SEE GAZA AND WEEP
Stuart Littlewood
…Gaza is just 365 sq km – 45 km long, up to12 km wide and entirely sealed from the outside world by an Israeli fence guarded by watchtowers, snipers and tanks. Israel controls Gaza’s airspace, coastal waters and airwaves. A vast prison with air-strikes, beach shelling, troops, tanks, armoured bulldozers, uncaring of civilian casualties. Whilst much has been blasted into rubble or skeletal remains, this was once an attractive place and many fine buildings survive. So does the defiant community, though wearied by years of humiliation and occupation. Gaza could easily blossom into a coastal paradise; a prosperous, independent trading state. But Israel’s hatred of Gaza and its people is terrifying. The economy is strangulated and for 1.5 million souls, life is hell. Fuel and candles are running out. Supplies of basics are exhausted, so even hygiene is fast becoming impossible. Power cuts disrupt hospital treatment and what few drugs there are cannot be kept refrigerated. Many look death in the face as medi-care collapses. Flour to make bread has doubled in price; cement for concrete to repair damaged homes and infrastructure has gone up 1,000 percent! Some schools are having to teach three shifts a day. It is truly a humanitarian crisis, as the UN and various charities have repeatedly warned western governments. A friend emailed: “Today in Gaza … we have no cement to build graves for those who die.”…

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Vicar: Dire Times For Iraq’s Christians
Says Most Of Iraq’s Christians Have Fled Or Been Killed
CBS
An Anglican clergyman in Baghdad, who has seen his flock murdered and forced into exile by Muslim extremists, says Christians there are worse off now than under Saddam’s rule and are probably suffering more than any time in history. The Rev. Canon Andrew White, an Anglican priest known as the “Vicar of Baghdad,” speaks to 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley for a segment on the persecution of Christians in Iraq to be broadcast this Sunday, Dec. 2, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. “There’s no comparison between Iraq now and [under Saddam],” says White. “Things are the most difficult they have ever been for Christians – probably ever in history,” he tells Pelley, referring to the nearly 2,000 years of Christian history in the area….

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“A Crude War Of Revenge”
Tariq Ali on Afghanistan
Mike Whitney
The United States is on its way to losing the war in Afghanistan. The eventual defeat will be political not military. Public sentiment is shifting in Europe. The people have had enough. They want to get out. When European troops withdrawal from Afghanistan; NATO will gradually unravel and the Transatlantic Alliance will collapse. That will be a disaster for America. The US will again be isolated by two great oceans. But not by choice. America’s days as an empire will be over. That’s why the US perseveres in Afghanistan even though there is nothing to gain. Pipelines corridors will continue to be blocked by enemy fighters for the foreseeable future. The guerrilla war will intensify. American fatalities will mount. Political opposition at home will grow. The Taliban can’t be beaten. They’ve already taken over more than half the country and they are steadily advancing on the Capital….

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IRAQ: A Tenuous ‘Peace’ in Al-Anbar
Ali al-Fadhily*
A semblance of calm belies an undercurrent of violence, detentions and fear across Iraq’s volatile al-Anbar province. The province — which occupies one-third of Iraq’s geographic area — has been a bane to authorities since the beginning of the occupation. “The Americans talked about our province as the deadliest enemy, and suddenly they are marketing us as their best friends,” Sa’doon Khalifa, an independent politician in the capital city of al-Anbar Province, Ramadi — 110 km west of Baghdad — told IPS. “They were lying to their people and to the world in both cases as we were never terrorists nor their friends now,” he stressed. Khalifa explained that resistance fighters in al-Anbar did fight occupation forces, but now they are standing down from launching new attacks against U.S. forces. This is due in large part to U.S. military payments to collaborating tribal sheikhs — already totalling over 17 million dollars….

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UN archives reveal plan to arm Jewish militia
Ofri Ilani, Haaretz
It was November 29, 1947. The United Nations General Assembly had just passed Resolution 181 – the Partition Plan, according to which the British Mandate was to be divided into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Civil war broke out between the Jewish and the Palestinian residents, particularly in the mixed cities and on the roads. The UN faced a difficult problem: how to implement the partition resolution together with the economic union of the two states, as specified by the resolution. The UN Secretariat created a Special Committee to deal with what was seen as the first major challenge of the young body. Dr. Elad Ben-Dror, a historian at Bar-Ilan University, has been studying UN diplomacy after the Partition Plan, at the University Institute for Diplomacy and Regional Cooperation of Tel Aviv University. Last year, he sat in the UN archives and read recently-declassified documents relating to the work of the Special Committee. He made an interesting discovery: The UN had planned to implement the Partition Plan by means of a Jewish militia, trained by the UN and armed, also by the UN, with weapons, combat aircraft and tankettes….

