We own Iraq: The Shock Doctrine perfected
Docudharma
It’s time to add another star to the flag. We’re never leaving Iraq. Ever. The Sun will go red giant in about five billion years, and we’ll still be in Iraq (…) The the disaster Bush has wrought in Iraq is perfect; and TPM Muckraker also points out, Iraq “war czar” General Douglas Lute claims the establishment of permanent bases in Iraq does not even require Senate approval. That, of course, would involve democratic processes, and we know that democratic processes are a hindrance to the effective exploitation by corporatists. Meanwhile, the military is getting ever more inventive in its construction of military bases: a recent Wall Street Journal article even revealed that we’re now building them literally on top of Iraq oil platforms! So, wake up tomorrow, go to work, and work hard. As earlier stated, a good chunk of the tax dollars you’re paying to our “government” will really be spent for our own military to provide personal protection to the corporatists to whom Iraq is now becoming a wholly owned subsidiary….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38667

Sixty years after ‘Al-Nakba’ in Palestine
Palestinian right of return still a fundamental demand
Richard Becker
…Six decades after Al-Nakba, the right of return remains a key issue despite the Israeli and U.S. leaders’ constant efforts to dismiss it. It is obvious why the cause remains so vital for Palestinians. If a people are deprived of their land, their very existence as a people is threatened. Defending the right of return is a key element in the struggle to maintain the unity of the Palestinian people between those who remain inside historic Palestine and those families that have been illegally expelled. Israeli opposition to Palestinian return is not really because there is “no room” for the Palestinians in Palestine, as Zionist ideologues often claim. That argument is blatantly racist. Palestinian demographer Dr. Salman Abu-Sitta has pointed out that most of the more than 500 demolished Palestinian towns and villages remain unoccupied today. They were destroyed and their residents driven away for mainly political purposes—the creation of an exclusivist state. Nor is this some long-resolved issue buried in the sands of time. Hundreds of thousands of people forcibly exiled in 1948 and 1967 are alive today. Many hold among their dearest possessions the keys to their homes in Palestine. Some of those houses, particularly in the demolished villages, were bulldozed into the ground. Many others, however, especially in cities like Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem and elsewhere were expropriated and turned over to Israeli settlers, who li! ve in th em to this day…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38665

Is what the US has been doing in Iraq genocide?
BULENT KENES
…Dr. Douglas states that the United States began its genocide in Iraq 17 years ago and notes, “The 2003 US invasion of Iraq was the culmination and intensification of a consistent US policy of destroying Iraq as a national and state entity.” Having figured out that around 1.5 million people, most them children and women, died because of the 13-year UN-led embargo on Iraq, which was enforced as a result of heavy pressure from the US, Dr. Douglas adds that the number of people killed in the war since 2003 has exceeded 1 million. He benefits also from Lancet and the Iraq Body Count in reaching the quoted figures and holds the United States responsible for the killing of a total 2.5 million people in Iraq — apart from the cultural, social and economic destruction it has inflicted on the country. He bluntly describes this as downright genocide….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38662

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….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38659

Ministerial report: IOF siege killed 45 Palestinian patients in Gaza
Palestinian Information Center
The health ministry in the PA caretaker government has announced that 45 Palestinians were killed over the past five months in the Gaza Strip due to the IOF closure of crossings. The ministry in a report said that 450 cancer patients are waiting for proper treatment in Gaza and that almost 35% of them are children and 25% women, warning that they were in real danger due to absence of medication and IOF travel ban. It pointed out that 400 Palestinians in the Strip were suffering kidney failure and depend on dialysis three times each week to preserve their lives, but due to the siege and absence of spare parts to repair damaged machines the dialysis was reduced to twice weekly, which endangers their lives….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38676

Bush Gets “Preferential Treatment” for U.S. Companies in Iraq
Matthew Rothschild
Bush just pulled the knee strings on his puppet in Iraq, and Nouri al-Maliki did the jig. The prime minister signed on to a deal laying the groundwork for the long-term presence of U.S. troops there. Permanent military bases, anyone? To inaugurate the pact, U.S. troops in Baghdad killed three women on a bus that was approaching a U.S. roadblock. The arrangement with the Maliki government will ultimately take the place of the U.N.-sanctioned presence of U.S. troops there, which itself is a blot on the U.N.’s record. And part of the “enduring” relationship that Bush and Maliki laid out in this pact has nothing to do with the presence of U.S. troops, but with the profits of U.S. corporations. The deal would give “preferential treatment for American investments,” AP reports, adding nonchalantly that this “could provide a huge windfall if Iraq can achieve enough stability to exploit its vast oil resources.”….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38683

