After more than five years
Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Dream
After more than five years of this war of aggression, the Nuremberg supreme international crime, the BBC continues its genocide denial business. “Another website run by academics and peace activists, iraqbodycount.net, estimates up to 90,782 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the same period.” After more than five years of this war of aggression, the Nuremberg supreme international crime, Iraq Body Count still doesn’t care its work is used to deny the Iraq genocide…

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THE U.S. POWER STRUCTURE
Who Really Runs the World – Part Three
Malcom Lagauche
…ML: Was Saddam Hussein a thorn in the side of the power elite? FM: Saddam kept Israel and Iran at bay. He tried to have an equitable Middle East, yet the other Arab countries ganged up on him. What Saddam did was to exhibit independence and creativity. One continuous policy of the Western imperial powers has been to divide the Middle East and keep it from coalescing into a prosperous working state, or at least a coalition. The big boys have no intention of bringing the Arab countries into the international club. They want to keep control of the oil for themselves. Interestingly, they have permitted people from Saudi Arabia to attend Bilderberg meetings now and then, but only as observers. The Western powers delegate some of their authority to Israel to keep things stirred up and under control. Saddam had to go because he was successful, thus a bad example to other Arab countries, plus the fact that he tried to get his brother nations to work together…

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Denying Palestinians Free Movement in the West Bank
Stephen Lendman, Global Research
This article summarizes an August 2007 B’Tselem report now available in print. It’s one of a series of studies it conducts on life in Occupied Palestine to reveal what major media accounts suppress. This one is titled: “Ground to a Halt – Denial of Palestinians’ Freedom of Movement in the West Bank.” B’Tselem has a well-deserved reputation for accuracy and integrity. It’s the Jerusalem-based independent Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). It was founded in 1989 by prominent academics, attorneys, journalists and Knesset members to “document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in (Occupied Palestine), combat (the Israeli public’s) denial, and create a human rights culture in Israel” to convince government officials to respect human rights and obey international law….

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Video: Gazans struggle to survive under Israeli blockade – 1 May 08
AlJazeeraEnglish
Israel’s lockdown on Gaza has virtually stopped the flow of vital supplies, the economy is in tatters and even black market goods are becoming hard to find. Fuel supplies are in danger of drying up completely forcing Palestinians to resort to desperate measures…

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IRAQ: Shia militiamen attack aid convoys in Baghdad suburb
IRIN News
Government officials and residents of Baghdad’s mainly Shia district of Sadr City on 30 April accused pro-Moqtada al-Sadr militiamen of attacking aid convoys and closing down schools. The militiamen have used roadside bombs to target aid convoys which carry food rations and medicines. They have also targeted schools, ambulances and public service vehicles, Tahsin al-Sheikhli, a government spokesman, said….

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Celebrating ethnic cleansing?
Oxford Students’ Palestine Society
It is with bemusement and outrage that we find ourselves being asked to celebrate 60 years of Israel’s existence. Sixty years ago this month, the State of Israel was declared in historic Palestine. Less than a year after this declaration, when a ceasefire was declared, Zionist forces were in control of 78% of Palestine. Yet the creation of this State came at unspeakable cost to the Palestinian people, who had been living there continuously for centuries. 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland, fleeing from the Stern Gang and the Haganah militias and the newly created Israel Defence Forces…

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European campaign: a halt of MSF medical relief portends health disaster
Palestinian Information Center
The European campaign to lift the siege warned that Medecins Sans Frontiers’ announcement that its medical relief operations will have to stop completely in the Gaza Strip during the next four days because of lack of fuel is portending an unprecedented health and humanitarian disaster. In a press release from Brussels a copy of which received by the PIC, Dr. Arafat Madi , the spokesman for the campaign, stated the continuance of the Israeli siege without making practical steps to pressure the Israeli occupation to lift it means that consecutive humanitarian catastrophes will take place, not only in the health sector but in all walks of life of one and a half million Palestinians in Gaza who lose everyday one patient at least because of the lack of medicines and the restrictions imposed on their travel to receive medical treatment abroad….

