Living hell
Mohammed, Last-Of-Iraqis
We are living in a real hell now; for the past 3 days till now there is a sever sand storm, the sky is red and the air is suffocating added to that the heat is unbearable it reaches 60s and 70s C° in the sun and high 40s in the shade and since we have a sand storm then we can’t open the windows and you can imagine how nice the weather is in a closed room in these temperatures…well, I bet you are thinking with your selves what is the problem? Just turn on the air conditioner or the air cooler!! Well, those are electrical devices and they need something really rare to operate; it’s the holy electricity…yes, believe me in Iraq electricity is holy… Yes 5 days without a single drop of fuel, that means I can’t operate my home generator and once the fuel in the car is finished I’ll have to stay at home and screw working, the queue for the gas station is about 6 km long with two rows and that means everything in Iraq will stop working pretty soon, even food will disappear from the markets if this continues …it has been 4 days without electricity!! Well, we had it for 2 hours during the past 100 hours. It has been 5 days and there is no fuel in the gas stations! … Would anybody want to stay in a country like this… May god have revenge from everyone who caused this…

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Historic Israel-Iraq handshake
Barak shakes hands with Iraqi “president”
Roni Sofer, Ynet News
Those attending the international conference in the Greek capital on Tuesday afternoon witnessed a truly historic event – a handshake between the president of Iraq and Israel’s minister of defense. Minister Ehud Barak, who is participating in the gathering of the Socialist International congress in his capacity as chairman of the Labor party, warmly shook the hand of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. The two were then joined by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who also extended his hand to them…

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Elimination Round: Hurtling Down History’s Dark Roads
Chris Floyd
With the backing and the blessing of local government and the police, the anti-Semitic organization takes its program into the local schools, to hammer home its stern, unyielding message: Girls, do not give your bodies to the racial enemy! Do not let them seduce and defile your innocence with their devious ways! The city’s own welfare representative heads up the program of the “Anti-Assimilation Department.” He shows the schoolgirls a film — “Sleeping with the Enemy” — which dramatizes how the filthy Semite worms his way into the affections of an innocent girl then cruelly abandons her. This “abnormal phenomenon” is plaguing several cities in the area, says the police chief; there have already been many cases of racially pure girls “joining with” Semite men…A report taken from the crumbling pages of Der Stürmer or some other German paper of the 1930s? No; it all comes from Haaretz, the liberal Israeli paper, and is happening right now. The Semites now being accused as sexual predators, racial defilers, devious operators and “unclean” subhumans who should be removed from the land are the Arab citizens of Israel. As Haaretz reports this week, the Anti-Assimilation Department of the religious group Yad L’ahim — “which works to prevent Jewish girls from dating Muslim men” — has taken its “Sleeping With the Enemy” program into the schools of Kiryat Gat, where the city fathers also fret about local Jewish girls “joining with Bedouin men.” …

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Iraq Suffering Miles-Long Gas Lines Despite Oil Riches
SEBASTIAN ABBOT
Frustrated Iraqis trying to tank up their cars faced miles-long gas lines in temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Tuesday – a stark reminder that a country with one of the world’s largest oil reserves still has major challenges delivering fuel to its people. Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad blamed the shortage on sabotage of a pipeline bringing crude oil from the southern fields to a refinery in Baghdad. He gave no further details and would not say how long the shortage would last. The fragile nature of the country’s oil distribution system means that periodic shortages appear from time to time. But this week’s crunch seems worse than most…

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Witnesses tell of worsening conditions for Palestinians to visiting UN team
UN News Centre
A three-member United Nations team investigative team has received accounts of grave economic, health and human rights conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, particularly in Gaza, from witnesses it interviewed in Jordan, the second stop on a three-nation visit that also includes Egypt and Syria. In a statement issued at the end of its visit to Amman, the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories expressed serious concern about reports it received about the “strangulation” of the Palestinian economy, the impact of the separation wall on the human rights of Palestinians, expanding settlements, and the condition of the Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons and detention centres…

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IRAQ: 340 academics and 2,334 women killed by militias in 3 years, Human Rights Ministry says
Azzaman
The Ministry of Human Rights says the country’s unruly militias and gunmen have killed 340 academics as well as 2,334 women in the years from 2005 to 2007. It is the first time the ministry reveals its records of the campaign of killings and assassinations against the country’s intelligentsia and women. The ministry made the revelations in the wake of the latest campaign of terror targeting this time the country’s main judges…

