Iraqi prisoners’ file a bargain chip in U.S. hands
Fatih Abdulsalam, Azzaman
…There are prisoners who have no idea about why they are incarcerated. The lucky ones are those who were covered by a pardon and freed after at least two years in prison without trial. Iraqis want to know about the measures under which their beloved ones are jailed and the nature of the accusations they are charged with. They would also like to have some idea about the nature of the emergency law imposed on them and the prerogatives of those implementing it. In the nearly five years since the U.S. invasion, every citizen unhappy with U.S. policy or that of its cartoon government in Baghdad is made a suspect. This is a classic example of state terror practiced by government institutions and (foreign) troops. It is almost impossible to elevate the country to the status of a civilized society when most of its members are affected by the presence in jail of their sons, brothers, husbands and fathers. Is this the face of the new Iraq? Is this the civilized life which millions of Iraqis were promised? In the five years since the U.S. invasion, millions of Iraqis have been made homeless driven out of their cities and towns as they flee the (U.S.) high-tech warfare and the terror of Iraqi militias….

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IRAQ: Detentions Escalate in Diwaniyah
Ali al-Fadhily*, Inter Press Service
Detentions have become commonplace in Iraq, but now more than ever before people are being detained after being accused of membership in “militias supported by Iran.” “Hundreds of our men were detained and accused of being militiamen supported by Iran,” Mahmood Allawi, a 50-year-old lawyer from Diwaniyah, 160-kilomtres south of Baghdad, told IPS. “We are Arab Shiite and Iran is as much an enemy to us as America! It is Iran that we fear most after our leaders were killed by the so-called ‘Iranian supported’ militias,” Allawi said (…) U.S. officials claim that the military has been actively fighting against members of the Mehdi Army militia of anti-occupation cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. People here told a different story to IPS. “If they mean the Mehdi Army then they know them well because they worked together for about two years now,” Abdul Kazem Hussein, a former Iraqi officer who fled to Baghdad from Diwaniyah recently told IPS. Hussein claimed that the U.S. military had been using members of the Mehdi Army to carry out attacks on Sunnis in Baghdad, as well as areas south of Baghdad, like Diwaniyah. “But they are detaining hundreds of people who have always been afraid of being drilled to death by Mehdi Army murderers,” Hussein explained, alluding to a practice used by Mehdi Army members of using electric drills to torture Sunni men they capture. “They are detaining those who have not accepted the influence of Iran in the city,” Hussein said…

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Iraq : Looking Back : ‘Internationally Sponsored Genocide’.
Felicity Arbuthnot
…The embargo of course, ground on for a further ten years, then came the criminality of ‘Shock and Awe’ and an invasion where Iraqis can be killed, tortured, stolen from, raped, run over, bombed, blown up, imprisoned without trial, with impunity. If anyone treated a domestic or farm animal in the West, as the Iraqis have been treated for over seventeen years: denied a proper diet, medication, clean water, a safe environment, that person would end up in Court and likely in prison…

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Gaza Children are at Risk .. The Anemia Disease Spreads as a Result of the Siege
Popular Committee Against Siege
In light of the siege imposed on more than a million and a half million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, suffering is spread amongst the people, but children are the most affected category by the siege. This led an international commissioner in Gaza to warn of the serious repercussions on the children of Gaza and their future health and education, as a result of the poor health conditions and malnutrition that the siege creates. In this regard, Dr. Ra’aft Hassouna, from the UNICEF, said that the symptom of malnutrition appeared on schoolchildren in several forms, including anemia, which has spread among school children by 22%, particularly from the age of 5 to 12 years. Also, the lack of iron and vitamin “A”, which leads to anemia, and the lack of vitamin D appear with 4.1%, and the lack of iodine appears by 10% among schoolchildren….