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Five years after “mission accomplished,” sharp rise in Iraqi and US casualties
Bill Van Auken, WSWS
May 1 marked the fifth anniversary of the infamous “mission accomplished” speech delivered by President George W. Bush aboard a US aircraft carrier. Five years after what Bush proclaimed to be the end of “major combat operations” in Iraq, US casualties have reached a seven-month high, while the Iraqi death toll continues to mount. In April, 52 US troops were killed in Iraq, the highest number since last September. The bulk of the casualties came in Baghdad, mostly in the crowded Shia slum neighborhoods of Sadr City. The sharp rise in US dead and wounded, and the far greater death and destruction being inflicted on Iraqi civilians, is the result of a month-old offensive launched by US and Iraqi puppet forces against the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to nationalist Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Citing “security officials,” Agence France-Presse said that 1,073 Iraqis were killed last month. This is undoubtedly a gross underestimation of the real death toll. One hospital alone in Sadr City reported taking in 400 bodies…

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Sami al-Hajj hits out at US captors
Aljazeera.net
Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj has hit out at the US treatment of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison where he was held for nearly six and a half years. Saying that “rats are treated with more humanity”, al-Hajj said inmates’ “human dignity was violated”. Al-Hajj arrived in Sudan early on Friday, was carried off the US air force jet in a stretcher and immediately taken to hospital.
His brother, Asim al-Hajj, said he did not recognise the cameraman because he looked like a man in his 80s….

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Iraq. Former workers accuse employees of improper activity, including the stealing of weapons, artwork and gold
AVID IVANOVICH, Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
— KBR employees working in Iraq stole weapons, artwork and even gold to make spurs for cowboy boots, two former company workers told Senate Democrats on Monday. Appearing before a Democrats-only panel looking into allegations of contracting abuses in Iraq, the witnesses accused their former co-workers of widespread improper activity. KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne said the company would not comment at length because the claims are part of ongoing lawsuits…

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Death toll in Iraq jumped in April
It was the highest in months for U.S. troops as well as Iraqi civilians.
Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
The four U.S. soldiers who died in a series of roadside bombings Wednesday lifted the number of American service members killed in April to a seven-month high of 50. Civilian deaths reported by the Iraqi government also reached the highest levels in months as Baghdad experienced intense clashes triggered by an Iraqi government crackdown against Shiite Muslim militias. U.S. commanders say Sunni Arab militants are also attempting to reassert themselves by staging suicide bombings and other high-profile attacks in parts of the country where they have come under pressure since last year….

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Three people, including a farmer, killed in separate Israeli army attacks on Gaza
Rami Almeghari – IMEMC & Agencies
The Palestinian death toll out of Israeli army attacks on Gaza today has risen to three including a civilian man, as a small-scale incursion is taking place in southern Gaza. Medical sources reported that three Palestinians including a farmer, have been killed in less than 24 hours in different parts of the Gaza Strip. Mohammad Abu Daqqa, was shot dead in the head after the Israeli army incurred into the Faraheen neighborhood of the Khan Younis city, in southern Gaza Strip today morning….

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Refugee camp trauma continues for Palestinians
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
More than 3,000 Palestinian refugees are currently cut off from the rest of the world in dire conditions without access to adequate humanitarian assistance. In March 2008, Amnesty International delegates met with Palestinian refugees stranded in al-Tanf camp in no-man’s land between the borders of Iraq and Syria. Al-Tanf camp, a narrow strip of land wedged between a concrete wall and the main transit road from Baghdad to Damascus, is dry and dusty. Temperatures soar to 50ºC in summer and plunge to below freezing in winter…

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IOF troops kidnap 30 Palestinians during incursion into Khan Younis
Palestinian Information Center
A large number of IOF troops reinforced by tanks, bulldozers and aerial cover invaded amid intensive gunfire at dawn Thursday the Farahin neighborhood in the east of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip and kidnapped 30 Palestinians. Palestinian local sources told the PIC reporter that the invading IOF troops stormed many houses moving from one house into another through demolishing the internal walls and kidnapped 30 Palestinian citizens, while the military bulldozers were sabotaging agricultural lands in the area….

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Official: Iraqi delegation goes to Iran to discuss militias
QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer
An Iraqi delegation traveled to Iran with evidence that proves the Islamic republic is arming and training of Shiite militias in Iraq, an official said Thursday. Five Shiite politicians left Wednesday carrying documents and other material they claim indicates that Iran is supplying weapons and training fighters who are locked in a violent standoff with U.S. and Iraqi troops, the government official said….

