And the “Show” goes on…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
Conquer, divide, split and fragment. Pit one against the other and one against the same… Yesterday’s foes are today’s friends, and today’s friends are tomorrow’s enemies… And the show goes on… I have been reading extensively about the Sunni Awakening Council, the new Sunni- Kurdish rapprochement, the Sunni–Sunni tensions, the Shia–Shia conflicts… I have also been reading the so-called analyses circulating. A lot of them are bullshit, as usual… They all seem to miss the essential crucial point, the core essence, the crux of the matter and you don’t have to be a wiz in sociology and politics to figure that one out. Namely, that: – in the absence of a functional representative State, – following the dismemberment of all political and civil institutions, – in the wake of over 5 years of a condensed, concentrated, violence that has totally DESTROYED the country, – with a massive exodus and a massive death rate – with a continuous, debilitating, provoked poverty, and an unemployment rate of over 70% and over 50% of the population cannot afford to eat, – with over 100’000 in jails, and a X number of disappeared – with the total destruction of all the infrastructural system – the DELIBERATE destruction. – when basics like water, electricity and fuel are still not available, – when hospitals are non functional, when universities are ransacked and closed, when corruption is contagiously rampant… With all of the above – it is simply not possible to talk of a FAILED STATE, what you n! eed to a ddress is the real issue – a NON-EXISTENT STATE in a country with no boundaries and no more structures…

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December 26, 2007: 3 US Soldiers, 36 Iraqis Killed; 17 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
At least 31 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 17 more were wounded in the latest round of violence. Seventeen of the dead were from a mass grave near Baquba. Meanwhile, Turkey continues to send warplanes into Iraq, but the only casualties were reported on the Turkish side of the border. Also, three U.S. soldiers were killed in separate incidents. Two MND-North soldiers were killed and three more were wounded during a small arms attack in Ninevah province today. Another U.S. soldier died in a non-combat incident yesterday in Baghdad….

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 26 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 9:20pm Baghdad time Wednesday night, the Yaqen News Agency reported that the Islamic Front for Iraqi Resistance, known by the Arabic acronym JAMi’, had announced that it had formed the first woman’s brigade to fight the US occupation forces. They have given it the name Nusaybah al-Ansariyah – the name of an early Muslim woman. Yaqen reported Dr. Sayf a-Din Mahmud, the official spokesman of JAMI’ told the newspaper al-’Arab from Qatar that the Resistance group relies on men in their fight against the Americans, young men in particular, given their enthusiasm and drive for the liberation of the country, but it has decided to create a woman’s group as well. The honor of fighting the occupation and dying as martyrs should not go only to the men, Dr. Mahmud said…

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TIS THE SEASON TO DIVIDE AND CONQUER
Desert Peace
‘Tis the season to be jolly’….. that is if you don’t live under occupation. If you do, you life is controlled by evil outside forces that dictate every move you make. So is the case of the Christian community in Palestine…. living under horrendous conditions in the very birthplace of their religion. The occupier is no longer satisfied with total control over their lives, it now wants it to appear that it is the Muslims that are responsible for their suffering. This latest zionist ploy will not work. ALL Palestinians know who the enemy is and are united as one people despite attempts to divide them. Palestine is divided these days, attempts to widen that gap will fail….

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The Torture Tape Cover-up: How High Does It Go?
Prof. Marjorie Cohn
When the hideous photographs of torture and abuse emerged from Abu Ghraib in the fall of 2004, they created a public relations disaster for the Bush administration. The White House had painstakingly worked to capitalize on the 9/11 attacks by creating a “war on terror.” Never mind the absurdity of declaring war on a tactic. Central to Bush’s new “war” was the portrayal of us as the good guys and al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein as the bad guys. But the Abu Ghraib photos of naked Iraqis piled on top of one another, forced to masturbate, led around on leashes like dogs shined the light on U.S. hypocrisy. After the Abu Ghraib revelations, the Bush administration could not tolerate more bad publicity. So in 2005, the CIA destroyed several hundred hours of videotapes depicting torturous interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, probably including water boarding…

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Closures throttling Palestinian economy
MEL FRYKBERG (Middle East Times)
Despite an aid package of $7.4 billion pledged by donor states and organizations at last week’s international donor’s conference in Paris, the World Bank has warned that unless Israel eases its draconian policy of closures and restrictions on movement and trade, the battered Palestinian economy could deteriorate even further. The World Bank’s endorsement of a Palestinian economic reform plan was tempered by a Dec. 13 report, “Investing in Palestinian Economic Reform and Development,” which stated that even with full funding but no relaxation in the closure regime on Palestinians, growth would be slightly negative and the already high and growing poverty levels would rise dramatically…

