Language And War in The Middle East
Ali Alarabi, al- Arab Online
…Iraq today is country cannibalizing itself on a daily diet of blood and gore, yet we hear US politicians and their Iraqi minions speak of “ democracy” in Iraq and “ liberation of Iraq (a country is liberated and occupied at the same time) The US administration hailed the Iraqi election in 2005 as the first Iraqi “democratic election”. It is unclear however how can that be called a “ Democracy” in the real sense of the word when we have Kurds vote for Kurdish politicians and Shias vote for Shia politicians under strict orders from the Iranian Ayatollahs in Najaf, and Sunnis vote for Sunni Politicians. This was religious and tribalism in the first order where each community voted for its religious tribe without any other consideration. This would be the same if American Mormons voted for a Mormon presidential candidate, Protestant citizens voted for a protestant candidate and Catholics for a Catholic candidate. This would be unthinkable and certainly no one in America would call that a “ democracy”….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39366

WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN?
Malcom Lagauche
What is the best way to ensure that the Republican neocon agenda continues? Elect Democrats. What a farce the November 2006 elections in the U.S. were. Almost every “liberal” or “progressive” writer told us how things would drastically change. For instance, the message was that the Democrat’s re-taking of the House of Representatives and the Senate would put a halt to the U.S. military intervention in Iraq. Finally, the troops would come home. What a bunch of horse merde. On December 19, 2006 the incoming Chairman of the U.S. Senate, Harry Reid (D) gave George Bush an early Christmas present. He endorsed sending a further 30,000 to 40,000 U.S. military personnel to Iraq. Bush didn’t even have to twist anyone’s arm. The public voted the Democrats to power for one reason: to stop U.S. involvement in Iraq. The Democratic candidates all called for a new direction. If one listened carefully, the message was not that the invasion of Iraq was wrong. They stated that the methods of execution of the invasion were wrong. But, the public took this as a message that the Democrats would get the U.S. out of Iraq….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39384

More women reporter KBR/Halliburton assaults in Iraq
SUZANNE GAMBOA Associated Press Writers
Several women have joined a Texas woman in coming forward with reports of sexual harassment and assault while working in Iraq for Halliburton’s former subsidiary, KBR, a Texas congressman told a House subcommittee Wednesday. The women have given lawyers and a congressman accounts similar to the allegations of Jamie Leigh Jones of Conroe, Texas, whose allegations of rape have gained national media attention. “This problem goes way beyond just me,” Jones told the House Judiciary subcommittee Wednesday. Jones she was raped in July 2005 by a co-worker who drugged her. She said she awoke groggy and confused the next morning, bleeding and bruised. She said a KBR representative kept her in a shipping container so she wouldn’t report the assault, she said…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39376

Unprepared Government Strands Returning Iraqi Refugees
CARA BUCKLEY, New York Times
…The government’s widely publicized plan to run free buses from Damascus, Syria, to Baghdad was suspended after just two runs. Thousands of Sunni refugees are not getting aid because they fear registering with the Shiite-led government. While aid organizations are distributing emergency packets that include utensils, blankets and food, deeper structural issues, like securing neighborhoods, supplying housing or creating jobs, remain unresolved and largely unaddressed. So far, just a fraction of the millions of refugees who fled from Iraq have come back. While the government trumpeted their return as proof of newfound security, migration experts said most of them were forced back by expired visas and depleted savings. Ms. Hashim, for one, pawned her wedding ring and gold jewelry to stay in Syria, but came back after her uncle’s visa application was denied…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39375

One-Act Farces on Peace in Palestine and their political lessons.
Agustin Velloso.
Last week end (14-16 December), the Forum for a Just Peace in the Middle East, one of the longest running plays in the world, was once again performed, this time in Alcorcon (a town close to Madrid). The plot was written by the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) and directed by Miguel Angel Moratinos, the Spanish government’s Foreign Affairs Minister. The cast was mainly made up of some people who should not have been there and some people who rather wish the earth might have swallowed them up. This performance has taken place in Madrid at least twice in the last few years: same script, similar actors, same results. The first took place in one of the elegant halls of the Agencia Española de Cooperacion Internacional, the Spanish Cooperation Agency. The man in charge of the “meeting” between Palestinians and Israelis, decided that a mural map of Palestine would be a great background for the event. He chose an Israeli map, which served well to show off Spanish mediating skills in the conflict between a powerful country and an occupied destitute nation…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39379