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Cheney’s Halliburton electrocutes US soldiers in Iraq
Dear Kitty. Some blog
From the New York Times: The Pentagon has ordered electrical inspections of all buildings in Iraq maintained by KBR, a major military contractor, after the electrocutions of several United States service members. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, told Congress of the new inspections while also disclosing that at least 13 Americans had been electrocuted in Iraq since the war began. Previously, the Pentagon said that 12 had been electrocuted. In addition to those killed, many more service members have received painful shocks, Army officials say. KBR, of course, used to be a subsidiary of Halliburton, the corporation of George W. Bush’s Vice President, Dick Cheney…

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Waterless West Bank
IOL Staff
The occupied West Bank is facing a grave water shortage as a result of the discriminate Israeli policies, an Israeli human rights group warned on Tuesday, July 1. “The shortage will have serious repercussions on the economy and the health of tens of thousands of Palestinians,” B’Tselem said. “The chronic water shortage results in large part from Israel’s discriminatory policy in distributing the joint water resources in the West Bank, and the limits it places on the Palestinian Authority’s ability to drill new wells.” B’Tselem said Israel has complete control over the joint water resources and forbids Palestinians from drilling new water wells to meet water needs.

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Popular committee: The Gaza private sector is in a state of clinical death
Palestinian Information Center
The popular committee against the siege warned that the private sector in the Gaza Strip is in a state of clinical death and paralyzed and the UN institutions do nothing to save the situation from collapse. The popular committee pointed out that the commercial sector completely collapsed except for some bakeries and activities related to transport and communication which are also threatened with collapse from time to time…

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US says Israel-Iran story false
BBC
The US state department has criticised reported comments by a defence official that it was increasingly likely Israel would attack Iran in the coming months. An unnamed senior defence official told ABC News that if attacked Iran would retaliate against Israel and the US. State department spokesman Tom Caset dismissed the anonymous comments as ill-informed and discourteous. “It’s rather foolish of people who often have no clue what they’re talking about to assert things and not even have the courtesy to do so on the basis of their name,” he told reporters…

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Hamas: Israel’s decision to close the crossings is a violation of the truce
Palestinian Information Center
The Hamas Movement stated Tuesday that the Israeli decision to close the Gaza crossings is a violation of the truce agreement and aimed to blackmail the Palestinian factions and the Palestinian people, adding that this decision is crippling to Egypt’s role. In a statement, Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said that this was a clear retreat by the Israeli occupation from the calm agreement and fully in line with what was stated Monday by Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni that the opening of the crossings was conditional on the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit…

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Iran must avoid ‘provocative’ nuclear talk: leader’s aide
Africasia
A top advisor to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Tuesday against the “provocative” remarks on the nuclear crisis with the West that are associated with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “The officials and the political experts need to avoid provocative and illogical declarations and slogans,” Ali Akbar Velayati told the hardline Jomhouri Eslami newspaper in an interview. The comments by Velayati, who is currently foreign policy advisor to Khamenei and served as foreign minister from 1981 to 1997, come at a critical time in the Islamic republic’s five-year nuclear crisis with the West…Velayati did not mention Ahmadinejad by name but the controversial president has caused alarm both inside and outside Iran with his provocative comments on the nuclear drive. Ahmadinejad has compared the nuclear programme to a train without brakes and asserted that Iran is now the most powerful nation in the world… Velayati also spoke out in favour of negotiations with the world powers…

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Iraq War Photographer Diary: Militias
By Zoriah in Baghdad
…I am noticing a disturbing trend in Iraq right now, one that I feel pretty sure will prove to be a major mistake in this war and cause a fair amount of grief to the Iraqi people and most likely beyond. The U.S. Military is arming and funding militias and civil military groups across the country…The streets of Iraq are now filled with various militias and private security forces. Think of these militias as Blackwater without background checks, rules or any kind of oversight whatsoever (ok, so just think of it like Blackwater!) . Often, they are composed mainly of children not old enough to drive and carrying AK-47 assault rifles nearly as big as themselves. Another soldier explains to me that most of the members from the militant groups and death squads a year or two ago, are now either wearing the uniforms of the Iraqi National Police Force, or in one of the hundreds, if not thousands of militias. As I said before, I no expert on such things, but in my humble opinion this appears to be a disaster waiting to happen…

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Palestinians who approach Gaza fence will be shot, says IDF
Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
Israel has informed Hamas it will fire “warning shots” at Palestinians
who enter an area west of the Gaza Strip border fence, extending for several hundred meters. Egyptian officials told Hamas of the new procedure, which is expected to raise tensions between the two sides. Israel’s representative in truce talks, Amos Gilad, told Egyptian mediators of the decision to declare the area west of the border a “special security zone” and to prevent Palestinians from entering it. The Egyptians informed Hamas, which objects to the plan…

