Human Rights Centre indicates Palestinian children face sexual abuse and other torture in prisons
Special to The Canadian
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Centre ADDAMEER, declared that the Israeli forces have arrested almost 6200 Palestinians since the last Intifada started in September of 2000. 350 of those languishing in prison are children who, against international conventions, are still imprisoned in Israeli jails and detention centers. Those youngsters undergo severe punishment and mental stress, living an extremely horrifying health and mental situation. Being subjected to torture, interrogation, beatings, humiliation, insults, degradation, and regular terrorizing, “such conditions will affect their mental well being forever, and will accompany them through their adult life,” the report said….

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Heavy fight started in Mosul
Roads to Iraq
Just reported, a heavy fight erupted with explosion sounds heard in Rifa’i Neighborhood – Mosul, later the fight spread into 17 July and al-Iktisadeen district [notice that until today Maliki’s forces arrested 1100 people without fight…and they claim they are arresting al-Qaeda?]. The “political Resistance Council” issued a statement saying that the reason Mosul attack is to form “the council of five”, which means allowing the five political powers [two Kurdish parties, Dawa Party, Islamic supreme Council, and the Islamic Party] to participate [and dominate] in the coming provincial election, I think this true because a report came that five members of the “Accordance Front” traveled to Mosul to “observe” the operations there…

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Sunni resistance calls for closing ranks against the Mosul campaign
badger, Arablinks
In a statement published yesterday by the Political Office for the Iraqi Resistance (Sunni factions the biggest of which is the Islamic Army in Iraq), and summarized this morning in AlHayat, the group described the current military campaign in Mosul as an “an attack on one of the strongholds of the People of the Sunna and the Community [referring to all Sunnis], in order to put down all of the voices of rejection and resistance to this tyrannical occupation,” and called on all the factions to close ranks and escalate their armed operations against the government…

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Palestinians beaten, sexually humiliated by Israeli captors, ex-prisoners say
Ma’an News
Beatings and sexual humiliation are among the torments suffered by Palestinian detainees at an Israeli prison located near the West Bank city of Ramallah, new testimony from prisoners indicates. Twenty-one-year-old Ramallah resident Sultan Abdullah Sulieman was recently released from the Ofer Prison, officially known as Incarceration Facility 386. In interviews with lawyers from the Palestinian Prisoners Society, he said that he spent forty days in solitary confinement in the facility…

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We covered up Iraqi bomb attack which destroyed a £30million Hercules, admits MoD
MATTHEW HICKLEY, Daily Mail
The Ministry of Defence covered up the fact that Iraqi insurgents destroyed a £30million RAF Hercules transport aircraft by planting bombs next to a runway. Military spokesmen claimed publicly that the C-130J aircraft, with 64 people on board, had been accidentally damaged on landing – and that there was no evidence of enemy action. The cover-up was an attempt to deny the Iraqis a further propaganda coup following the earlier loss of another Hercules. It is revealed in official documents seen by the Mail….

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Who killed al-Sadr? (not the media spin version)
Roads to Iraq
It is not about Muqtada, it is about: Who assassinated his father? Patrick Cockburn: “aspects of al-Sadr and the Mehdi militia are key to understanding his influence…..Particularly his father, who was assassinated by Saddam” This is what really happened [as I explained earlier in this Blog in details]: Mohammad al-Sadr killed because of the power struggle between the “Hawza” and the “Supreme Clerics”, it was inside job organized by al-Hakim family….

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Iran-Contra II?
American Samizdat
Not that Iran’s influence in Iraq has ever been seriously questioned in the media – it has, but for all the wrong reasons, which is the basis of some growing suspicions I’ve had recently on a developing collusion between Iran, the U.S., and its quisling Maliki/Badr government. But because relations between the U.S. and Iran overshadow whats happening in Iraq the standard narrative gets split into two mutually exclusive stories that are/have been allowed to co-exist as if they are not connected….After the initial U.S. invasion the Badr was permitted (by the U.S.) to return to Iraq and eventually formed the pan Shiite coalition UIA party alliance currently in power, and took control of the police intelligence/death squad Interior Ministry (talk about “special groups”) and have filled the regular ISF. This side of the narrative of course, has received about zero media attention – a blanket of silence on the “influence” that Iran might have sequestered right smack in the seat of power in the green zone. Why is this?…

