we need ideas to help URUKNET
Mary Rizzo, Alterinfonet
Hello friends, fellow activists, writers, translators, editors, bloggers One of the most important sites has been under extreme pressure for quite some time. Uruknet has been hacked, taken of Google News indexing and now, the latest… take off Google completely. How can this be done? We really don’t know, but we do know that Google has refused to respond to the thousands of requests by readers to reinstate Uruknet on Google News. They came up with a response after weeks only to the site itself where it “reasoned” that Uruknet was “only” an aggregator. All of us know that it is an exceptionally important aggregator, but it is far more than that! It contains original material, has editorial choices and space for commentary and it presents for an international public much material that otherwise would not be translated or disseminated. Without being listed on Google, as much as we detest Google for its arbitrary blocking that many of us have had to undergo, losing readership in the meantime, we are able to admit that for a news site to not be listed AT ALL on Google means that NO ONE at all finds their articles on a simple search…

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LEBANON: “Lost generation” of Iraqi refugee children
IRIN News
Of the 10 million refugees worldwide, half are children, estimates UK-based World Vision – children who will grow up as a “lost generation” unless more is done to address their needs. “To preserve the young generation growing up today, we need to shield children from violence, enhance humanitarian access and provide more resources targeted to children’s specific needs,” World Vision said in a report highlighting the plight of Iraqi refugee children in Jordan, released to coincide with 20 June, World Refugee Day. Such problems are clearly evident in Lebanon, where the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates half the 50,000 Iraqi refugees are children…

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Are They Really Oil Wars? No
Xymphora
…One of the myths floating around is that the attack on Iraq was part of an operation intended to ‘seize the oilfields’. This is preposterous from the point of view of oil company interests. Past experience, and the current situation in Iraq, prove that the only sensible way to obtain access to the oil is to have local officials run the situation. ‘Seizing the oilfields’ is a pure Zionist notion, first suggested by covert Zionist Henry Kissinger in the early 1970s, and is intended not to obtain American corporate access to the oil, but to remove the ‘oil weapon’ from the Arabs….

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Colors of an Occupation.
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
…I simply can’t come to terms with a very simple fact—this Occupation (Zionist American and racist Iranian – and I will never cease repeating it) has managed to turn a modern country, a modern state, a functioning entity, a sovereign nation into a rubble of sectarianism, corruption, theft and murder. Think about it for a minute…In the space of 5 years, this country has been turned into a disfigured entity, a monster. Many of you can’t see that. I’ll tell you why – because in the recesses of your minds, you have this automatic voice like a tape that keeps playing and which says – “Saddam was a dictator, he was a bad man, so yes, it is unfortunate but…”We really need to get to that voice inside your heads that keeps repeating these injunctions and turns you into parrots, because it is these injunctions that prevent you from fully recognizing how Iraq has been deformed into a grotesque place, and it has become only a place, nothing else, a place of bloodied thorns… Make no mistake about it. What do you expect from a Woman who has been repeatedly gang raped for over 5 years? Close your eyes and try to imagine any woman you personally know who has been gang raped for 5 years, daily, daily, daily…

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Torturegate: Truth, But No Consequences
Chris Floyd
This has been one of the most extraordinary weeks in modern American history. The many isolated streams of evidence about the Bush Administration’s torture system – and the direct responsibility of the Administration’s highest officials for this vast crime – have now converged into a mighty flood: undeniable, unignorable, pouring through the halls of Congress and media newsrooms, lashing at the walls of the White House itself. In the course of the past few days, a series of events has laid bare the stinking sepsis at the heart of the Bush Regime for all to see…

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The Semantics of Bush’s Torture Policy
Jason Leopold
The Bush administration built a legal framework – relying on semantics and secrecy – to subject detainees at Guantanamo Bay to brutal interrogation techniques and then to hide the reality from human rights observers, according to internal government documents. The documents, made public by the Senate Armed Services Committee, undercut assertions by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials who have blamed cruel treatment of detainees on “a few bad apples” who acted on their own….

