Video: White Phosphorus Anger: Could Fallujah Bombing Be Behind Birth Defects?
Lisa Holland
Families in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are calling for an investigation into their claims of a rise in the number of birth defects. They have raised concerns about the weapons used by American forces in 2004 – when Fallujah suffered one of the heaviest bombardments of the entire war in Iraq…Hikmat Tawfeeq, deputy chairman of the Fallujah-based human rights group Alakhiyar said: “We have around 200 cases of deformities recorded by our society. Most of these cases are birth deformities which have arisen after the bombing of Fallujah.” Campaigners say officials are reluctant to speak out publicly, but at Fallujah’s children’s hospital one doctor told Sky News in the past month she has seen one or two cases of birth deformities every day.

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“Le petit soldat” dancing on Palestinian graves?
Open letter, various undersigned
The following is a 25 May 2008 open letter to filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard endorsed by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and a list of Palestinian and Arab filmmakers: Palestinian artists were devastated to learn that you shall visit Israel soon to participate in a film festival in Tel Aviv, despite Israel’s decades-old colonial and racist policies against the indigenous people of Palestine. Your visit, particularly at this time of intensified Israeli war crimes in Gaza, can only help Israel’s incessant public relations efforts in covering up its persistent violation of international humanitarian law and universal human rights. Taking part in this festival is not art separated from politics, as if it can be; rather, it is a crude politicization of art, allowing it to become complicit….

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ARE YOU ANGRY YET?
Michael Rivero, WHR
You should be! You’ve been lied to. Your tax money has been taken from you and spent under false pretenses. Your children have been sent off to kill and be killed in an illegal war launched without Congressional approval. You who fought in the war and think you came back home healthy, well, you’ve been lied to as well. Your health is all downhill from here (ask any Vet from Desert Storm), and your children will have a higher incidence of birth defects because that depleted uranium isn’t as harmless as you were told it was. And those VA medical benefits you were promised? That was a lie too. Are you angry yet?…

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World Complicit in Gaza Shame: Tutu
IslamOnline.net & News Agencies
Shocked by “scary” scenes in Gaza after months of Israeli and Western sanctions, Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu denounced on Thursday, May 29, the international community’s complicity in the suffering of the Gaza people. “My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity, especially on the situation in Gaza, shames us all,” Tutu told a new conference at the end of a three-day UN fact-finding mission….

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Suicide bombers target Iraqi police
Aljazeera.net
At least 18 people have been killed in two attacks targeting police in northern Iraq, prompting the sacking of a senior police officer. A suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a police recruitment centre in Sinjar city, 100km west of Mosul, on Thursday, killing 16 people – mostly recruits – and wounding 18 others. Shortly after the attack, Jawad al-Bolani, the Iraqi interior minister, dismissed Sinjar city’s police chief and ordered an investigation….

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Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory No. 22/2008 (22 – 28 May 2008)
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law seriously escalated in the OPT, especially in the Gaza Strip, during the reporting period (22 – 28 May 2008):Shooting: During the reporting period, IOF killed 9 Palestinians, including a child and an elderly farmer, and wounded 33 others, including 7 children, in the Gaza Strip. A child was also wounded by IOF in the West Bank. On 22 May, IOF killed an elderly Palestinian during an incursion into Gaza Valley village in the central Gaza Strip. They left him bleeding to death. On the same day, IOF killed a Palestinian child and wounded 16 civilians, including 6 children, when they used excessive force against a demonstration organized near al-Mentar (Karni) crossing, east of Gaza City, in protest at the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip…

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Too Little, Too Late…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
…In the same vein, the latest admissions from Mc Lellan ex-press spokesman for the White House and from other media voices like this CNN reporter, who both finally admitted that their reporting on Iraq, was “less than candid”. In other words they fucking lied…The CNN reporter added that they were “forced” to report in a particular fashion that was not detrimental to your government’s image. Excuse me, but am I supposed to feel better now or what ? For 5 fucking years, no for 18 years, you’ve been buying the lies and suddenly you admit that it was “less than candid” and am supposed to feel OK with it ? Like what do you expect me to do? Rush and embrace you for your “honesty”? Or maybe you expect me to forget our ruined lives and our filled to the brim graves ? Or maybe being the fucking hypocrites that you are, you expect me to say “well after all, there are some good people left in America. It’s not their fault really, they were forced…”…

