14/12/07

One More Cruel Hoax
Iraqi Refugees Return
JOHN ROSS
With the first presidential primaries on the U.S. doorstep January 3rd, the usual unholy alliance of Bushites, Democrats, and Big Media are doing their damndest to skam a skeptical electorate into swallowing the lie that the surge has worked, the drawdown has begun, and the war in Iraq is just about over. Security is so improved in Baghdad thanks to the Bush-Petraeus putsch that New York Times reporters can walk certain streets without armed escort. Even the refugees, driven off by unspeakable violence, are returning to Baghdad in droves. This myth is being perpetrated by the likes of Fox News and CNN. A four-column full-color photo on the front page of the New York Times November 20th of a gala Baghdad wedding party was accompanied inside by a shot of smiling adolescents playing fussball and a banner headline “BAGHDAD EXHALES AS SECURITY IMPROVES.”…

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Sheikh Harith al-Dhari: ‘US is the main irritant in Iraq’
Aljazeera.net
Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, head of the Association of Muslim Scholars, is arguably one of the most influential Iraqi Sunni leaders today. His unequivocal opposition to the US-led occupation and criticism of the Nouri al-Maliki government attracted threats against his life and forced him into exile. In an interview with Al Jazeera, al-Dhari says the slight improvement in the security situation in Iraq “is due to a decision by the Iraqi government to reign in its death squads”. He concedes that the “resistance has temporarily” retreated in the face of US-funded al-Sahwa (Awakening Council) militias “but that the resistance is regrouping and will bounce back”….

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Hideous Crime: Israeli Occupation kills new baby in Gaza Strip ?
Popular Committee Against Siege
Palestinian Medical sources reported today, Friday, that a new infant child died due to siege. The infant baby died after Israeli occupation banded her from traveling for treatment abroad! The sources told PCAS that Hala Zanon, a 3-month-baby, had a severe disease since her birth. Her family tried hard to get her outside for treatment, yet she was prevented several times until she died. The number of dead patients rise up to 38 individuals due to occupation harsh closure imposed on Gaza Strip….

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British ‘success’ under siege in Afghanistan
Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times
British troops have once again recaptured the less than a few square kilometers of the district headquarters of Musa Qala town in Helmand province from the Taliban, but, as before, it could turn out to be a pyrrhic victory. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters in Kabul have heralded this week’s operations as a “most strategic and significant success” in the province, where 80% of Afghanistan’s poppy cultivation is located. British troops have seized Musa Qala before, but then have become virtual prisoners in their barracks. Indeed, last year they were only able to vacate the town after striking a truce with the Taliban, who controlled all the surrounding areas of the inhospitable terrain. The Taliban put up token resistance this week, according to a Taliban commander in Kandahar, Moulvi Abdul Jalil, who told Asia Times Online on telephone that the organisation now aims to concentrate its efforts on Kandahar province and has already captured two districts near Kandahar city. With regard to Musa Qala, Mullah Noormal (a jihadi alias), a lieutenant of Mullah Abdul Bari, said in a satellite phone interview with Asia Times Online, “They [British] fired continuous artillery shells for two days on the civilian population and as a result the people evacuated the area. The Taliban did not receive any casualties as we did not actually fight. Civilians were the one victims. We were under the command of Mullah Abdul Bari and retreated when the troops rolled into! town… .

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Violent Day in Iraq Begins With Liquor Store Bombings
PAUL von ZIELBAUER
Homemade bombs hit two Baghdad liquor stores early Thursday, and attacks in several other parts of the city killed two people and wounded at least seven others. Eleven more deaths were reported from attacks outside Baghdad, and 19 bodies were found in Baghdad and elsewhere. Liquor stores are frequent targets of bombings and other violence by Islamic militants seeking to end the sale of alcohol here. The two bombings occurred within moments of each other, shortly after 6 a.m. The police said they had defused another bomb placed near a third liquor store….

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FLASHBACK: Torture, Israeli style
‘Now you are paralyzed, as we promised’
Gideon Levy, Haaretz
“We have to make you do a little sports,” the Shin Bet interrogator said, launching four successive days of questioning accompanied by brutal physical torture. The result: Luwaii Ashqar can no longer stand on his feet. He sits in his wheelchair, dressed in a fashionable quasi-military suit, super-elegant, new Caterpillar-brand shoes on his paralyzed feet. “I love this color,” he says about his uniform. “It’s the color of the soldiers who came to arrest me for the interrogation that did all this to me.” His smile is captivating, his Hebrew rich and incisive. He is a young man whose world fell apart. He entered prison sound of body and mind and emerged a broken man. For four days and four nights nonstop, he says, he was interrogated and subjected to torture of the most brutal kind. The result is the person we see before us in the wheelchair, in the elegant home high in the village of Saida, north of Tul Karm, which was placed at his disposal by a friend after he was released from Israeli prison a month ago….