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Afghan puppet fumes as Taleban seize US helicopters
Ameen Izzadeen
Hamid Karazai, the president of the US-controlled state of Afghanistan, last Sunday had the temerity to issue a warning to his country’s powerful neighbour, Pakistan. Karzai, whose writ does not extend beyond Kabul and who cannot take any decision without consulting the United States, breathed fire saying he would send Afghan troops across the border into Pakistan, because his country had the right of self-defence, if Pakistan did not get tough with Taleban militants who were operating from Pakistan’s tribal areas…

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Top Pentagon Officials Developed Brutal Interrogation Methods at Guantanamo
Jason Leopold
Top Pentagon officials developed the harsh interrogation methods used against detainees at Guantanamo less than a month before the Justice Department issued two now repudiated memorandums that gave interrogators legal cover to employ the tactics, according to documents released Tuesday by the Senate Armed Services Committee. The documents undercut assertions by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and other senior administration officials that the brutal interrogations were the result of “a few bad apples” who acted on their own accord…

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Israel’s very own Guantanamos
Khaled Amayreh
Palestinians inspect the wreckage of a car hit by an Israeli air strike on Gaza, virtually the largest open air prison in the world. Israeli maltreatment of Palestinian captives and political prisoners has reached unprecedented levels of brutality, according to lawyers, human rights groups and newly-released prisoners. There are currently as many as 12,000 Palestinian detainees languishing in Israeli detention camps, many of them without charge or trial. They include hundreds of university professors, engineers, school teachers as well as religious and civic leaders, students, resistance fighters and women activists….

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IRAQ: Disappearing lake a blow to livelihoods
IRIN News
Iraq’s Lake Hamrin in the northeastern province of Diyala has shrunk to nearly half its size and could dry up in a month or two, ruining the livelihoods of many farmers and fishermen, according to a local official and residents. “The lack of water from Iran’s River al-Wand and Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG] has caused Lake Hamrin to lose nearly 80 percent of its capacity,” said Mowafaq Hawar Mohammed, an expert with the provincial water resources directorate…

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Gaza: Anything for a Bath, Anything for Fuel
Mohammed Omer
The girl, about 16, is wandering about Jebaliya refugee camp, picking up anything she thinks can burn. She cannot find enough bits of wood, so she gathers plastic bags, old notebooks and even a pair of broken plastic sandals. “I want to heat some water,” she said. “I want a bath.” Not far away, Mohammed Abu Elenin, 23, exhaustion all over his face, prepares for a fourth night outside a gas station to refill his canister. His brother Nour has sat up with him. Earlier he could get half a fill. Now he doesn’t know what may come, but waits. “Some weeks ago, I managed to get a half cylinder of cooking gas,” he says. “It lasted just one week. Now we have nothing to cook with.”…

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Deals with Iraq are set to bring oil giants back
Andrew E. Kramer
Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat…

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Dr. Khaled: Resistance, AMSI and Conference- Part II
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
…After five years there is found strong anti-occupation itself in a position firmer and stronger. Thanks to the resistance and a historic moment. If that was wrong previously about being delayed in this case it would be committing an unforgivable sin against our people and the blood of its martyrs. This opportunity had to be represented by the necessity to form a reference for the national political and incubator of the armed resistance in order to escalate and mobilize our people….