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A Million People Murdered For a Lie, and To Tom Brokaw It’s Just Business As Usual
John Eskow
In a medium full of revolting displays of hypocrisy and self-importance, Tom Brokaw gave a performance last night that was so hypocritical and so self-important that I wanted to make like Elvis watching Robert Goulet and shoot out the screen with a .38. Fortunately, I was unarmed, and the TV was my mother’s, or there would’ve been a thousand jagged fragments of screen and a black, smoking picture-tube in the center of her living-room. Brian Williams was interviewing Brokaw about Scott McClellan’s new book, specifically citing McClellan’s charge that media talking-heads like Brokaw were “complicit enablers” in selling America — in-between decongestants and erection pills — a criminal “war” that has already killed 4,000 Americans and, according to the respected medical journal The Lancet, more than one million Iraqi citizens…

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Action Alert: Support George Monbiot. Write to the Guardian.
Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Dream
It seems White doesn’t understand that Monbiot’s action was grounded on international law… Among serious international law experts there are no doubts about the illegality of the war of aggression against Iraq. “This intervention is illegal” denounced former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 2003. “I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal”, condemned then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2004 It’s really unfortunate Michael White doesn’t get it. Even more unfortunate because it’s not the first time White seems not to understand complex matters but decides nevertheless to offer his opinion to the Guardian’s readers… In times when the state-corporate media and many of its professional journalists and editors are actively aiding and abetting in war crimes and crimes against humanity and contribute to normalize the unthinkable, George Monbiot deserves all the support we can offer him…

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Invitation to Steal: War Profiteering in Iraq
William D. Hartung, Foreign Policy In Focus
The heavy reliance on private contractors to do everything from serving meals and doing laundry to protecting oil pipelines and interrogating prisoners has been a major factor in the immense costs of the Iraq war. By one measure, there may be more employees of private firms and their subcontractors on the ground in Iraq than there are U.S. military personnel. One of the main rationales for using private companies to carry out functions formerly done by uniformed military personnel – a practice that has been on the rise since then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney commissioned a study that led to the contracting out of all Army logistics work to Halliburton in the 1990s – was that it would save money. But in Iraq, the combination of greedy contractors and lax government oversight has resulted in exorbitant costs, many of them for projects that were never completed…

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Merkel’s Germany wants to take in Iraqi refugees, but ONLY Christians
Der Spiegel
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats on Wednesday said they would like to see Germany take on thousands of refugees from Iraq. The hitch? They only want the Christians. If the CDU has its way, Iraqi Christians like this family may soon be on their way to Germany. If the CDU has its way, Iraqi Christians like this family may soon be on their way to Germany. For months, ethnic violence has been on the ebb in war-torn Iraq. But that has done little to ease the pressure of over 2 million refugees seeking shelter in neighboring Syria and Jordan. Indeed, for many of them — particularly those once part of Iraq’s Christian minority — going back may never be an option…

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Fallout from McClellan book: The Iraq war’s “complicit enablers,” then and now
Bill Van Auken, WSWS
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s new book indicting the Bush administration for employing a “political propaganda campaign” and deception to drag the US into an “unnecessary war” in Iraq has unleashed a wave of bitter recriminations from the Republican right, while prompting opportunist attempts by Democrats to exploit the tell-all memoir for their own political purposes….

