10/12/07

Iraq calmer, but more divided
Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
…
In the south, Shiite Muslim militias are at war over the lucrative oil resources in the Basra region. To the west, in Anbar province, Sunni Arab tribes that once fought U.S. forces now help police the streets and control the highways to Jordan and Syria. In the north, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens are locked in a battle for the regions around Kirkuk and Mosul. In Baghdad, blast walls partition neighborhoods policed by Sunni paramilitary groups and Shiite militias. “Iraq is moving in the direction of a failed state, a highly decentralized situation — totally unplanned, of course — with competing centers of power run by warlords and militias,” said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group. “The central government has no political control whatsoever beyond Baghdad, maybe not even beyond the Green Zone.”…

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Supporters of Evil
Arthur Silber
For numerous reasons that I have explained in detail, the practice of torture is unalloyed evil: see, “Lies in the Service of Evil.” Supporting torture or allowing its practice to continue — allowing it to continue in any manner at all — is also evil. Some of you may recoil from the term “evil.” If you recall what torture is, you should not: Torture is the deliberate infliction of unbearable agony on a human being — a human being who is intentionally kept alive precisely so that he will suffer still more and for a longer period of time — for no justifiable reason. This is the embrace of sadism and cruelty for their own sake, and for no other end whatsoever. This does not represent “specialized” knowledge available only to purported experts. These are simple and obvious truths, that can be known by any decent human being who devotes an hour or two to consideration of this subject. One would think that would not be too much to require of national leaders and lawmakers….

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The grim reality in Gaza
Mohammed Omer, New Statesman
Mohammed Omer reports on shortages in Gaza from crucial medical supplies through children’s winter clothing to fuel. Traffic in the Gaza Strip slowed to a trickle last week, and this week medical centres have scaled back treatment in the medicines and sustenance-destitute Strip. “Israel’s decision is a death penalty: our reserve of fuel is almost zero and it may very likely run out by the end of today,” said Khaled Radi, Ministry of Health spokesman for the dismissed Hamas government….

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The first intifada 20 years later
Sonja Karkar, The Electronic Intifada
The first Palestinian intifada (uprising or shaking off) erupted dramatically on 9 December 1987 after twenty long years of brutal Israeli military occupation. The Palestinians had had enough. Not only had they been dispossessed of their homeland and expelled from their homes in 1948 to make way for the boatloads of European Jewish immigrants flooding into Palestine on a promise of a Jewish state, they had been made to suffer the indignities of a people despised and rejected by the whole world. They were the victims of a colonialist project that denied their existence and their rights to self-determination in the land that they had continuously inhabited for millennia so that a state could be created in all of the land exclusively for Jews from anywhere in the world….

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 10 December 2007.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
…In a dispatch posted at 11:10pm Baghdad time Monday night, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that Iraqi puppet forces closed the one entrance to the city of Samarra’ at noon on Monday after a puppet policeman was killed on the west bank of the Tigris River in the city by an Iraqi Resistance sharpshooter. The AMSI reported that meanwhile fighting broke out between Resistance men on one side and US troops and their puppet allies on the other in the as-Sikak neighborhood of the city. No information on the outcome of the fighting was available. On Sunday, AMSI reported, US forces opened fire indiscriminately around the neighborhood of al-Jubayriyah after an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US patrol. The wild American shooting began just as primary schools were letting out, and children coming into the streets were panicked….

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Israeli Violations in Jerusalem, November 2007
The Civic Coalition for Defending the Palestinians’ Rights in Jerusalem
Israeli occupation authorities committed more war crimes against the occupied Palestinian territories and against the Palestinian civilians in the Jerusalem Governorate, continued to commit more serious and gross violations of human rights, which are incompatible with the provisions of international law, rules of international humanitarian law, and the International Bill of Human Rights. In this report the National Coalition for the Defense of the rights of Palestinians in Jerusalem, in cooperation with the Jerusalem Center for Democracy and Human Rights (JCDHR), and the Center for Land Research will give a summary of these violations during the month of November 2007. The following are highlights of these violations…

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CIA photos ‘show UK Guantanamo detainee was tortured’
Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Lawyers for a British resident who the US government refuses to release from Guantanamo Bay have identified the existence of photographs taken by CIA agents that they say show their client suffered horrific injuries under torture. The photographic evidence will be vital to clear Binyam Mohammed, 27, who the Americans want to bring before a Military Commission on charges of terrorism, say his lawyers. Last week it emerged that Britain had negotiated the release of four detainees who have British residence status but Mr Mohammed, who speaks with a London accent, and at least three others are being held back….