Reporters say Baghdad too dangerous despite surge
David Morgan, Reuters
Nearly 90 percent of U.S. journalists in Iraq say much of Baghdad is still too dangerous to visit, despite a recent drop in violence attributed to the build-up of U.S. forces, a poll released on Wednesday said. The survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center showed that many U.S. journalists believe coverage has painted too rosy a picture of the conflict. A separate Pew poll released on Tuesday showed that 48 percent of Americans believe the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going very or fairly well, up from 34 percent in June, amid signs of declining Iraqi civilian casualties and progress against Islamist militants such as al Qaeda in Iraq. But most journalists said they believe violence and the threat of violence have increased during their tenures….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38677

Coexistence in Gaza
Mohammed Omer, The Electronic Intifada
…And what of the Western media assertions that Gaza’s Christians are considering emigrating because of Islamic oppression? Sighing, Musallam corrects the misconception. “If Christians emigrate,” he states resolutely, “It’s not because of Muslims. It is because we suffer from Israeli siege. We seek a life of freedom. A life different from the life of the dogs we are currently forced to live.”…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38681

The partition of Palestine ushers in apartheid
Sonja Karkar, IMEU,
….Even though the current manoeuvres for peace are a timely reminder of the world’s dreadful neglect of the Palestinians, no just solution is likely to emerge. In all this time, there has not been a single genuine attempt to redress the grievous injustice done to the Palestinians, despite the fanfare that has accompanied every peace summit. To hear the empty rhetoric yet again is painful. Israel’s usual pattern of operation is to blame the Palestinians and to put the onus on them to make peace work. Israel claims it is ready to meet its obligations provided that the Palestinians stop their violence and keep law and order. But, it is Israel’s violence that continues unabated; Israel that is still illegally building settlements and the Apartheid Wall; Israel that is appropriating yet more Palestinian land; Israel that continues to arrest Palestinian civilians as it announces the release of 800 prisoners out of some 12,000 still in Israeli prisons; Israel that continues to steal precious Palestinian water; Israel that builds more checkpoints and roadblocks as it announces the removal of 25 out of now more than 546 checkpoints that strangle the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank; Israel that is still punishing 1.4 million civilians in Gaza with draconian sanctions to bring them to their knees; and the list goes on. All of Israel’s gestures are window-dressing….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38674

The last interview with Nael AlKurdi, 21 years old cancer patient in Gaza strip
Nael was denied access to Medical Treatment for ‘security reasons’!!
(Nael died couple of days after the interview)
The Palestinian International Campaign To End The Siege on Gaza
“I appeal to the world and all international organizations to help open Gaza crossings. Patients are the weakest category in Gaza strip. Patients do not represent at all a threat on Israel security. Since last October, I no longer had any treatment available in Al Shifa hospital in Gaza. I lost 21 kilos in one month. I cannot find the prescribed medicine due to shortage of drugs. I just depend on pain-killers to survive”. These were Nael Alkurdi’s last words during an interview with Ramattan Media Agency before leaving our world, and his pain behind. Nael was denied access to medical treatment in Israel. This 21 year-old Palestinian young man is another victim of the Israeli oppressive infringement of basic human rights….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38670

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 27 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 3:10pm Baghdad time Tuesday afternoon, the Yaqen News Agency reported that US troops shot and killed an Iraqi man in front of his family in the Baghdad district of al-’Amiriyah at dawn on Tuesday. Yaqen reported the Ahl al-’Iraq Conference as issuing a statement in which it announced that US troops together with their Iraqi puppet army allies stormed the home of ‘Abdallah Ibrahim Khidr al-Qays at dawn on Tuesday. The Americans and their Iraqi allies shot ‘Abdallah Khdr al-Qays, the head of the household, despite the fact that he was more than 70 years of age. US troops also arrested three youths – all brothers in the family that lives next door to the victim…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38673