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Palestinians live in horror of losing their homes
Patrick Moser, AFP
Salim Hamed Jaber, 85, shook his head angrily as he recounted how an Israeli soldier drove up to his impoverished household in the occupied West Bank to deliver a demolition order. “Living under the occupation is like having a piece of glass in your throat,” said Jaber. According to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “more than 3,000 Palestinian-owned structures in the West Bank have pending demolition orders, which can be immediately executed without prior warning”…

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U.S. reassigns Marine for passing out Bible verses to Muslims
Leila Fadel and Jamal Naji | McClatchy Newspapers
The U.S. military confirmed Thursday that a Marine in Fallujah passed out coins with a Gospel verse on them to Sunni Muslims, a military spokesman in the Iraqi city said. The man was immediately removed from the checkpoint and reassigned. The coins angered residents who said they felt that the American troops were also acting as Christian missionaries in a predominantly Muslim nation….

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Rogue Sadr militias roam Baghdad
Anna Badkhen | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
Nadir Hamid Shamkhi has not stepped outside since March 24, when she retrieved her kidnapped husband’s tortured body from a Baghdad morgue, buried him, and fled to her relatives’ house in Risala – a slum in southwestern Baghdad. Ms. Shamkhi is counting on the black Shiite flag that flies from her sanctuary’s roof to protect her from the militants. But she is not certain it will. Too afraid of being recognized in the streets by members of the Shiite militia that killed her husband, she hasn’t even filed a claim with the government to receive the $1,800 compensation for his death…

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Disturbing 2008 Global Peace Index Report
Stephen Lendman
The Global Peace Index (GPI) was launched in May 2007 and claims to be the first study of its kind ranking nations according to their peacefulness. Last year’s report covered 121 countries. The latest increased it to 140. Australian entrepreneur Steve Killelea conceived the idea and won some dubious endorsements. Among them, the Dalai Lama. He served as a CIA asset from the late 1950s until 1974 and may again be in tow if the Bush administration’s awarding him a Congressional Gold Medal last year and closeness to him now is an indication. Other endorsers include Jordan’s Queen Noor; another member of her royal family; four members of the British House of Lords; Ted Turner; Virgin Group’s Richard Branson; other business and community leaders; Australia’s former Prime Minister JM Fraser; other former high-ranking government officials; academics; a former BBC war correspondent and MP; plus six Nobel Laureates, including Jimmy Carter. In fairness, a few distinguished names join them, including Helen Caldicott and economics professor James Galbraith…

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CNN reporter talks of pressure to be patriotic
DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer
CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin said Thursday she was referring to her time spent at MSNBC when she said she felt pressure not to report stories critical of the Bush administration during the time leading up to the Iraq war. Yellin’s initial comments, made during a discussion with Anderson Cooper on CNN Wednesday, shifted attention to the news media’s performance following release of a critical assessment of the Bush administration by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. He wrote that Bush’s strategy for selling the war was less than candid and honest. During her CNN appearance, Yellin said the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives to make sure the war was presented “in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.”…

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Gaza Diary: Driving on cooking oil
Omar, a humanitarian worker, in partnership with Oxfam
Gaza now smells of falafel. The people here are transferring their used cooking oil into their cars to be used as fuel. With the fuel shortage continuing due to the Israeli blockade, donkeys now have the word ‘taxi’ written on their behinds. It is as if we have gone back to the Stone Age. Nevertheless, I missed my niece’s wedding because no donkey could carry me fast enough to arrive on time for the ceremony. I was upset that I missed an event so important for her…

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US Army Suicide Rate Continues to Rise
Al Pessin, VOA
The U.S. Army reported Thursday that the suicide rate among its soldiers continued to rise last year, and is now nearly double the rate recorded before the invasion of Iraq. But they say last year’s increase was not as sharp as the two previous years. VOA’s Al Pessin reports from the Pentagon. The army says it has confirmed that 115 active-duty soldiers committed suicide last year, with two more investigations still pending. That is a rate of nearly 19 per 100,000 soldiers. The rate was just under 10 per 100,000 in 2002, before the Iraq invasion, and has been rising steadily, except for one year, ever since. The rates for the last two years are the highest since record keeping began in 1980…