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Iraq calmer, but more divided
Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
…
In the south, Shiite Muslim militias are at war over the lucrative oil resources in the Basra region. To the west, in Anbar province, Sunni Arab tribes that once fought U.S. forces now help police the streets and control the highways to Jordan and Syria. In the north, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens are locked in a battle for the regions around Kirkuk and Mosul. In Baghdad, blast walls partition neighborhoods policed by Sunni paramilitary groups and Shiite militias. “Iraq is moving in the direction of a failed state, a highly decentralized situation — totally unplanned, of course — with competing centers of power run by warlords and militias,” said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group. “The central government has no political control whatsoever beyond Baghdad, maybe not even beyond the Green Zone.”…

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Iraq’s Sadr uses lull to rebuild Army
Sam Dagher | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
For more than three months, the Mahdi Army has been largely silent. The potent, black-clad Iraqi Shiite force put down its guns in late August at the behest of Moqtada al-Sadr. The move has bolstered improved security in Baghdad, even though the US says some Mahdi Army splinter groups that it calls “criminals” or “extremists” have not heeded Mr. Sadr’s freeze. Away from public view, however, Sadr’s top aides say the anti-American cleric is anything but idle. Instead, he is orchestrating a revival among his army of loyalists entrenched in Baghdad and Shiite enclaves to the south – from the religious centers of Karbala and Najaf to the economic hub of Basra…

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December 10, 2007: 1 US Soldier, 3 US Contractors, 30 Iraqis Killed; 81 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
Baghdad was rocked by several attacks today, including one that caused a refinery fire in a southern neighborhood. At least 30 Iraqis were killed and 81 more were wounded throughout the country. One Task Force Iron soldier was killed and two more were injured during a suicide attack today in Salah ad Din province. Also, three American contractors were killed and one more was wounded during an IED attack yesterday. In Baghdad, mortars landed on a jail near Shabb stadium. Seven inmates were killed, 25 Iraqis were wounded, and several inmates escaped. Meanwhile, rockets fell on a forward operating base in Rusafa. Five detainees were killed, and 23 others were wounded….

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Baghdad safer, but it’s a life behind walls
Sam Dagher
…It’s not just Abu Nawas that’s starting to resemble a fortress. Walls like those around the ultrasecure Green Zone, where US officials and Iraqi dignitaries live and work, are rising around neighborhoods all over Baghdad – new “Green Zones” protected by US-paid Iraqi neighborhood guards. Creating civilian havens is a cornerstone of the US counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq. While many here are grateful for the newfound calm, they say the price is an increasingly segregated city that is starting to feel like a collective cage. In many cases, the US military is keeping tabs on male residents by collecting fingerprints and retinal scans. “One road in and one road out, that’s it,” says Ghazaliya resident Muhammad Rajab. “Iraq is a prison, and now I live in my own little prison,” he adds wryly….

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World Health Organization reports Gaza situation ‘intolerable’
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
The head of the World Health Organization for the West Bank and Gaza, Dr Ambrogio Manenti, said Monday at a Jerusalem symposium, “There is a situation of physical and mental isolation that has become intolerable.” Manenti was referring to the Israeli closure of all borders of the Gaza Strip since May, and a recent decision two weeks ago to cut off all fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip — thus preventing emergency generators for hospitals and schools from operating. “We as health professionals have to denounce this situation and the international community cannot tolerate it any longer,” said Manenti….

