IRAQ: Poverty Gets the Survivors
Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail*
More than a million Iraqis were lucky enough to flee into Syria. But in this relatively safe haven, there is no getting away from poverty. Mohammad Saleem ran a successful supermarket in Baghdad. “I was leading a comfortable life with my family, despite the 13 years of UN sanctions,” Saleem told IPS in Damascus. “My four sons worked together to keep our supermarket running, and so we passed the dark sanctions period successfully. The big suffering started with the 2003 occupation that brought closed roads and reduced income for people.”…

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Gaza is on the verge of bread crisis
Palestinian Information Center
Many of Gaza bakers warned that the Strip is on the verge of acute bread crisis because their bakeries would stop working during the coming few days due to scarcity of cooking gas and the depletion of flour. The bakers said that Gaza is suffering from flour crisis after many suppliers failed to deliver the remaining quantities of flour in their warehouses to bakeries because of lack of fuel supplies for their trucks. The flour suppliers reported that the coming days would witness the shutdown of majority of bakeries, adding that the Israeli occupation had not allowed in flour quantities for more than a week because of the closure of the Mintar crossing….

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ACLU And HRF Ask Circuit Court To Reconsider Rumsfeld Torture Casen
Precedent Used To Dismiss Case Wrongly Ignores Constitution, Groups Say
ACLU & Human Rights First
The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First (HRF) today filed an unusual motion in federal court in an effort to overturn the dismissal of a lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The March 2005 lawsuit was filed on behalf of nine Iraqi and Afghan former civilian detainees who were tortured while in U.S. military custody and eventually released without being charged with a crime. The lawsuit charged that then-Secretary Rumsfeld was legally responsible for policies and practices leading to the torture and abuse of detainees. “It is increasingly obvious that responsibility for widespread and systemic abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan lies at the top of the chain of command, but no one has been held accountable,” said Lucas Guttentag, ACLU lead counsel for the plaintiffs…

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Why Palestinian Unity is Not an Option
Ramzy Baroud
…In order for the show to go on, Hamas and Fatah will not be allowed to reconcile, at least not until Israel and the US decide to change tactics. Of course this doesn’t mean that there is no basis for reconciliation. Palestinian factionalism equals capitulation in the face of a harsh, emboldened enemy. Recently we have seen the 2005 Cairo Agreement, the 2007 Mecca Agreement and the March 2008 Yemen Agreement. But to win the approval of Israel in the West Bank — and to avoid the tragic fate of Gaza — Abbas is not interested in the points of agreement, but rather in the points of discord. Aljazeera reported that Azzam al-Ahmad, the Fatah member who signed the Hamas-Fatah memorandum in March, was chastised openly for keeping Abbas “in the dark”, regarding the nature of the agreement….

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The Ghosts of Deir Yassin
Sonja Karkar
ISRAEL HAS LONG played on its heroic beginnings to stir up support for its less than heroic exploits today. The problem is that those heroic beginnings have always been a fiction. Israel’s bloody birth and subsequent actions were crimes against humanity which continue to this day. The veneer of Israel’s manufactured “legitimacy” cannot hide the rot eating away at the core of its existence—its original sin of violent dispossession and its current colonialist and apartheid policies. And, without acknowledgement of, and reparations for, the atrocities committed against the Palestinians, the ghosts of Deir Yassin and elsewhere in Palestine will continue to loom large in any peace talks. It was April 9, 1948, that a Jewish terrorist gang entered the quiet rural village of Deir Yassin on the outskirts of Jerusalem with the express purpose of destroying it…

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Iraqi oil pipeline blown up again
BBC News
An oil pipeline south of Baghdad has been blown up, wounding at least eight security guards, Iraqi police say. The blast, near the town of Iskandiriya, caused a large fire and disrupted the flow of crude oil to refineries in the south of Iraq. The pipeline carries fuel south from Baghdad’s Doura oil refinery. It was the second time in the past year the pipeline had been hit and the latest in a series of attacks on Iraqi oil refineries, blamed on insurgents…

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Taliban urge UN to block Afghan executions
Reuters
Taliban insurgents urged the international community and right groups to stop Afghan President Hamid Karzai approving the execution of about 100 prisoners whose death sentences were approved by the supreme court. The Taliban, fighting to overthrow the pro-Western Afghan government, have executed dozens of captured troops and civilians since U.S.-led and Afghan forces ousted the Islamist movement in 2001. The Taliban also executed dozens of criminals, often in public, while they were in power from 1996 till 2001. Human Rights Watch said on Thursday Karzai should refuse to confirm the death penalties of about 100 convicted prisoners because of concerns they had not received a fair trial. The Taliban’s leadership council said 80 percent of those sentenced to death were members of the Taliban jailed by the government and should not be executed as they had been “detained on charges of fighting for freedom”….

