Cassandra’s New Year’s Wish…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
Just heard it now, Condi Rice is full of good wishes for the Middle East. The statement just issued on her behalf says to the effect that the U.S does not wish to see any more turmoil in this region. That it extends its “friendly” hands to Syria and Iran and primes diplomacy over war. Condi Rice also assured the Palestinians that her administration is very eager to find a long lasting solution to the 60 years old Palestinian problem (to which her country contributed greatly…) (…) What Condi Rice is really telling the Arabs is that Arab nationalism and any true Arab identity is the real enemy of the U.S. Hence the destruction of Iraq and its fragmentation into sects and its turning it into a Shia theocracy is exactly what America and the Western world had hoped for… On a side note but still related, I find the following very interesting and more than coincidental – namely that both puppet governments in Iraq and Afghanistan have called for a continued American presence in the region…

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Iraq resistance still in operation
Aljazeera.net
Al Jazeera has obtained video footage that appears to show that Iraq’s resistance movements are very much in operation, despite the US administration’s claims. The US has been pointing to the decreasing number of violent deaths in recent months as a sign the country is being brought under control. The footage shows the inner workings of the Islamic Front for Iraqi Resistance, known as Jami…

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Inside Iraq’s Only Women’s Prison
Women And Their Children Held In Jail Because Their Husbands Are Accused Of Terrorism
Elizabeth Palmer, CBSNews
Imagine women in prison because their husbands are accused of terrorism. Now imagine their infants and children in prison with them. Worst of all, it seems they have no way out. CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer visited such a place with Iraqi Vice President Tareq al Hashemi, who had come to inspect Iraq’s only women’s jail. The women prisoners of Khadimiya jail had been waiting a long time for the chance to be heard, some shouting from behind bars…

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The Plight and Resistance of Christians in Palestine
ARA
With Christmas approaching, ARA decided to post some stories of Christians in Palestine fighting against Israeli apartheid alongside their Muslim brothers and sisters. Their resistance takes the form of “steadfastness” or refusal to leave their homeland. These stories are important to popularize in the United States because many Christians are unaware that Palestinian Christians suffer from Israeli apartheid. Here, their stories will be given a chance to be heard…

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Tearful Eid at Rafah Crossing
Mohammad Abu Aita
Mahmoud Abu Ali wished that `Eid Al-Adha would not come this year, being one of hundreds of Palestinians stranded on the Egyptian side of Rafah far away from his wife and four kids, which twisted the knife further in his wound.
“It is breaking my heart that I can’t be with them in these days,” Abu Ali told IslamOnline.net, his voice breaking. “As I’m stuck in here, with no job or money, there will be no new`Eid clothes or toys for the kids,” added Abu Ali, who also missed `Eid Al-Fitr with his family in October…

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Iran Cited In Iraq’s Decline in Violence
Order From Tehran Reined In Militias, U.S. Official Says
Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer
The Iranian government has decided “at the most senior levels” to rein in the violent Shiite militias it supports in Iraq, a move reflected in a sharp decrease in sophisticated roadside bomb attacks over the past several months, according to the State Department’s top official on Iraq. Tehran’s decision does not necessarily mean the flow of those weapons from Iran has stopped, but the decline in their use and in overall attacks “has to be attributed to an Iranian policy decision,” David M. Satterfield, Iraq coordinator and senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said in an interview….

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PCAS offers mediation to ending crossings crisis
Popular Committee Against siege
Popular Committee Against siege (PCAS) expressed today, Saturday, full readiness to act as mediator among all parts to reopen Gaza’s borders. PCAS stated that there must be a compromise among all sides to ensure permanent opened crossings including Rafah terminal. The committee confirmed that this step comes from its awareness towards alleviating suffering of students, patients, labors, businessmen and all society classes. The PCAS asserts that it works far from any political affiliation….

