Wa’ed Society: “70 detainees died due to Israel’s systematic policy of torture”
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies Report
The Wa’ed Society for Detainees reported on Thursday that 70 Palestinian Detainees died due to torture in Israeli prisons and interrogation facilities since 1967. The statement of the society came as the world marked the International Day Against Torture. The society added that Israel legalizes torture against the detainees although it is one of the signatories of the 1986 UN document against torture. The agreement came into effect on June 26 1987 and in 1991 the Israeli government officially approved it. Yet, Israel continued torturing and abusing the detainees leading to the death of 70 detainees in addition to more than 120 who died of medical negligence…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45229

Bush is trying to impose a classic colonial status on Iraq
US efforts to force Iraqis to swallow permanent vassal status and give up control of their oil echoes British imperial history
Seumas Milne, Guardian
…What is certain is that, if Bush’s blueprint for indefinite foreign rule in Iraq and the takeover of its oil is forced down the throats of the Iraqi people, resistance and bloodshed will increase. Of course, it’s true that the US and Britain didn’t invade Iraq only for its oil. It was a projection of American power in the world’s most strategically sensitive region, with oil at its heart, which has brought catastrophe to Iraq and great danger to the Middle East and the wider world. That’s why the struggle to restore Iraq’s independence matters far beyond its borders – it is a global necessity…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45221

Is Iraq coming un-surged?
Swopa, Needlenose
Just when you might have been thinking you could, oh, “relax” a bit and just worry about Afghanistan going to hell, there’s more bad news from Iraq today. As Alissa Rubin reports for the New York Times: Two insurgent bomb blasts struck at pro-American Iraqi targets in Anbar province just west of Baghdad and in the northern city of Mosul on Thursday, and the police said at least 30 people were killed and 80 wounded. Iraqi police officials said three American marines were among the dead in the Anbar attack, which came just as the American military command was preparing to hand control of the province, once considered the hotbed of the insurgency, over to Iraqi forces. The bombings extended a pattern of multiple-casualty attacks in recent days that are clearly intended to kill local Iraqi leaders, in particular those who are believed to have collaborated with American forces against insurgents…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45220

The Rape of Iraq- Casinos & Whores
RickB
I cannot urge you enough to watch this youtube clip and post it yourself, an American- Martin Eisenstadt who is thought to be this guy (pretty well much confirmed see below for his own blog posts) talking at the ‘Baghdad Business 2 Business EXPO’ about business opportunities in Iraq, he evangelises about casinos in the green zone (built with slave labour incidentally), bringing in former Soviet Union and Thai ‘masseuses’ and is horrifically so racist it is difficult not to feel sick…This is the naked face of imperialism, utterly greedy, endlessly racist and brutally arrogant…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45214

Taking a cue from Israel
Khaled Amayreh
Despite continued blame-casting, Hamas and Fatah are getting themselves ready for Arab-mediated reconciliation talks aimed at restoring Palestinian national unity and ending the year-long rift between the two largest political factions in the occupied Palestinian territories. No concrete date has been designated for the intensive talks, but reliable sources in the Gaza Strip have intimated that Egypt is about to extend the invitations to both Hamas and Fatah for the resumption of the inter-Palestinian dialogue…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45227

Narratives Under Siege (17): Swimming in Sewage
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
“I think the sea probably is polluted. Sometimes I get strange white marks on my skin; but we come down to the beach every day because we have nowhere else to go.” Samer and his friends are hanging out on the beach in Gaza city, next to the old fishing harbour, and just about to jump into the sea. One of the boys holds a plastic bottle with several small fish and a tiny crab trapped inside. The fish are all dead. Less than a hundred metres away, a sewage pipe pours mucky water into streams of dark waste that flows towards the sea where Samer and his friends swim. Summer is intensely hot in the Gaza Strip, and families flock to their local beaches en masse. But on some beaches, bathers are now, literally, swimming in sewage…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45215

UN: Israel violated truce 7 times in one week
Roi Mandel, YNet
UN records 7 incidents of IDF soldiers attempting to drive Palestinian farmers away from border fence by shooting at them. Only one offence marked against Palestinians for firing on Sderot; report does not include most recent rocket fire Since it went into effect last week, at least eight violations of the new ceasefire agreement with Hamas and the Palestinian factions have been recorded, a UN source told Ynet on Thursday. According to the source, seven violations were committed by the IDF, while the Palestinians are responsible for just one…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45216