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IRAQ: Education Becomes the New Casualty in Baquba
Ahmed Ali*
The alarming security situation in Diyala province north of Baghdad has killed off much of the education system. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq had at first brought hope. Salaries were increased; a newly appointed primary or secondary school teacher was given 200,000 Iraqi Dinars, about 150 dollars a month. In September 2006, the Ministry of Education increased teachers’ salaries by 20 to 50 percent in an attempt to entice them to stay in their jobs. But in Diyala capital Baquba, 40km north of Baghdad, lack of security means many teachers have quit, and children are not going to school…

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Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR
KBR Told Victim She Could Lose Her Job If She Sought Help After Being Raped, She Says
BRIAN ROSS, MADDY SAUER & JUSTIN ROOD
A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident. Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job. “Don’t plan on working back in Iraq. There won’t be a position here, and there won’t be a position in Houston,” Jones says she was told….

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Democratic complicity in Bush’s torture regimen
Glenn Greenwald, Salon
The Washington Post reports today that the Bush administration, beginning in 2002, repeatedly briefed leading Congressional Democrats on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — including, at various times, Jay Rockefeller, Nancy Pelosi, and Jane Harman — regarding the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation methods,” including details about waterboarding and other torture measures. With one exception (Harman, who vaguely claims to have sent a letter to the CIA), these lawmakers not only failed to object to these policies, but affirmatively supported them. This information was almost certainly leaked to the Post by intelligence officials who are highly irritated — understandably so — from watching the manipulative spectacle whereby these Democrats now prance around as outraged victims of policies to which they deliberately acquiesced, when they weren’t fully supporting them….

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Harsh refugee life rather than improved security spurs return of Iraqi refugees
Ashley Jonathan Clements – Regional Emergency Advocacy Adviser (MEERO)
The recent return of considerable numbers of Iraqi refugees to their homeland has been hailed by some as evidence of an improvement in the security situation inside Iraq. Many Iraqi refugees face little alternative, however, than to return to their homeland, according to a survey by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in Syria. Most returnees did so because they were running out of money or because their visas had expired, states the report, with less than 15 per cent found to be returning because they believed the security situation had improved. According to the Iraqi government, up to 1,000 Iraqi refugees are returning to their homeland each day. “So far there are no indications that the refugees in Jordan are planning to return to Iraq anytime soon,” said Nidal Qsar, Jordan Office Manager. “World Vision is continuing to monitor the situation closely for signs of change” added Qsar….

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IOA blocks baby with a hole in the heart from leaving Gaza for urgent treatment
Palestinian Information Center
A Palestinian child, who was born almost two weeks ago with a hole in the heart, has been denied an Israeli permit to leave the Strip and receive urgently needed treatment for his case, medical sources reported. They said that the baby’s condition was worsening as he is suffering problems in the liver and swelling in his body. The doctor following the case of the baby at the European hospital explained his condition to a delegation of the popular committee against the siege headed by MP Jamal Al-Khudari, stressing that the child was in need of an urgent surgery before it was too late….

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US-Iran to discuss Iraq on December 18: minister
AFP
US and Iranian officials will hold another round of talks on Iraq’s security next week, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said on Monday, adding that cooperation from Iraq’s neighbours was improving. Zebari said officials from Tehran, Washington and Baghdad would meet on December 18 to thrash out strategies aimed at quelling the violence in Iraq. “This will be a technical meeting … not at ambassadors level… but at experts level. There are positive signals from Tehran and Washington,” Zebari told a news conference….

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Signs of a major turning point
Arablinks
Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad Bulani, in a follow-up to the highly-touted seizure of documents near Tikrit late last week, said yesterday his ministry has recruited 3000 special police agents to track down resistance Baathists. There were a couple of particularly noteworthy points in what he said. First: He said this is going to involve pursuit of people from both the Izzat al-Douri wing and the rival Yunis al-Ahmed wing. This is noteworthy because of what sketchy information we have about talks or negotiations between the US and the GreenZone on the one side and Baathists on the other. The split between the two wings occurred immediately after the execution of Saddam, and the Douri loyalists accused the Yunis wing (and the government of Syria) of preparing to sell out to the Americans. And there has been continuing tension over the question of who is talking to the Americans and who is not…