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ACTION ALERT: A Call From Gaza Asking For Your Help To End The Siege
Delinda C. Hanley and Janet McMahon, WRMEA
Today—the 60th anniversary of the passage by the U.N. General Assembly of the nonbinding resolution partitioning Palestine—is the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. We’ve been hearing speeches about peace all week from politicians—but talk, as we’ve learned, is cheap. We’ve seen photos of Gazans demonstrating in the streets against the Annapolis conference, to which the elected government of Palestine was not invited, but with few reporters in Gaza Americans aren’t getting the entire picture….

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Thursday, 29 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 3:25pm Baghdad time Thursday afternoon, the Yaqen News Agency reported that the Iraqi Resistance bombarded the al-Habbaniyah base, which is jointly occupied by US forces and their puppet Iraqi army allies, with mortars at midday ThursdayYaqen reported Major Mahmud al-Habbani of the puppet “Joint Coordination Center” which works with US forces as saying that the shells landed in the area of the base, located about 70km west of Baghdad but offered no further details. Eyewitnesses reported that three Iraqi Resistance mortar rounds scored direct hits in the middle of the base at midday Thursday. It was said that the attack was meant “to welcome” John Negroponte, US deputy Secretary of State, who was on a visit in the area. The witnesses said that plumes of smoke could be seen rising from the headquarters right after the attack and US aircraft appeared in the skies above the American-occupied facility….

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Aid shrinks as Iraq’s internal refugee tally grows
Sam Dagher | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
…Mr. Hussein and his family – he is a father of eight who is also caring for the 10-member family of his brother, killed in Ghazaliya at the height of sectarian bloodshed last year – are among the 2.3 million Iraqis considered internally displaced as of the end of September. That number is 16 percent higher than August, according the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization (IRCO). And as the number of the internally displaced is growing, aid workers say the conditions they are living in is growing worse. They say it is becoming especially tough for children 12 and under, who make up 65 percent of the total number of internally displaced Iraqis. Aid agencies say the situation is getting harsher because of dwindling aid from international agencies and an overwhelmed central government in Baghdad. Hussein and his family have been living with 2,000 other people in the camp for more than a year now….

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Bill Clinton, Anti-War?
Times, Post let Bill Clinton’s dishonesty slide
FAIR
The New York Times and Washington Post (11/28/07) both failed to adequately challenge the dishonesty of former President Bill Clinton’s declaration that he had been opposed to the Iraq War “from the beginning.” Clinton, in fact, was a supporter of the war, both before the invasion and in the first year or so of the fighting (…) Clinton’s public support for the war is a matter of record. Just before George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair invaded Iraq, Clinton published an op-ed in the London Guardian (3/18/03) urging Britons to “Trust Tony’s Judgment”: As Blair has said, in war there will be civilian was well as military casualties…. But if we leave Iraq with chemical and biological weapons, after 12 years of defiance, there is a considerable risk that one day these weapons will fall into the wrong hands and put many more lives at risk than will be lost in overthrowing Saddam…

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Six new cases of cholera reported in Baghdad
Azzaman
Six new cases of cholera have been detected in Baghdad, sources at the Kadhimiya Teaching Hospital said. The sources, refusing to be named, said the government was trying hard not to let news about the contagious disease spread in Baghdad where fears are rising of a massive outbreak unless the disease is contained. Medical personnel have discovered at least 80 more new cases of cholera but the authorities would not let media report on the spread of the disease….

