The Google Big Brother Saga Continues
URUKNET
On May 7 we published Google’s reply where Google wrote, “We currently don’t include sites that are primarily news aggregators”. This is FALSE, of course. Today – after several attempts to have more information on the arbitrary exclusion of Uruknet from Google News – Google was kind enough to reply again: Hi Vincenzo, Thank you for your reply and for providing us with this additional information about your site. We apologize for our delayed response. As we mentioned in our previous email, we currently don’t include sites that are primarily news aggregators. Please be assured, however, that we’ll log your site for future consideration. Also, if you know of a site that you think shouldn’t be included in Google News, please send us the URL of the site in question and we’ll look into it. We sincerely appreciate your interest in Google News. Regards, The Google Team. Google keeps lying but, as bad as this surely is, it’s not even the worst part in this Orwellian e-mail. The Google Team now would like to engage Uruknet as its informer???????????? After embracing censorship and self-censorship, we wonder if delation is now officially Google’s policy….

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GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY
Malcom Lagauche
In 2006, we saw the worst travesty of justice of our time during the trial of Saddam Hussein and members of the Ba’ath government. Virtually every international legal institution condemned the farce that was called a trial. Even the United Nations issued a report blasting almost every aspect of the proceedings. A lackey judge sentenced Saddam to hang. Shortly after, he fled Iraq and ended up in Great Britain, claiming financial asylum. Now we are confronted with another chapter of the outrageous trials of Ba’ath Party members. Tariq Aziz, after rotting in prison for five years, will be tried for the crime of being involved with the execution of 42 Iraqis during the embargo that strangled the country. The accused tampered with food prices while food was in short supply. Because of their actions, many Iraqis suffered. This column is not about the execution of some black-marketeers. It concerns the total lack of any legal integrity for Aziz’ upcoming trial. First of all, Aziz had nothing to do with the execution of the 42 Iraqis. He was in foreign service and was out of the country when they were condemned. But, the court doesn’t seem interested in the truth. The judge will be the same one who sentenced Saddam. Miraculously, he has re-appeared in Iraq. Maybe some investigative journalist will take the time to see who his paymasters are for this trial. I will give a hint: start looking in Washington, D.C. Tariq Aziz made an appearance in court on May 20, 2008. However, he had no legal representation…

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Iraq, Somalia Least Peaceful Countries
IOL Staff
Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan are the least peaceful nations, according to a survey of 140 countries by the Global Peace Index (GPI) released on Tuesday, May 20. “The ongoing war in Iraq which, since 2005, has taken on an increasingly sectarian nature and left most of the country in turmoil, makes it the lowest-ranked nation of the 140 surveyed in the GPI,” said the report. “The country’s indicators show high levels of political instability, and the number of displaced persons as a percentage of the population is also very high.”…

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Your Hypocrisy keeps me awake…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
Every day I promise myself “Thou shall not blog today” and then I read a piece of news that just makes me enraged. Look at this one for instance -Iranian shelling of Iraqi/Kurdish villages – a member of the “Iraqi parliament” (hahahahahaha) is astonished over the government’s position regarding these Iranian shelling. This is not the first time that Iran shells Iraqi villages.
The Imperial West and its pillar, the anti-war/left (another hahahahaha) never tire, till this very day of repeating “Saddam shelled Kurdish villages, Saddam displaced Iraqis, Saddam gassed his own people, Saddam tortured, Saddam eliminated all opposition …” Bla-bla-bla… I need not continue since you know the old fabricated refrain much better than I. You are were/are very proficient at it. Of course all of the above, later transpired to be FALSE ACCUSATIONS, SLANDERS and DEMONIZATION part of a massive disinformation/propaganda campaign to JUSTIFY, RATIONALIZE and LEGITIMIZE the Zionist Anglo-American and Iranian occupations of Iraq. But let’s forget the past for one minute. Let me ask you this, did you read ONE condemnation of the current, ongoing Iranian shelling of Iraqi villages ? Of course not…

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Breathless Gaza
Ola Attallah, IOL Correspondent
Six-year-old Ahmed was playing with his brother outside their Gaza house when his little face suddenly turned blue and he fell to the ground. “Mom, dad, help,” screamed his panicking brother Sami. “Ahmed is not breathing.” But the young kid is not the only person in the besieged Gaza Strip having a problem breathing. Many people in the overcrowded coastal territory of nearly 1.6 million are experiencing respiratory problems due to the strange smell and burning orange glow of using cooking oil to run cars…