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Senators say report of planned US strikes on Iran untrue
Nick Juliano, Raw Story
An anonymously sourced report that emerged Wednesday claims President Bush plans to launch an attack against Iran before summer’s end, but aides to two Senators who were supposedly told of the plan tell RAW STORY that the report is absolutely untrue. Asia Times correspondent Muhammad Cohen, reporting from New York, writes that an “informed source” has clued him in to plans from the Bush administration “to launch an air strike against Iran within the next two months.” Cohen’s source told him that Sens. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Richard Lugar (R-IN), the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, were secretly briefed on the administration’s plans and were prepared to write a New York Times op-ed condemning Bush. Aides to the two senators were quick to deny the report…

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Trial begins in Haditha killings
Aljazeera.net
A marine intelligence officer has lied to investigators to help cover up a squad’s killing of 24 Iraqis, a prosecutor said during opening statements in the officer’s court-martial. Lieutenant Andrew Grayson is the first of three defendants to go on trial over the Haditha killings in Iraq. The trial, which began on Thursday in California, is the biggest US criminal case involving deaths of Iraqis after the US led invasion in 2003….

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Government Forces Burn Apartments
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
The forces belong to the Iraqi Government Interior Commandos attacked to civilian areas burning two apartments, stealing money and mobile devices of civilians in Mosul City. So-called commandos belong to the Interior forces burnt tow apartments and stolen money, mobile devices belonging to the civilians in al Zahour Street in Mosul City on 27 May 2008 according to the eyewitnesses who gave information to heyetnet correspondent after the explosion….

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IT’S MY HOLOCAUST ~~ NOT YOURS
Desert Peace
A demonstration once again of the ultimate in ‘chutzpah’…. One of the administrators of the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem is not too happy that the City of Berlin erected a memorial to gays that were murdered during the war…. I can only guess that he fears competition in the ‘holocaust business’…. it’s SICK! Senior Yad Vashem member opposes homosexual memorial…

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Iraqis claim Marines are pushing Christianity in Fallujah
Jamal Naji and Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers
At the western entrance to the Iraqi city of Fallujah Tuesday, Muamar Anad handed his residence badge to the U.S. Marines guarding the city. They checked to be sure that he was a city resident, and when they were done, Anad said, a Marine slipped a coin out of his pocket and put it in his hand. Out of fear, he accepted it, Anad said. When he was inside the city, the college student said, he looked at one side of the coin. “Where will you spend eternity?” it asked. He flipped it over, and on the other side it read, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16.”…

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A radical Sunni argument against the treaty
badger, Arablinks
A Sunni member of parliament by the name of Omar al-Jabburi (described as a member of the Arab Bloc for National Dialog*) said he opposes the proposed treaty with the United States because in order to be sound and binding, an agreement would have to be between two parties each with an independent will, and as long as the American occupation continues, that cannot be said of any Iraqi government….

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Break The Siege On Gaza! Action postponed until 27th June
ISM Media Group ·
Put Your Body Where Your Heart Is – Break The Siege On Gaza! There is still time to get involved! People of conscience from around the world are gathering in Egypt now. The demonstration has been changed to June 27th to accommodate people continually arriving. People will attempt to enter Gaza in an act to break the murderous siege and to stand in solidarity with those inside. The siege, brutally imposed by the Israeli government in June 2007, following over a year of sanctions has resulted in lethal denial of medical access, shortages of food, fuel and electricity, and stands as a grave act of collective punishment….

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IOF troops withdraw from Beit Hanun after kidnapping tens of youths
Palestinian Information Center
IOF troops mounting armored vehicles withdrew from northern Gaza Strip on Thursday after bulldozing cultivated lands and kidnapping scores of young men. Local sources reported that the soldiers advanced into east of Beit Hanun amidst intensified firing while escorting two huge bulldozers that wreaked havoc in farmers’ lands. They said that the soldiers rounded up tens of young men including a photojournalist and took them to an unknown destination…

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