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Inspector General for Iraq Under Investigation
FBI, Congress Among Those Probing Allegations of Overspending, Mismanagement
Robin Wright, Washington Post
Over the past four years, Inspector General Stuart W. Bowen Jr. and his staff have probed allegations of waste and fraud in the $22 billion U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq. Their work has led to arrests, indictments and millions of dollars in fines. And it has earned Bowen, who had been a legal adviser to President Bush, many admirers among both parties on Capitol Hill for his efforts to identify overspending and mismanagement. But Bowen’s office has also been roiled by allegations of its own overspending and mismanagement. Current and former employees have complained about overtime policies that allowed 10 staff members to earn more than $250,000 each last year….

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Holiday Greetings – Home Demolitions in Israel’s Negev
Yeela Raanan, RCUV.
On Tuesday, the seventh day of Hannuka and the second day of the fast before the Moslem holiday of El Adha, Israeli police accompanied bulldozers in a horrific day of demolitions in the unrecognized Bedouin Villages in the Negev. 27 homes were demolished – 27 families were left homeless, with broken dreams, anger and pain towards the government that does not allow them to live in dignity. Nadia Abu Hadobeh from the village of Abu-Tlul is 60 years old. She has lost most of her hearing, and is considered 100% disabled by the Israeli government because of breathing hardships. Because of lack of oxygen she faints on a daily basis, and needs constant care and at times hospitalization. She finds it hard to live in her grown sons’ homes, so she took a loan from the bank – half of her governmental allowance – $200 a month – she pays for this loan – to build herself a place to live by her sons. She moved into her new modest home several months ago. Now she is without a roof, and without the ability to live the remainder of her life in dignity….

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Why I Will Not Participate in the Madrid Social Forum for a Just Peace in the Middle East
Michael Warschawski, Alternative Information Center (AIC)
I have no problem in taking part in a conference where Zionist spokespersons are invited too, for debates are part and parcel of a healthy political arena. As well, I have no problem being invited to official public meetings, initiated by government agencies, including Israeli ones. I need, however, to know exactly what kind of gathering I am supposed to participate. By its own definition, the Madrid Social Forum for a Just Peace in the Middle East belongs to the family of “social forums,” as defined in the Porto Allegre Charter, i.e. a forum of grassroots and popular organizations, without any involvement of State’s agencies, political parties (or armed-organizations) (…) .Some of the newly-invited Israeli organizations to Madrid are, to say the least, not fully opposed to the war plans of their government or their US godfather. To mention only two: Shimon Peres (founder of the Peres Peace Center) is calling for a preemptive war against Iran after having supported the last aggression against Lebanon; Peace Now supported the war in Lebanon in summer 2006—that is, until it became a military fiasco. It is a matter of private ethics: I do not want, today, to be in the same forum with such people. The blood of the martyrs of Tyre and Bint Jbail is not dry yet, and the noises of the next war, a war that they will undoubtedly support, are already in our ears….

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Palestine: No to Unjust Peace!
A Response to Madrid Social Forum’s Misrepresentation of Facts
Palestinian Delegation
Yesterday, 13 December, we were shocked to read the statement posted on the website of the Forum for a Just Peace in the Middle East, as it entirely and intentionally misrepresented the facts and the factors that motivated the now growing boycott of the Forum. We feel obliged to correct these falsities and to present the facts, as they are, to all those who are still committed to a peace based on justice, international law and universal human rights. 1. The communiqué starts by saying that only “one part” of the main entities sending delegations to the Forum has withdrawn. This is not true. It ignores the fact, which everyone knew yesterday, that our Israeli civil society partners, led by the Alternative Information Center (AIC), the Syrian Golan Heights delegation and the Lebanese delegation have all announced their withdrawal, as well….

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Baath Party Statement
A statement to our people’ masses concerning the US Occupiers and their debased servile stooges moaning under the growing blows of the glorious Iraqi heroic Resistance.
The Arab Baath Socialist Party
…The puppet government works with the half of its ministers unable to achieve whatever but to run after personal gains, despise, torture and punish the persevering Iraqi people who lacks the simplest everyday life services suffering from the outbreak of horrible killer diseases and plagues unknown in Iraq before the Occupation, genocide, starvation, unemployment and growing levels of poverty, refugees and displaced insecurity in many governorates including Baghdad, Nineveh, Diyala and mainly Karbala, Diwaniyah and Basrah whose best sons and daughters were victims of the warring criminal militias ..

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With schools in east Jerusalem overcrowded, Palestinian children are staying away
Associated Press
At overcrowded schools in Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, children sit three to a desk, bathrooms are converted into makeshift classrooms and the dropout rate is rampant. This situation stands in sharp contrast to the holy city’s better-equipped Jewish schools, which enjoy smaller class sizes and a great deal more government investment. Meanwhile, plans to build new classrooms in Arab sections have been put on hold. The result: tens of thousands of students studying in appalling conditions, and many others staying home altogether.
Arab residents of east Jerusalem say the situation in the schools reflects wider discrimination they face in every aspect of life. They point to piles of uncollected garbage and an absence of state medical clinics in their neighborhoods. “The children are the victim of the government’s policy,” said Abdel Karim Lafi, chairman of the parents’ union for east Jerusalem schools….