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New momentum for US-Iran dialogue
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times
New momentum for United States-Iran dialogue on Iraq has been generated as a result of this week’s Kuwait summit of Iraq and its neighbors. It will likely trigger a cooling of tensions between Tehran and Washington in the near future after several weeks of vitriolic exchanges. Although on the surface the summit did not break any ice between Iran and the US, and there was no direct interaction between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, there was sufficient fuel, both at the summit’s open- and closed-door meetings as well as on the ground in Iraq, to help improve the hostile climate dominating US-Iran ties….

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April 25, 2008: 1 US Soldier, 44 Iraqis Killed; 128 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr clarified recent comments about “open war” and urged his followers to observe the ceasefire. At least 44 Iraqis were killed and another 128 were wounded across Iraq. An IED killed an American soldier south of Baghdad. Also, a delegation of lawmakers wanting to assess the security situation in Basra were denied access….

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 25 April 2008
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
…In a dispatch posted at 6:25pm Baghdad time Friday afternoon, the Yaqen News Agency reported that a bomb exploded by a US patrol in the city of al-Kubaysah, 185km northwest of Baghdad, on Thursday, prompting the Americans to seal off the city on Friday. Yaqen reported eyewitnesses as saying that the blast killed two US soldiers and wounded six more of them in addition to destroying two Humvees. After the attack, the witnesses said, the Americans carried out raids and searches in the city. The witnesses said that the US followed up by sealing off the city, preventing medical and food supplies from getting in. The Americans also arrested 10 people on charges of carrying out attacks on the US troops. As of the time of reporting, the American side had not confirmed the reported attack….

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The War Against Christianity
Hussein Al-Alak
There is a war against Iraq’s Christians taking place, at the behest of two allegedly Christ-loving regimes and one supposed Islamic government, with one commonality being their need to hide behind the walls of Jericho to carry out the persecution of men, women and children. How else can any one describe the systematic ethnic cleansing of Iraq’s Christians, who were born and raised in the land between two rivers, the land which gave birth to the founder of the three major religions and whose lineage of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is now the land which being destroyed at the hands of “god fearing” heathens.
It has been five years and still silence is the golden fleece for Britain and America. They have chosen to ignore the murders – the beheadings, the attacks, the forced displacement and increases in taxation upon the Christians for refusing to convert, the intimidation by militias upon women for not wearing a headscarf..

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Iraqi children silent victims of ongoing violence, says UN envoy
Voices of Iraq
Wrapping up a six-day visit to Iraq, the United Nations human rights envoy tasked with protecting the rights of children caught up in armed conflict said that the war-ravaged country’s children are silent victims of the continued violence. “Many of them are no longer go to school, many are recruited for violent activities or detained in custody, they lack access to the most basic services and manifest a wide range of psychological symptoms from the violence in their everyday lives,” said Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, in a statement received by Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq (VOI)…

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How the Pentagon manipulated the media to promote the Iraq war
David Walsh
On April 20, the New York Times published a lengthy article by investigative reporter David Barstow detailing the US Defense Department’s extensive and ongoing program of manipulating news coverage of the Iraq war. The article provides a glimpse into the intimate connections between the government, military and mass media and the means by which they have attempted to package and sell a neo-colonial war to the US population…

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Iraq’s simmering ethnic war over Kerkuk
Sam Dagher | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Graffiti inside this city´s ancient hilltop citadel quickly spells out the tension between Kirkuk´s three main ethnic groups – Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmen. On one wall, an eagle descends on a two-headed serpent meant to symbolize enemies of the Kurdish nation. Next to it, the word “Arab” is erased and replaced with an etched “Kurdish” in a slogan that once read: “Kirkuk is an Arab city.” Another slogan reads: “Kirkuk is Turkmen.” Kirkuk has been the object of a bitter struggle over the past five years among Iraq´s competing ethnic and sectarian groups. And now Arab, Kurd, and Turkmen factions seem to be digging in, anticipating that tensions may erupt in an area that is the center of northern Iraq´s oil industry ahead of a promised referendum on the fate of Kirkuk Province, officially still called Tamim, its previous Baath Party-era name…