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Doctors: ‘Severe Crisis’ in Gaza, 44 Dead Since July Closings
Annapolis Meant Little for Dying Gazans Being Denied Medical Care by Israel
BBSNews
Residents in Gaza in need of medical care are facing a “severe crisis” with forty-four Palestinan deaths due to Israeli border closures and denial of medical care since July. With Gaza all but ignored during Annapolis, only rights groups are making a dent in letting the world know what is going on in the open air prison known as the Gaza Strip. According to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, the situation in Gaza has reached very serious proportions and they are making an appeal to be allowed into Gaza to “document” the true extent of medical necessity cases being left untreated (…) Wouldn’t it have meant a great deal if Ehud Olmert openly proclaimed at Annapolis that medical patients from Gaza would no longer be denied care by his government that occupies every nook and cranny of Gazans lives?…

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The Algebra of Occupation
Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy In Focus
…An occupation is not a war against an army, it is a war against all. There are no front lines and no distinguishing uniforms, only an ambush or a roadside bomb that strikes without warning. And when one does, a veteran told Hedges, “people just open up.” A roadside bomb in 2005 set off a massacre by U.S. Marines in Haditha that killed 24 civilians. On March 4, 2007, following a suicide bomb, Marines in Afghanistan went on a rampage that killed 12 civilians. Occupation is only possible if the occupied are reduced to a category that places them outside the boundaries of a shared humanity So the Iraqis becomes “Hajji,” just as two generations ago the Vietnamese became “Slopes.” The Israeli right routinely refers to the Palestinians as “cockroaches.” Soon, everyone becomes an enemy….

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After 40 years of occupation “solidarity” is not enough
Press Release, Al-Haq
Over the past 40 years Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip has aggressively targeted both the land and the people of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Not simply haphazard structures of concrete, steel and tarmac, Israel’s settlements and their accompanying maze of bypass roads, hundreds of checkpoints, other movement restrictions and the Annexation Wall, are ever-increasing monuments to the dispossession and subjugation of the Palestinian people, at the expense of their fundamental rights guaranteed under international law. Supporting the physical infrastructure of the occupation is an invisible system of administrative restrictions and military dictates. Military orders serve as the arbitrary basis for land expropriation, property destruction and the exclusion of Palestinians from vast tracts of land, while a permit regime further restricts movement and stifles social, economic and cultural existence. Since the beginning of the occupation, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been arbitrarily arrested and detained, thousands more killed in extra-judicial executions, and an estimated 115,000 forcibly displaced internally, while over six million Palestinians remain refugees, unable to return to their homeland….

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GI Special 5K22: The Death Of A Lie – November 27 , 2007
Thomas F. Barton
The Death Of A Stupid Lie: U.S. Occupation Command And Iraqi Collaborators Caught Faking Numbers About All Those Happy Iraqis Coming Home Thanks To “Improved Security” “The Government Has Continued To Publicize Figures That Exaggerate The Movement Back To Iraq” “Syria Has Tightened Visa Rules For Iraqis In Hopes Of Forcing People To Return Home And Blocking New Refugees”

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PHR-Israel emergency appeal for medical supplies for Gaza
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)
The prolonged siege imposed by the Israeli government on Gaza, the closing of its borders, the tightening of policies regarding permission to exit Gaza for medical purposes, and the severe shortage of medications and other medical supplies all severely damage the Palestinian health system and endanger the lives and health of thousands of Palestinian patients. This severe crisis calls for an extraordinary response on the part of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel) that is separate from our routine activities. For this reason we intend to implement the following emergency actions: – Emergency aid dispatch of humanitarian supplies and a delegation of doctors from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel) to Gaza…

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Well-Being You Harith Al-Dhari
Dr. Eyad Mohammed Al- Saqr, AMSI
…Other talks were definitely that Al-Dhari has connections with terrorists, terrorist organizations and has also accused working with groups who carry the responsibility of killing the innocents… He is innocent of these accusations… Yesterday you have seen pictures of Iraq’s heroes and commanders whom were the symbol of honors, faith and nationalism for the territory of Iraq. But now you want their executions. They were performing their national duties in faith and trust, so instead of rewarding as they are older fighters all over the world. They are fulfilling the willing of the occupation and wish to execute them to death…They will remain as a lamp lighting the heaven of the nation. These are all I want to say. The convoy is continuing on its movements… The liberation of convoy should go forward… The occupation forces will leave as soonest…All Iraqi territory will be liberated… Palestine will return freely back to the shore of the sea. Iraq will return back to its owners in the assistance of Almighty Allah….