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Occupation forces released Baath members from prison
Roads to Iraq
Sources reported to “Iraq News” that the American occupation forces released a leading member of theBaath Party (Fadhil Al-Mshihdani), he is one of the 55 in the wanted list, Al-Mshihdani was a high rank Baathist in Mosul province and assistance of Izzat Al-Duri. The source noted that the occupation forces also released “Sabar Al-Mashihdani”, who was Baath Party representative in Egypt, the source also added that there will be many other Baathists to be released soon…

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1927
Arablinks
…The roles in 2007 compared to 1927 are partly reversed, with a Shiite instead of a Sunni puppet under pressure by the colonial power to toe the line, but at least some of the ingredients of pressure are the same, notably Shiite/Sunni animosity fanned by the colonial power. When it comes to the colonial power’s manipulation of takfiiri raids as a way of enhancing the puppet government’s sense of weakness and sense of reliance on the colonial power, that is something where Batatu saw circumstantial evidence, in the first place, and also documentary evidence in the form of the colonial secretary’s memo….

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GI Special 5L15: Another Big Surprise [ December 22, 2007 ]
Thomas F. Barton
IRAQ TROOP SURGE doesn’t curb hunger for troop withdrawals.
Proportion saying increase in U.S. forces is “helping the situation” rises to 37% from 33% last month and 24% in April.
Yet the number saying victory remains possible drops to 37% from 40% in November.
The result: 57% say “the most responsible” U.S. course is pulling most troops out by beginning of 2009. Some 46% say violence in Iraq represents “Iraqis fighting each other in a civil war,” outpacing the 24% citing “Iraqis and foreign terrorists” fighting Americans.

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 22 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 11:20am Baghdad time Saturday morning, the Yaqen News Agency reported that US troops killed one civilian and severely wounded a second in the city of al-Fallujah, 60km west of Baghdad. Yaqen reported a medical source who asked not to be identified as saying that puppet policemen brought in two civilians, one of them dead, both of them with multiple gunshot wounds to the body. The two had been shot by American troops in the al-Fallujah suburb of ‘Amiriyat al-Fallujah on Friday evening. Eyewitnesses close to the victims said that a US patrol fired on a civilian car in which the two men were riding down the main road in ‘Amiriyat al-Fallujah, 20km south of al-Fallujah during the time when the Americans allow such traffic. The shooting killed the driver of the car and wounded his companion who was sitting next to him. Both were taken immediately to al-Fallujah General Hospital….

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UN issues Iraqi children aid plea
Aljazeera.net
The United Nations has called for immediate action to assist about two million Iraqi children affected by poor nutrition, disease and disrupted education. “Iraqi children are paying far too high a price,” said Roger Wright, Unicef’s special representative for Iraq, in a statement. “We must act now.” Unicef, the UN’s children’s fund, said young Iraqis were also getting caught up in violence, with hundreds killed or injured…

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Basra in turmoil
Abed Battat, Azzaman
The southern city of Basra, where most of Iraq’s oil exports originate, is in the throes of a power struggle in which militia rivals compete with provincial police forces and central government authorities. The head of the provincial council says security committees the government has set up in Basra refuse to cooperate with the provincial police forces. These committees have troops and National Guard corps at their disposal. Meantime, the disparate militia groups have carved out their own ‘fiefdoms’ where irregular gunmen impose their interpretation of law and order and even have imposed a crude system of taxation….

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INTERVIEW-New Iraqi cardinal calls for release of Saddam aide
Mussab Al-Khairalla, Reuters
…Aziz is now in U.S. custody and is reported to be in poor health, suffering from diabetes. He is being held without charge and his family has repeatedly called for his release. “In terms of Tareq Aziz, who has worked so long for Iraq and I am sure still wants good things for Iraq, we have to demand the release of all those who were captured and which have no evidence against them … as soon as possible,” Delly said. Delly, a critic of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, said he had tried to visit Aziz, but his request had been turned down…

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Turkey in fresh Iraq air strikes
BBC News
Turkey has launched fresh air strikes across the border into northern Iraq against Kurdish rebels, the army says. Aircraft have been attacking positions held by the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), according to the army’s official website. Turkish airstrikes earlier this month were followed by the incursion of several hundred Turkish soldiers across the border into Iraq. Turkey says the PKK is using bases in Iraq to launch attacks on Turkey…

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Iraqi Gov’t Pledges to Disband Sunnis
DIAA HADID
Iraq’s Shiite-led government declared Saturday that after restive areas are calmed it will disband Sunni groups battling Islamic extremists because it does not want them to become a separate military force. The statement from Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi was the government’s most explicit declaration yet of its intent to eventually dismantle the groups backed and funded by the United States as a vital tool for reducing violence. The militias, more than 70,000 strong and often made up of former insurgents, are known as Awakening Councils, or Concerned Local Citizens. “We completely, absolutely reject the Awakening becoming a third military organization,” al-Obaidi said at a news conference….

