill them. From the beginning of the American occupation in Iraq, air strikes and attacks by the U.S. military have only killed “militants,” “criminals,” “suspected insurgents,” “IED [Improvised Explosive Device] emplacers,” “anti-American fighters,” “terrorists,” “military age males,” “armed men,” “extremists,” or “al-Qaeda.” The pattern for reporting on such attacks has remained the same from the early years of the occupation to today. Take a helicopter attack on October 23rd of this year near the village of Djila, north of Samarra. The U.S. military claimed it had killed 11 among “a group of men planting a roadside bomb.” Only later did a military spokesperson acknowledge that at least six of the dead were civilians. Local residents claimed that those killed were farmers, that there were children among them, and that the number of dead was greater than 11….

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Resistance negotiations in Cairo with the Americans
Roads to Iraq
Speaking about the Sadirists, they were not the only group that rejected the new de-Ba athfication law, even the Ba ath Partty party rejected it. Al-Murshidi said to Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: Our position is clear, we rejected all the resolutions and laws issued under the occupation, if it is the de-Baathification law or oil and gas laws. Also Al-Murshidi denied that Baath Party involved in any negotiations with the Americans. According Elaph the “Iraqi Resistance Political Council” was negotiating the Americans in Cairo two days ago . Former Oil minister Taiyh Abd Al-Karim said: The Iraqi Resistance Political Council, appointed me to negotiate with the Americans. Several meetings held with the Americans at the request from the American side in several States, including what happened two days ago sponsored by Cairo…..

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Iraqi Refugees: Challenges for Iraqis Detained in Lebanon
WorldBridge: Refugees International’s Blog
Every refugee crisis creates tragic stories, but in the case of the Iraqi refugees in Lebanon, part of the tragedy lies in how absurd people’s situations become. A visit to the Rumieh prison in Beirut confirmed this. Meeting with Iraqis who are imprisoned in Rumieh is heartbreaking, as their stories are tragic, and even more so in that they are all so common and similar. The Iraqis we met were either victims of or threatened by violence, and felt that their only choice was to leave Iraq, often on a moments notice. Rumieh prison now houses over 400 Iraqis, nearly all of whom were arrested for being in the country illegally. In the prison, over a hundred prisoners share a room no bigger than 35 square meters.

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Iraq to seek long-term US presence
QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer
Iraq’s government, seeking protection against foreign threats and internal coups, will offer the U.S. a long-term troop presence in Iraq in return for U.S. security guarantees as part of a strategic partnership, two Iraqi officials said Monday. The proposal, described to The Associated Press by two senior Iraqi officials familiar with the issue, is one of the first indications that the United States and Iraq are beginning to explore what their relationship might look like once the U.S. significantly draws down its troop presence….

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Defining Racism
Kim Petersen
…Kay presents herself as a defender of Jews from racism. Jews should be defended from racism. All peoples should be defended from racism. Racism is a scourge that should be obliterated. Yet, in essence, Kay exposes her own racism by ignoring or minimizing the terrible crimes perpetrated on Palestinians by Jews. Kay and other apologists for Zionist crimes strive to entrench criticism of Zionist crimes as the “ultimate taboo” and to bludgeon the anti-racist critics with the label of anti-Semitism. But Zionism is not the equivalent of Judaism, as Neturei Karta evince. Anti-Semitism is being wielded as a fallacious defense against racism. In fact, it is racism under the guise of anti-racism. In a moral world, seeking justice for Palestinians must not be conflated with anti-Semitism…

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Annals of Liberation: Killers and Extremists in the Pay of Petraeus
Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque
…You could have a whole new round of civil war between Shiite and Sunni factions that are both backed by the United States: the usual win-win scenario, keeping Iraq supine, “justifying” a continuing U.S. military presence, and ensuring American dominance of whatever regime emerges from the mass bloodletting. This is the reality that has always prevailed in Iraq, from the moment that George W. Bush ordered the international war crime of military aggression to begin to the latest “metric of success” in the Petraeus surge. This war has never been anything more than a low and dirty game of power politics for the benefit of a few elites – who are willing to pay anyone to kill for them, or see anyone killed, as long as their interests are served….