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The One State Declaration
Various authors, IMEU
For decades, efforts to bring about a two-state solution in historic Palestine have failed to provide justice and peace for the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish peoples, or to offer a genuine process leading towards them. The two-state solution ignores the physical and political realities on the ground, and presumes a false parity in power and moral claims between a colonized and occupied people on the one hand and a colonizing state and military occupier on the other. It is predicated on the unjust premise that peace can be achieved by granting limited national rights to Palestinians living in the areas occupied in 1967, while denying the rights of Palestinians inside the 1948 borders and in the Diaspora. Thus, the two-state solution condemns Palestinian citizens of Israel to permanent second-class status within their homeland, in a racist state that denies their rights by enacting laws that privilege Jews constitutionally, legally, politically, socially and culturally. Moreover, the two-state solution denies Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right of return….

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McCain blames Rise of Hitler on Ron Paul
Not Invading and Occupying other Countries Branded ‘Isolationism’
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
In a new low of despicable looniness, at the Republican debate in St. Petersburg, John McCain equated those Americans who want to stop militarily occupying Iraq with Hitler-enablers. He actually said that, saying that it was ‘isolationism’ of a sort that allowed Hitler to come to power. It gives a person a certain amount of faith in one’s fellow Americans that McCain was booed by the Republican crowd for this piece of calumny. Comparisons to Hitler should be automatic grounds for a candidate to be disqualified from being president….

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70,000 Sunnis join Iraqi army
Basil Adas, Gulf News
The US decision to include more than 70,000 armed men from the Sunni Awakening council, who fought against Al Qaida, into the Iraqi Army has fired up new conflict with Iran. Haider Al Abadi, advisor to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, revealed that Al Maliki had not been told of the move and the process had taken place with no coordination between the US Army and the Prime Minister….

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HOW CAN THERE EVER BE PEACE WITH ZIONISM?
Desert Peace
“The establishment of the Palestinian state is not our Nakba, or disaster, provided that upon its establishment the word “Nakba” be deleted from the Arabic lexicon in referring to Israel.” …. a quote from the ‘Peace’ Conference…. Would this Israeli consider removing the word “Holocaust” from the zionist lexicon in referring to Palestine? I doubt that very much… the very existence of the ‘Jewish State’ is based on the suffering endured by the Jews at the hands of the nazis….. NOT THE PALESTINIANS…. but one would never realise that listening to them ramble on about what happened in Eastern Europe…. For decades the zionist has blamed Palestine for the Holocaust…. not so much in words but in actions…. actions that must end NOW….

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A DIARY OF THE ONSET OF THE GREATER DEPRESSION,
Carolyn Baker
…About the same time that “In Debt We Trust” appeared on my radar screen, Chalmers Johnson’s Nemesis was released, hammering home the inescapable similarities between the fall of the Roman Empire and the demise of the United States. Despite the divergence of focus between Schechter’s documentary and Johnson’s Nemesis, both ultimately reveal that the American empire is descending into catastrophic financial collapse, already bankrupt, which will eventually result in the abject impoverishment of all but a very few of its privileged inhabitants. After purchasing “In Debt We Trust” I showed it regularly to a particularly endangered species in the empire’s economic war on its own citizens, students…

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Another Brick in the Wall…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
….Your brave boys just killed “at least” another 5 Iraqis including one child. Cholera is gaining, and we are foaming at the mouth… Even the clown, Ban Ki Moon is concerned. He was concerned last week about violence against women, but he did not say one word about the sectarian Shias whom you called “very oppressed”, slaughtering women with impunity…But hey, they are only women. Why should you care?! Your other category of “poor oppressed” the Kurds, are flirting big time with oil companies, have bedded Israel, and have signed over 20 contracts so far. One of your famous douche bags that goes by the name of P.Cockburn in an article in today’s Independent, was so generous…really. He said that there are 2.3 million internally displaced, one million of which are Kurds from Saddam’s time. This douche bag, Cockburn went against all the statistics from the Red Cross and the UN that stated that 2.3 million of those internally displaced, took place SINCE your occupation…