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Bush Commits Troops to Iraq for the Long Term
Deal to provide mandate for military beyond 2008. US oil companies likely to benefit from proposals.
Suzanne Goldenberg,The Guardian UK
The Bush administration formally committed America yesterday to a long-term military presence in Iraq, pledging to protect the government in Baghdad from internal coup plots and foreign enemies (…) The military, economic and diplomatic agreement would commit US forces to defending the government of Iraq from internal and external threats as well as fighting al-Qaida and “all other outlaw groups regardless of affiliation”, according to the declaration of principles released by the White House yesterday. In return, Iraq pledged itself to “encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq”. The promise was immediately seen as a potential bonanza for American oil companies….

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“Political Council for Resistance” denies negotiating with US in Cairo
HAQ agency
Haq Agency reported that the “Political Council for Resistance” denied negotiating with the US in Cairo, as claimed on Radio Sawa, an Arabic language radio station funded by the United States government. According to Radio Sawa, Tayh Abd Al-Karim (Iraqi Ba’athist and former Oil minister in the 70’s) was chosen as spokesperson for the Political Council for Resistance and he was negotiating with the US. The Political Council for Resistance denied any negotiation with the occupiers and also denied having any relationship with Tayh Abd Al-Karim or other Ba’ath Party members….

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Four Days in Iraq: And this Means the Surge is Working?
Larry C. Johnson
If fourteen car and roadside bombs in four days is your idea of success then I give up. You should immediately sign up for the Joe Lieberman fantasy tour. While you are at it, keep those eyes on the skies because I bet the rapture is imminent. (Please remember to tell Joe that since he is a Jew that Jesus will not be favorably disposed to catch him up with the rest of the saved. Unless he accepts Jesus he is getting left behind, no matter how deeply he believes things are swell in Iraq.) Yes it is true that the level of violence is down in Iraq. But that is like saying that the explosions on Omaha Beach were not as bad as the fire bombing of Dresden. Truth is no sane person would want to be in either locale. We also need to be honest with ourselves. If we were experiencing one terrorist bombing a day in America would Bush or any member of Congress have the balls to tell the American people that things are better?…

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Calling Israeli-Palestinian struggle a ‘conflict’ misses basic inequities between two countries
Sarah Price, Window Into Palestine
What’s happening between Israel and Palestine is most often, and most erroneously, referred to as a conflict. What’s erroneous about the use of this term is that it implies two parties on equal footing who disagree with each other. That there is disagreement is correct. But it is not only that Israel wants to be recognized as a state and Palestine disagrees; it’s that Palestinians believe they should be free to live their lives without occupation, sanctions, forced poverty and starvation, lack of health care, and constant fear of snipers and bombings. And Israel disagrees. In its silence and blind eye toward the actions of Israel, so, apparently, does the rest of the world. Where the effects of the occupation are most concentrated is in the region’s hospitals, which are struggling to support and heal their patients. At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, doctors have had to modify the treatment of their patients in order to give them any treatment at all, because of the depletion of drugs and malfunctioning equipment….

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PRESIDENT SIGNS DOCUMENT EFFECTIVELY MAKING IRAQ A COLONY OF THE U.S.
Damian Lataan
I’m not sure that I’ve read a more sickening document than the one that was released by the White House yesterday entitled ‘Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America’. Encapsulated in this document is the geo-political reality of what the Bush/Cheney administration and their neoconservative and Likudnik supporters had set out to achieve since the day George W. Bush became President of the US (…) There are several iniquitous points made in the document that betray the real intent of the administration but, in particular, point five of the second principle relating to ‘the economic sphere’ which says: “Facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq,” and point eight which says: “Supporting the Republic of Iraq to obtain positive and preferential trading conditions for Iraq within the global marketplace including accession to the World Trade Organization and most favored nation status with the United States,” says it all. Iraq’s puppet leaders have signed over Iraq to the US…