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Sex for Bread in New Afghanistan
IslamOnline.net & News Agencies
hen Fatima returned home after years of living as a refugee, the teenage was aspiring to a promised better life in post-Taliban Afghanistan. She has since turned to selling her body to make a living. “I had no other way but prostitution,” the 19-year-old told Reuters on Monday, May 19. After returning from Iran, Fatima knocked every door in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif in quest for a job, but in vain. Desperate to sustain her mother, two sisters and young brother, she eventually found no other option but prostitution…Fatima is not alone. According to RAWA, an independent organization of Afghan women, prostitution has become widespread in conservative Afghanistan since the 2001 US ouster of Taliban. In the northern regions, more and more young women are turning to sex work….

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Iraq Vets Testify to War Atrocities, Vow to Fight and Resist Bush Policy
Liliana Segura, AlterNet
“I was ordered multiple times by commissioned officers and noncommissioned officers to shoot unarmed civilians if their presence made me feel uncomfortable,” Sgt. Jason Lemieux told a panel of lawmakers last Thursday in a packed public hearing on Capitol Hill. “These orders were given with the understanding that my immediate chain of command would protect our subordinates from legal repercussions.” Lemieux, a former Marine who was part of the invading force that entered Baghdad in March 2003, came to Washington, D.C., with Iraq Veterans Against the War, weeks after the fifth anniversary of President George Bush’s declaration of “Mission Accomplished” to tell Congress enough is enough. Invited by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., the veterans spoke firmly and eloquently before members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, telling stories that were just “the tip of the iceberg,” as Lemieux put it, but which nevertheless offered a frightening range of accounts: violent house raids, the killings of innocent people, “drop weapons” used to make dead civilians look like insurgents, racism in the ranks, and their own process of dehumanization as they became inured to the humanity of those who they were supposedly sent to “liberate.”…

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Mental illness in Iraq rises as care falters
ERICA GOODE, NYTimes
In a different time, in another country, where violence and terror did not stalk the streets, Dr. Amir Hussain could practice psychiatry the way he once hoped to…But Hussain, who entered his profession at a time when Iraqi doctors were among the most sophisticated and highly trained in the Middle East, is caught in a time warp in a war-torn land. Knowledge and sophistication have been largely overwhelmed by developing world decay, and ancient equipment has plunged some treatments into a “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” barbarism, despite the best intentions. Hussain cares for patients whose illnesses are often set off or worsened by the mayhem around them. They crowd into his tiny office at Ibn Rushid psychiatric hospital in central Baghdad, accompanied by their mothers and aunts, wives and brothers. The litany of death and misery they recite no longer shocks him…

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Iraq Media Campaign
Iraqi Solidarity News (Al-Thawra)
The media’s coverage of the situation in Iraq and the conditions being faced by the Iraqi people, has left much to be desired and has resulted in a culture of ignorance and disinformation, despite the efforts of thousands of Iraqi’s and supporting activists who provide regular and accurate information. The people of Iraq need pro-active supporters who can help inform the international community about what is really happening in Iraq and this can help to educate people into the brutal living conditions being faced by the entire population and the facts that the occupation has left one million people dead and an estiamted 4.5 million child orphans….

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Refugees are the key
Sam Bahour, The Electronic Intifada
…President Bush used the anachronistic words “Eretz Yisrael” (the biblical Land of Israel) to describe the Israeli state. This sort of usage was, and is, exactly what most right-wing Jewish fundamentalists use to refer to an Israel that reaches from the Euphrates River, in what’s left of today’s Iraq, to the Mediterranean Sea. Adding insult to injury, he went on to praise Israel’s welcoming of immigrants from around the world to populate the newly created state of Israel. It meant absolutely nothing to Bush that the indigenous Palestinian population, lingering for 60 years only hours away from where he was standing while addressing the Knesset and on whose ruins Israel was built, remains today’s longest-standing refugee community. The Palestinian refugees symbolize the protracted conflict between Israelis and Palestinians…

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Tariq Aziz stays defiant in face of trial for his life
Deborah Haynes, The Times
…Mr Aziz, who had no lawyers present, accused those who tried to assassinate him in an attack almost three decades ago of wanting to finish the job. “This is a selective process wrought by the personal motivations of those intent on destroying Aziz,” the 72-year-old, who was also once Deputy Prime Minister, told the court. “It is a plot of personal revenge.” The case will continue today…
His lawyers have long complained about their client’s ill-health. Ziad Aziz, his son, who lives in Amman, said that the absence of legal support was because a team of foreign lawyers had not been granted visas. The trial, presided over by the same judge who sentenced Saddam to death in 2006, is the fourth to be conducted by the Iraqi High Tribunal, which was established to try former regime officials…