Christians and Muslims Weep Together
A Christmas Reflection on Palestine
SONJA KARKAR
As Christmas approaches this year, the thoughts of Christians all over the world will once again turn to Bethlehem, the holy town where Jesus was born over two millennia ago. Voices will be raised in joyful celebration and children everywhere will re-create the Christmas story to help us remember the circumstances in which the Christ child was born. Such a momentous occasion in such humble surroundings heralded a new way of thinking about people’s relationship with God and with each other. It shook the foundations of an unforgiving society presided over by an unforgiving God and proclaimed peace and goodwill on earth amongst all people. There was indeed much to hope for. However, the tranquil pastoral scene so familiar to us is not at all evident in Bethlehem today. Bethlehem does not lie still, and peace on earth and goodwill towards all is as elusive as ever. The tyranny of Israel’s occupation and its colonial expansionism is crippling the lives of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims alike…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39372

IRAQ: Looking to Security from Paper Police
Ali al-Fadhily*, Inter Press Service
In a country with no security and no jobs, just about anyone can work as a policeman. “To survive in Iraq under U.S. occupation, there are only two jobs; police and garbage collection,” Baghdad journalist Mohammad al-Dulaymi told IPS. “Unemployment is leading many Iraqis to join the security forces despite the risk involved.” According to the Iraqi government, unemployment was between 60-70 percent over the year. But not even senior army and police leaders know how many have got jobs as security men….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39378

All Iraqi Groups Blame U.S. Invasion for Discord, Study Shows
Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer
Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of “occupying forces” as the key to national reconciliation, according to focus groups conducted for the U.S. military last month… Dated December 2007, the report notes that “the Iraqi government has still made no significant progress toward its fundamental goal of national reconciliation.” Asked to describe “the current situation in Iraq to a foreign visitor,” some groups focused on positive aspects of the recent security improvements. But “most would describe the negative elements of life in Iraq beginning with the ‘U.S. occupation’ in March 2003,” the report says. Some participants also blamed Iranian meddling for Iraq’s problems. While the United States was said to want to control Iraq’s oil, Iran was seen as seeking to extend its political and religious agendas…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39368

Divided and ruled in Paris
Karma Nabulsi, The Guardian
The current strategy of international involvement in Palestine has just entered its most dangerous, most shocking and most sordid phase. Hallucinatory scenes of apocalyptic profligacy were unfolding in Paris yesterday as French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner grabbed a mike to badger member states to give yet more millions in aid to the suffering Palestinians. Meanwhile, Gaza is declared to be on the brink on an economic collapse of catastrophic proportions by the UN, the ICRC, the World Bank, and Oxfam. Were the billions pledged yesterday targeted to address this current crisis? The more sickening reality, sadly under-reported, is that yesterday’s donor initiative is actually creating this crisis. The money is to be spent in increasing the political, economic, social and civic siege of Gaza, in increasing the fragmentation of the Palestinian people, in pumping up a ruined leadership, and in thwarting any chance of national unity for the Palestinians…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39355

Saddam’s memorial
Roads to Iraq
…President Saddam Hussein did not leave secret bank accounts in Switzerland, no palaces in Europe, and no luxurious yachts in southern France. His family members are living on charity in Yemen, Qatar, Jordan and Libya. while the new the rulers of the new Iraq playing with billions of dollars from corruption, smuggled oil, suspicious transactions, and funds from the CIA. President Saddam Hussein, in this day, did not only go to the gallows courageously: he went to the pages of history books as an Arab leader who refused to bow to the enemies, defending the people and their dignity, singing hymns of pan-Arabism and Palestine…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39369