Two American soldiers killed in an explosion north of Baghdad
Associated Press
The military says two U.S. soldiers have been killed in an explosion north of Baghdad. They’re the first U.S. combat deaths reported in five days. And in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, police say a burst of violence has killed at least 11 Iraqis, including seven who died when a suicide bomber attacked a police headquarters. Meantime, the U.S. military says U.S. troops have been involved in two deadly shootings in Iraq involving vehicles trying to drive through roadblocks. One occurred yesterday, about 155 miles north of Baghdad. The military says troops shot at a vehicle speeding toward a roadblock after firing warning shots. Two men died immediately, and a child traveling with them died later of his wounds. In a separate roadblock incident, U.S. troops fired at a bus in Baghdad as it tried to drive through a U.S. roadblock. Police say as many as four passengers were killed….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38668

US air strikes kill 14 civilian roadworkers in Afghanistan
David Batty, Guardian Unlimited
US forces mistakenly killed at least a dozen road construction workers in air strikes in eastern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said today. As many as 14 engineers and labourers were killed in the incident on Monday in Nuristan province, which officials blamed on faulty intelligence, possibly fed out by the Taliban. The workers, who had been contracted by the US military to build a road in the mountainous province, were sleeping in their tents when they were killed, according to Sayed Noorullah Jalili, director of the road construction company Amerifa…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38671

Sheikh Al-Fadhi Criticizes the Accusation
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
Sheikh Al-Fadhi criticizes the accusation of Sunni Foundation against the AMSI of being behind violence in Iraq indicating to the Foundation decision to close the Headquarter of the Association in Abu Hanifah Al-Numan in Baghdad. He considered that there was a war towards the AMSI because of its national attitudes against the American occupation and rejecting the political operation under the occupation….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38664

IRAQ-SYRIA: More Iraqi refugees leaving Syria than entering
IRIN News
…Nevertheless, a recent report by the UNHCR suggested that many refugees are returning to Iraq against their will as a result of financial and legal difficulties. “The majority of people are going back either because they’re running out of savings and making ends meet has finally become impossible, or for the first time we’re finding that people are not able to renew their visas, and they’re getting an exit stamp in their passports,” said Sybella Wilkes, spokesperson for the UNHCR in Syria. As buses departed on 27 November, some refugees expressed frustration that their life in exile had become virtually impossible. “We’ve received no help from anyone here,” said Khadoum Mohammed, saying the soaring cost of living in Syria, where rents have more than doubled and basic commodity prices increased, had become financially unsustainable for him….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38679

Water: The Impending Apocalypse
Sarah Meyer, Index Research
…This research is about water on our planet Earth, now. I try to show the effects of fire, floods and drought on those living in impossible cicrcumstances. So far, the media poodles give us information in drips alongside its more important advertisements; it is thus difficult to understand the overall enormity – the pattern – of our planet’s crisis. I feel the research has something interesting for everyone rather than a chosen few….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38660

Peace and its discontents: the Israeli takeover
Lenin’s Tomb
Israel and Palestinians commit to peace trumpets The Guardian, with a sick-making portrait of Bush, Olmert and Abbas holding hands. How’s that commitment working so far? (…) Previous peace efforts by Fatah, however limited and corrupted, were at least seriously attempting to get something out of Israel, a stretch of continuous land with Olive Trees on it and water running, the dismantling of settlements, demilitarization of the West Bank, something. Now, with settlements more in abundance than ever, with Israel’s occupation expanding instead of contracting, with daily aggression against the Palestinian population, Abbas offers himself as Israel’s agent. The talks now taking place are about talks that may take place in the future, that may at some point result in an idea, then a concept, then a series of hastily drawn diagrams, then a hint about a possible settlement. There is no prospect of even a remotely legitimate settlement emerging from this charade. Olmert is hasty with vague intimations about bold moves, but Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank continues apace…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38682

Bush meets Iraqi Shi’ite leader at White House
Reuters
President George W. Bush met Iraqi Shi’ite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim at the White House on Tuesday and discussed the importance of starting formal negotiations about a long-term relationship between the two countries, the White House said. Bush met Hakim, leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, in the Oval Office after returning from the Annapolis conference on Middle East peace. Hakim’s party has close ties with Iran, which the United States accuses of funding, training and arming Shi’ite militias blamed for sectarian bloodshed in Iraq….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38666