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Orthodox Jewish youths burn New Testaments in Or Yehuda
The Associated Press
Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land. Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material. After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it…

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Clive Stafford Smith: US Holding 27,000 in Secret Overseas Prisons; Transporting Prisoners to Iraqi Jails to Avoid Media & Legal Scrutiny
Democracy Now!
“There is a huge number of [secret prisoners] being held in Iraq, and one of the intriguing aspects of this that doesn’t get much reporting is that the US is bringing people into Iraq from elsewhere to hold them there, simply because that keeps [the media and lawyers] away from the prisoners so they can’t get any sort of legal rights,” reports British attorney Clive Stafford Smith…

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Five Palestinians, including one child, killed in Gaza on Tuesday
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies
Palestinian sources in the Gaza Strip reported on Tuesday at night that five Palestinians, including one child, were killed in separate Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip. Medical sources reported that a child and a farmer were killed and two other Palestinian were wounded when the army shelled several areas, including houses and farmlands, on the northern and central parts of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian news agency, WAFA, identified the child as Majd Ziad Abu Okal, 13, from Beit Lahia. The killed famer was identified as Hamdi Al Dahdouh, 32, from Juhr Al Deek in the central Gaza Strip; his body was severely mutilated.—

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Specialists: Gaza children suffer malnutrition due to the siege
Palestinian Information Center
Specialists in child rights and health care stated Tuesday that there is a large percentage of Palestinian children in the impoverished Gaza Strip who suffer from anemia and malnutrition in addition to psychological disorders, calling on health institutions to work as much as possible on reducing the death rates and illnesses among children resulting from the Israeli siege. During a workshop entitled “The siege and its impacts on the health of children in the Gaza Strip”, Hind Faris, the coordinator of child program in the Dhameer foundation for human rights, said that the children in Palestine constitute a high percentage, the thing which made the foundation interested in this category especially after noticing an increase in the diseases among children resulting from malnutrition…

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White House denies story about attacking Iran
BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer
The White House on Tuesday denied a published report in Israel that said President Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term in January. A story in the Jerusalem Post quoted a “senior official” there as saying that Bush plans to attack Iran in the coming months. The story says the unidentified official claimed that a “senior member” of Bush’s traveling entourage made the statement about attacking Iran in a closed meeting. Bush was in Israel last week…

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Palestinian Child Need Help to Pay For Urgent Transplantation
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
Abdullah Ramz Mahmoud Kalloub, a two and a half year old Palestinian boy from Gaza Strip, is diagnosed with Mevalonic Aciduria. Abdullah has a twin sister, Angham.From the first days after the birth, in observing the twins, the parents find out that something was different in how the new born boy,Abdullah absorbed the food, compared with the twin sister Angham. During the first week,the doctors found emphysema in Abdullah’s abdomen,dryness and wrinkles on face and body of the child.After dealing with the symptoms as merely an incidental thing,while time past on during the first months, Abdullah needed testing and observation according to the doctors at the al Naser Hospital…

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This government has been the most rightwing since the second world war
George Monbiot, The Guardian
…One fact alone should disqualify this government from office: we have a cabinet of war criminals. The Nuremberg tribunal characterised a war of aggression as “the supreme international crime”. It is not just that Britain’s Labour government launched and sustained an unprovoked war, it also sabotaged all means of achieving a peaceful resolution. In April 2002 it helped the Bush administration to sack José Bustani, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, in order to prevent him settling the dispute over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. In two separate offers before the invasion, Saddam Hussein agreed to meet the terms the US and Britain were demanding. But they slapped him down and concealed his offers from their electorates…

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MP astonished over government’s position regarding Iranian border shelling
Voices of Iraq
Deputy Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament Aaref Tiefour on Tuesday condemned the Iranian shelling of Iraqi border villages in the Kurdistan region, voicing astonishment over what he described as “the negative” position of the U.N. and the Iraqi government toward that shelling. In a statement released from his office received by Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq (VOI), Tiefour demanded the U.N. and the European Union EU as well as other international organizations to take firm measures to stop these violations against Kurds in northern Iraq….