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Why won’t the American media try to stop Bilal’s kangaroo court
Attytood
Attytood has been on the warpath urging the authorities in Iraq, under the thumb of the American military, to give Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Bilal Hussein a real day in court…or set him free. Our fear is that — before broader awareness of the Hussein case mounts — he will be found guilty in a kangaroo court, without the kind of due process that Americans would expect and that you’d think would be part of that “freedom” package that we delivered to Iraq: Those worst fears are coming true, of course….

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Health ministry: Gaza on the brink of medical collapse
Palestinian Information Center
The health ministry in the PA caretaker government has warned that the health situation in the Gaza Strip was on the brink of collapse and added that the number of deaths due to serious diseases would double in the few coming days. Khaled Radi, the spokesman of the ministry, said in a press interview on Tuesday that the number of patients who died due to the siege (that reached 50 victims) would double in the coming days as more than one thousand patients were suffering chronic diseases and were banned from travel abroad for treatment. He said that all hospitals in the Strip suffer from acute shortage in medicines, explaining that 69 types of medications were out of stock while 130 others are expected to follow within three months or less….

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Iraq government backs amnesty law
Whole Neighbourhoods Imprisoned
BBC News
Iraq’s government has backed a draft law that enables the release of thousands of suspected insurgents held captive by US and Iraqi forces. The amnesty law is thought to specify offences for which prisoners who have been held without charge can be freed. Parliament must debate the law on Sunday before it is ratified. The number of prisoners held by US and Iraqi forces, estimated at 50,000, has risen sharply after the recent “surge” strategy, boosting military operations… The US military surge has also seen a steep rise in the number of prisoners, with entire neighbourhoods sometimes being taken into custody….

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Palestinian child dies of cancer to become 51st victim of IOF siege
Palestinian Information Center
A Palestinian child died of cancer on Wednesday in the Gaza Strip after the IOF troops blocked his travel abroad for treatment while no proper medication was available in the Strip for his case. Medical sources identified the child as Yousef Abu Mariam and noted that his death brought to 51 the number of Palestinian patients dying in the Strip due to the siege and IOF closure of all crossings almost seven months ago. The popular committee against the siege warned that Gaza should be declared a disaster area as the siege had paralyzed all life sectors with the exception of simple trade in agriculture produce….

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Report: Israeli crews manning UAVs in Turkish operations against Kurds
Yossi Melman, Haaretz
…Security sources told Haaretz that as Turkey is carrying out offensive operations against the PKK operating in northern Iraq, there is increased suspicion in the Turkish government and its defense establishment toward the United States and Israel. According to the same sources, Turkey is following “very closely” every step and statement made by Israel and fears that Jerusalem is not supporting it in its action against the Kurds to the degree that it expects. Turkish suspicions are in great part fueled by the history of Israel assisting Kurds in their wars in Iraq during the 1960s and 1970s, as well as recent reports that Israeli firms are involved in sales of military equipment and training assistance aimed at establishing an autonomous Kurdish administration in northern Iraq….

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Body count, Iraq
Eli Stephens, Left I on the News
Not to be confused with Iraq Body Count, with its “media and politician-friendly” undercount of Iraqi fatalities, requiring “confirmation” by publication in two different English-language sources. Leila Fadel reports on one of those uncounted deaths, a report which as far as I can determine appears only on her blog despite the fact that she is the Baghdad bureau chief for a major newspaper chain…

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A Peace-killing Linkage, De-linkage
Nicola Nasser, What Really Happened
Linking the “aliyah” to what the Jewish literature has been describing as Eretz Israel or Yisrael HaShleima (Greater Israel) to the Israeli colonial settlement of the Palestinian land, which the Hebrew state occupied in 1967, while at the same time negating the Palestinian Right of Return, is torpedoing whatever prospect is left for a peaceful solution for the Arab – Israeli conflict, undermining the latest U.S.-sponsored launch of the Palestinian – Israeli talks in Annapolis and further splintering, so far politically, the only viable Palestinian partner to Israel in any viable peace process, namely the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)….