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Full account Muhammed Omer’s hair-raising encounter with the Shin Beth
From Khalid Amayreh in the occupied Palestinian Territories
From his hospital bed at the European Hospital in Gaza and with barely audible voice, award-winning Palestinian journalist Muhammed Omer has given a full account of the hair-raising encounter he had last week with Shin Beth agents at the Allenby Bridge border-crossing between Jordan and the West Bank. Omer, a co-winner of the 2008 Martha Gelhorn Prize for Journalistic Excellence, said he was abused, assaulted , humiliated, ridiculed, kicked, and strip-searched at gunpoint by undisciplined Shin Beth officers until he had a nervous breakdown in which case he lost consciousness for at least 90 minutes…

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Iran’s MPs threaten to sever ties with IAEA if sanctions imposed
RIA Novosti
Iran’s parliament issued a statement on Tuesday saying the country could cease to cooperate with the United Nations nuclear watchdog if new sanctions are imposed over Iran’s controversial nuclear program. Iran is currently under three sets of relatively mild UN Security Council sanctions for defying demands to halt uranium enrichment, which it says it needs purely for electricity generation despite Western suspicions that the program is geared toward weapons production. The statement signed by 201 of 209 lawmakers urged the European Union to pursue the diplomatic route rather than impose sanctions, saying that pressure will only prompt Tehran to speed up its nuclear program…

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North Korea Smackdown
How the “Dear Leader” Blackmailed Bush
Mike Whitney
After seven years of nonstop belligerence and saber rattling, the Bush administration has given North Korea everything it has demanded. In return, the US gets nothing. The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, will not get access to Kim Jong-il’s nuclear stockpile or its “Top-Secret” file on weapons programs or be allowed to conduct surprise “go anywhere, see anything” inspections. Kim will continue to develop his long-range ballistic-missile delivery system, the Taepodong 2, just as he will (presumably) continue to export nuclear weapons technology to allies in the Middle East and elsewhere…

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Ex-Agent Says CIA Ignored Iran Facts
Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer
A former CIA operative who says he tried to warn the agency about faulty intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs now contends that CIA officials also ignored evidence that Iran had suspended work on a nuclear bomb. The onetime undercover agent, who has been barred by the CIA from using his real name, filed a motion in federal court late Friday asking the government to declassify legal documents describing what he says was a deliberate suppression of findings on Iran that were contrary to agency views at the time…

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THE SLEEPING GIANT AWAKENS… SLOWLY
Desertpeace
FINALLY!!!! Almost four days after the news broke about the incidents surrounding the torture and beating of a well known Palestinian journalist, the ’story’ is finding itself on the pages of some of the Corporate Media’s outlets.
OK… it was the weekend, in some countries a Holiday weekend… but that does mean the world gets ‘put on hold’ for a few days? Such actions are to be expected from the Israeli press, but from the major media outlets in the West? Even the Arab press, including AlJzeera has not printed one word about the incident. WHY???? Also silent has been newspapers that Mohammed Omer has written for in the past. WHY???? Below is the first report from a major news source…

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‘MOHAMMED OMER IS A LIAR!’ SO SAYS THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT
Desertpeace
The Israeli government clarified the entire situation regarding his ‘beatings and torture’ in a Reuters report just issued… THEY DENIED EVERYTHING! Israel would NEVER lie… I can’t understand why Reuters would even give coverage to such blatant lies… especially considering that Israel has still not given them details of the MURDER of their own reporter Fadel Shana two months ago. (May the lying bastards rot in hell!!! That’s all I have to say about Israel’s statement)…

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Gaza Strip Report 996: Tricky Israelis Alter Truce Conditions Hamas to Barter Open Borders for Trump Card,Gilad Shalit..and then?
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
On Monday Hamas accused Israeli officials of an attempt to change the terms of the current truce agreement in Gaza Strip by setting preconditions,the release of Israeli Gilad Shalit in exchange for an re-opening of Gaza border crossings.Sami Abu Zuhri Hamas spokesperson said the Israelis claim reflects bad intentions.”Hamas and other Palestinian factions are complying with the terms of the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, the commitment is on the condition that also apply on the Israelis. Hamas called the Israeli decision to close the Gaza crossings an obstruction to the ceasefire in an attempt to blackmail the Palestinian people…