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Israeli Siege of Gaza Resulting in Huge Humanitarian Crisis
Electricity Cuts Spell Impending Humanitarian Disaster, Gazans Cannot Even Properly Bury Their Dead
Mohammed Omer, BBSNews
…Israel’s siege is not only creating a living Hell for the 1.4 million living in the Gaza Strip: the dead are also affected. In addition to the very vital food and medical supplies which Israel is preventing from entering Gaza, cement and building materials are also being denied entry. As a result, those who die, an increasing number of who are killed by invading Israeli forces or border closures, will have no burial place. Without the cement for graves, it isn’t possible to adequately construct gravesites. More than ever, this makes Gazans wonder, how and when is this siege going to end, if we don’t even have cement to build graves to bury our dead, casualties of this international siege on us? Is there any humanity left, when the world only remains glaringly silent on starving and killing Gaza in every way possible? Our basic needs have been starved. Our education is being rendered impossible, here and abroad. Our dead have no peace…

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An excursion through the West Bank is a trip to disbelief
Dan Lieberman, Online Journal Contributing Writer
…Entering Bethlehem means being greeted by the separation wall which runs close to homes. The former popular Bethlehem has shrunk in size and economy. Israel decided to incorporate 22 percent of Bethlehem’s land into Jerusalem. The government also routed the wall so that it cuts across the Jerusalem/Bethlehem highway and closes the previously used road to Bethlehem. This road brought tourists past the souvenir shops, which are now mostly closed. Hotels are only 10 percent occupied. The livelihoods of many Bethlehem citizens have disappeared. To obtain employment, laborers line up at 3 a.m. at checkpoints they must pass through in order to go to Jerusalem and work. The checkpoint funnels persons through a small fenced area, similar to a stockyard, bringing them to a turnstile and to security control. The once busy and proud Bethlehem is now a decaying town; empty shops, empty homes, empty tourist attractions. If the Christian Lord could rise again, he would be alone. The UN claims decaying Bethlehem water pipelines lose 25 percent of the water. The former Palestine Authority intelligence headquarters, bombed by Israeli jets on March 5, 2002, remains a bombed out group of senseless buildings….

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Islamic Army splits over fight with Qaeda
Kareem Abedzair, Azzaman
A split in the ranks of the Islamic Army of Iraq is certain to reverse the successes U.S. occupation troops allege to have made in the country in the past few months. The Mosul sector has severed ties with the Islamic Army whose leaders have agreed to cooperate with U.S. troops and turn their guns against Qaeda fighters and elements in the country. The Mosul sector is one of the most effective and battle hardened of the insurgent group which once claimed the execution of almost daily attacks on U.S. troops….

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Gaza Must Not be Forgotten if Anapolis Goes Ahead
Window Into Palestine
…Please Copy and Paste this letter into a email and Please sign & Email to: Ghada.karmi@btinternet.com
The Anapolis meeting must not ignore the plight of Gaza. We are horrified at the continuing illegal siege of its people, further intensified following Israel’s decision to declare Gaza a ‘hostile entity’. If Israel now cuts off power and fuel supplies, essential for hospitals, pumping equipment and sanitation, Palestinians, already suffering without food or fresh water, will face a full-blown humanitarian disaster – deliberately created through a consciously punitive Israeli policy (…) We should not stand by, silently watching while Palestinians die as a result of the siege of Gaza. The Israeli government’s systematic denial of Palestinian rights is incompatible with any notion of peace or justice. This is the real issue at Anapolis, and our government must act to ensure that Israel immediately ends its blockade of Gaza….