Iraqi Web reporter found dead in Baghdad, unclear if he was killed for his work
The Associated Press
An American media watchdog group said it was alarmed by the death of an Iraqi reporter for an Internet-based news site who was shot and killed in Baghdad — allegedly during a raid by Iraqi security forces. The Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement Tuesday that it was trying to determine if Ali Shafeya al-Moussawi was killed because of his work for the Web site Alive in Baghdad. Al-Moussawi was shot 31 times and found dead in his home in Sadr City early Saturday after Iraqi security forces raided the area and entered his home, Alive in Baghdad reported. In the past, gunmen not affiliated with Iraqi security forces have raided areas while dressed in official-looking uniforms. The Web site’s founder and director, Brian Conley, said details of exactly who killed al-Moussawi or why remain unclear. He said the site is looking into a threat the reporter received the week before his death from the Mahdi Army, the militia controlled by firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39354

The Iraq war is no longer newsworthy
DOUG THOMPSON
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found recently that news media coverage of the war in Iraq is dropping and, as a result, American support for the conflict is rising. In other words, less news is good news for George W. Bush and his failed war. Wall-to-wall coverage of the upcoming Presidential primaries along with the latest antics of a pantyless Britney Spears and any other bimbo du jour is more important than an illegal and immoral war…From the beginning, the mainstream news media has aided and abetted Bush’s con job on Iraq. Before the invasion, they accepted – without question or investigation – his lies about weapons of mass destruction, mobile chemical weapons factories and non-existent ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. In recent weeks, news anchors under heavy security have traveled around carefully-prepared routes in Baghdad so they could file propaganda reports about increased safety in that civil war-torn country. Reality shows have more truth than television news reports from Iraq…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39367

Reports document deepening social catastrophe in Afghanistan
Oscar Grenfell
More than six years after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, two recently released reports have again demonstrated the falsehood of the Bush administration’s claims to be helping the Afghan people. The social indices on literacy, life expectancy and food availability contained in the reports provide an insight into the terrible social crisis confronting millions of Afghans. The 2007 Afghanistan Human Development Report produced by the United Nations and based on statistics gathered in 2005 shows that Afghanistan has actually fallen in world rankings. In 2004, it was placed 173rd out of 178 countries on the UN global human development index; in 2007 it has fallen another place to 174th ahead of only four poverty-stricken African countries—Burkina Faso, Mali, Sierra Leone and Niger. According to the report, average life expectancy fell from 44.5 years in 2003 to 43.1 years in 2005, while adult literacy fell from 28.7 percent in 2003 to 23.5 percent in 2005. When these figures are cross-referenced with pre-invasion 2001 statistics, a picture of social retrogression becomes clear. Under the Taliban regime, average life expectancy was actually slightly higher at 45.5 years and the literacy rate for adults was 31 percent….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39365

Collective punishment begins While illegal according to international law, Israel presses ahead in denying Gaza access to fundamental commodities
Marian Houk, Al-Ahram Weekly
Israel has been reducing fuel supplies to Gaza for some weeks now, though tightened Israeli sanctions against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip were supposed to go into effect only a week ago. Gaza is totally dependent on Israeli supplies of fuel — including gas for cooking, gasoline for automobiles, and diesel to operate generators, hospitals, and public utilities, including the main Gaza power plant that supplies much of Gaza’s electricity. So far, the supply of water to Gaza is the only one of three vital commodities controlled entirely by Israel that has been left untouched. A group of Israeli human rights organisations appealed to the Israeli High Court to prevent fuel and electricity cuts to Gaza. The fuel cuts were authorised, however, and went into supposed legal effect 2 December. A decision on electricity cuts is expected soon….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39374

A PALESTINIAN VIEW
The demographic argument is inherently racist
an interview with Hanan Ashrawi
bitterlemons: Israel’s demand to be recognized as a “Jewish state” at Annapolis caused an uproar among Palestinians. This doesn’t seem like a new demand, so why the uproar? Ashrawi: It is new in a sense. It is new as a prerequisite for negotiations. The demand has always been the recognition of Israel. Then Israel added the recognition of Israel’s “right to exist”, and then the recognition of it’s right to exist as a “Jewish state”. But when the PLO recognized Israel in 1993 there was an assumption that that was it, in the context of a two-state solution and international law and UN General Assembly Resolution 181 and Security Council Resolution 242. This issue of the Jewishness of the state came up recently mainly because of the so-called demographic issue—which to me is an inherently racist issue—which became the central motivation for the two-state solution among the Israeli right, including Ariel Sharon. The fear of the demographic balance, projections for the birthrate and so on, led people to this position, and now Israel wants to ensure that there is always a Jewish majority….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39373