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Invisible Hand: Washington Role in Iraq Oil Deal Revealed
Chris Floyd
Here’s a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the sham sovereignty of the American client state in Iraq. The New York Times reports – in a story of the “Sun Rises in the East” variety – that Bush Administration has admitted that American government officials and selected corporate cronies “helped” the Iraqis draw up the sweetheart contracts that will bring the original exploiters of Iraqi oil back to their old stomping grounds. This admission comes just weeks after Condi Rice publicly proclaimed that there was no U.S. government involvement in the oil deal. “It’s a private sector matter,” she told Fox News. Although the denial of Washington meddling was the usual outright lie…

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Education in the New Iraq
Zeyad, Healing Iraq
Five students were wounded when the bodyguards of Education Minister Khudhair al-Khuza’i (Da’wa) randomly opened fire at students inside the campus of the College of Education in the Saba’ Abkar district north of Adhamiya last Thursday. The minister, who was visiting the campus to oversee the ministry board examinations, first claimed there was an assassination attempt by one of the students prompting his security detail to open fire, though he later retracted his claim on an interview with Radio Sawa. PM Maliki has promised to investigate the incident. And we all know how these investigations end…

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US’ Violation of Human Rights in Afghanistan
Ash Narain Roy
The “war on terror” has led to widespread civilian deaths, often at the hands of unaccountable units led by the CIA and other foreign intelligence agencies. These foreign intelligence units “operate” with “impunity” in Afghanistan. This is not the propaganda of the Taliban or jehadi outfits. This is what the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Philip Alston, has said in his preliminary report on civilian deaths in Afghanistan a few days ago. Though he has not directly named the CIA, he has clearly alluded to the CIA and the US Special Operation Forces. The killing of 200 civilians by the US and international military forces in the first four months of 2008 is too high to escape global attention. Besides those targeted indiscriminately, Alston also refers to “a number of raids for which no state or military command appears ready to acknowledge responsibility”…

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Palestinians Hold “Monitoring Human Rights Compliance in Places of Detention” Conference on UN Day in Support of Torture Victims
Written by Cheryl Rettig for the Alternative Information Center (AIC)
The United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture (26 June) is an occasion when human rights organizations, torture survivors and concerned individuals raise public awareness of the continued prevalence of torture around the world and discuss methods of eradicating this evil. This year, the Treatment and Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture (TRC) and United against Torture (UAT) organized a conference in Ramallah titled “Monitoring Human Rights Compliance in Places of Detention.” This series of lectures by national and international organizations and experts examined torture in Palestine and Israel, and discussed the best practices for prevention. Dr. Mahmud Sehwail, General Director and Consultant Psychiatrist at the TRC stressed the importance of this day when he said it is an opportunity to support victims of torture, remember those who are suffering, and show international concern to eradicate this crime…

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Bush’s top general quashed torture dissent
New evidence shows that despite warnings from across the military, former Gen. Richard Myers shut down legal scrutiny of brutal interrogation tactics.
Mark Benjamin, Salon
The former Air Force general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, helped quash dissent from across the U.S. military as the Bush administration first set up a brutal interrogation regime for terrorism suspects, according to newly public documents and testimony from an ongoing Senate probe. In late 2002, documents show, officials from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps all complained that harsh interrogation tactics under consideration for use at the prison in Guantánamo Bay might be against the law. Those military officials called for further legal scrutiny of the tactics. The chief of the Army’s international law division, for example, said in a memo that some of the tactics, such as stress positions and sensory deprivation, “cross the line of ‘humane treatment’” and “may violate the torture statute.” …

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Hebron’s orphans
Seth Freedman, Guardian
Sitting in the courtyard of one of the orphanages facing closure by the Israeli Defence Force, Rasheed admitted he’d all but lost hope of preventing demise of the institution in which he’s worked for 12 years. “I want to ask the Israeli public one simple question,” said Rasheed, who teaches English to the orphans. “’Do you want to live in peace with the Palestinians?’ If the answer is yes, then they need to know they’re not taking the right track here [by shutting down the orphanages and attacking the Islamic Charitable Society, which administers them]. This method plays into the hands of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the other extremists; no one here will just sit back and watch the collapse of their community.” The ongoing saga of the orphanages has seen several raids by the army on ICS-affiliated businesses and schools, and severely weakened the charity’s ability to continue its desperately needed pastoral care in Hebron…