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The Wa’ilis and the Hakims
badger, Arablinks
Here is the latest set of charges in an ongoing war of words between leaders of two of the main power centers in Basra, the Shiite nationalist Fadhila party, headed locally by the Basra governor Mohamed Musbih al-Wa’ili, and the Iran-oriented axis of Hakim and/or Maliki. Naturally there is no way of assessing the actual content of any of the following charges, or how much of it is merely personal, but I think the story is interesting anyway, as an indication of the bitterness of the continuing war of words (and interesting too for the fact that AMSI republishes the accusations against the Hakim axis)…

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Spinning the News – The FARC-EP Files, Venezuela and Interpol
Stephen Lendman
First some background. On March 1, the Colombian military (with US Special Forces help) illegally attacked a FARC-EP rebel camp inside Ecuador. US satellite telephone tracking located the site. Washington signed off on the mission. Over 20 people were killed, including 16 or more FARC-EP members while they slept. Key among them was Paul Reyes, the FARC-EP’s second-in-command, key peace negotiator and public voice, and lead figure in the Chavez-led hostage negotiations with Colombia. The action was a clear act of aggression and premeditated murder…

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More than a Stone’s Throw Away, No Justice for Palestinian Child Prisoners
Yasmin Abou-Amer for MIFTAH
On Saturday 10th May, a press conference was held in Beit Sahour, just outside of Bethlehem, to draw attention to the plight of child prisoner, Ziad Mahfuth. One issue that has been afforded the least coverage in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is that of child prisoners. Along with checkpoints and roadblocks, prison is yet another of the central features of Palestinian life. There are hundreds of Palestinian children from within the Occupied Palestinian Territories who have been arrested, interrogated and detained in severe violation of international law. According to Defence for Children International, at the end of April 2008, 327 children were held in Israeli detention facilities. Of this figure, four are girls and 12 are being held without charge or in administrative detention. Administrative detention is a procedure whereby a person is detained without charge or trial and which is permitted under international law in limited circumstances…

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Your’s Forgetfully,
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
What the fuck is going on here ? Why do I have this impression that Iraq has been forgotten ? Why do I perceive that the discourse has taken a turn, for over 4 years now, away from Iraq, away from THE occupation of the 21st century ? Who are these motherfuckers putting Iraq on the “back burner”? Who are these deceptive sons of bitches obliterating the millions of deaths, the millions of those left behind, languishing in grief and ruins ? I’ll tell you who they are They are divided into two categories. The Zionist/American Camp and the Iranian Camp. These are the ones who are currently pulling all the strings. They belong to the “right” and to the so-called “left”. But when it comes to Iraq they are in total agreement, in total harmony. The Right camp with its propaganda tries to make you believe that Iran is the real danger and that it has to be fought. The Left wants you to believe that Iran is the anti-Zionist, anti-Imperialist victim and that it needs to be defended. But – IN IRAQ, both camps are present, dancing away over our bodies, over our corpses…

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Washington’s Pathological Liar
Khalid Amayreh, Desertpeace
George W. Bush is well known for his low intellectuality and clarion ignorance of the world. To mask these serious flaws and shortcomings, he routinely adopts a discourse based on mendacity and dishonesty. And while it is premature to pass a final judgment on the man, it is probably safe to conclude by now that he has already brought an irremediable disaster upon the United States and the rest of the world…

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Demolished by the Pakistan army: the frontier village punished for harbouring the Taliban
Declan Walsh, The Guardian
A fading photo tossed on an empty bed is all that remains of the interrupted lives in Spinkai, a desolate Pakistani village that has endured the wrath of the army’s “collective punishment”. In the image a laughing young man in a jet-black turban brandishes his rifle like a trophy. Beside him stand two little girls in bright frocks, giggling with glee. Now they have fled, and so has everyone else. An estimated 200,000 villagers have been displaced since the Pakistani army attacked the mountain redoubt of Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban and a suspect in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto four months ago…

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American military delegation, secretly visited Azhar asking the Sheikh to condemn the Iraqi resistance
Roads to Iraq
After Egyptian newspaper Al-Maryoon revealed yesterday that the American ambassador in Egypt Margaret Scobey secretly met with journalists and newspapers chief editors seeking to improve the American image in the Arab countries with an adds campaign aims on the American role in “spreading democracy” around the world, focuses on the “positive” American policy in the Palestine – Israel conflict and the situation in Iraq…

