AFGHANISTAN: “I sold my daughter to feed the rest of my family”
IRIN News
Sayed Ali (not his real name) said he sold his 11-year-old daughter, Rabia, for US$2,000 to a man in Sheberghan city, Jawzjan Province in northern Afghanistan to feed his wife and three younger children. With food prices in Afghanistan having soared over the past few months and the 40-year-old father unable to find work, he said had no other choice but to sell his daughter to save his family from starvation. “Even animals don’t sell their children, because they love them and want to die for them, not to mention human beings. For too many days I stood next to roads and asked people for work, but always ended up disappointed. I couldn’t go home empty-handed and disappoint my starving children, so I used to scavenge in garbage and collect leftover food…

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The French Resistance in the Service of Palestine
Gilad Atzmon, Palestine Think Tank
The commemoration events of 60 years of the Nakba have brought a very different type of Palestinian solidarity activism to my attention: it is young, vibrant, dynamic and creative solidarity campaigning. It’s a new form of struggle that goes far beyond the old dogmatic clichés, a fierce battle that aims at the exposure of the Jewish state for what it is: a racist, chauvinist apartheid state. Last Monday I saw it happen in Exeter University while watching and listening to the astonishingly eloquent Palestinian ambassador to Britain Dr Manuel Hassassian . Last Friday I met the French resistance at a Euro Palestine event at the Parisian Librairie-Resistances bookshop…

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Jews against Zionism – Statement on Nakba
IJSN Statement on Gaza and of Solidarity with 60 Years of Palestinian Resistance to Israeli Colonialism, Racism and Zionism
International Jewish Solidarity Network (IJSN)
The year 2008 is the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe marked by the destruction or depopulation of more than 400 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian people from their lands, communities and homes. Since then, Palestinians have lived under occupation, as refugees, and as second class citizens on their own land; Israel’s assault against the indigenous Palestinian communities continues with unremitting brutality. In Gaza, with the support of the US government and its allies, Israel has effectively cut off food, water, electricity, humanitarian aid, medical supplies and the means of basic employment or trade, despite the pretence of ‘disengagement’ offered by Israeli withdrawal of settlements…

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Trumpets of the Silenced Voices…
neurotic Iraqi wife
If I didn’t see the photos in my own eyes and if I hadn’t spoken to my sister about it, I would have never ever believed the atrocious conditions the Iraqi refugees are living in, in Syria. Even animals are treated better. It boiled my blood to the point where my eyes watered as I continued clicking the mouse. An elderly man on a wheel chair, looking into his eyes, all you see is sadness. Sadness and despair. A child, a malnutritioned child staring right through the lense. Beautiful honey green eyes hopeless. Just hopeless. I would have asked to publish the images, but I don’t want to endanger anyone….

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Mosul
Cernig
…So Maliki is contenting himself with another purpose – rounding up Baathists and non-violent malcontents he can label AQI. Over 1,000 have been arrested without much, if any, fight and the provincial governor says they’ve already released those who weren’t AQI (they released 94). The US military seems just fine with this….So Mosul, far from being a final accounting with AQI, is just another whack-a-mole operation with a very useful sideline in dissent supression and sectarian revenge…

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Ex-detainee: Palestinian women are living in tragic conditions in Israeli jails
Palestinian Grassroots Anti Apartheid Wall Campaign
The newly-released prisoner Samar Subeih revealed that the imprisoned women in Israeli jails are living in heartbreaking living, health and psychological conditions, adding that the Israeli jailers put the Palestinian women in small humid cells underground that are full of cockroaches and rats. In an interview with the Palestinian center for the defense of prisoners, Subeih explained that the cells inside the Ramle prison are dark and the sunbeams cannot find their way to prisoners, adding that the chambers which the imprisoned women along with children are locked in were actually stables for horses and are unfit for human living….

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Iraqi court rulings stop at US detention sites
CHRIS TOMLINSON, Associated Press Writer
In the eyes of Iraqi justice, Yahya Ali Humadi is a free man. To the U.S. military, he’s another of the detainees in yellow jumpsuits held at the sprawling Camp Bucca in southern Iraq. Humadi — ordered released nine months ago after an Iraqi judge dropped all charges — now spends his days in a legal limbo. It’s one that has confronted and confounded thousands of other Iraqis since 2003 who have been freed by their nation’s courts but remained in U.S. custody….