Shawan Jabarin – The Rights of a Human Rights Activists
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
In 1989, Shawan Jabarin 29 , a respected human rights field worker in the West Bank Al-Haq Human Rights organization, was nominated to the Reebok Human Rights Award, given to young people who have contributed to freedom of expression and human rights. In October 10 1989 Israeli soldiers knocked on the door to Shawan Jabarin’s home near Hebron on the West Bank. A few days earlier while Jabarin was at work the windows on Jabarin’s home was smashed broken, and the front door kicked in. Shawan Jabarin was asleep when suddenly awaken by his wife, in her condition of being in her nine month pregnant. The Israelis took her husband away, he was forced out of his home, not allowed to get dressed…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45217

Neocons Blast Rice Over North Korea, Iran
Robert Dreyfuss
… Like the rest of the ‘cons, Perle wants a showdown with Iran, and it’s looking less and less like he’s going to get one. How else to understand the likelihood that the United States is angling to open a US interests section in Tehran for the first time since the embassy was seized in 1979? Though the White House is playing it down, there are persistent reports that the State Department is getting ready to make just such a move. Iran, for its part, has welcomed the idea. Both Pyongyang and Tehran are probably thanking their lucky stars that President Bush invaded the Iraq part of the “Axis of Evil,” since now are they not only off the hook, but they’re actually talking turkey with the turkey in the White House…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45219

Iraqi refugees neglected by international community
Amnesty International
Denmark is preparing to deport four Iraqi men convicted of criminal offenses to Iraq, where they will face torture, ill-treatment or death at the hands of any one of the dangerous armed groups roaming the country. All four men had become legal residents of Denmark. Danish authorities are also attempting to reach an agreement with Iraqi officials to deport another 364 rejected Iraqi asylum-seekers. With 4.7 million people displaced in the years since the invasion of Iraq, the situation in Denmark highlights the international community’s negligent response to the plight of these refugees…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45222

Gaza: El Khoudary calls for reopening borders and crossings
Popular Committee Against Siege
Chairman of Popular Committee Against Siege PCAS, Gamal N. El Khoudary, calls today for open borders and crossings as soon as possible. He requested that Israel should respect the ceasefire and facilitate the life of people in Gaza. In a press conference held in Gaza today, he demanded that all Palestinian parties to be unified upon one position. He added in his speech that a cease fire must go on despite the violations perpetrated by Israel. “Closing the borders by Israel till now is unjustified since the start of the truce. Israel is taking some fired rockets as a pretext and this is illogic,” El Khoudary added. As for the fuel deliveries he confirmed that Israel is still supplying Gaza with the decreased amounts of fuel. Additionally he said, the main Gaza power plant will stop in two days if Israel doesn’t peruse the supplies. He warns that this will result in the death of many patients…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45223

Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory No. 26/2008 (19 – 25 June 2008)
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law continued in the OPT during the reporting period (19 – 25 June 2008): Shooting: During the reporting period, IOF killed 3 Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and wounded 18 others, including 5 children and 2 old men. In the West Bank, IOF killed 2 Palestinians and wounded 13 others, including 5 children. On 24 June 2008, IOF extra-judicially executed 2 Palestinians in Nablus; a prominent activist of the al-Quds Brigades (the armed wing of Islamic Jihad) and a university student. This attack came after the Egypt-brokered truce between Palestinian resistance groups in the Gaza Strip and Israel entered into force on 19 June 2008, which indicates that IOF may escalate attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank…

On the same day, 12 Palestinian civilians, including 4 children, were wounded when IOF used force to disperse a peaceful demonstration organized in protest to the construction of the Annexation Wall in Ne’lin village, west of Ramallah. A Palestinian child was also wounded in similar circumstance in Far’oun village, south of Tulkarm.