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Iraqi army seizes Sadr’s Baghdad bastion
Aseel Kami and Adrian Croft, Reuters
Some 10,000 Iraqi police and soldiers, backed by tanks, pushed deep into Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Baghdad bastion on Tuesday, stamping the government’s authority on an area until now outside its control. The army said they met no resistance as they moved into Sadr City in the early hours, securing three quarters of the sprawling slum where hundreds have been killed in weeks of fighting between U.S. and Iraqi forces and Shi’ite militants loyal to Sadr…

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THE NEW McCARTHYISM
Michael Rivero, WHR, via Desertpeace
Back in the year 1947, the House Select Committee began an investigation into the Motion Picture Industry. Ostensibly the goal was to ferret out communists working in the film industry. But in actuality the US Government was concerned that Hollywood was no longer as blindly supportive of government policy as it had been only a few years earlier at the height of WW2. In particular, J. Edgar Hoover had long held the opinion that the entertainment industry should be the propaganda arm for the government in peace time as well as war…

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When Free Speech Doesn’t Come Free
Remi Kanazi, thepeoplesvoice.org
Free speech is not without consequence. In the United States, for example, criticism of Israel is tantamount to heresy. Former US President Jimmy Carter felt a societal backlash last year after the release of his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which condemned Israel’s apartheid-style policies in the occupied Palestinian territories. Consequently, and without foundation, Carter was branded by many in the American press as a one-sided, anti-Semitic propagandist. Similarly, Harvard professor Stephen Walt and University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer were lambasted for a paper the two co-authored that discussed the power of the Israel lobby and its adverse effect on American policy. Additionally, Norman Finkelstein, an esteemed professor at Depaul University and author of the bestselling book, The Holocaust Industry, witnessed a McCarthyite-style campaign mounted against him when he came up for tenure…

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European compaign: Israeli siege killed 158 patients since imposed a year ago
Palestinian Information Center
A report issued by the European campaign to lift the siege stated that 158 Palestinian patients out of 1,200 have died since Israel imposed its siege on the Gaza Strip nearly a year ago, adding that 20 of them only died during last April. In a copy of the report received by the PIC, the European campaign warned that the specter of death is threatening a long list of patients especially those who have chronic and serious diseases as a result of the Israeli restrictions imposed on travel for medical treatment and medical supplies…

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Israeli army kills a Palestinian child in northern Gaza and incurs into central Gaza
Rami Almeghari – IMEMC & Agencies
The Israeli army killed earlier on Tuesday dawn a Palestinian child in northern Gaza, as the Israeli tanks rolled few hundred meters into central Gaza. Medical sources confirmed that Majd Abu Aukal, a 13-year-old child from the northern Gaza Strip city of Beit Lahiya, was killed instantly after sustaining a rocket shrapnel. The sources said that another resident was also wounded by the same shrapnel….

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Iraqi forces launch operation in Sadr City
Reuters
The Iraqi army launched an operation on Tuesday to take control of Baghdad’s Sadr City slum, the power base of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Army spokesman Major-General Qassim Moussawi said soldiers had launched “Operation Peace” in the sprawling area of eastern Baghdad early on Tuesday. “The troops have entered all of Sadr City’s districts and are trying to arrest all the wanted men,” he told Reuters. Moussawi said the troops had moved deep into Sadr City and taken control of three quarters of the area. “The operation includes providing basic services for the dwellers of the city,” he said. A health official resident in Sadr City, who asked not to be named, said no one had fired at the army when they entered and the district was quiet…

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Iraq’s antiquities garner international attention
Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
…”The looting of ancient sites is an old problem, of course, but this phenomenon has accelerated since the invasion of Iraq and the general insecurity that has left so many sites with no protection,” says Qais Hussein Rashid, director of research and antiquities excavations for Iraq’s Board of Antiquities and Heritage. “We feel we are losing many of the keys to our past and the many pieces that together make up our heritage.” Iraq has more than 12,000 significant archaeological sites, dating back to 2500 BC at Kish, near ancient Babylon. For all these sites the government of Iraq employs only 1,200 guards, leaving many gaps. “We have easily 11,000 archaeological locations with no protection,” Mr. Rashid says…

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16 year old boy murdered by Israeli soldiers at Huwarra checkpoint
International Solidarity Movement
At 7pm on Monday 19th May, a 16 year old boy, Fihme Abdel Jawad Dardouk, was murdered by Israeli soldiers at the Huwarra checkpoint in Nablus. Israeli army spokespeople have since claimed that the boy, a volunteer in the Tanweer Cultural Enlightenment Centre, had three pipe-bombs strapped to his body. Eyewitnesses claim this is not true….