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Two sick patients, one infant and one adult, die due to ongoing siege on Gaza
IMEMC NEWS
Rami Abdo, spokesperson of the Popular Committee Against the Siege, reported on Saturday that an eight-month old infant and a 45-year old man died due to the ongoing siege in Gaza after suffering from serious illnesses and were not allowed to leave the coastal region for medical treatment in abroad. Several patients died in Gaza last week. Abdo stated that Fahidh Tawafeen, 8 months old, suffered from leukemia and her family filed an appeal to the Israeli Authorities more than twenty days ago to allow them transfer her to a hospital outside the Gaza Strip but received no response and the child died at the Al Aqsa Hospital in the central Gaza Strip…

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Afghan death squads ‘acting on foreign orders’
Jerome Starkey
Secret Afghan death squads are acting on the orders of foreign spies and killing civilians inside Afghanistan with impunity, a senior UN envoy has claimed. Professor Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on illegal killings, said “foreign intelligence agencies” had used illegal groups of heavily armed Afghans in raids against suspected insurgents. He said the attacks were beyond the legitimate military chains of command, and they were “completely unacceptable” and “outside the law”…

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Palestinian al-Nakbah at 60: The Case of Unrecognized Villages
Sharat G. Lin
Sixty years after the terrorist catastrophe that drove over three quarters of a million Palestinians from 531 villages and towns during the Israeli war for independence in 1948, walls of division continue to be built, inhabited houses continue to be demolished, and an entire population in Gaza is being slowly starved of food, fuel, and medicine. The incessant siege mentality and ubiquitous security infrastructure are ever more eroding the social fabric of Palestinian and Israeli societies alike. Ending the siege and occupation are crucial preconditions to the future security of both peoples. No matter what peaceful solution ultimately emerges, the futures of Palestinians and Israelis are inseparably intertwined. This story of a Palestinian village in the Negev is a perspective on al-Nakbah (??????) at the age of 60…

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Urgent…..attention required
Mohammed, Last of Iraqis
Today I have been an eye witness of one of the cruelest crimes committed against innocent Iraqis… I’ve seen something very similar to the crimes of Black water….
I was shopping at about 11:30 am from a compound of super markets and I saw the Turks shopping, they have parked their cars (armored navy blue Mercedes A class) and they were on foot; carrying their guns and wearing armors, it’s something ordinary to see them there, they always do shopping from there …I was going to that compound when I remembered I want to buy meat so I entered the butcher’s shop which is 50 meter away from the supermarkets, after 5 minutes I went out of the shop and as soon as I stepped out of the butcher’s shop I noticed that the rifle of one of the Turks shot accidentally (or that’s what I think it was) then the other Turks started shooting randomly (I think they though they were attacked), they were shooting at people like they are not humans, they were shooting like they were shooting at dogs…people started to run and others tried to hide and I immediately went back to the Butcher’s shop…they continued shooting and the whole crime took about 1 or 2 minutes then they ran back to their cars and went away without thinking of what have they caused and who was injured or killed, few minutes later I went to the site and I saw the people who were there carrying two men…one of them was an old man injured in the head and was unconscious (most probably he was dead) and the other one was covered with blood but I think he was injured in the leg and torso (I think he will not survive)…

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Pope Benedict, please support Palestinian Christians! Petition
Mary Rizzo, Palestine Think Tank
Your Holiness, we are Palestinian Christians from Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Haifa, Tiberius, Beit Jala and many other Palestinian cities, towns and villages. We have been completely uprooted from the place of our birth, our land and homes have been confiscated through Zionist terror since 1947/48 and today’s Israelis are still in the process of emptying the country where Christ was born and which saw the first community who followed his teachings of its Christian population. 418 Arab towns and villages inhabited by both our monotheist Muslim compatriot sisters and brothers and us, Palestinian Arab Christians, had been destroyed and emptied of its people…

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Hebron is a ghost town where joggers carry automatic rifles
Ian Jack, The Guardian
At Birzeit University in Ramallah last week a young woman student in a headscarf asked how it was that Nadine Gordimer, the South African novelist and Nobel laureate, could agree to visit and speak in Israel. Hadn’t Gordimer fought apartheid for years – famously fought it in her writing and her actions? And now she was about to appear at the International Writers Festival in Jerusalem, a guest in one way or another of the Israeli government. What did we think of this? Weren’t these double standards? Wouldn’t we condemn her?…

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THE SKY OVER JERUSALEM TURNED BLACK IN MOURNING
Desertpeace
It was not an eclipse of the sun that turned the sky over Jerusalem black on Thursday… it was an organised protest of both Palestinians and Israelis commemorating the events of May 15th, 1948… the Nakba. Part of the text of a thank you letter from the organisers follows… Dear Friends, Thank you so much for your participation in the Justice is the Key to Tomorrow: 21,915 Black Balloons Over Jerusalem event on May 15, 2008, commemorating 60 years of our dispossession…