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Sub-planting Palestinian Memory
Dr. Elias Akleh, PalestineChronicle.com
Palestinians share one common experience with North and South American Native Indians, with Australian Aborigines, and with New Zealand Ma’oris. They all have been subjected to settler colonialism. Settler colonialism, usually technologically and militarily more advanced, is based on the erasure of already existent people, their culture and their memory, and substituting it with new foreign national entity that builds new culture, new history and new memory. To do this, settler colonialists have to get rid of the native people, their physical evidence, their history and their memory. They have to wipe off their existence from the world collective memory. In the case of Palestinians, the name of their country has already been wiped off the map. If you look for Palestine on any modern map you will not find it. Palestine had been wiped off the map and replaced by Zionist Israel…

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Once again, a Middle East stage(d) production
FIRAS AL-ATRAQCHI, Daily News Egypt
When Middle East nations meet with members of the United Nations Security Council to stage a theatrical performance, they resort to the tried and tested formula of hosting a “peace” conference. Carefully scripted, the operetta gathers its list of primary performers — old and new stage hands who have made names for themselves in the ever-intriguing world of show business. They meet routinely before the show to argue semantics, minor and major changes to the script. They argue the need for secondary actors. They argue set design but the venue is pre-determined. Choreography comes into play — excuse the pun — as do stage rehearsals. Art and theater critics begin to heave and ho with expectation as audiences get ready for this primetime spectacle….

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Lest We Forget
Anwaar Hussain
As November 2007 draws to a close, it will be full three years since American forces razed the Iraqi city of Fallujah to ground. It was in November 2004 that George Bush’s forces played havoc with that city and its unfortunate inhabitants in the name of God. While the American media chose to remain blind to the utter horror of it all, busy as it was with keeping a close watch over the life and death of Terri Schindler Schiavo, Dr. Hafidh al-Dulaimi, the head of “the Commission for the Compensation of Fallujah citizens” reported the destruction that American troops inflicted on Fallujah. According to the report, there were some 7000 totally destroyed, or nearly totally destroyed, homes in all districts of Fallujah. 8400 stores, workshops, clinics, warehouses, etc. were completely destroyed. 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries were demolished. 59 kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools and technical colleges were flattened. 13 government buildings leveled. Four libraries, that housed thousands of ancient Islamic manuscripts and books, were gutted completely. The number of human beings slaughtered in those buildings, of course, is any body’s guess….

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At Odds Over Iraqi Refugees
Mike Nizza, New York Times
Was it the success of the surge, or the urge to make a living? The motivations of Iraqi refugees returning home from Syria came into focus on Tuesday, when 20 busloads of them set out for Baghdad, though not before a sampling were interviewed by staff members of the United Nations refugee agency: Some of the refugees heading back to Iraq said they were convinced that it was now safer. “I want to leave because the security situation in Iraq is much better and the atmosphere is less dangerous,” Abu Ali, a refugee from Baghdad, said as he waited to board a bus with his three children. But many of the refugees said financial considerations, rather than security concerns, were the deciding factor in their decision to return. “The money is finished and my visa has expired,” said Ahmed Hussein from Baghdad’s Sadr City district. “Of course I want to stay here, but I can’t,” he said. (…) An Iraqi official announced that 45,000 Iraqis had returned to the country in October. But the U.N. countered that “there is no sign of any large-scale return to Iraq.” According to their count in the past week — when the supposed good news gained traction — only 4,200 people returned, and “not all are refugees.”…

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Deadly cholera threatens Iraq’s children
CNN
Cholera deaths at a Baghdad orphanage and deteriorating water and sewage systems are spurring fears of a larger outbreak of the killer disease, the United Nations children’s agency said. As the rainy season begins, waterway pollution from raw sewage “is perhaps the greatest environmental and public health hazard facing Iraqis — particularly children,” said UNICEF spokeswoman Claire Hajaj in an e-mail to CNN on Wednesday. “Waterborne diarrheal diseases kill and sicken more Iraqi children than anything except pneumonia.” (…) Discovery of the illness at the orphanage “raises concerns for all children in institutions and schools Baghdad,” said Hajaj. We estimate that only one in three Iraqi children can rely on a safe water source — with Baghdad and southern cities most affected,” she said….