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Tragedy and Travesty at Annapolis
Stephen Lendman
November 27 at Annapolis kicks off the latest Israeli-Palestinian Middle East peace process round that may be an historic first. It’s the first time in memory the legitimate government of one side is excluded, and that alone dooms it. Like previous rounds, it’s more pretense than peace, and as Jonathan Steele puts it in his November 16 Guardian column “The Palestinian path to peace does not go via Annapolis….so what do….Palestinians do next….In their decades-long bid for justice, they have tried everything:” armed struggle to compromise, but nothing works and the reason is simple. Their sincerity isn’t matched by Israel, the West, other Arab states and the US most of all with all the muscle in its hands to push or constrain Israelis to be serious and fair. That’s the problem. How can one side negotiate in good faith without a willing partner….

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 25 November 2007
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
…In a dispatch posted Sunday, the Yaqen News Agency reported that the Iraqi Resistance organization called the “Brigades of the South” had taken responsibility for the assassination of Majid Talib a commander of Jaysh al-Mahdi Shi’i sectarian death squads in the southern city of al-Basrah. Yaqen reported a communiqué issued by the Brigades of the South as saying that its fighters opened fire on Talib on the Commercial street near the Electricity Department in al-Basrah, killing him on the spot. The Brigades noted that Talib was a commander of one of the Shi’i sectarian criminal death squad organizations in al-Basrah responsible for torture and murder of Sunnis….

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Gunmen slaughter 11 relatives of Iraqi journalist
AFP
An Iraqi journalist said on Monday gunmen went on a killing spree in his Baghdad home, murdering seven children and four adult relatives in the latest assault on media staff in the war-scarred country. Dia al-Kawwaz, editor of Internet website Shabeqat Akhbar al-Iraq (Network of Iraqi News), said militiamen sprayed his relatives with bullets after storming into his house on Sunday. “Four gunmen entered my family house in Shab area. Two of my sisters, their husbands and seven children between five and 10 years old were killed yesterday (Sunday) morning,” Kawwaz told AFP on Monday by telephone from Amman. He accused Shiite militiamen of carrying out the killings, saying they “stormed the house when the family was having breakfast”. “Earlier I was accused of being pro-US and so had to flee to Germany and now I am accused of being a Saddamist,” said Kawwaz, a Shiite, who has lived in Germany for the past 20 years. According to the report on his news website, which is known for its strong stance against the US military occupation of Iraq, the gunmen bombed the house after killing the family members….

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Annapolis Talks About Anything But Peace
Israeli Media Reports that there will be No Change in Israeli Policy
BBSNews
….Maybe if Israel actually had to follow international law the way the US expects Arab nations to follow it there might just be a breakthrough. But it won’t come from Republicans and it won’t come from Bush and Annapolis. Condi Rice should just book herself a couple of weeks in some luxury locale with lots of shoe stores where she can forget about the humiliation she is about to go through. President Bush already gave up Palestinian land he does not have title to when he gave Ariel Sharon some “letters of assurance” that major settlement blocks in the West Bank will be kept intact. Since that in itself guarantees that there will never be peace, Rice should not have gone down this path. Only when a US president stands up to Israel and says “follow the UN resolutions or we will stop the billions of dollars of arms and otherwise prop-up money the American taxpayer gives you” will the world see a fair and balanced settlement between Israel and the Arab world….

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Israeli military implements excavation plan from Silwan reaching as far as Al Aqsa Mosque
Ali Samoudi – IMEMC
Despite efforts made by Palestinian groups and NGOs to halt Israeli plans for the Judaization of Jerusalem and to devastate the Palestinian existence inside the city, Israeli policy shows their objective is to make Jerusalem the capitol city of an Israeli Jewish state. Recently the Israeli archaeological department has commenced excavation works in the Silwan area towards the Al Aqsa mosque. Israel is exploiting Arab and Islamic countries apathy to go ahead with its plans for the holy site of the al Aqsa according to Sheikh Irema Sabri, former mufti of Jerusalem….