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Lies, Injustice and the Capitalist Way: We’re on the Highway to Hell—Don’t Stop Us!
Jason Miller
We “Free World” capitalistic Westerners are a loathsome lot—or to put it more crudely, we suck. When one considers how degenerate we are from a collective standpoint, it is difficult to suppress intense feelings of disgust and contempt. There are many layers to our repugnant, depraved, and “beloved” capitalism, a socioeconomic system which ultimately furnishes the members of its upper echelon with de facto licenses to exploit, plunder, and murder with impunity. Problem is that as one peels back each successive layer hoping to find some purity, one finds a more profound rot….

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‘Israel has megaton nuclear bombs’
The News
…a Washington-based military think tank has revealed that the Zionist regime has produced nuclear weapons with ‘a yield of one megaton’. A new report complied by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) claims Israeli nuclear warheads have both air and sea capabilities. The study, authored by former US Defence Department strategist Anthony Cordesman, disclosed that Israel is currently ‘in possession of 200 nuclear warheads’. Megaton nuclear bombs are about twice the size of MK 18, the most powerful US-made fission bomb, which used 60kg of enriched uranium….

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Testimony: ISA prevents Gazan heart patient who refused to collaborate from entering Israel for treatment, Nov. 2007
Sha’ban’Obeid, heart Patient, B’TSELEM
… He said I would have to supply information about laborers and other people. I told him I was sick and unable to move about easily, and that I didn’t agree to the deal. I told him I didn’t want to work with the Shabak. He told me I would have to return to Israel for medical treatment, and that if I agreed [to the deal], he would make things easy for me. I refused. He shook his head and said, “May God help you enter Israel after this meeting.” I crossed into Gaza . A few months later, I received an appointment from Barzilai Hospital to complete the treatment, but Israel refused to give me a permit. I received appointments for 6 March, 20 March, 12 April, and 15 May, but Israel did not give me a permit to enter for any of them. The last one I got was on 25 September. Israel has not yet approved the request. I have all the necessary documents. I submitted them via a Ministry of Health official, Mr. Ahmad Abu Ghazeh. He told me I was refused on security grounds. But I have already been in Israel , and more than once….

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Iran minister: Russia to supply Tehran with new missile system
Reuters
Russia has agreed to sell an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Iran, Iran’s defense minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday in the Iranian Fars News Agency. S-300 missiles are longer-ranging than the TOR-M1 surface-to-air missiles which Russia, in a deal criticized by the West, earlier this year said it had delivered to the Islamic Republic under a $1 billion contract….

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CIA Torture and other War Crimes
Philip Giraldi, Huffington Post,
…Looking for war crimes committed by members of the Bush administration is a complicated exercise because there are so many to go around. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo come immediately to mind. The Nuremburg Tribunals at the end of the Second World War defined an aggressive war against another country if that country has not attacked you first or threatened to do so as “essentially an evil thing…to initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” A number of leading Nazis were executed for their unprovoked attack on Poland….

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Alasra centre for research warns of the continuous medical negligence in the Israeli detentions
Ali Samoudi – IMEMC
The Alasra for research and Israeli studies centre warned of continuous medical negligence in Israeli detention centres. The centre appealed for the Red Cross and Human Rights organizations to intervene to bring and end to this misconduct. According to Alasra, scores of kidnapped Palestinians are dying as a direct result of the medical negligence policy in Israeli detention centres. The centre claimed that there are countless Palestinians inside Israeli centres who are suffering from serious diseases but receive no medical treatment and are denied visits from their relatives….

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IRAQ: ‘Awakening’ Forces Arouse New Conflicts
Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail*
The controversial move of the U.S. military to back Sunni “Awakening” forces has created another wedge between Sunni and Shia political groups. Following disputes between the tribal groups assembled into Awakening forces and the Iraqi government, the creation of these forces has become also a political issue. U.S.-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who heads a Shia political bloc, has adamantly opposed the U.S.-military policy of backing tribal groups and former resistance fighters….