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Iraqi children: Squeezed to survive
Voices of Iraq
Wherever you go in Baghdad’s vegetable markets, you find yourself surrounded by scores of children trying to sell you plastic bags and other things to earn a living. Exploring the world of peddlers can be an adventure, especially when it comes to child peddlers. Muhammad Abbas, an 8-year-old boy who receives people at a Baghdad local market with a big smile that encourages them to buy his goods, said that he likes school and is making progress. “I am in the third grade. My father and mother are educated. My dad dropped out of school in the sixth grade and mom in the fifth.” When asked about whether he would love to continue his education, the poor child answered, “Yes, why not?!”…

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Israeli troops execute injured Palestinian in Gaza, eyewitnesses say
Maan News
Local residents in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip told Ma’an’s correspondent that Israeli forces executed a Palestinian man after he was wounded in the Israeli air strike on Wednesday afternoon. Jabir Khalil from Jabalia, near the former Erez industrial zone, in the northern Gaza Strip, was shot. Nineteen-year-old Amina Abu Jarad said Israeli troops, stationed in northern Beit Hanoun, discharged machinegun fire at two injured Palestinians lying on the ground in front of her uncle’s house….

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Annapolis, Ramallah and the Siege on Gaza
Kris Petersen
…Hamas is the elected leadership of Palestine (like it or not) and should have been represented in some way. No peace can be negotiated as long as Israel and Gaza remain in a state of war… but neither Olmert nor Abbas seem to recognize this. In fact, from my understanding of the situation, I blame Salam Fayyed and the other incompetent puppets in Ramallah for their short-sighted, tacit support for the siege on Gaza. PA Cabinet Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh (not the brightest guy) recently said to a friend of mine during a teleconference, “We want to teach Hamas a lesson.” Fine, but with Hamas and Fatah each taking care of their own in this way, the ordinary people in Gaza are the ones who suffer the consequences of this “lesson”…

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Israeli army forcibly evacuate at least 200 Palestinians from Kherbet Qessa
Ameen Abu Wardeh – IMEMC
At least 200 Palestinian residents of Kherbet Qessa in the Hebron district were left homeless after being forcibly evacuated by the Israeli army in order to establish the annexation wall in their place. On October,29, 2007 Israeli military expelled 200 Palestinians from their homes in Kherbet Qessa, a town established in the fifties and largely inhabited by refugees who came from Beit Jebreen village. An illegal Israeli checkpoint called Tarqumia checkpoint was established near the town. Residents of the town had lived in tents and caves and earned there living from livestock….

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ANOTHER UNREPORTED REPORT
Malcom Lagauche
On March 16, 2004, a report (Iraq on the Record) was published. It was the compilation of public statements made by various U.S. government officials about Iraq that later were proven to be false. Because of the large size of the report, only portions are included here. These encapsulations prove the deceit of the administration in its justification for invading Iraq. There has been little publicity of this report. What should make it damning is that it was prepared by a U.S. Congressman, Henry Waxman, who voted in favor of invading Iraq. The report is concise and comprehensive. The writers compiled a database of the hundreds of misleading statements and outright lies told by the administration….

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Settlers respond to Annapolis statements with new settlements
Efrat Weiss, Ynet.news
The right-wing Ne’emanei Eretz Israel movement announced Thursday that it plans to establish three new outposts in the West Bank during Hanukkah and return to five outposts it had already created in Sukkot. “The gravest thing about the Annapolis peace conference’ is Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s barefaced talk of a Palestinian state. This is our answer to the prime minister’s plan, which I believe must first break the spirit of the settlers before it can work, and that is why it will never be successful (…) “ Anyplace in Israel where we do not reside in, is home to terrorists,” said Weiss….

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Non-binding framework for negotiations
Xymphora
…The fact of the matter, ignored by commentators on both the left and right (who oddly share an interest in mischaracterizing the current state of the American Empire), is that the United States has no sway over the Iraqi government, particularly telling given the massive presence of American occupying troops. To the extent foreigners are running Iraq, they are Iranians. This pathetic little Bush publicity stunt is just more evidence, if any were needed. that the attack on Iraq wasn’t, and could not possibly have been, about oil or any other Iraqi resources…

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Mission accomplished
Osamah Khalil, The Electronic Intifada
So it is over. The much heralded Annapolis “meeting” attended by over 50 countries and organizations has ended, and the result is a vague, non-binding agreement to begin negotiating. In typical fashion, the Bush administration has hailed the conference of low-expectations and even less tangible results as a “success.” Instead of donning a flight suit and landing on an aircraft carrier, US President George W. Bush offered his best Bill Clinton imitation presiding over a ceremonial handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, like an approving father or Roman emperor. However, rather than remind observers of the halcyon days of September 1993, the oft repeated handshake between Israeli and Palestinian leaders leads many to paraphrase Karl Marx: “History repeats itself first as tragedy, second as farce.” Indeed, a farce has been carried out in the last week of November, where the conference was symbolically and cynically timed to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the United Nations’ vote to partition Palestine….