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The True Aim of Annapolis, and Why It Failed
Ramzy Baroud
…Although both Bush and Abbas are willing collaborators in this undemocratic endeavour, Israelis must wake up to the fact that their country is knee-deep in Apartheid, and nothing is significant enough to salvage their racially-selective democracy, except true democracy. It’s time for people like Harris to stop talking of ‘two-space-nation-space-states’ and other such nonsense, but instead to invest sincere efforts in finding a formula that guarantees peace, justice and security for both Palestinians and Israelis, without overlooking the historic responsibility of Israel over the plight and dispossession of the Palestinians….

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They’re JUST Noticing…
karlmarxwasright
…Meanwhile, the battle in/for Kosovo appears inevitable at this point. NATO is beefing up its military. Russia also. Lebanon’s Presidential election has now been postponed upteen times. Condi Rice indicated a possible compromise on positioning Missile Defense in Eastern Europe with Russia. However, if you can’t guess where else missiles are going to be stationed and purchased, you are an absolute idiot. The Arab/Persian Gulf Coast countries, of course….

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Operating Beyond the Law: Israeli Agents in the US
Kim Petersen
When a state arises from the dispossession of an Indigenous people and when that state persists in the brutalization, murder, and humiliation of the Indigenous people, some vociferous voices are likely to respond to such moral outrages. The dispossessors would be compelled to expiate their crimes or try and cover up their crimes. The Lobby is frequently accused of attempting to prevent or stifle debate about Israel and itself: a fabricated taboo. Nonetheless, more and more attention is being focused on The Lobby’s role in covering up Zionist crimes and its own criminal activity in the United States….

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Nothing less than our freedom
Mohammed Khatib, The Electronic Intifada
For the people of our small village of Bil’in, which lies west of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, the planned negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli leaders in Annapolis, Maryland evoke mixed feelings. Like all Palestinians, we pray that our children will not spend their lives as we did, under Israeli military occupation. But our experience has been that Israel, the stronger party, exploits peace talks as a smokescreen to obscure facts that it is establishing on the ground. During the Oslo “peace” process Israel built settlements in the occupied territories at an unprecedented rate. Israel’s system of settler-only roads, which is now strangling our cities and villages, was created during the Oslo process. This makes us wary of the Annapolis negotiations….

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Ritual Gloating Postmortems – The Corporate Media v. Hugo Chavez
Stephen Lendman
Dateline December 3, 2007 – the corporate media is euphoric after Venezuelans narrowly defeated Hugo Chavez’s constitutional reform referendum the previous day. The outcome defied pre-election independent poll predictions and was a cliffhanger to the end. Near-final results weren’t announced until 1:15AM December 3 with about 100,000 votes separating the two sides and a surprising 44% of eligible voters abstaining. On December 7, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) released the final outcome based on 94% of ballots counted…

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Philadelphia Inquirer Editor Gushes over Bush, Columnist Panders to Anti-Immigration Crowd
Walter C. Uhler
…Anyone who has paid serious attention to the disaster that has befallen Iraq knows that Ferris is either patently dishonest or willfully ignorant when he touts the situation there as “the central front in the campaign for hope.” “Campaign for hope?” Even a majority of military families now believe that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. What possible outcome could justify the horrors and evil of Bush’s war? “Campaign for hope?” Consider that, according to Robert Dreyfuss and Tom Engelhardt, “There are, by now, perhaps a million dead Iraqis, give or take a few hundred thousand. If a typical wounded-to-dead ratio of 3:1 holds, then you’re talking about up to 4 million war, occupation, and civil-war casualties. Now, add in the estimated 2-2.5 million who went into exile, fleeing the country, and another estimated 2.3 million who have had to leave their homes and go into internal exile as Iraqi communities hand neighborhoods were ‘cleansed.’” ….