ISRAELI TROOPS LITERALLY GET AWAY WITH MURDER
Desert Peace
Israeli prisons are overcrowded with innocent Palestinians, many of whom were never even charged with a criminal offense. These prisoners include scores of young children as well, again not charged with any particular crime other than the fact that they are Palestinian…. a crime itself in an apartheid state. Adding ‘insult to injury’, Israeli soldiers that ARE suspected of criminal offenses are NOT prosecuted as reported in the following Associated Press article…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39362

BROADCAST EXCLUSIVE: Yemeni Man Imprisoned at CIA “Black Sites” Tells His Story of Kidnapping and Torture
Democracy Now!
Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, a victim of the CIA rendition program—kidnapped, held in secret jails, and tortured—speaks out in his first broadcast interview. In the fall of 2003, Bashmilah was detained in Jordan and turned over to the CIA. He was eventually flown to a secret prison he later found out was in Kabul, Afghanistan. In CIA custody, Mohamed says he was held in a freezing-cold cell, interrogated, shackled, force-fed and subjected to sleep deprivation and loud music for days. He attempted suicide at least three times. He talks about his interrogators and the American psychiatrists or psychologists who also played a role. Bashmilah has brought a lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan, a Boeing subsidiary, accused of abetting his kidnapping. In an in-depth and detailed interview from his home in Yemen, Bashmilah tell us his harrowing story…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39360

Wikileaks busts Gitmo propaganda team
Wikileaks
The US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has been caught conducting covert propaganda attacks on the internet. The attacks, exposed by government transparency group Wikileaks, include deleting detainees’ ID numbers from Wikipedia, the systematic posting of unattributed “self praise” comments on news organization web sites in response to negative press, boosting pro-Guantanamo stories on the internet news site Digg and even modifying Fidel Castro’s encyclopedia article to describe the Cuban president as “an admitted transexual” [sic]. Among the un- or mis-attributed responses to news stories were statements such as “[Guantanamo is] a very professional place full of true American patriots.” and comments playing down the impact of leaked documents which among other matters mandated all Guantanamo detainees to have no contact with the Red Cross for at least the first 2-4 weeks after their arrival: “interesting document but not at all relevant today as much of this has changed over the years.” …

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39358

Occupation and Gvernmental Forces Attack Samarra
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
Samarra City and its Suburbs of villages and districts have seen an increased cruel practices conducted by US forces with support of Governmental forces. In Jalam and all villages spread out North of Samarra the occupation forces together with government forces have confiscated several equipments related to the Company of Chemical Industries in it headquarter in Al-Milh region (there are some new machines included in this confiscation such as well drilling machine) within a new attack started last week and had arrested tens of innocents…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39364

Palestinian Patient dies due to the Israeli siege on Gaza
Palestinian Information Center
Palestinian teen died on Wednesday due to the Israeli siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources in the Gaza strip reported. Dua’ Omran, 18, was unable to leave Gaza to get medical treatment she needed to live due to the Israeli army closure of the strip. The Israeli army had closed all entrances to and exits from the Gaza strip in late June shortly after Hamas took total control of the Gaza strip. Despite of the witdrawal in September 2005, Israel still controls all entry and exit points of the Gaza Strip, and since the beginning of September 2007, all borders have been completely sealed, even for patients in dire need of medical treatment….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39356

December 18, 2007: 53 Iraqis Killed, 66 Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
A large bombing in Abbara was among the numerous attacks that left dozens of casualties throughout Iraq today. Overall, at least 53 Iraqis were killed and 66 more were wounded in the latest violence. No Coalition deaths were reported, but Turkey sent hundred of fresh troops into Iraq to counter the PKK rebels in the north. At least 300 Turkish troops entered northern Iraq today to reinforce the 1200 soldiers who have been stationed in the country since 1996. Some unconfirmed battles with Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels were reported. Meanwhile, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud al-Barazani, said that Sunday’s air assault was a “horrific crime” against Kurdish civilians…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39363