The Ghosts of Misplaced Conscience
Charles Sullivan
…True, capitalism has made cheap products available to the voracious American consumer; but it has also given the world preemptive war and famine, global corporatism, pestilence and wage slavery; it has stoked the fires of mass extinction, global warming and ecological collapse—all of which have acquired an unstoppable momentum of their own with unimaginable consequences that extend indefinitely into an already uncertain future. There are consequences to everything we do, just as there are consequences to inaction. Yet it is increasingly obvious that too few of us care enough to take action, as long as we are free to buy and to consume….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38663

Tuesday November 27, 2007: 2 US Soldiers, 46 Iraqis Killed; 35 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
At least 46 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 35 more were wounded during attacks that included multiple shootings involving U.S. troops and civilians. Also, an Iraqi journalist is accusing the Interior Ministry of killing his family in Baghdad yesterday. Also two U.S. soldiers were killed and seven more were wounded in separate events that took place today. Two MND-B soldiers were killed and two more were wounded during an explosion near Tuz Khormato. Meanwhile, in Baquba, a female suicide bomber detonated her vest, wounding seven GIs and injuring five Iraqi civilians; two people were killed…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38672

Palestinian refugees take dim view of Annapolis
‘Perhaps in the distant future we can hope for a solution’
David Barett, Special to The Daily Star
…”This is not a conference,” he said. “This is an idea created by George Bush, the dictator of the world, in order to further the strategic interests of Israel.” “What usually comes out of these meetings? No improved basic rights for the Palestinians and no progress on the right of return,” he added. “All this is an idea for the Bush administration to achieve something while it is stuck in the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan and it will achieve nothing at all.”…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38675

The Iraqi Miracle – From Invasion to “Partnership”
James Rothenberg
…Now what was it that was so clear to some from the very beginning? That a takeover of Iraq was a natural way to establish a permanent military presence in the heart of the resource-rich Middle East. This was not a departure from longstanding American foreign policy goals but merely its latest iteration. Iraq happens to harbor the second largest proven oil reserves and oil just happens to be entering its scarcity mode. The morning newspaper carries an Associated Press story detailing the signing by President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki of a “declaration of principles” between the two countries, which, for those still interested in the real reason we invaded Iraq, amounts to a full confession. Not in front of the International Criminal Court (that’s not for us) but mainstreamed, normalized, now fit to print….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38702

U.N. raises new concern about possible cholera outbreak in Baghdad
The Associated Press
The United Nations raised new concern Wednesday about a possible cholera outbreak in Baghdad ahead of the rainy season, saying the capital accounts for 79 percent of all new cases despite a national decline. The Iraqi Health Ministry reported that two boys in a Baghdad orphanage died of cholera earlier this month and six other children there had been diagnosed with the disease, which was first detected Aug. 14 in the northern city of Kirkuk. The U.N. Children’s Fund said 101 cases had been recorded in the capital, most in the past three weeks, making it the source of 79 percent of all new cases. It said no single source for the outbreak had been identified, but the main Shiite enclave of Sadr City was among the areas hardest hit….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38698

U.S., Iraq: The Al-Hakim Factor
Stratfor
Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of Iraq’s largest and most powerful Shiite political party, stopped in Washington on Nov. 27 to pay a visit to U.S. President George W. Bush. This was a meeting of extreme importance. Right now, the United States is in a highly favorable negotiating position to deal seriously with Iran over Iraq: Violence levels are dropping, Sunni tribal sheikhs are fighting al Qaeda, and a real argument can be made that the troop surge is working. The Iranians, though still continuing to seek some added leverage, also are willing to talk, as illustrated by their acceptance of Washington’s invitation for another round of formal negotiations over Iraq. The negotiations are getting serious, and they are moving fast. Earlier this week, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Bush signed a Declaration of Principles defining a long-term U.S.-Iraqi bilateral pact. This pact is a key stepping stone to negotiations over establishing permanent U.S. military bases — one of the United States’ core demands in its negotiations with Tehran over Iraq. When news of this pact came out, Stratfor searched high and low for any signs of dissent coming from Iran. But as a sort of negative confirmation, Tehran kept silent…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38697