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Palestinian Medical Relief Society calls for an immediate end to the murderous siege of Gaza
Grassroots International (GRI)
People are dying in Gaza. Patients die in their hospital beds because they are denied permits to access life-saving treatments abroad. Patients with such permits die at the Erez crossing because the Israeli military denies them exit, despite their permits. These are all avoidable deaths. These are patients diagnosed with a critical condition, seeking life–saving treatment. This is tantamount to murder. Premeditated murder. More than 29 Palestinians have already died in this manner so far. A further 900 are still waiting to permits to leave the Strip. But this is only the tip of the iceberg, for the collective punishment unleashed on the Palestinian people in Gaza cuts much deeper: food, goods, medicine, medical supplies, critical equipment, construction materials and now fuel and electricity. The closure of the crossings by the Israeli military and the new delivery cuts ordered by the Israeli government are far reaching. All sectors of life are impacted; all the population is under attack….

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Palestinian Medical Relief Society calls for an immediate end to the murderous siege of Gaza
Grassroots International (GRI)
People are dying in Gaza. Patients die in their hospital beds because they are denied permits to access life-saving treatments abroad. Patients with such permits die at the Erez crossing because the Israeli military denies them exit, despite their permits. These are all avoidable deaths. These are patients diagnosed with a critical condition, seeking life–saving treatment. This is tantamount to murder. Premeditated murder. More than 29 Palestinians have already died in this manner so far. A further 900 are still waiting to permits to leave the Strip. But this is only the tip of the iceberg, for the collective punishment unleashed on the Palestinian people in Gaza cuts much deeper: food, goods, medicine, medical supplies, critical equipment, construction materials and now fuel and electricity. The closure of the crossings by the Israeli military and the new delivery cuts ordered by the Israeli government are far reaching. All sectors of life are impacted; all the population is under attack….

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3,000 undercover cops to track down Dori, Ahmad cells – minister
Voices of Iraq
Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Bulani said his ministry recruited 3,000 undercover policemen to track down the former Baath Party cells belonging to Izzat Ibrahim al-Dori and Muhammad Younes al-Ahmad. “The operatives of the so-called al-Awda (Return) Organization, which stemmed from the Baath Party and belong to Dori and Ahmad, will be hunted down by 3,000 policemen working undercover,” Bulani said in a joint press conference with Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Ubaidi on Sunday. Bulani said “one of the strong factors that contributed to enhancing security was the decision taken by Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr to freeze his Mahdi Army militias, which helped sort out criminals who cover under several names.”….

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Sunday: 46 Iraqis Killed, 28 Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
Baiji was again the scene of an attack that left several people dead or injured. Overall, 46 Iraqis were killed or found dead and another 28 were wounded throughout the country. No Coalition deaths were reported. Also, officials have banned the use of government vehicles that lack license places in order to curb their use in attacks. In Baghdad, mortars injured into Karrada injuring two people. One person was killed and two were injured during a mortar attack in Rashidiyah. Five unidentified bodies were found. No casualties were reported after a mortar attack on the Green Zone. Also, Iraqi soldiers shot and killed a person wearing a suicide vest…

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Nasr: Hamas’s talks in Saudi Arabia important, successful
Palestinian Information Center
Mohammed Nasr, the political member of the Hamas Movement, on Monday stressed that his Movement’s talks in Saudi Arabia were important and successful. Nasr, who was a member of a delegation headed by political bureau chairman Khaled Mishaal in Riyadh, said in an exclusive statement to the PIC that the delegation’s visit to Saudi Arabia fell in line with the natural and regular contacts between Hamas and the Saudi Kingdom. “We met with a number of senior Saudi officials including the foreign minister, Saud Al-Faisal, and we discussed latest political and field developments in the Palestinian arena especially in the post Annapolis stage,” he elaborated….

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Saudis and UAE want to reopen Baghdad missions: Iraq
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have asked to reopen their diplomatic missions in Baghdad, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Monday. The United States has repeatedly urged Sunni Arab Saudi Arabia, a regional heavyweight, to reopen its embassy in Baghdad as a sign of support to the Shi’ite-led Iraqi government. Saudi diplomatic representation would send a strong signal to other reluctant Arab countries to follow suit….

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