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‘JEALOUSY IS THE ROOT OF ANTI SEMITISM’
Desertpeace
I am somtimes amazed at the lack of wisdom demonstrated by Mr. Anti Semite himself, Abe Foxman. I am convinced that every time he opens his mouth a new anti Semite appears somewhere on the horizon. The man has dedicated the last 43 years of his life to battling creating anti Semitism where it does not exist. In all that time he has not learned the FACT tht anti zionism is NOT anti Semitism, but he dances to the tune of the ADL which he heads, and they keep him there because he dances well… Personally, I am sick and tired of the Foxmans pulling out the ‘race card’ at every opportunity. Criticism of Israel is NOT anti Semitism. Condemnation of apartheid is NOT anti Semitism. Condemnation of genocide is NOT anti Semitism. Belief in the brotherhood of man is NOT anti Semitsm…

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U.S. Planning Big New Prison in Afghanistan
ERIC SCHMITT and TIM GOLDEN, NYTimes
The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come. The proposed detention center would replace the cavernous, makeshift American prison on the Bagram military base north of Kabul, which is now typically packed with about 630 prisoners, compared with the 270 held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Until now, the Bush administration had signaled that it intended to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan. It had planned to transfer a large majority of the prisoners to Afghan custody, in an American-financed, high-security prison outside Kabul to be guarded by Afghan soldiers…

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Palestinian Options as the Nakba turns 60
Mazin Qumsiyeh, Palestine Think Tank
We are 126 years after the practical initiation of Zionist project to colonize Palestine and we are 60 years after the realization of that vision in the form of a Jewish ethnocentric nationalistic state. These are very short periods in human histories (the crusader kingdoms lasted much longer). History teaches us that native people are not guaranteed victory but that they always have many options moving forward. In this essay, I explore the challenges and the many options open for Palestinians as we enter perhaps the most challenging period of our history…

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Iran’s role rises as Iraq peace broker
Scott Peterson and Howard LaFranchi, The Christian Science Monitor
…Iraqi officials say that Iranian influence was key to reaching the deal with Moqtada al-Sadr aimed at ending weeks of deadly fighting. Iran’s intervention comes as previously undisclosed details are emerging of a secret meeting between Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, other senior Iraqi officials, and the commander of Iran’s Qods Force, Brig. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, in April, after clashes with Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra. In that meeting, General Soleimani “was deeply concerned” and “promised to stop arming groups in Iraq and to ensure that groups halt activities against US forces,” according to a description given by a US official to the Monitor. Soleimani gave Mr. Talabani a “message” for US Gen. David Petraeus, too. He noted that his portfolio includes Iraq, Gaza, and Lebanon and that he was willing to “send a small team” to “discuss any issue” with the Americans…

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Iraq arrests 1,100 in “Qaeda crackdown” in Mosul
AFP
Around 1,100 people have been arrested during the first four days of a government crackdown on Al-Qaeda jihadists in Iraq’s main northern city of Mosul, the defence ministry said on Saturday. Ministry spokesman Major General Mohammed al-Askari said there had been no clashes during the operation and that 530 of those arrested were wanted by the authorities…

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U.S. Planning Big New Prison in Afghanistan
ERIC SCHMITT and TIM GOLDEN, NYTimes
The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come. The proposed detention center would replace the cavernous, makeshift American prison on the Bagram military base north of Kabul, which is now typically packed with about 630 prisoners, compared with the 270 held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Until now, the Bush administration had signaled that it intended to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan. It had planned to transfer a large majority of the prisoners to Afghan custody, in an American-financed, high-security prison outside Kabul to be guarded by Afghan soldiers…

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Remembering Al Nakba in the Occupied Territories
Kim Bullimore
This year marks the 60th anniversary of Al Nakba, the catastrophe, which saw the destruction of Palestinian society and the ethnic cleansing of more than 700,000 indigenous Palestinians from their historic homeland. It has now been more than 21,915 days since the Palestinian people were expelled by force by Zionist terror gangs and militia and forced to become refugees in their own land or in foreign lands. In Palestine today, the Nakba continues. Millions of Palestinians have been denied the right to return to their homes or to live in freedom. Israel continues to carry out its illegal and brutal occupation of the Palestinian people, while also carrying out mass illegal collective punishment (which is a war crime under international law) in the Gaza Strip. On May 15, throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Palestinians remember their dead, their imprisoned, their loved ones in refugee camps throughout the Middle East and their family and friends who make up the 7 million strong Palestinian Diaspora around the world…

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