Exorcising a Child’s Nightmare…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
…So this piece of news was from an email I received on the 15th of March 08, from M. And this is what it said : Swedish press reveal serious facts on the markets for the sale of children in Iraq. Investigative journalism, published on page 6 of the broadest and largest newspaper – Swedish Agency for World News Express – which has been translated into more than 12 languages throughout the globe in the last 24 hours, which has caused an outcry in Sweden… The disguised Swedish press (Tiris Christenson), and her colleague (Thorbjorn Anderson) went in an old Brazilian Volkswagen car and followed closely the sale of children in a large market at the centre of Baghdad with pictures and sound .. Market for the sale of infants and adolescents .. Slave market in the land of the cradle of civilisation which made the readers and viewers cry the minute the story was published and shown on Swedish television! It’s an Iraqi girl named (Zahra) age of 4, sold in the centre of Baghdad for $ 500! Then the journalist shows the children that are sold at the copper market, and women forced to prostitution. The actual figures are not shown in the daily number of killings, the journalist continued describing the lives of the Iraqis under the daily killing, hunger, torture, kidnapping, slaughter and total anarchy, all under the cover of Democracy….

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Robert Fisk keeps deceiving you
Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Dream
Dear Editors of CommonDreams, You have today reposted an article from the UK Independent by Robert Fisk. Disgracefully, in his article Robert Fisk writes: “tens of thousands dead in Iraq”. I have no illusions whatsoever that the corporate Independent may consider to issue a correction and have no interest in speculating why Fisk keeps ignoring the Iraq’s reality and deceiving his readers. However I still hope CommonDreams may respect at least the memory of those Iraqis killed by our governments. Once again I urge you to issue a formal, visible correction of this dreadful charade of journalism. When the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, the Nuremberg’s supreme international crime, may have slaughtered well over 1.2 million Iraqi citizens, Fisk’s words equal genocide denial…

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TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME
Malcom Lagauche
Memorial Day weekend is the traditional start of many Little League Baseball organizations in the U.S. When I played baseball as a youngster in my home town of about 5,000 people, all teams assembled at the town library and then marched to the ball field, about a half mile away, with a marching band leading the way. The parade was viewed by townspeople lining the road. Opening day was at hand. This tradition again occurred this past weekend in the U.S. What about Iraqi kids and the playing of their sports? Some in Baquba weren’t so lucky. According to a Reuters report of May 30, 2008, titled, “Iraqi Children Playing Soccer Blown Up by Bomb (…) Amidst the “fog of war,” one glaring aspect of Iraqi society has received little or no ink in the U.S.: the gradual and violent cessation of sports in Iraq…

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An Agony Foretold: Bitter Roots, Bitter Fruits in the Middle East
Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque
Long before the Nabka, long before the Holocaust, the present-day agony in Israel and Palestine had already taken root. The ineradicable core of the conflict is brutally simple: the attempt by one people to take another people’s land. In this respect, the turmoil in the Middle East is just another chapter in one of the world’s oldest stories, for human beings have always been about the bloody business of conquest, dispossession and domination. The United States, for example, was built on this ancient principle. Its settling was cast largely in the same terms as those used later by the Zionists in Palestine: the claiming and cultivation of a land that was essentially empty — save for a few savages who could only benefit from the imposition of a superior civilization. (And if they couldn’t, so much the worse for them.)…

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American plans to loot Iraqi oil and other Bush war crimes
Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
Though Bush has given every other lie and cover story to justify the US war of aggression against Iraq, the real reasons for the ‘war’ are now openly admitted. An article in American Daily proposes that the oil fields of Iraq be seized and plundered to pay off America’s national debt of some 9.3 trillion dollars. I am shocked by the implication that they haven’t been so plundered already! I am outraged that the author expects the victims of US aggression pick up the tab for Bush’s capital crime! The article proposes that the US commit yet another war crime….

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More war lies and propaganda
Adel Safty, Special to Gulf News
All governments engage in self-promotion and propaganda to influence public opinion and achieve a measure of thought control – overtly so in authoritarian regimes, and more subtley in democracies. What distinguishes the Bush administration from other democratic governments, is the aggressiveness with which it engaged in propaganda, and the contempt with which it treated the people’s democratic right to know the truth. The Bush administration also co-opted the influential corporate media in its campaign of deception. Newspapers such as the Washington Post acted as a cheerleader for the war….

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New Contracts Reflect Continued Presence in Iraq
Walter Pincus, Washington Post
The depth of U.S. involvement in Iraq and the difficulty the next president will face in pulling personnel out of the country are illustrated by a handful of new contract proposals made public in May. The contracts call for new spending, from supplying mentors to officials with Iraq’s Defense and Interior ministries to establishing a U.S.-marshal-type system to protect Iraqi courts. Contractors would provide more than 100 linguists with secret clearances and deliver food to Iraqi detainees at a new, U.S.-run prison….