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How picture phones have fuelled frenzy of honour killing in Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
A dark pool of dried blood and a fallen red scarf mark the place where Ronak, who had fled to a woman’s shelter in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah when she was accused of adultery by her husband, was shot three times by a man hiding on the roof of a nearby building. Ronak was wounded by bullets in the neck, side and leg and only survived after a four-hour operation. She was the latest victim of a huge increase across Iraq in the number of “honour” killings of women for alleged immorality by their own families. Many are burnt to death by having petrol or paraffin poured over them and set ablaze. Others are shot or strangled. The United Nations estimates that at least 255 women died in honour-related killings in Kurdistan, home to one fifth of Iraqis, in the first six months of 2007 alone…

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ISRAEL: Arab minority has lower life expectancy – new report
IRIN News
Residents of Baghdad’s mainly Shia district of Sadr City are breathing a sigh of relief as a ceasefire between Shia militiamen loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr and US-backed government forces has brought to an end seven weeks of clashes that left daily life all but paralysed. Schools, government offices and businesses have re-opened, mine clearing operations have begun and aid teams are bringing much needed relief items to those who had been cut off…

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Olmert talks about decisive action against Gaza; Hamas unshaken
Palestinian Information Center
Prime minister of the Israeli occupation government Ehud Olmert has hinted on Sunday that he was mulling taking a decisive decision against Hamas Movement in the Gaza Strip in a bid to stop Palestinian retaliation to IOF troops’ crimes. Palestinian resistance factions have said they were able to develop their home-made primitive weapons and succeeded in making them more effective as evident with the latest missile attack on the 1948-occupied Ashkilon city, in which 15 Israelis were reportedly wounded….

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Qur’an…New US Sniper Victim in Iraq
IslamOnline.net & News Agencies
The soldier, who remained unnamed, was sent home for using the Qur’an for target practice in a predominantly Sunni area west of Baghdad. The action, which happened on May 9, was discovered two days later when Iraqi police found the bullet-riddled Qur’an with graffiti inside the cover on a small-arms range near a police station in the village of Radwaniya. Beside being removed from Iraq, it was not clear what disciplinary action was being taken against the soldier…The Qur’an shooting is the latest and the most serious known incident of desecrating Muslim holy symbols in Iraq by American troops, according to AFP….

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Progressive Vision Failure: The Real Scandal of Bush’s Knesset Speech
Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque
…In fact, in a truly remarkable – and to me genuinely shocking – outburst, Bunch says that Bush’s tweaking of Obama in the speech was actually worse than the Watergate scandal, the Iran-Contra scandal, and all of the Bush Regime’s own depredations in the past seven years, including the “flagrant disregard for the Constitution, the launching of a ‘pre-emptive’ war on false pretenses, and discussions about torture and other shocking abuses inside the White House inner sanctum.” All of this — crime, deceit, mass murder in a war of aggression — pales in comparison to Bush’s Knesset speech, which Bunch calls “a new low that I never imagined was even possible.”… I must confess that I simply cannot comprehend the mindset that would lead to such a statement. Bush goading Obama in an overseas appearance is a “new low”? Worse than torture? Worse than unrestricted spying on the American people? Worse than the subversion of the electoral process in Watergate (not to mention the 2000 and 2004 campaigns)? Worse than running guns to the Iranian mullahs to help fund a terrorist insurgency in Nicaragua? Worse than aggressive war launched on false pretenses? Worse than a million people dead and more than four million driven from their homes? What kind of moral algebra could lead to such a conclusion? How could anything that Bush says at this point be worse than what he has already done?…

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Israeli government to privatize prisons for profit
Palestine News Network
Palestinian Legislative Council deputy Issa Qaraqa’ said on Sunday that the Israeli government is seeking to privatize its prisons. Not only does this fly in the face of international law as these are political prisoners we are dealing with, says the former Director of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, it is the same type of deal that the Israelis engaged in by handing over several military roadblocks to private companies. The law had been enacted in 2004 in the Israeli Knesset and the Israeli High Court of Justice was to discuss how to consider its legality under considerable pressure for approval….