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Hezbollah sees role beyond Israel leaving Shebaa Farms
AFP
The Shiite movement Hezbollah said on Thursday that Lebanon would still need its armed presence even if Israel finally quit the disputed Shebaa Farms district in the south. “Any Zionist retreat from the Shebaa Farms would be a big achievement for the ‘resistance’ for this would be the result of its role and its pressure,” Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah was quoted as saying by the state-run National News Agency…

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‘Updated’ Western offer to Iran highlights energy, trade
Agence France Presse (AFP)
Iran would receive benefits in nuclear energy, trade, finance, agriculture and high technology if it halted uranium enrichment as demanded by several major powers, according to a document released on Tuesday by the US State Department. The package presented to Tehran on Saturday offers Iran a chance to return to the international fold after years of isolation over its sensitive nuclear work, according to a copy of the proposed deal. Among key provisions, Iran was offered support in building “a light-water reactor based on state-of-the-art technology” as well as “legally binding” guarantees for nuclear fuel supplies…

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Behind the new wave of assassinations in Mosul
Roads to Iraq
A new wave of assassinations in Mosul. According Al-Fatehoon, a new initiative from the Talabani, Barzani and Abdu Al-Aziz Al-Hakim to dominate the upcoming provincial election in Mosul. A secret meeting took place negotiates the new developments after the Maliki’s “Lion Roar”. The meeting discussed the gathering of intelligence about Iraqi army movements, and a security group is formed with the task of assassination of the Kurdish parties oppositions in the city, especially the Islamic Party members….

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IOF troops kill Palestinian fighter in Gaza one hour before calm starts
Palestinian Information Center
The IOF troops killed at dawn Thursday a Palestinian fighter affiliated with the Army of Islam and wounded two others when they shelled, just an hour and a half before the truce went into effect, a group of fighters east of the Bureij refugee camp, central Gaza Strip. Palestinian local sources told the PIC reporter the Israeli shelling led to the death of fighter Rami Abu Swureih and wounded two others affiliated with the Army of Islam who were transferred later to the Aqsa Martyrs hospital…

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Sadr militia won’t resist Iraq offensive
UPI
Iraqi officials say radical Shiite militias have agreed to let the government retake control of a provincial capital without a fight. Forces loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr have told Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki they won’t offer resistance when an expected offensive to take control of Amarah, capital of Maysan province, begins this week, USA Today reported Wednesday…

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Report: Israeli siege claimed lives of 116 patients since beginning of 2008
Palestinian Information Center
A report issued by the European campaign to lift the siege stated that the number of the siege victims has risen to 116 Palestinian patients including children since the beginning of 2008 which indicates the Gaza Strip is witnessing a notable rise in the death toll of patients. According to the report, the total number of the siege victims since the Israeli siege imposed about a year ago, thus, has reached 192 patients…

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Before Iraq inks deal with U.S., a little history
DeWayne Wickham
The biggest thing Iraqi officials have going against them in their negotiations with the Bush administration over the status of U.S. forces in that country is history. What the United States wants from countries it occupies, it usually gets. Last week, as some lawmakers in Iraq complained about what they saw as heavy-handed efforts of U.S. negotiators to secure a long-term agreement to maintain nearly 60 military bases in that country, President Bush was in Germany assuring the world that the deal would get done…

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Lost in the cyberspace
Google’s censorship against Uruknet
Uruknet
Google must really have a thing against Uruknet. After Google News’ censorship Uruknet disappears even on Google’s search engine. Google stopped indexing Uruknet the middle of May. After Uruknet wrote (again!) many e-mails to Google (and again! we didn’t receive any reply) Google restarted indexing some (not all!) Uruknet’s article on June 17. However, it seems that these articles have a short life on Google since they keep disappearing immediately after they are indexed. For instance this is a Google’s page saved today, June 19, at 3pm Rome time and this is the same search Google page, the same day at 10 pm Rome time. While the first page at 3pm shows the Uruknet’s article indexed by Google, in the second page’s results the article disappeared and Google left simple the Uruknet’s homepage. Moreover Uruknet’s articles indexed by Google before the middle of May are being disappearing as if someone is manually deleting them. As odd it may seem, it’s as if someone inside Google deleted the indexed article…We don’t ask anymore our readers to write to Google since we lost even our last hopes in their fairness and good faith, but we would be grateful if our readers could post and distribute this article over the Internet; this affair goes far beyond Uruknet and Internet censorship is a real threat and is happening now…

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