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IRAQ: Girls denied education
Parents concerned about militia violence are pulling their daughters out of school.
By Samah Samad in Kirkuk
Thirteen-year-old Huda Ahmed’s world was turned upside down when her classmate was kidnapped two years ago. The girl was snatched by armed men on her way to school in Kirkuk, and was only released three days later when her family paid 40,000 US dollars in ransom. Fearing harm may come to their only daughter, Huda’s parents pulled her out of school. Often depressed, she now spends her days cleaning the house and watching television when there’s electricity…

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Hundreds New Settlement Units in Al-Quds
IslamOnline.net & News Agencies
Defying international calls to halt settlement construction, Israel unveiled on Sunday, June 1, plans to build hundreds of settlement units inside Al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem). “We will invite tenders for the construction of 121 housing units in Har Homa and 763 others in Pisgat Zeev,” Israeli Housing Ministry spokesman Eran Sidis told Agence France-Presse (AFP), referring to two settlements in Al-Quds. The construction bid comes few days before the 31th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the holy city during the 1967 Middle East war…

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US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships
Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian,
The United States is operating “floating prisons” to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees. Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained…

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The other “Mosul operations” story
badger, Arablinks
The security operation by the Iraqi government in Ninawa province has uncovered the fact that a large part of the provincial [security] agency has been implicated in corruption and in feeding operations of violence, since the fall of Baghdad in 2003. But the recent disclosures, connected in their overwhelming majority with the Democratic Party of Kurdistan—led by the president of the Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani—have not led to confrontations between the [Iraqi] government and the Kurdish parties…

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The Promised Land
Robert Thompson, AxisofLogic.com
…As I have written before, the only long-term solution to the problem of Palestine is to have a single state where every inhabitant has equal rights regardless of his or her religious affiliation or lack of it. A true and lasting peace can never come from the establishment of a supposedly “Jewish state” enveloping a series of “Bantustans” whose inhabitants are then expected to provide cheap (or slave) labour for the invaders, enabling the latter to live in luxury in the surrounding areas by operating as a local militaristic super-power…

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Baghdad Jews Have Become a Fearful Few
STEPHEN FARRELL, NYTimes
…Among those who remain is a former car salesman who describes himself as the “rabbi, slaughterer and one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Iraq.”…He lamented that Jews in Baghdad had had no meeting place since the Meir Tweig synagogue, the last in the city, was closed in 2003, after it became too dangerous to gather openly…

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Australia ends Iraq combat operations
TANALEE SMITH, AP
Australia, a staunch U.S. ally and one of the first countries to commit troops to the war in Iraq five years ago, ended combat operations there Sunday. Soldiers lowered the Australian flag that had flown over Camp Terendak in the southern Iraqi city of Talil. The combat troops were expected to return to Australia over the next few weeks, with the first of them arriving home Sunday. The move fulfills a campaign promise by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who was swept into office in November largely on the promise that he would bring home the country’s 550 combat troops by the middle of 2008. Rudd has said the Iraq deployment made Australia more of a target for terrorism…

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Iraq says agreement talks with U.S. still in early stage
Xinhua
The Iraqi government said Sunday that its negotiations with the United States over their future relations are still in the early stage and the sovereignty will not be sacrificed. The remarks came amid strong voice in Iraq against a planned agreement, which is expected to enable the U.S. a long-term military presence here. The two sides intended to wrap up by the end of July the negotiations which commenced early this year….

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Tadamun: IOF troops killed 45 Palestinians including five children last month
Palestinian Information Center
International Tadamun (solidarity) society for human rights reported that the IOF troops killed 45 Palestinian citizens during last May including five children and two women, adding that most of the victims were murdered in the Gaza Strip. In a monthly report received by the PIC, the society said that this large number of victims in one month clearly indicates that the Israeli occupation is persistent in its aggression through pursuing the policy of execution and assassination against the Palestinians despite it is proscribed by international conventions and charters….

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Saudi Arabia criticizes U.S. – Iraq security agreement
Roads to Iraq
If the Iranian media and the Iranian news agencies report this “US bribing Iraqi MPs to sign deal”, it will not surprise me, and if the Americans really tried to bribe Iraqi MP’s, that is also understandable; America is “bribe culture”. But if this is reported on the Saudi media then it is something else, shows how bad the U.S. – Saudi relations, and how disappointed the Saudi…

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AN APOLOGY FROM DESERTPEACE
Desertpeace
Yesterday I posted a piece about a ‘purge’ at the HaAretz Newspaper.
It was sent to me by a very reliable source and dear friend…. but apparently the content was not quite the truth….So, to my readers, my humble apologies. This was a mistake and every attempt will be made to insure it never happens again. I must add that I am very pleased the information was not correct…

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Music school battles persecution
Haider Salahuddin, Reuters
Gunmen threaten to kill their relatives, roadside bombs make journeys to school hazardous and religious hardliners persecute them — but the children of Iraq’s Music and Ballet School have an antidote to war: music. “When I play my oud, I defy violence in society,” said Haneen Imad, 17, referring to her traditional Arabic lute, as she played an old folk song on its strings. “When I hear the sound of a helicopter droning over my head, I play louder.”…

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IRAQ: Ministry issues drought warning
IRIN News
Iraq is suffering from water shortages that could lead to widespread drought as a result of the water policies of neighbouring countries and an unusually dry winter, the Iraqi Water Resources Ministry has said in a statement. “The shortage of rain, which last winter was 30 percent of what it was in previous years, has led to an obvious impact on water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates and their tributaries,” the Ministry said. Iraq’s total water store in reservoirs and lakes is currently 22.07 billion cu. m. – down from the pervious year by 9.19 billion cu. m., it said. Iraqi officials have accused Syria, Turkey and Iran of either building dams on the Tigris and Euphrates or changing the course of tributaries leading to Iraq, and the government is dispatching official delegations to these countries next week to discuss the problem…

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Hezbollah hands over Israeli remains
Los Angeles Times
Israel handed over a convicted Hezbollah spy to Lebanon on Sunday and in a surprise move the Islamic guerrilla group turned over what it said were remains of Israeli troops killed in a 2006 war. The Hezbollah gesture, along with recent comments by its leader, signaled that a larger prisoner exchange could be in the works. Israel said that Sunday’s exchanges were unrelated to a deal that would include Israel releasing the longest-serving Lebanese prisoner and Hezbollah setting free two soldiers captured in a 2006 raid that sparked the monthlong war. But a senior Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, said a deal was in the making, though there was no timetable…

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