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45224

Dismantling Israel’s racist infrastructure is the key to peace in Middle East
Saree Makdisi*
A cease-fire went into effect in Gaza last week, offering some respite from the violence that has killed hundreds of Palestinians and five Israelis in recent months. It will do nothing, however, to address the underlying cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Intermittent spectacular violence may draw the world’s attention to the occupied Palestinian territories, but our obsession with violence actually distracts us from the real nature of Israel’s occupation, with its smothering bureaucratic control of everyday Palestinian life. This is an occupation ultimately enforced by tanks and bombs, and through the omnipresent threat, if not application, of violence. But its primary instruments are application forms, residency permits, population registries and title deeds. On its own, no cease-fire will relieve the beleaguered Palestinians…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45228

War News for Thursday, June 26, 2008
Iraq Today
MNF-Iraq is reporting the death of a Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldier in a roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad. on Wednesday, June 25th. No other details were released. The Santa Barbara News-Press is reporting the deaths of three U.S.-led coalition soldiers from an attack in Lagar Province on Thursday, June 26th. An Afghan interpreter was also killed in the attack. The Santa Barbara News-Press is reporting the deaths of three Marines from a suicide bomb attack in Karmah, Al Anbar province, Iraq on Thursday, June 26th. Two Iraqi interpreters and at least 20 Iraqis were also killed in the attack…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45225

GI Special 6F15: “They Didn’t Want Us There” – June 24, 2008
Thomas F. Barton
…Interview With The Resistance #1: Al-Rashideen Army; “We Consider That The War Had Never Come To An End As Invaders Claimed” “The Invaders Have Not Withdrawn Yet; We Are Part Of The Iraqi People Resisting The Occupation And We Are Dealing With The Language He Understands”…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45226

Israeli military continues to torture Palestinian children
Defence for Children International
On the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, DCI/PS releases further evidence that Israeli military forces in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) continue to abuse, threaten and torture Palestinian children. Today, DCI/PS is releasing two case studies to draw attention to the continuing plight of Palestinian children, in particular, the 700 Palestinian children who are arrested, interrogated and often abused by the Israeli military and police each year. In one case, Israeli interrogators beat 15-year-old Ibrahim S. over the course of several hours. Ibrahim was then threatened with sexual assault for the purpose of extracting his confession…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45212

Report: 24 patients died in Gaza during 24 days this month due to the siege
Palestinian Information Center
The European campaign to lift the siege reported that 24 Palestinian patients including children died during 24 days of current June as a result of the lack of medicines and the Israeli restrictions imposed on travel for medical treatment outside the Gaza Strip. In a report, the campaign said that since Israel started to tighten its siege on Gaza in mid-June 2007, the number of the siege victims rose to 195 out of 1,500 patients suffering difficult health conditions…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45201

Washington’s new alibi for a criminal war: the “surge has worked”
Bill Van Auken, WSWS
…The destruction of a society and the killing, maiming or violent displacement of fully a third of its population can create only continuous turmoil and ultimately a resurgence of mass resistance. Meanwhile, in the US itself, the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on this war have contributed to the onset of the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, creating the conditions for an eruption of mass social struggles.

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45189

Mahmoud Abbas’ Time Has Passed
John Taylor
…And now, a severe body blow for Abbas and his rump regime: de facto Israeli recognition of Hamas as Israel and Hamas agree to a cease-fire without preconditions. In return for an end to the firing of rockets, Israel promises to increase the range and quantity of goods allowed into Gaza. Whether the cease-fire will hold and the economy of Gaza will revive is uncertain, but the Israelis apparently decided trying to starve Hamas out of power was not going to work. So Mahmoud Abbas’ policy of shunning the rejectionists of Hamas, dictated by the United States and Israel, has been undercut by the Israelis themselves, undoubtedly hastening the day Abbas ceases to be president of the Palestinian Authority and becomes a resident of one of the little Arab towns the Israelis maintain for the protection of Palestinian collaborators whose usefulness is at an end…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45190

As seen on Aljazeera, American military killed civilians in Baiji
Roads to Iraq
– Totally agree with M of A, and I add these words: Notice that Maliki and Hakim as they called them “Iraqi Government” do not condemn, criticize or even question the American bombardments if it is occurred against civilians. Here you can watch the victims and the civilian casualties of Baiji bombardment, broadcast this morning on Aljazeera…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45199

Gaza man dies after the army didn’t allow him to leave the Strip for medical care
Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC News
Medical sources in Gaza City reported that a Palestinian man died on Thursday because he was prevented by the Israeli army to leave the Gaza Strip to get medical care. The sources said that Adnan Aloush, 55, had cancer and he needed life saving medical care outside Gaza, but the Israeli army refused. Aloush is the 197th patient who has died since June 2007 in Gaza because the Israeli army refused to allow them access to medical care outside the coastal region…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45197