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MP Khudari warns: Gaza to witness human disaster if world remains idle
Palestinian Information Center
MP Jamal Al-Khudari, the head of the popular anti-sanctions committee, has warned that the Gaza Strip is heading to a human disaster in all fields of life, urging the world to act before it is too late. Addressing a press conference in Gaza city on the occasion of the international day for solidarity with the Palestinian people, the MP noted that the event this year fell at a time of continued tight siege imposed on the Gaza Strip. He noted that the number of Palestinians dying due to lack of medical treatment was growing and that the number is expected to increase as Palestinians in serious conditions had reached 1,500 patients. He explained that out of those there are 300 patients in very critical conditions….

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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…

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Abu Dhabi Purchases Citigroup Shares; Continued Middle East Bubble
karlmarxwasright
Following along, again, from all my previous blogs on the Next Bubble, the Middle East, etc., see especially this month’s previous, November, 2007, blog entries, The Abu Dhabi Investment Fund, today, for approximately $7.5 Billion purchased 5% of Citigroup shares. This information is being reported just about everywhere. It has sent the stock market up, again. The price the Abu Dhabi Fund is paying for these Citigroup shares is/was approximately half the price those same shares were selling for roughly 6 months ago. A bargain, literally. ($56 previously, $30, now, appxly). Furthermore, powerful NY Democrat Senator Charles Schumer from the oversight Congressional Banking and Finance Committee appeared just this morning on the Business Channel (CNBC) giving his absolute blessings to the deal….

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The Surge Worked: Bush Got His Permanent Iraq War
Jen Clark, Little Country Lost
President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed a deal on Monday arranging for permanent bases and “investment opportunities” for the Bush Administration in Iraq. In return, Nouri al-Maliki and his government will get protection from the United States military against any threats to Maliki’s power (at least until Bush decides to renege on the deal). The Bush Administration is calling this arrangement an “enduring relationship with a democratic Iraq”. While this imperial arrangement is the exact opposite of what the American taxpayers are demanding, this is a victory for the Bush Administration, which has been quite clear that its intention is to keep our military in Iraq. In reality, this deal is a treaty between President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki. However, because President Bush decided not to call it a treaty and instead a “Declaration of Principles for Friendship and Cooperation”, the Bush Administration is going to use those semantics to circumvent Senate approval…

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US soldier killed in Baghdad: military
AFP
Insurgents have killed a US soldier in the Iraqi capital Baghdad in an attack involving small arms fire, the military said on Thursday. The soldier was killed in western Baghdad on Wednesday, the statement said giving no further details. The latest fatality brought the military’s overall losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3,878, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures….

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The House of Reps Vote 404 to 6 to Pass the Bill that Legalizes COINTELPRO?
Justin Ponkow and Troy Nkrumah
One month ago a bill passed almost unanimously in the House. This bill has received no mainstream news coverage. So it must not be that big of a deal, right? It’s just a bill that will soon to go to Capitol Hill and since the Democrats are in control we are all safe from further infringements up on our civil rights, right? Well, maybe that is not totally correct since this bill is a lot more than meets the eye. But indicator number one should be the title, and indicator number two should be how fast it is moving through Congress. On October 23rd of this year, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 passed 404 to 6 in the House. This bill is proposing an expansion of Homeland Security with the objective of spying on citizens whose political or religious beliefs might lead them to commit violent acts…

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Arrest warrant for journalist who claimed family massacre
Voices of Iraq
The Iraqi Ministry of Interior on Thursday issued an arrest warrant for a journalist who claimed that his 11-member family had been slain by unknown gunmen in Baghdad a few days ago. “The issue has been referred to court,” an official ministerial spokesman, Maj. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI), in reference to Diaa al-Kawwaz, an Iraqi journalist who claimed that his family had been liquidated and pointed the finger at the security apparatus. “Al-Kawwaz will be sued by the Iraqi court for making false allegations against our security forces,” Khalaf added…

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