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$144 Million Over Budget and Still Not Open for Business
Iraq Embassy as Gilded Palace
CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI
I was half right. In late May I wrote that September was going to be an exciting month in Iraq. I observed that that was the month in which funding for the war would end and the debate about the future of the war would begin. That has happened and the debate has not yet drawn to a close. I also said it was going to be exciting because that was the month in which the new United States Embassy in Iraq would be opened. I said it was not only exciting because it would soon be opening but because it was going to be the first major construction project in Iraq that had been completed on time and right on budget, an unusual occurrence in the United States but even more unusual in a place like Iraq. I also observed that unlike the rest of Iraq, this splendid edifice (as large as the Vatican with an ambassador’s residence of 16,000 square feet) would have its own water and power supply. That served to distinguish it from the rest of Iraq where many residents have electricity only 4 hours a day and only 32% of the population has access to potable water.

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PA-Israeli document liquidating RoR unveiled
Palestinian Information Center
The Hebrew Haaretz newspaper has unveiled in its late edition on Monday a “serious” PA-Israeli document that aims at liquidating the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees to their homeland in the 1948-occupied Palestinian lands. According to the paper, an Israeli group close to Israeli premier Ehud Olmert along with a Palestinian team associated with PA chief Mahmoud Abbas had negotiated the possibility of replacing the RoR with some economic projects that could cost 90 billion dollars. The document, the paper added, was an initial semi-official attempt to dismantle the barrier of the RoR and to transform it into economic benefits that could help reaching practical solutions to the issue…

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SAME METHODS 300+ YEARS APART
Malcom Lagauche
In my last column, I wrote about the annihilation of the Wampanoag Indian tribe after they helped the Pilgrims survive in a hostile environment in Massachusetts. Many of the actions perpetrated by the descendants of the Pilgrims against the Natives were similar, if not identical, to those used by the U.S. against Iraq more than three centuries later. We saw the same ethnocentrism and bigotry released in 1991 repeated in 2003 with the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq by the U.S. However, there are more precedents from antiquity that mirror those actions….

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Bush’s Twenty-Billion Dollar Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia
The Zionist Power Configuration Defeats Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, the White House and the Pentagon
James Petras
So Bush and Gates went ahead and sent the bill to Congress authorizing the $20 billion sales to Saudi Arabia, a trillion dollar economy with a two-bit military wholly dependent on its US military protector. Immediately the ZPC rounded up its automatic 190 members of the House of Representatives to sign a letter opposing the sale. The ZPC formulated the position embodied in the letter and oversaw its draft with the collaboration of its co-religionists in Congress. Zionist Congress members Shelley Berkeley and Anthony Weiner teamed up with Michael Ferguson. The Zion-Cons claimed justifiably that they could mobilize over three quarters of the Congress on any issue affecting Israel’s ‘security’. Zionist lawmakers claimed, “the sale would undermine Israel’s superiority in the region”. Every major independent military think tank would dispute this argument since Israel is the only nuclear power in the region, has the biggest and most technologically sophisticated air force and missile system, while Saudi Arabia and all the Gulf States have trouble even controlling local ground level bomb throwers. There are two likely outcomes both demonstrating categorically that it is the ZPC that dictates US policies in the Middle East: The military sales will not fly. The military sale will be approved on conditions that Israel is privy to all its details and can modi! fy or om it any part of the agreement….

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Iraq Kurds defy Baghdad on oil deals
AFP
The autonomous Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq defied Baghdad on Monday, vowing to sign more contracts with international oil firms despite the national government’s opposition. “The (regional) government will continue with the contracts and they will be implemented,” its prime minister Nechirvan Barzani said. “No one can cancel any contract of the KRG (Kurdistan regional government) signed with foreign companies,” a defiant Barzani told reporters in the regional capital Arbil….

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