US/NATO crisis in Afghanistan generates greater pressure on Pakistan
James Cogan, WSWS
…As the insurgency grows, NATO countries are continuing to baulk at US, Canadian and British appeals for them to send more troops to Afghanistan. Germany announced this week it would deploy an additional 1,000 personnel, but not until after October and only for service in the relatively calm northern sector of the country. The crisis within NATO over how it will furnish the additional combat troops that military commanders say are needed is also leading to ever greater demands on the new Pakistani government to do more to stop insurgents using its territory as a safe-haven. A volatile situation is developing in Pakistan as a result…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45194

Marines, Interpreters Among Those Killed in Iraq Attacks
Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post Foreign Service
Three U.S. Marines and two interpreters were among scores of people killed Thursday in two bombings in predominantly Sunni provinces in Iraq, the U.S. military said. U.S. officials have confirmed the death of 13 Americans killed in Iraq this week. Nine of them were attacked while attending meetings with Iraqis. The Marines were killed after a bomb exploded inside a building where they were meeting with local leaders in Anbar province, in western Iraq…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45213

U.N.: Opium Trade Soars in Afghanistan
Colum Lynch, Washington Post Staff Writer
Afghan opium cultivation grew 17 percent last year, continuing a six-year expansion of the country’s drug trade and increasing its share of global opium production to more than 92 percent, according to the 2008 World Drug Report, released Thursday by the United Nations. Afghanistan’s emergence as the world’s largest supplier of opium and heroin represents a serious setback to the U.S. policy in the region. The opium trade has soared since the U.S.-led 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, which had eradicated almost all of the country’s opium poppies in 2001. The proceeds from the illicit trade — which is concentrated in Taliban strongholds — are now helping finance a resurgent Taliban that is battling American troops and their allies…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45208

Iraq Bombings Target Local Officials, Killing 38 (Update1)
Camilla Hall
Iraqi local and provincial officials were targeted in two bombings that killed as many as 38 people and injured dozens, the latest incidents of violence after a period of relative calm. A car bomb killed 18 Iraqis and wounded 71 in an attack on a governor in the northwestern province of Ninewah. The bombing was aimed at the convoy of Governor Duraid Kashmoula, who survived the blast, President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Party said on its Arabic-language Web site. Five private guards were hurt. An Iraqi policeman was among the dead, and nine other officers were wounded, the U.S. military said…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45206

Israeli doctors complicit in torture -rights group
Reuters
Israel’s Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) group accused Israeli doctors on Thursday of ignoring what it described as the torture of Palestinian detainees during interrogations. The PHR said its findings were based on testimony from two Palestinians who developed trauma-related symptoms, such as weak hearing, panic attacks and incontinence during and after their detention. Israel said those findings were “fraught with mistakes, groundless claims and inaccuracies”…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45205

Gaza: De facto government accuses Al-Aqsa Brigades of violating Gaza truce and threatens action
Ma’an news
The de facto government in Gaza warned all Palestinian groups against violating the ceasefire agreement on Thursday. It described those violating the ceasefire as outside the Palestinian national consensus and “pawnbrokers of the [Israeli] occupation,” and added that it will take the necessary measures against them. The de facto government affirmed that the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire agreement is in the Palestinian national interest and was reached through national consensus, and that anyone who acts against this consensus will be held responsible before the people and the law. It called on the Egyptian authorities to intervene with those it described as trying to sabotage the truce agreement to further a partisan political agenda…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45209

IOA uproots 300 old olive trees
Palestinian Information Center
Israeli bulldozers have destroyed 300 old olive trees that date back to the Roman times in Beit Hanina village in occupied Jerusalem, the village’s municipal council reported on Wednesday. Nidal Abu Hamda, the council’s chairman, said that the Israeli occupation forces, which closed off the targeted area after declaring it a military zone on Tuesday, escorted huge bulldozers and assaulted villagers who tried to defend their centuries old trees. He appealed to all international institutions and human rights groups to help the village in face of such destruction…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45203