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LEGIONARIES OF DEATH
Malcom Lagauche
…The Legion of Christ represents hundreds of thousands of members with dozens of universities and hundreds of schools. It operates in dozens of countries. The organization is fully endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church and considers the pope the leading person on the Earth. Let’s look at the picture and the prayer. The person kneeling is not exactly a Boy Scout leader; he is a trained killer. The prayer is an endorsement for the “War on Terror,” recently renamed “The Long War.” It is laden with not very subtle brainwashing verses: “ … from enemies within and without … ;” “Instill in the minds and hearts … “ and “ … of all who are imperiled by injustice and evil … “ among others. (There’s that word “evil” again). The pope’s recent trip to the United States was shameful. He and George Bush cried a few crocodile tears* about the Christians in Iraq who have been killed. Then, the pope went to Yankee Stadium where some of his followers made a few dollars hawking t-shirts. If the pope had a backbone, he would have agreed with Bush about the killing of Christians in Iraq and then stated, “But, it was your actions that created the scenario in which Christians have been killed or have had to flee their country.” If he had a big backbone, he would have refused to visit the U.S. until its foreign policy of death and destruction changed directions….

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BlogIraq is dead
Mohammed Alani
Yes. Ahmed (BlogIraq) is dead. He was killed in Baghdad on April 11th, 2008. He went back to Baghdad to take his family out, but he did not have enough time to do so. He had an appointment that day with a guy he knew. This guy was supposed to get him some documents that prove corruption in some USAID office back in Baghdad. I don’t have complete details about it. Anyway, he and the guy bringing the documents were killed at their meeting place in Mansour district in Baghdad. This is the email he sent me a couple of hours before he was killed…When I first setup this blog for him, he gave me the admin password of his blog and I gave him the password of mine. We agreed that whoever dies first, the other should write about it in his blog….

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Poultry farms’ losses due to IOF destruction estimated at $1.5 million
Palestinian Information Center
The agriculture ministry in the PA caretaker government in Gaza on Sunday said that the poultry breeding farms in Shoka area, Rafah district, south of the Strip, have lost more than 1.5 million dollars due to the Israeli occupation forces’ destruction streak. The ministry in a statement said that ten poultry farms were destroyed on Saturday in Shoka, east of Rafah, at the hands of IOF troops within a few hours….

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Gaza Siege Largely Destroys Commercial Fishing Industry
Mohammed Omer, BBSNews
It’s been strangely quiet for some time at the port in Gaza. No clanging of hooks, no sounds of creaking cranes or of thumping of nets upon decks. Boat engines, normally puttering and spewing exhaust, lie entombed under covers. Of the 40,000 fishermen and others who make a living from the catch, only about 700 are still busy, according to the Fishing Syndicate in Gaza. The boats need oil, and Israel will not let the fishermen have it….

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U.S. soldier uses Quran for target practice; military apologizes
CNN
A soldier used the Quran — Islam’s holy book — for target practice, forcing the chief U.S. commander in Baghdad to issue a formal apology on Saturday. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, flanked by leaders from Radhwaniya in the western outskirts of Baghdad, apologized for the staff sergeant who was a sniper section leader assigned to the headquarters of the 64th Armored Regiment. He also read a letter of apology by the shooter. It was the first time the incident — which tested the relationship between U.S.-backed Sunni militiamen and the military — was made public since it was discovered May 11…

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Abu Zaid: Gaza is experiencing its own unique Nakba
Palestinian Information Center
Karen Abu Zaid, the commissioner-general of UNRWA, stated on Saturday that Gaza is experiencing its own unique Nakba, a catastrophe which was wrought on it by the cruelties of continuing occupation and the tightening siege. These statements came during a photo exhibition held in Gaza by UNRWA, “I am from there and I remember,” which commemorates and celebrates the Palestinian life before the Nakba….

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May 17, 2008: 33 Iraqis Killed, 54 Wounded
Margaret Aguirre, International Medical Corps (IMC)
At least 33 Iraqis were killed and 54 more were wounded during light violence. A female suicide bomber attacked a Sunni checkpoint in Baquba, while eight bodies were unearthed near Basra. No Coalition deaths were reported, but an Australian soldier was wounded in Nasiriyah. A female suicide bomber attacked an Awakening Council (Sahwa) post in Baquba. Shortly afterwards a car bomb also blew up, killing three people are wounding 15 others…

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Iraqi forces, Shiite militants fight in Sadr City
CNN
Shiite militants and U.S.-backed Iraqi forces — two sides that agreed to a cease-fire last week — fought overnight in Sadr City, killing four people and wounding 38, Interior Ministry and hospital officials said Sunday. An Iraqi soldier checks a car for explosives at a checkpoint in Sadr City on Saturday. A spokesman for radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said the fighting does not mean an end to the newly negotiated peace agreement. Neither side agreed on what caused the fighting in the stronghold of al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia…

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