Lies from Annapolis
Comment by Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
The peoples of the world are being subjected to a fresh dose of lies, this time coming from Annapolis, Maryland, in the United States. George Bush, the Fuehrer of the White House, who has destroyed two nation-states and killed a million human beings, and then had the chutzpa to claim that the Almighty told him to do so, displayed some of his characteristically morbid magic this week. He invited delegates from 50 nations to watch Israel, a state whose modus operandi consists of murder, theft and mendacity, and the miserable Palestinian Authority, which claims to represent the most uninterruptedly oppressed people on the face of earth, to pledge peace and reconciliation that would end decades of violence and bloodshed….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38696

Video: FOX News Takes 32 Seconds to Explain That We’re Going to Be in Iraq Forever
News Hounds
During the November 26th edition of Special Report substitute host Bret Baier took 32 seconds to verify what those of us on the progressive side of the aisle have been predicting since the war on Iraq started. President George Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have signed “a deal” to be finalized by July 2008 that will offer to America “military bases outside major Iraqi cities in return for security guarantees against both foreign threats and internal attacks.” The plan, as Baier explained, “calls for a long term U. S, force of about 50,000 troops, down from the current figure of almost 160,000.” In other words George Bush has just agreed to keep one-third of the current American force in Iraq for the foreseeable future (forever?)…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38703

Annapolis Backlash Leaves a Bloody Trail
Joharah Baker for MIFTAH
Enough has been said about the preparations, the expectations and the ultimate execution of the Middle East Summit in Annapolis. Needless to say, the outcome was disappointingly what we all expected – more of the same. More promises, “joint statements”, lots of sugary words, but no concrete results. The joint statement made by US President George Bush read, “We agree to engage in vigorous, ongoing and continuous negotiations, and shall make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008.”….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38693

The Politics of Anti-Semitism: Zionism, the Bund and Jewish Identity Politics
Gilad Atzmon, peacepalestine
Those amongst us who support the Palestinian people, those amongst us who are devastated by the growing scale of Israeli atrocities, those who want to bring justice to Palestine and this includes bringing Palestinians back to their land, will have to make up their minds sooner or later. From now on, everything we do or say about the Jewish state is seen by one Jew or another as anti-Semitism….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38694

U.N. raises new concern about possible cholera outbreak in Baghdad
The Associated Press
The United Nations raised new concern Wednesday about a possible cholera outbreak in Baghdad ahead of the rainy season, saying the capital accounts for 79 percent of all new cases despite a national decline. The Iraqi Health Ministry reported that two boys in a Baghdad orphanage died of cholera earlier this month and six other children there had been diagnosed with the disease, which was first detected Aug. 14 in the northern city of Kirkuk. The U.N. Children’s Fund said 101 cases had been recorded in the capital, most in the past three weeks, making it the source of 79 percent of all new cases. It said no single source for the outbreak had been identified, but the main Shiite enclave of Sadr City was among the areas hardest hit….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38698

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 28 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 2:05pm Baghdad time Wednesday afternoon, the Yaqen News Agency reported that the Iraqi Resistance unleashed a rocket barrage on the base jointly occupied by US troops and their Iraqi puppet army allies in as-Saqlawiyah, 17km north of al-Fallujah, Wednesday morning. Yaqen reported a source in the puppet police in ar-Ramadi, who asked not to be identified as saying that the attack set a Humvee ablaze and severely damaged two other vehicles. US aircraft flew in over the base after receiving calls for help….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38701

Karl Rove’s Shameless, Remorseless, Soulless Attempt to Rewrite History
Arianna Huffington|
I went on Countdown last night to talk about what Keith Olbermann called Karl Rove’s “attack on history.” During an interview with Charlie Rose, the erstwhile Boy Genius pulled out his bucket of whitewash and audaciously claimed that “one of the untold stories” about the war in Iraq is that the Bush administration had been “opposed’ to Congress holding the vote authorizing the president to use military force in Iraq just a few weeks prior to the 2002 elections because “we thought it made it too political.” Too political? For Karl Rove? That’s like saying something was too bloody for Count Dracula….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38691