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In Gaza: No shoe nor a drop of fuel
Sameh A. Habeeb
Siege imposed on the Gaza strip has become the first concern for Palestinian citizens who live in the biggest jail ever in this world. Those civilians are severely suffering from the Israeli collective punishment policy which influences them day and night in all life facets. Many direct consequences and repercussions resulted in the ongoing siege which storms every single item of life. The last hit that affected innocent civilians is the current shortage of shoes, clogs, slippers and sandals connected with fuel cut. The lack of these basic requirements for people is due to Israeli black list against Gaza Strip. This black list includes thousands of raw materials and food stuff in a flagrant violation of all human laws and charters…

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Iraqi PM al-Maliki sets 4 conditions for stopping crackdown against Shiite militias
Associated Press
Iraq’s prime minister set four conditions Friday for stopping a government-led crackdown against anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said the groups must hand over heavy and medium weapons and cease interference in the affairs of the state as well as the security forces. He also demanded they hand over all wanted people and present lists of names of people involved in violence. The conditions were listed in an interview with Al-Arabiya TV.

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Gardenia time
Mohammed, Last of Iraqis
…Baghdad is burning, I literally mean burning because in every neighborhood or district there is at least one attack…I remember when I used to travel before the war or even after the war, I start to miss Baghdad after one month and I can’t resist the urge of getting back after 3 months, one time I got back before my parents do, I got back to Baghdad and stayed alone in my family’s home and that was one year after the war, I used to miss Baghdad, even if there is violence and explosions but my friends are there, we could go out and have fun, we would stay up at night and go to many nice places….but not anymore, there is no one left and no place to go…everything was destroyed or became impossible to reach. I bet I will never want to get back even after 10 years outside Iraq…I’m sure I’m going to miss Baghdad but not this Baghdad, I’m going to miss my Baghdad, Baghdad that was occupied by the good and real Iraqis…

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Head of Catholic Church: Gaza will not die of hunger
Palestinian Information Center
Father Manuel Musallam, head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Gaza Strip said on Friday that it is Gaza’s right not to die, and if dies it will be in the battlefield. The Palestinian people will bear hunger and thirst because they seek freedom for themselves and not for their stomachs. Father Musallam’s comments were made during a press conference he held jointly with the head of the Popular Committee Against the Siege (PCAS), MP Jamal al-Khudari….

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UN censures US and Israel over Syria nuclear row
Ewen MacAskill & David Batty, Guardian
The UN’s nuclear chief today criticised the US for the delay in publishing what Washington claims is proof that a Syrian nuclear reactor was built with help from North Korea. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was briefed yesterday by the US under-secretary of state for arms control, shortly before the director of the CIA, Michael Hayden, briefed members of Senate and House committees on the same intelligence. “The director general deplores the fact that this information was not provided to the agency in a timely manner, in accordance with the agency’s responsibilities under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, to enable it to verify its veracity and establish the facts,” ElBaradei said in a statement today….

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Deepening crisis
Economic conditions in the West Bank as well as Gaza are deteriorating, leaving many incensed at the masquerade of peace talks
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly
As 1.5 million Gazans are crying out to the world to pressure Israel to lift its scandalously callous blockade of the coastal territory, another 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank are struggling to cope with an unprecedented economic crisis that is further impoverishing and exhausting them. The crisis, the harshest in recent memory, stems from a host of local and global factors, including soaring food and energy prices, sagging currency value, rampant joblessness and draconian Israeli restrictions on the movement of people, goods and services…

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Last-ditch effort
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas met with President Bush in Washington Thursday in a desperate effort to save the American-backed peace process from the danger of collapse. Abbas is reportedly “gravely concerned “ that the prospects of reaching a breakthrough in peace talks with Israel before the expiration of Bush’s term in the White House are very slim. Palestinian sources in Ramallah told Al-Ahram Weekly that Abbas urged the Bush administration to exert “a real and meaningful pressure” on Israel in order to ensure the drafting of a final status agreement before the end of 2008…

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The Media Falls for Fake News Once Again
Syrian Nukes: the Phantom Menace
JOHN W. FARLEY
Last September 6, Israel bombed a Syrian building at Dair el Zor. In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, little was said in public, by either Israel or Syria, but later the Israelis started claiming that the Syrians were building a nuclear reactor. On the radio today (April 25), I heard NPR’s Tom Jelton repeat, as if it were undisputed fact, the US. government claim to have “proof” of a Syrian-North Korean nuclear connection. Now I see that AP writers Pamela Hess and Deb Reichmann have a story headlined “White House says Syria ‘must come clean’ about nuclear work,” while ABC news has a video entitled “Syria’s Nuclear Reactor”. Are the wonderful mainstream media, who gave us Saddam’s mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction, lying to us again? The answer is yes…