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Concern rises regarding Gaza health care access
IRIN News
The isolation of the Gaza Strip is “intolerable” said a senior World Health Organization (WHO) official on 10 December, urging better access for Gazans to medical care outside the boxed-off enclave. Ambrogio Manenti, head of the WHO in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, urged medical professionals to take a stand against the current situation which, he said, was having a negative impact on the health of residents. Manenti was speaking at a WHO symposium with the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-I) organization and the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme. The WHO noted an increase in the number of patients being denied access to care outside Gaza. Hadas Ziv, the director of PHR-I, said her organization had collected affidavits from Palestinians whose permits to leave Gaza were allegedly made contingent on their cooperation with the Israeli security services….

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Gaza tensions flare after abduction and funeral blast
Nidal al-Mughrabi , Reuters
Tensions between rival Palestinian factions flared in the Gaza Strip on Friday after ruling Hamas Islamists detained an adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas’s government and three Fatah mourners were killed in an explosion. Hamas said its forces took Omar al-Ghoul, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, from his home in the highest-profile detention since the group seized the coastal strip in June after routing Abbas’s secular Fatah faction. Abbas issued a terse statement, read out on Palestinian television, which condemned the abduction and accused Hamas of setting off an explosion that ripped through a funeral procession for three militants. They had been killed in an Israeli air strike on Thursday. Medical officials said at least three Fatah mourners were killed and 35 wounded in Friday’s funeral blast. Hamas security officials said a mourner taking part in the procession accidentally dropped a grenade into the crowd….

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Four people killed, dozens injured in a Gaza funeral
Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC
Palestinian medical sources reported that four people have been killed and dozens injured on Friday, during a funeral procession in Gaza city. Witnesses said that an abrupt explosion ripped through the funeral of a Fatah resistance fighter, who was killed yesterday by an Israeli air strke in southern Gaza. Dr. Mo’awiah Hassanin, head of the emergency department at the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said that among those injured were children and that most of the wounded sustained light injuries….

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3 Killed in Israeli air strike targeting a car in Gaza city
Palestinian Information Center
The Israeli occupation airforce on Thursday evening attacked a car travelling in the Zaitoun neighbourhood in Gaza city killing three Palestinians and wounding a fourth. The attack took place only hours after a meeting between Salam Fayyad, Prime Minister of the Rammallah government and the Ehud Barak, the Israeli occupation war minister. Eyewitnesses said that the Israeli occupation airforce attacked a blue Renault car carrying 3 Palestinian passengers and travelling near the Saqallah Mosque in the Zaitoun neighbourhood killing all those inside the car. One of the passengers in the car is affiliated with the Quds Brigades the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad movement….

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Two US soldiers killed in Iraq: military
AFP
Two US soldiers were killed in Iraq on Thursday in separate incidents south of Baghdad, the military announced. One soldier was shot dead during an exchange of fire, a statement said on Friday. The military later announced a second soldier died of his injuries after he was wounded by a booby trap bomb while on foot patrol south of the capital…

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Hamas officers arrest a senior Fatah official in Gaza
Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC
Palestinian sources reported that Hamas officials arrested on Friday morning a senior member of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party. ‘Omar Al Ghoul, the National affairs advisor of the appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, had reportedly returned to Gaza on Thursday to attend the funeral procession of his mother-in law. Hamas accuses al Ghoul of engaging in ‘illegal activities’, but did not specify the exact charges against him. Al Ghoul is also a known Fatah leader who criticized the Hamas movement on several occasions….

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Democratic Process: Another Day, Another Capitulation
Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque
The Democratic “opposition” in Congress – you know, the party that represents the common people, good working folk and the most vulnerable in our society: the sick, the old, the poor, the children – have just effected yet another capitulation to Money Power, gutting an energy bill that would have required Big Oil – now reaping the most gargantuan profit margins in the entire history of human enterprise – to pay a pittance in new taxes. The original bill would have also required utility companies to eventually produce a whopping 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources….

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Nabil Abu Rdainah & Khaled Mash’al Ahead of Negotiations with the Israelis.
Meanwhile the Israeli ‘s Incursions & Abductions & Assassinations Continues on Palestine Lands
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
Eight Palestinian resistance fighters from Al Quds Brigade,the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, and the An-Nasser Brigades was assassinated during separate Israeli incursions in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.AlQuds Brigade announced that three members of the organisation were killed and sustained serious injuries when Israelis State terrorists fired missiles at a house in Rafah in the southern parts of Gaza Strip.The four were killed when confronting the invading Israelis.Two of the dead are identified as Muhammad Abu Hamra 23 and Jihad Al-Aswad 26- a third body was discovered but could not be identified…

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Thursday: 1 US Sailor, 1 British Soldier, 46 Iraqis Killed; 47 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
This week’s surge in violence continues with at least 46 Iraqi dead and 47 Iraqi wounded in the latest attacks. Another five who were killed appear to be Arab foreigners. Also, a Navy Seal was killed in combat on Tuesday, while a British soldier died from wounds received in a vehicle accident. At least sixteen bodies were found in a mass grave near Muqdadiyah. The bodies are thought to belong to men who were kidnapped and assassinated two months ago. Twelve of the victims were beheaded….

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