Exit on the Left
Reza Fiyouzat. Dissident Voice
…The ruling classes in the U.S. like to call it War on Terror. Did the United States government, in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995, go on a bombing and razing campaign destroying all the states the terrorists had resided in or passed through the previous decade or two, in the process killing directly or causing the eventual death of nearly 14 million Americans, maiming and crippling another 15-20 million and displacing nearly 60 million (half of them to Mexico and Canada), while guaranteeing a medium-term future of diseases (long eradicated) spread atrociously due to the total destruction of all infrastructure in all those states? Would the American people put up with such a response by their government? So, why do they put up with its equivalent when it happens in Iraq and Afghanistan?…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38690

Israeli War Crimes Continues – In the Shadow of Annapolis Summit
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
Just weeks ahead of the Annapolis summit the Israelis has escalated their attacks in different parts of Gaza Strip. Eight Palestinians including fighters in the Palestinian resistance,naval-officers and farmers have been killed in the last 24 hours by Israeli perpetrators invading Palestinian territories on ground and by missiles fired from aircraft’s. Invading Israeli terrorist’s opened heavy fire towards farm lands, killing the farmer a 55-year-old local farmer.Mr. Al Sufi, was shot to death in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah.The Israelis killed Al Sufi and wounded three of Al Sufi’s brothers, including four other residents. Further more on Tuesday just before dawn, the Israelis fired missiles on a group of resistance fighters in the northern Gaza Strip, killing a Fadi Abdel Sattar 22, resistance fighter in Al Qassams Brigade of Hamas…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38689

Iraqi journalist who claims 11 relatives were killed challenges government denial of deaths
The Associated Press
An Iraqi journalist who said 11 members of his family were killed in their Baghdad home challenged the government’s denial of the deaths on Wednesday, saying if his relatives were alive “let all my family appear on TV.” Dhia al-Kawaz, editor of the Jordan-based Aswat al-Iraq news agency who was associated with Saddam Hussein’s banned Baath Party, has said masked gunmen stormed the family home and killed two of his sisters, their husbands and their seven children as they ate breakfast (…) “I ask the spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh to let all of my family appear on TV,” al-Kawaz told Al-Jazeera television. The media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders condemned the attack and claimed Iraqi police at a nearby checkpoint failed to intervene….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38687

Women under extremists’ guillotine in Basra
Voices of Iraq
….Basra, the largest city in southern Iraq, has been witnessing an increase in violence against women according to local police sources. “The city is witnessing an innovated kind of terrorism: At least 2-3 corpses of women are daily found dumped near the city garbage gathering places, mostly beheaded or mutilated!” a senior authorized spokesman for Basra police told reporters in November. He also added, “It is obvious that these women have been killed on skeptic bases or for other incomprehensible reasons with the least legal justification.” A humanitarian activist from the predominantly Shiite Basra blamed militiamen and Muslim extremists for the wave against women allover the city. “The executors seemingly belong to the same bands ideologically and politically linked to the dominating fanatic parties and militias,” the young activist who completely refused his name be mentioned told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI)…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38686

American site publishes false news about the Iraqi resistance
HAQ agency- exclusive
American site “Radio Sawa” published news that the spokesman for the “Political Council of Resistance” claimed that he was negotiating with the Americans by Arabic sponsoring. The news added “Tayh Abdul al-Karim ex-leadership of the past Baath party and the Minister of Oil in the regime of Saddam Hussein said that the seventeen factions belonging to the Brigade of the so-called Supreme Council of Iraqi resistance or what has become known as the” Political Council of Resistance “ incurred him to be its spokesman.” The Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (Jamma) had previously denied these allegations in an earlier statement which said “once again reared us one of these suspicious media institutions -and the so-called “ American Radio Sawa “ –with a new lye which goal to the mislead of public opinion and crafts it from the right direction to understand the trends of jihad and its people.”….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38685