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Sick are in the frontline as supplies and hope drain away for isolated Gazans
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian
…Desperately in need of refitting, re-equipping and repainting, the Nasser hospital is the main centre for children’s healthcare in the Gaza Strip. The intensive care unit has six beds, but can take only three patients because it has only three functioning ventilators. Two more stand idle, worn out and in need of spare parts or replacement. The monitors above each ventilator are well past their expiry dates: one is 13 years old and produces dangerously inaccurate or conflicting readings. “So you have to look at the patient yourself and trust what your eyes are telling you,” said Bushra Hassan Lubbed, one of the unit’s doctors. In the last fortnight two of their patients have died and the doctors are distraught. One was a seven-month-old girl who was brought in with acute kidney failure. Lubbed knew the only treatment was kidney dialysis, but there is no paediatric dialysis machine in Gaza. The routine in such cases has been to refer the child for treatment elsewhere, either in Egypt or in Israel. But in mid-June Hamas, the Islamist movement which won last year’s elections, seized full control of Gaza after a near civil war with its rival, Fatah. Since then the crossing to Egypt has been completely closed and entry into Israel has been limited to a very few…

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Letter to The Independent re the Annapolis Conference
Khalid AMAYREH, Tlaxcala:
The Annapolis conference is another monumental exercise in futility, mendacity and failure. Just take a fleeting look at participants and attendees. George Bush, the Fuehrer of the White House, has tons of innocent Iraqi and Afghani blood on his hands. Needless to say, a person as such is inherently incapable of making peace. This is the same man who had called Ariel Sharon, the certified Israeli war criminal and hero of the Sabra and shatila massacres, a man of peace. Tony Blair, another participant, is a deceitful liar, a verbal juggler, a pathetic prevaricator, a man as sinful as sin itself. He too has much Iraqi and Muslim blood on his hands. As such, he can’t make peace in Palestine….

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The African Lakes Plateau is an Israeli water playground
Ahmad Tuhami Abd Al-Hay from Sudanese Media Centre 26 November 2006
Translated by: Adib S. Kawar, revised by Mary Rizzo, Peacepalestine
Some Egyptian parliamentarians and commentators have recently raised the issue of the crisis between Egypt and the Nile basin States, some of whom such as Kenya and Uganda, signatories of the Nile source agreement, expressed their intention to withdraw from it and use the Nile waters as they desire. This brought to attention the dangers of the “Israeli” infiltration in the Nile basin States, which does not cover only Ethiopia as some may believe. This infiltration was extended to cover the rest of the basin States, the relations of which grew to a considerable extent with the Zionist entity since the mid nineties. Researchers believe that these relations reached a stage equal to that between Ethiopia and the Zionist enemy. The goals and benefits of the Zionist entity go beyond these relations….

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Iraqi Police: US Gunfire at Bus Kills 4
HAMID AHMED, AP
American troops fired on a minibus carrying bank employees to work Tuesday, killing as many as four passengers, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said two people were killed after the driver disregarded a warning shot and drove into an area limited to cars. The shooting took place in northern Baghdad’s Shaab neighborhood, known as a Shiite militia stronghold, as the driver was collecting employees to go to work at Rasheed bank, police said. U.S. troops fired when the bus reached the U.S. roadblock and tried to drive through, killing four passengers — including three women, police and hospital officials said…

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Israeli army kills a Palestinian farmer in Rafah, as death toll rises to six in 24 hours
Rami Almeghari – IMEMC
Six Palestinians, including resistance fighters, have been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza over the past 24 hours. Early on Tuesday morning, Palestinian medics pronounced the death of Ali Alsufi, a 55-year-old local farmer in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, after the Israeli soldiers opened fire at him. Witnesses said that the Israeli army has swept into the eastern Rafah city, just close to the devastated Gaza international airport…

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Democrats Choose Prisoner Abuse-Linked General for Radio Address, Author Tara McKelvey on Sanchez and Her Book “Monstering”
Democracy Now!
This past Saturday, the Democrats chose retired Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez to give their weekly radio address. According to the ACLU, Sanchez urged his troops to “go to the outer limits” to extract information from prisoners. Previously released documents have linked Sanchez to the use of army dogs during interrogations. We speak with Tara McKelvey, author of “Monstering: Inside America’s Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War.”