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Ten facts about the Nakba
IMEU
Sixty years ago, more than 700,000 Palestinians lost their homes and belongings, their farms and businesses, their towns and cities. Jewish militias seeking to create a state with a Jewish majority in Palestine, and later, the Israeli army, drove them out. Israel rapidly moved Jews into the newly-emptied Palestinian homes. Nakba means “catastrophe” in Arabic, and Palestinians refer to the destruction of their society and the takeover of their homeland as an-Nakba, “The Catastrophe.”…

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Assasinations and Destructions of Workshops on Gaza Strip – Torture of Hamas Member and Closing of Islamic Factory on the West Bank
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
On Wednesday evening,Israeli warplanes shelled a metal workshop in the southern parts of Rafah City ,the attack killed Awad El-Qieq 38 ,many people were wounded in this attack.The Israelis attack came after that 12 Palestinian political and military factions agreed to accept in principle a ceasefire with the Israelis. A field commander of Al Qassam Brigades,Nafiz Mansour 42, was killed on Thursday morning when Israeli pilots in warplanes launched a missile attack at Sataryia town in the western parts of Rafah.Nafiz Mansour was killed when walking in the street . A large number of Israeli tanks and bulldozers made an incursion into the Al Faraheen area in the eastern parts of Khan-Younis while open fired towards a residential area. The parents of the only 4 months old Naseem El-Baiouk, was prevented by the Israelis to travel abroad for treatment for their little child, which led to the death of this little child.The death of Naseem have increased the number of Gaza Strip residents whom has died because of the Israeli siege, to 140 victims…

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Radical cleric Sadr snubs Iraq peace overtures
AFP
Hardline Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Thursday refused to hold talks with Iraqi lawmakers who had gone to Iran in a bid to end the clashes between his fighters and troops, an aide told AFP. “Moqtada al-Sadr did not permit his leaders to meet the Iraqi delegation,” said Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi, the cleric’s spokesman in the central holy city of Najaf. “Sadr insists that the crisis can be solved only through a parliamentary initiative backed by president Jalal Talabani and speaker Mahmud Mashhadani.” Obeidi did not elaborate, but Talabani has been holding talks with Sadrists to resolve the crisis…

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A lose-lose game
Nuri Al-Maliki’s bid to subdue Sadr’s militia could spark a Shia-Shia civil war and increase Iran’s influence in Iraq
Salah Hemeid, Al-Ahram Weekly
… The escalation has indicated a failure of the political effort to end the weeks-long military confrontations that have so far deepened the rift in the Shia ruling coalition and now threaten the violence-torn country with a Shia civil war and cast Iraq into a deeper and more lasting political crisis….As for Iran, which has publicly opposed the Shia-Shia fighting, it is expected to increase its influence in Iraq regardless of who eventually wins in this new round of Iraqi violence. The Iranian agenda in Iraq is more complex than many would have thought and its strategy is based on fuelling threats to the American war effort in Iraq, while still posing itself as a power broker and a force which can help in stabilising the strife-wracked nation….

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Twin blasts hit Iraq wedding party
Aljazeera.net
Two suicide blasts have ripped through a wedding party in Iraq’s Diyala province killing at least 35 people and wounding about 60 others, officials say. The bombers detonated explosive vests within minutes of each other in the town of Balad Ruz on Thursday, Major-General Abdel Karim al-Rubaie, head of the provincial military command, said. “The first bomber blew himself up amid a crowd of people. Minutes later another bomber blew himself up as people were trying to rescue the victims of the first attack,” he said…

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‘Mission Accomplished’: How the Media Covered the Bush Pronouncement 5 Years Ago — and its Aftermath
Greg Mitchell
Richard Perle advised, in a USA Today Op-Ed, “Relax, Celebrate Victory.” The same day, exactly five years ago, President Bush, dressed in a flight suit, landed on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major military operations in Iraq — with the now-infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner arrayed behind him in the war’s greatest photo op. Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a “hero” and boomed, “He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.” PBS’ Gwen Ifill said Bush was “part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.” On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, “The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a — on a carrier landing. This must be very meaningful to the United States military.”…

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