“A” is for Apartheid or Annapolis
Susan Abulhawa
… Now we arrive at yet another surreal meeting in the clouds: Annapolis. Everyone is invited except the PLO — the sole and only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people — and the democratically elected members of the Palestinian Authority (that would be Hamas). At this meeting, Israel will throw us a few bones, like releasing some prisoners (who will most likely get rounded up again when the hype dies down) while it is intentionally starving 1.4 million human beings in Gaza, cutting off fuel, electricity and clean drinking water. Annapolis will serve only to move Israel a little closer to stamping out the “refugee problem,” those Palestinians and their descendants whose homes, farms, property and history Israel stole. Palestinians are the natives of the land that was called Palestine for the last several thousand years until 1948 when Jewish foreigners changed its name to Israel…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38684

“Multinationals on Trial”
Review of James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer
Stephen Lendman
James Petras is Binghamton University, New York Professor Emeritus of Sociology whose credentials and achievements are long and impressive. He’s a noted academic figure on the left and a well-respected Latin American expert. He’s also a prolific author of hundreds of articles and 64 books including his latest one titled “Multinationals on Trial: Foreign Investment Matters,” co-authored with Henry Veltmeyer, and subject of this review. Henry Veltmeyer has collaborated with Petras before on previous books. They include “Globalization Unmasked,” “Social Movements and State Power,” “A System in Crisis” and others. He’s Professor of Sociology and International Development Studies at Saint Mary’s University, Canada and Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas, Mexico. He’s also Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of International Development Studies and, like Petras, is a prolific author of many books and articles focused mainly on Latin American issues, globalized trade, alternative models and approaches and progressive social movements…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38678

When the Roadmap is a One Way Street
Israel’s Strategy for Permanent Occupation
JEFF HALPER
One may well think that the struggle inside the Jewish community of Israel is between those of the political right, who want to maintain the settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank so as to “redeem” the Greater Land of Israel as a Jewish country, and those of the left who seek a two-state solution with the Palestinians and are thus willing to relinquish enough of the “territories”, if not all, in order that a viable Palestinian state may emerge. This is not really the case (…) The vast majority of Israeli Jews, stretching from the liberal Meretz party through Labour, Kadima and into the “liberal” wing of the Likud, excepting only the religious parties and the extreme right-wing led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the current minister of strategic affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, share a broad consensus: for both security reasons and because of Israel’s “facts on the ground”, the Arabs (as we [Israelis] call the Palestinians) will have to settle for a truncated mini-state on no more than 15-20 per cent of the country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. What’s more, it’s agreed that the decision whether to relinquish any territory and how much is an exclusively Israeli decision…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38706

Counterattack as Fateful Referendum Looms
CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces
James Petras
On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine operations and which will influence the referendum this Sunday, December 2, 2007. The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton Steere, was addressed to the Director of Central Intelligence, Michael Hayden. The memo was entitled ‘Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer’ and updates the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym ‘HUMINT’ (Human Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming referendum and coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez government. The Embassy-CIA’s polls concede that 57 per cent of the voters approved of the constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez but also predicted a 60 per cent abstention….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38688

Have They No Shame?
Amy Goodman, Truthdig
Every Saturday, the president of the United States gives a radio address to the nation. It is followed by the Democratic response, usually given by a senator or representative. This past Saturday the Democrats chose retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez to give their response, the same general accused in at least three lawsuits in the U.S. and Europe of authorizing torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners in Iraq. This, combined with the Democrats’ endorsement of Attorney General Michael Mukasey despite his unwillingness to label waterboarding as torture, indicates that the Democrats are increasingly aligned with President Bush’s torture policies. Sanchez headed the Army’s operations in Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004. In September 2003, Sanchez issued a memo authorizing numerous techniques, including “stress positions” and the use of “military working dogs” to exploit “Arab fear of dogs” during interrogations….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38695

6,000 Sunnis Join Pact With US in Iraq
LAUREN FRAYER, AP
Nearly 6,000 Sunni Arab residents joined a security pact with American forces Wednesday in what U.S. officers described as a critical step in plugging the remaining escape routes for extremists flushed from former strongholds. The new alliance — called the single largest single volunteer mobilization since the war began — covers the “last gateway” for groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq seeking new havens in northern Iraq, U.S. military officials said. U.S. commanders have tried to build a ring around insurgents who fled military offensives launched earlier this year in the western Anbar province and later into Baghdad and surrounding areas….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=38700