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US Army reports rising desertion rates
Naomi Spencer, WSWS
After a decline in desertion rates following an initial exodus before the preemptive strikes on Afghanistan and Iraq, the military is recording a rise in the number of soldiers who abandon their posts. The Associated Press reported November 16 that desertions this year stand 80 percent higher than in 2003, when the US invaded Iraq. According to the US Army, 4,698 soldiers—about 9 in every 1,000—deserted in the fiscal year ending September 2007. Over the same period, the Department of Defense reported 1,163 total US deaths and 8,190 wounded. Overall, desertion is the largest cause of personnel attrition—over fatalities and injuries—serious enough to result in military discharge….

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IS PALESTINE ON THE ROAD TO PEACE OR THE ROAD TO DESPAIR?
Desert Peace
The situation in Palestine continues to deteriorate, both on a political scale and humanitarian scale. The international blockade of Gaza and the continued illegal collective punishment of its residents by Israel has resulted in soaring food prices (eg. a bag of flour has risen from 80 shekels to over 200 shekels ie. A $23 to A $57). In addition, many foodstuffs, medicines and other goods, such as building material are no longer available. According to the United Nations Office for Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories there are zero stocks available for 91 drugs. Hospitals are reporting zero stock availability of pediatric drugs and anti-biotics, as well as a shortage in chronic disease drugs, cancer treatment drugs, a range of kidney dialysis drugs and IV glucose solution. In addition, there are also shortages of kidney dialysis machine equipment…

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“JUST TELL THEM YOU ARE A CHRISTIAN…..”
Desert Peace
I was recently informed that a certain tour company (U.S. based btw) which operates throughout the Middle East has informed the Muslim guides working for them in Israel to tell their clients that they are Christians if anyone asks. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Would an American Jewish or Christian tourist feel uncomfortable knowing they are in the presence of a Muslim? Is that Muslim really expected to deny who he is for the comfort of some ignorant or perhaps even racist person, or should they proudly declare what they are and see where the ‘cards fall’. Are we expected to put our native Muslims ‘behind the wall’ to satisfy these people? Are we to go into denial, saying that no Muslims live in the Middle East?…

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A large rally in Gaza, protesting Annapolis
Rami Almeghari – IMEMC
Scores of thousands of Palestinians demonstrated in Gaza today, in protest of the Annapolis peace summit, taking place Tuesday in the United States. The rally, the largest, since Hamas has taken over Gaza in June, was called by opposition factions, mainly the Hamas and Islamic Jihad parties. Protesters chanted slogans against the underway Washington-sponsored conference, saying ‘ we wont recognize Israel, we never concede the right of return, we never give up an inch of our lands’….

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A Culture of Crime, Racism and Privilege
On the Road to the Torture School
JOE DeRAYMOND
…This year, between 11,000 and 25,000 people were at the gates of Fort Benning, demanding a close to a school that provides aid and training to the most repressive and terrorist militaries of the world. Torture and assassination techniques have been taught at SOA/WHINSEC, as proven by the disclosure of manuals used in courses during the 1980's and 1990's. In August of this year, news reports appeared that Colombian graduates and instuctors of SOA/WHINSEC have been implicated in recent murders of US drug interdiction teams in Colombia, and have been providing protection for a Colombian drug lord, Diego Leon Montoya Sanchez, alias “Don Diego”…

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Update from Annapolis
IMEU
..Tense negotiations continue to focus on the American request for a joint Palestinian/Israeli declaration. The Palestinian team – before coming to Annapolis and since arriving – has been pushing for three major issues to be included in any statement: 1) a timeline for implementation; 2) guarantees of international involvement; and 3) clearly stated terms of reference, including international law, United Nations resolutions and the Roadmap to Peace. Israel has rejected all three…

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