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Google and the Anti-Obama Bloggers
Miguel Helft, NYTimes
Did Google use its network of online services to silence critics of Barack Obama? That was the question buzzing on a corner of the blogosphere over the last few days, after several anti-Obama bloggers were unable to update their sites, which are hosted on Google’s Blogger service. The bloggers in question, most of them supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and all of them opposed to Senator Obama, received a notice from Google last week saying that their sites had been identified as potential “spam” blogs. “You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog,” the Google e-mail read…

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Dr. Al-Arian Indicted! Please Act!
www.FreeSamiNow.com
Last Thursday, three months after refusing to testify before a third grand jury, Dr. Sami Al-Arian – whose trial has been the single most important test case of the PATRIOT Act – was charged on two counts of contempt of court. Dr. Al-Arian refused to testify not only because the plea agreement he concluded with the government in 2006 clearly exempts him from having to do so, but also because it was a clear perjury trap…

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US, NATO deaths in Afghanistan pass Iraq toll
JASON STRAZIUSO Associated Press Writer
Militants killed more U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan in June than in Iraq for the second straight month, a grim milestone capping a run of headline-grabbing insurgent attacks that analysts say underscore the Taliban’s growing strength. The fundamentalist militia in June staged a sophisticated jailbreak that freed 886 prisoners, then briefly infiltrated a strategic valley outside Kandahar. Last week, a Pentagon report forecast the Taliban would maintain or increase its pace of attacks, which are already up 40 percent this year from 2007 where U.S. troops operate along the Pakistan border…

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Seymour Hersh: Preparing the Battlefield:
Laura Rozen
…I am also pretty skeptical about the CIA-supporting-PJAK/Baluch to destabilize the Iranian regime stuff that Gardiner, discredited former ABC news consultant and phony Obama interviewer Alexis Debat, and the Islamic Republic of Iran have been saying. Skeptical in large part because people out front saying it like Debat have shown an inclination to make things up, while well meaning and sincere people like Gardiner saying it don’t offer much in the way of evidence beyond their own conviction and some charts tracking the hawks’ rhetoric that make the conspiracy theorists go nuts but don’t in the end really show very much but that there’s a propaganda effort, which was already reported a year ago. (…) But mostly I’m skeptical because of the fact that former US intelligence sources I consider highly credible tell me the CIA is not working with the Baluch/Rigi, and those like British reporter James Brandon who have been up in the Qandil mountains with the PKK/PJAK say the groups have no good weapons, are extremely modestly supplied, and no sign of serious US or western support to be found. They expressed that they would welcome western support when he was up there over a year ago, but he saw no sign and they said they hadn’t gotten any. And indeed far more recently the PJAK has threatened to attack US forces because of US support to Turkey in its attacks against the PKK…

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Rafah Terminal to open for three days starting Tuesday
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
Palestinian sources reported on Monday that the Rafah terminal between the Gaza Strip and Egypt will open for three days starting on Tuesday. The sources added that the first two days will be for departure and the third for residents willing to return to Gaza. The Border Administration in Gaza reported that it is holding talks with Egypt in order to determine the criteria which would determine who will be allowed to leave Gaza through the terminal which will be opened until evening hours on Thursday…

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Vicar: Dire Times For Iraq’s Christians
Tells 60 Minutes Most Of Iraq’s Christians Have Fled Or Been Killed
CBS
From the time of Jesus, there have been Christians in what is now Iraq. The Christian community took root there after the Apostle Thomas headed east in the year 35. But now, after nearly 2,000 years, Iraqi Christians are being hunted, murdered and forced to flee… “You were here during Saddam’s reign. And now after. Which was better? Which was worse?” Pelley asked. “The situation now is clearly worse” than under Saddam, White replied. “There’s no comparison between Iraq now and then,” he told Pelley. “Things are the most difficult they have ever been for Christians. Probably ever in history. They’ve never known it like now.” “Wait a minute, Christians have been here for 2,000 years,” Pelley remarked. “Yes,” White said. “And it’s now the worst it has ever been,” Pelley replied. To understand the history of Iraqi Christianity, start with the Last Supper. One saint to the right of Jesus is the Apostle Thomas, who took the gospel and headed east after the death of Christ. In modern times, under Saddam, Christians were treated much the same as Muslims; Saddam’s right hand man, Tariq Aziz, was Christian. Before the war, it’s estimated there were about a million Christians in Iraq. They were a small minority, but free to worship, free to build churches, and free to speak the ancient language of Jesus, Aramaic. But, after the invasion, Muslim militants launched a war on each other and the cross…