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GI Special 5L20: “I Hate That Place” [ December 26, 2007 ]
Thomas F. Barton
Nearly every soldier I spoke with replied with a large smile, “Thank you very much. I’m glad there are people like you doing this. Happy holidays to you too!”
Within an hour, Steve and I had given out nearly one hundred and fifty bags. In that time, only one soldier reacted negatively toward us; every one else seemed extremely pleased.
Around one o’clock in the afternoon, a female manager who worked for the Army and Air Force Exchange Services (AFFES) came out of the Mini Mall and said, “Hey guys I’m glad your giving out packages to soldiers, but you can’t do this on Fort Bragg without a permit.” […]

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Behind the Sunni – Kurdish alliance
Roads to Iraq
Strange and weird alliance between the two Kurdish parties and the Sunni Islamic party described by Tariq Al-Hashmi: A major change in the political equation Interestingly that Al-Hashimi said that this agreement linked to the return of Al-Tawafiq front to the government [same link above], the funny thing is that Al-Tawafiq criticized this agreement, AL-Dulaimi said: A general agreement on general terms Al-Dulaimi statement is totally true because IPA reported that Al-Hashimi didn’t specify his position from Kirkuk and the Kurdish oil contracts…

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“Ticking Time Bomb” and War with Russia
karlmarxwasright
…Meanwhile, attempting to navigate this self-inflicted and self-created conundrum and quackmire, Rice and her international cohorts are busy trying to buy off and nullify everybody on the planet, especially Iraq’s regional neighbors, while creating a non-Baath, Baath Arab, “Sunni” identity, a face of the pretend Iraq resistance, the one they killed off with Hussein, with whom they can negotiate and mint a newly created privatized, national reconciliation, “multi-ethnic, multi-party” Iraq government. Meanwhile, the greater Middle East continues to be armed to the teeth, on the Gulf , Mediterranean and Arab side by the US and NATO, pending missile defense, while Iran, Russia’s surrogate in the region, is being armed by Russia, which, once again, makes the competing interests of the US, EU, NATO and Russia converge at Iran’s present fascist government and its involvement with the corpse of Iraq’s occupation and “transformation.” …

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 25 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 11:55am Baghdad time Tuesday morning, the Yaqen News Agency reported that US forces killed an officer in the former Iraqi Air Force along with his son and arrested another in a house raid they carried out in southeastern al-Mawsil, 420km northwest of Baghdad, at dawn Tuesday. Yaqen reported Brigadier General ‘Abd al-Karim al-Jabburi as saying that US occupation troops raided a home in the al-Mithaq neighborhood of southeastern al-Mawsil. There the US troops killed a father and one of his sons and then arrested another son, aged 15. The precise reasons for the Americans’ latest killing were unknown, the puppet army general claimed….

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Sunni-Kurdish Alliance
Marc Lynch, Abu Aardvark
There was an interesting political development in Iraq yesterday: the announcement of a new political alliance between the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party (Tareq al-Hashemi) and the two major Kurdish parties (Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani). I haven’t seen any coverage of this yet in the English-language media, but it’s at least potentially kind of important. The actual text of the agreement (as published online in several places) is fairly bland: assorted agreements to pursue a democratic and federal Iraq, reject terrorism, push for genuine national reconciliation, and so forth….

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Iraqis divided over Sunni militias
Ahmed Janabi, Aljazeera.net
A principal founder of the US-funded tribal “Awakening Councils”, or al-Sahwa, has said that parties loyal to Iran and Syria are targeting his group. Abu Azam rejected accusations that al-Sahwa, formally known as The Tribal Arming Programme, was aimed at undermining the Iraqi resistance. The accusations stem from divisions among Sunni leaders over the militias and fears that they could form the nucleus of a separate Sunni army. Many believe such an army could perpetuate the territorial break up of the country. Critics point to comments made by Shia leaders who want a separate region for the sect in the south and Kurdish leaders who have set their eyes on an autonomous region in the north….

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Trilateral MoU could support political situation – spokesman
Voices of Iraq
…Speaking at the press conference, President Talabani said “today a tripartite MoU was signed between the two main Kurdish parties and the Iraqi Islamic part to boost ties among them and to foster Iraq’s unity.” For his part, Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said the agreement will have important impacts on the political process, underlining “today is a historic day in the ongoing political process.” The Islamic Daawa Party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and the two main Kurdish parties formed a four-way alliance in mid-August that they claim aims at backing the current Iraqi government following the withdrawal of some political blocs from the cabinet…

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Palestinian farmers, including child, beaten by masked Israeli settlers near Nablus
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
Palestinian sources reported Tuesday that a group of farmers in their fields near Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank, were badly beaten by a group of Israeli settlers living illegally in the area. The settlements in the Nablus area are illegal under both international and Israeli law, but Israeli authorities allow the settlements there, deep within the Palestinian West Bank territory, to continue to expand on stolen Palestinian land….

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