Gaza man dies after the army didn’t allow him to leave the Strip for medical care
Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC News
Medical sources in Gaza City reported that a Palestinian man died on Thursday because he was prevented by the Israeli army to leave the Gaza Strip to get medical care. The sources said that Adnan Aloush, 55, had cancer and he needed life saving medical care outside Gaza, but the Israeli army refused. Aloush is the 197th patient who has died since June 2007 in Gaza because the Israeli army refused to allow them access to medical care outside the coastal region…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45197

Prisoner ministry: Israel the only country sanctioning torture under int’l cover
Palestinian Information Center
The ministry of prisoner affairs stated Thursday that Israel is the only country in the world that practices torture under international political and legal cover, pointing out that there are more than 11,700 Palestinians in Israeli jails living in inhuman conditions. In a report issued by the ministry on the occasion of the world day against torture which marks 26 of June, Dr. Ahmed Shweideh said that the IOA has escalated its torture policy against prisoners, where from the first moment of arrest, the IOF troops use tight plastic stripes to shackle their victims and blindfold them before starting to beat them brutally with batons and rifle butts and to trample them underfoot…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45196

4 U.S. Soldiers, Interpreter Killed In Iraq Fighting
Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post
Four U.S. soldiers died in roadside bombings Tuesday and Wednesday, the U.S. military said, bringing to 10 the number of Americans killed in Iraq since Monday. Three U.S. soldiers and an interpreter were killed in a roadside bombing late Tuesday in Nineveh province, a military statement said. In recent weeks, U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up operations against Sunni insurgents in the area. An American soldier was killed in eastern Baghdad on Wednesday morning by an armor-piercing roadside bomb, the U.S. military said in a statement. Meanwhile, Iraqi officials said a U.S. airstrike killed four members of a family north of Baghdad early Wednesday…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45191

Suicide bomber kills 15, injures 17 near Falluja
Voices of Iraq
At least 15 persons were killed and 17 were wounded on Thursday in a suicide bombing attack in east of Falluja city, said a police source. “A suicide bomber blew himself up amid a meeting of tribes and the Sahwa (Awakening) Council in al-Karama district, east of Falluja, killing 15, including a number of the council’s members, and injuring 17,” the source, who asked for anonymity, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq (VOI). He gave no more details…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45202

Voices of Evil
Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
Benyamin Netanyahu and Daniel Pipes are two classical examples reflecting the brutal ugliness of Jewish Islamophobia. The former has been moving stridently toward full-fledged Zionist fascism while the latter is unabashedly calling for an all-out crusade by the US and Europe against the Muslim world, of course on Israel’s behalf. Let us start with Netanyahu, a racist, pathological liar by every shred of imagination. This week, Netanyahu had the temerity to claim that the Nazi-like Israeli occupation of Palestine was not the real root cause besetting the Middle East, and that the real source of trouble was “radical Islam.”…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45188

ZIOHACKS TARGET PRO PALESTINIAN WEBSITES
Desertpeace
Jewish terrorists have left their guns behind and busied themselves on the Internet this morning instead . Three Websites associated with pro Palestinian causes were hacked by them. A HaAretz report of the incident follows… . Rightists on Thursday hacked into three Web sites associated with the Israeli Arab and Palestinan causes, and embedded on their pages an image of the Israeli flag, the words to the Israeli national anthem and the symbol of an outlawed ultra-rightist movement…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45195

UNICEF’S BOLD DECISION ANGERS ADL’s FOXMAN
Desertpeace
The ADL is upset…again. This time with the decision by UNICEF to reject all donations from Israel’s multi billionaire Lev Leviev. In a press release issued yesterday by them they insisted that UNICEF change its policy on this matter claiming that it “smacks of selective political discrimination.” They further stated that “This decision only gives legitimacy to those who would seek to promote a boycott of the State of Israel and its supporters.”…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45200

Israel and Hezbollah ready to sign on prisoner swap deal
Barak Ravid, Yossi Melman, and Jack Khoury. Haaretz
Israel and Hezbollah have prepared a written agreement on a prisoner exchange that the cabinet will deliberate on Sunday and possible approve. If approved, Israel will sign the deal that will then be taken to Beirut by the German mediators for Hezbollah’s signature. The deal with Hezbollah aims to secure the release of IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who were captured in a cross-border raid by the Lebanese guerillas in July 2006, sparking the Second Lebanon War…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=45207