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Rights group accuses Israeli doctors of torturing Palestinian detainees
Palestinian Information Center
Israel’s Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) group accused Israeli doctors of complicity in 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. Palestinian prisoners undergo medical examinations before, during and after their interrogation, but doctors in detention facilities fail to report such symptoms, making them complicit in “prisoner torture”, the PHR said in a statement…

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Iraq throws open door to foreign oil firms
Ahmed Rasheed / Reuters
Iraq opened its giant oilfields to foreign firms on Monday, putting British and U.S. companies in pole position five years after U.S.-led troops invaded the country to oust Saddam Hussein. The move to invite bids for the development of Iraq’s largest producing fields should mark the return of the oil majors whose cash and expertise Iraq needs to restore its oil infrastructure that has been hard hit by sanctions and war…

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Report: 35 Palestinians killed, 230 kidnapped by the army during the month of June
Laila Ewaiwi – IMEMC News Report
International Soldiery Society for human rights issued its monthly report for June 2008 on Monday. During the reported period the Society stated that the Israeli army has killed 35 civilians and kidnapped at least 320. The report shows that during the month of June 2008 the Israeli army killed in total 35 Palestinians, 29 in the Gaza Strip and six in the West Bank. In addition the International Solidarity Society said in its report that the Israeli army continued to use the policy of extra-judicial assassinations, the report shows that out of the 29 killed in Gaza 22 were killed by this policy meanwhile one out of the six killed in the West Bank was killed in the same way…

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Four US Soldiers Die in Afghanistan
Prensa Latina
Four US soldiers were killed by Afghan insurgents over the weekend, says a Pentagon report. According to the Department of Defense dispatch reproduced in Kabul three of the military died in an attack to a base in the conflictive southern territory. The release says a military caravan detonated a roadside bomb and was later target of hand grenades and automatic rifle fire and another US soldier died Friday of wounds caused by a bomb while patrolling the southern city.
Unofficial statistics rate June as the deadliest for US soldiers and NATO with 46 of the 113 fatalities reported since January…

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The BBC ignores the beating of Palestinian journalist they interviewed only days before
DAVID HALPIN, Palestine Think Tank
My first message to you was on 06/28/2008 at 08:33 PM. I see no report of the assault on this journalist on the BBC web site. Assuming you are on holiday, I am copying this to senior colleagues. To this lay person, there would appear to be several reasons to report that which Mohammed Omer has and is suffering. 1. The BBC were sufficiently interested to interview him on BBC World Service just before he left for France. I provided the contact number for that to happen. 2. It is true is it not that an unprecedented number of journalists have been killed in Iraq – at least 250? 9 have been killed in Gaza. The alleged barbaric treatment of this young journalist should be reported; the louder the silence, the greater the state impunity. 3. If this was Alan Johnston and not a Palestinian (albeit of great talent), the story would have been number one…

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HUMILIATION TREATED LIKE RAPE
Desertpeace
I have spoken to a number of Palestinians over the past few days about the humiliation and torture suffered by my dear friend and Brother Mohammed Omer. He had his clothing forcibly removed by Israeli soldiers upon returning to Israel on his way home to Gaza. They proceeded to torture him which resulted in unconsciousness and hospitalisation. He was treated like a captured criminal rather than the esteemed journalist that he is. His crime? He is a Palestinian…

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Masquerading As Taliban
Aamir Latif, IOL Correspondent
Masquerading as Taliban, criminals and kidnappers are practicing abduction for ransom, extortion and robbery in Pakistan’s tribal belt, taking advantage of ongoing clashes between security forces and pro-Taliban militants. “Nowadays, every incident (in tribal areas) is being attached to Taliban, which is not true,” lawmaker Noor-ul-Haq Qadri told IslamOnline.net on Saturday, June 28. Qadri, a member of the national assembly from Khyber agency, 40km off Peshawar, said criminals are taking shelter of militant groups to carry out their business…

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SOME LITTLE KNOWN FACTS ABOUT CONDOLEEZZA RICE
Desertpeace
Two years ago when Mohammed Omer was trying to get to the United States for a speaking tour arranged by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, he wrote to Ms. Rice asking for her assistance. His letter appears below… She DID intervene and he was allowed to leave Gaza… I urge all of my readers to write to her asking her to put pressure on the Israeli government to conduct a proper and thorough investigation regarding the brutal treatment he received at the hands of Israeli soldiers…

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U.S. advised Iraq on oil deals – paper
Voices of Iraq
A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, the New York Times quoted American officials as saying. “The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism,” the paper said…

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