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Last-ditch effort
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas met with President Bush in Washington Thursday in a desperate effort to save the American-backed peace process from the danger of collapse. Abbas is reportedly “gravely concerned “ that the prospects of reaching a breakthrough in peace talks with Israel before the expiration of Bush’s term in the White House are very slim. Palestinian sources in Ramallah told Al-Ahram Weekly that Abbas urged the Bush administration to exert “a real and meaningful pressure” on Israel in order to ensure the drafting of a final status agreement before the end of 2008…

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Video: Blockade halts food aid to Gaza
Michael Bailey: 70,000 Gazans have no drinking water; UN can’t feed 700,000 refugees
THE REAL NEWS
The Gaza Strip has fallen eerily silent as day-to-day life grinds to a halt in the face of an Israeli fuel blockade that has forced the UN to halt its food shipments into the territory. Michael Bailey of Oxfam in Jerusalem tells The Real News Network that some 300,000 Gaza residents have drinking water at home for less than five hours per day, every four days, and the UN can no longer get supplies to the 700,000 refugees living in Gaza….

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Love and resistance in the Gaza Strip
Mona el-Farra, Guardian
I started writing in 2000 when my parents’ home was demolished by the Israeli occupation army at the beginning of this intifada. I felt strongly that I should tell people abroad about my personal experience and about what’s happening in Gaza under occupation. As a doctor working in the field and living in Gaza I witnessed so many human rights violations and I wanted people to know about it. About two years ago some friends and supporters of the Palestinian cause in Britain encouraged me to start a blog because they thought that my message was strong, but I didn’t expect the reaction – the response was overwhelming. So I continued. Gaza at the moment is a big prison, a very dire situation….

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Israel dismisses Hamas truce offer
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian
Israel dismissed an offer of a six-month truce from the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas today, saying the group merely wanted time to rearm. The Hamas offer came after several weeks of negotiation with Egyptian officials and after several meetings with former US president Jimmy Carter, who travelled to Damascus last week to meet the movement’s leader, Khaled Meshal. Egyptian officials, led by the intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, are expected to continue talking with Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups to try to establish a ceasefire in Gaza that might eventually extend to the West Bank. Suleiman is due in Israel next week to speak to officials there….

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Two Israeli guards killed near Tulkarem
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
Israeli military sources reported on Friday that two Israel guards working at the Nitzanei Shalom industrial area, near the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem, were shot and killed earlier on Friday by a Palestinian gunman; a third guard managed to escape unharmed. The sources added that the bodies of the two guards were found on Friday morning in a factory in the Industrial Zone. The area where the attack took place is on a boundary strip between Israel and Tulkarem….

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Iraq’s Sadr tells fighters to observe truce
Wisam Mohammed, Reuters
Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr pulled back from confrontation with the government on Friday, asking his followers to continue to observe a shaky ceasefire and not to battle government troops. Sadr, whose call for calm was read out in a major mosque in Baghdad, said his recent threat of “open war” was directed only at U.S. forces, not the Iraqi government. His comments could ease some of the tension that has been boiling in Iraq since Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki cracked down on Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia a month ago and threatened to ban his mass movement from provincial elections in October….

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Settlement leaders in Golan call for further construction of settlements
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
Leaders of settlements in the occupied Golan Heights stated on Thursday that settlement construction and expansion in the occupied Syrian area will continue and will advance. The leaders said that “any attempt to harm the Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights inflicts danger on the Israeli security, and will fail”, the Arabs48 news website reported…

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Iran denies any clash with US vessel in Gulf: report
AFP
Iran denies that any confrontation took place between Iranian boats and a US vessel in the Gulf, a source in the naval force of the Revolutionary Guards told state-run Al-Alam television Friday. A US defence official said earlier Friday a vessel chartered by the US military fired warning shots Thursday morning at two speedboats believed to be Iranian that approached it in the Gulf…

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EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Gila Sversky
Steve Amsel, MWCNews
…Actually, my mother was quite the activist – for Zionism. She moved to Jerusalem from Europe in 1935 and lived here for 2 years, until she married my father (who was in Jerusalem visiting his parents) and moved with him to the US. For me, the process of change was long and gradual, and part of the growing breakdown of consensus in Israeli society. This change began in the early 1980s with the first Lebanon War, when many Israelis began to realize that our government was lying to us about the war and terrible things came out – the bombing of Beirut, Sabra and Shatilla, etc. There was growing distrust of the authorities and a questioning of prior givens. Over time, especially with the first Intifada (which began in 1987), I also became aware of the terrible situation of the Palestinians under occupation – and things were much more benign then compared with today. So once you know about an injustice, it’s really immoral to ignore it, hence my activism…

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