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Iraq could have largest oil reserves in the world
Sonia Verma in Sharm el-Sheikh, The Times
Iraq dramatically increased the official size of its oil reserves yesterday after new data suggested that they could exceed Saudi Arabia’s and be the largest in the world. The Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister told The Times that new exploration showed that his country has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, with as much as 350 billion barrels. The figure is triple the country’s present proven reserves and exceeds that of Saudi Arabia’s estimated 264 billion barrels of oil. Barham Salih said that the new estimate had been based on recent geological surveys and seismic data compiled by “reputable, international oil companies . . . This is a serious figure from credible sources.”…

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Video: Israel’s reply to a non-violent protest INSIDE Israel
Sabbah’s blog
This is from the Israeli licensed march of Palestinian families at the old destroyed arab village of Safurye. About half way through the clip CNN’s own Ben Welderman gets harassed too and barks back. If this is how Israel treats Palestinians who are citizens of Israel you can only imagine how it treats Palestinians that they occupy. Remember, this demo was licenced by the Israeli authorities!…

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The roots of the conflict in Palestine
Salim Nazzal
…60 years ago Palestine was there. We were farmers, fishermen, merchants, drivers, shopkeepers, etc. Israel today celebrates its independence from those farmers and fishermen, with Zionists even portraying those indigenous Palestinians as the occupiers. In reality, however, Israel is celebrating 60 years of my nation’s misery. And what are they truly celebrating? Seven wars, one third of Palestinians have been in Israeli prisons. Four million Palestinian refugees, 60 years of violating human rights, more than 600 check points, around half a million settlers and moreover, 60 years of ethnic cleansing? …

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Human rights group documents Israeli use of illegal force against civilians in Gaza
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News
The Al Haq Center for Human Rights, based in Gaza, has issued a report documenting numerous violations of international law by Israeli forces during a May 14th invasion of the Gaza Strip. According to the report, the incursion on 14 May 2008 into ‘Izbet ‘Abed Rabba, in the occupied Gaza Strip provides clear examples of the impact on civilians of Israel’s consistent willful misinterpretation of its obligations under international humanitarian law…

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Sending a message to the world
Linda Haddad, in Ram, Aljazeera.net
As two Palestinian youth activists spray paint messages on the ‘security wall’ in the town of Ram, a 75-year-old woman slowly approaches the massive concrete wall, stairs up at it and asks: “Is this peace?” For Nelly Mousa, the wall is not only an inconvenience to her way of life, but damaging to her family’s small fruit and vegetable shop, which sits on what used to be the main road from Jerusalem to Ramallah – now directly opposite the wall. Since Israel started constructing the wall in 2004 – today it is two-thirds completed – the United Nations International Court of Justice ruled that the construction of the West Bank barrier is illegal and that construction should stop…

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Palestinian youth killed by Israeli military fire near Nablus
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies
Israeli military sources reported on Monday at night that soldiers shot and killed one Palestinian youth at the Huwwra military roadblock, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Soldiers claimed that the youth carried explosives. The sources stated that a 20-year old youth approached the military checkpoint “while acting suspiciously while pacing back and forth”, as reported by Israeli online daily, Haaretz…

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An Open Letter to Dr. Stephen Behnke on Psychologists Engaged in Torture
If Not Now, When?
Dr. TRUDY BOND
Dear Dr. Behnke: In your letter as Ethics Director for the American Psychological Association dated May 15, 2008 to the ACLU, you wrote: “APA will adjudicate any allegation that an APA member has engaged in unethical conduct. If you have information that a psychologist has engaged in torture, I ask that you immediately bring this information to my attention.” Please excuse me if I sound a little impatient. Our profession has been hearing much the same theme from APA presidents for the past three years. Gerald Koocher, APA President 2006: “I should also note that A.P.A. has taken a very strong stance against the use of torture, inhumane, and degrading treatment, and if anyone is able to identify A.P.A. members who have been involved in such activities, we will take disciplinary action.”…

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Baath Party Statement
Mosul’ carnage is a grave link in the genocidal chain which will inflame the Resistance in the face of the Occupiers and their stooges!
The Arab Baath Socialist Party
Nearly four months ago, the puppet Maliki declared that his “decisive battle” will be in Mosul and so he went with his “crisis cell” following the Zindjerli carnage perpertated on the hands of his gangs and the Peshmarga’ exploded a house with T.N.T material provided by an oil foreign firm they agreed with to steal Mosul oil. This carnage led to hundreds of victims from amongst our people sons and daughters and left many more wounded….

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