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Tales of the Afghan Prisoners
Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons in Afghanistan
ANDY WORTHINGTON
In the last week, while the media’s attention has focused on the release of two Sudanese humanitarian aid workers from Guantánamo, the 13 Afghans who were flown to Kabul at the same time have barely been mentioned. The reasons for this oversight are clear: firstly, because one of the Sudanese ex-detainees, Adel Hamad, a hospital administrator, had become something of a celebrity after his enterprising lawyers posted a video about his case on YouTube, which prompted a group of campaigners to establish a website devoted to his plight; and secondly, because Hamad and his compatriot, Salim Adem, were released on their return, and various reporters were able to meet them. No such luxuries were reserved for the Afghans. Few of their stories are known at all, and on their return to Afghanistan they were promptly imprisoned in a wing of Pol-i-Charki, Kabul’s main prison, which was recently refurbished by the US authorities….

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48 patients die so far as a result of being denied access to treatment abroad
Three patients, including two children, die on Saturday as a result of the siege
Palestinian Information Center
Three Palestinian patients, including two children, died on Saturday in Gaza as a result of being denied access to medical treatment abroad because of the closure of border crossings. These latest deaths bring the number of Palestinian patients who died while waiting for a permit, from the Israeli occupation authorities, to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment to 48 patients so far. Palestinian medical sources in Gaza announced on Saturday morning the death of Nada al-Agha, a 13-year-old Palestinian girl from Khan Younis suffering from kidney failure. Nada was waiting to be allowed to travel abroad for treatment. The death of another child and a woman were also announced on Saturday evening, the woman Zuhaira Radwan was suffering from a chronic disease and died while waiting to be allowed to access medical treatment not available in the beleaguered Gaza Strip…

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On ‘Israel’s Right to Exist’
John V. Whitbeck, Special to PalestineChronicle.com
Almost two years after the most democratic elections ever held in the Arab world, as Palestinians struggle to survive in two disconnected and hostile fragments of historical Palestine, a besieged Gaza Strip and a coopted West Bank, with the enemies of the Palestinian people sending arms and funds to the side perceived as responsive to Israeli and Western wishes for use against the side perceived as representing Palestinian interests, the justification put forward by Israel, the United States and the European Union for their refusal to accept the result of the January 2006 elections, their determined efforts to overturn that result and their brutal collective punishment of the Palestinian people — the refusal of Hamas to “recognize Israel” or to “recognize Israel’s existence” or to “recognize Israel’s right to exist” — merits serious examination. These three verbal formulations have been used by media, politicians and even diplomats interchangeably, as though they mean the same thing. They do not…

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Al-Hayat: The GreenZone fears the awakening movement as a potential Sunni-Shia nationalist alliance
Arablinks
The Central Council of Iraqi Arab Sheikhs (representing tribes—mostly Sunni—in the West and North of Iraq) issued a statement in support of the nationalist, anti-federalism stance adopted by Arab tribes—mostly Shiite—in the South of Iraq, and Al-Hayat says it was this emerging sign of Sunni-Shiite solidarity on the tribal level that frightened Hakim and the Maliki government into their new-found opposition to continued organizational existence/expansion of the awakening-council movement…

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Israeli Housing Minister offers Israelis free land to build homes next to Gaza
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News
On Thursday evening, Israeli Housing Minister Ze’ev Boim made a speech encouraging Israelis to move to areas adjacent to the Gaza Strip (an Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory in which 1.4 million Palestinians are imprisoned). The one town that currently exists next to the Gaza Strip, Sderot, was built as a provocation to Palestinian resistance fighters, whose homemade shells can only be shot a distance of five kilometers at most and are unable to be aimed at any specific spot. Sderot is built far from any other Israeli town or development, and is within five kilometers of the Gaza Strip…

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