Fifty-five Zionist companies said to be operating in Iraq under assumed names.
Yaqen News Agency
In a dispatch posted at 6:55pm Baghdad time Saturday afternoon, the Yaqen News Agency reported that 55 “Israeli” companies were now working in Iraq under assumed names. Yaqen reported that the Zionist firms operate in a variety of fields, including infrastructure and marketing. The Zionist Mossad secret police agency had established the Kurdish Lending Bank with its headquarters in as-Sulaymaniyah in the US-founded Kurdish separatist enclave in northern Iraq. The report indicated that the Kurdish Lending Bank had a secret mission of purchasing vast tracts of agricultural land, oil fields, and residential areas in the vicinity of the cities of al-Mawsil and Kirkuk, both oil-rich cities in northern Iraq. The massive land purchases facilitate the effort by the US-backed Kurdish separatist Peshmergah militia to expel Arab and Turkoman residents of northern Iraq so that the oil-rich area can be annexed to the Kurdish separatist state under US and Zionist hegemony…

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CLINTON BLEW IT
Malcom Lagauche
…During her tenure as Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright stated time and time again that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). She was a broken record. However, in 2005, in Sweden, she told a group that if Al Gore was elected president in 2000, he would not have gone to war because “we knew Saddam did not have these weapons.” One of those statements must be a lie. Now, let’s look at how many Iraqis have been killed by the U.S. because of military action and the embargo that was in place from 1990 to 2003. Almost three million. Let’s look at how many were killed under three administrations, two Republican and one Democrat. Hmmm. It appears that many more died from January 1993 to January 2001. But, this was a Democratic administration. In other words, the Democrats have as much, if not more, blood on their hands than the Republicans in the 1990-2003 period of the U.S.-Iraq War. By the way, the war is still going on. There is no official document calling for the end of the war, making this conflict a 17-year battle, with no end in sight…

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The Case of Gilad Atzmon and those who want him boycotted
Roy Ratcliffe, Palestine Think Tank
The catalyst leading to the production of this paper was the suggestion of a boycott of an Exeter University student ’Friends of Palestine’ event in May 2008. The suggestion was made by at least one Exeter Socialist because it was alleged that one of the participants, Gilad Atzmon, is an anti-Semite. The charges against Gilad Atzmon were extended to include links with other alleged anti-Semites, Fascists and Holocaust deniers. We were not urged to read the actual articles by Gilad Atzmon, but to read polemics against him. This was not the first time such remarks had been made, but it was the first time in mid-Devon that this had been translated into a proposal for action against solidarity work for Palestine. This suggestion marked a potentially serious transition from polemic to practical obstruction. Given a long background in activist campaigns I had heard many charges (which later turned out to be false) from within solidarity movements which not only poisoned the atmosphere putting many people off solidarity work and activism, but split and weakened the movements. Having only heard about the various people involved in this particular case, but not knowing them personally, I decided the only sensible way forward was to investigate both sides of the dispute. With this in mind, I initially obtained five copies of articles by Gilad Atzmon and five polemics against him. They later increased to six and then seven. After reading them thoroughly, examining other relevant background material and clarifying the terms being used, I came to the conclusion that the charges as stated were unfounded…

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Paralysed Gaza girl, Marya Aman, in plea to Israel
Uzi Mahnaimi, Times
Three Israeli judges will hear a case this week brought on behalf of a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was paralysed from the neck down in an Israeli missile attack. The High Court judges will be asked to decide whether the Israeli government should help Marya Aman, from Gaza, who depends on a life-support machine, by allowing her to stay in Israel with continuing financial support from the authorities. Her supporters say if she loses the case it will amount to a death sentence…

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Pakistan Taliban for Girls Education
Aamir Latif, IOL Correspondent
Pakistan’s Taliban movement has denied involvement in the burning of girls’ schools in the volatile tribal region, saying it supports the right of girls to education. “Neither Taliban are against girls education nor have they burnt any girls school in any part of the country,” spokesman Maulvi Umar told IslamOnline.net on Saturday, July 5, by phone from an unknown location. Several girls’ schools have been set on fire in the north western frontier province (NWFP) and Waziristan in the past few months. The Pakistani government and security forces blamed the Baitullah Mehsud-led Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan for the schools’ burning. “The exploitative forces (US and west) want to present us as terrorists and savages,” said the spokesman…

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Bush-Cheney Crony Got Iraq Oil Deal
Jason Leopold
Ray Hunt, the Texas oil man who landed a controversial oil production deal with Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, has enjoyed close political and business ties with Vice President Dick Cheney dating back a decade – and to the Bush family since the 1970s. Despite those longstanding connections – and Hunt’s work for George W. Bush as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board – the Bush administration expressed surprise when Hunt Oil signed the agreement last September…

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Plan Mexico Gets Rough
US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico
KRISTIN BRICKER
Exactly one day after George Bush signed the first year of the $1.6 billion Plan Mexico into law—giving Mexican military and police US training, armament, and resources—videos surfaced showing Mexican police undergoing torture training in León, Guanajuato. The torture training is directed by a British man from an unidentified US private security company. The videos show the English-speaking contractor directing and participating in the torture of members of the Special Tactical Group (GET in its Spanish initials) of the León municipal police force during a 160-hour training over twelve days in April 2006. Alvar Cabeza de Vaca, the Secretary of Public Security in León, says the participants volunteered to be tortured as part of the training…

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Mission Accomplished
Ten Years Ago, Bin Laden Demanded Barrel Of Oil Should Cost $144
Think Progress
In a 1998 interview, Osama bin Laden listed as one of his many grievances against the U.S. that Americans “have stolen $36 trillion from Muslims” by purchasing oil from Persian Gulf countries at low prices. The real price of a barrel of oil should be $144, bin Laden demanded. Ten years ago today, the price of a barrel of oil was just $11. Heading into this holiday weekend, the price of a barrel of oil rested at $144 — a thirteen-fold increase. One month after 9/11, the New York Times wrote of possible “nightmare” scenarios that would deliver bin Laden’s goal. Neela Banerjee warned that among the “misguided decisions” that would put oil supplies at risk would be “that the United States attacks Iraq.”…

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Gaza Strip Report 999: The Israelis Breach the Truce Again – Attacking Palestinian Fishing Boats in Palestinian Territorial Water
PalestineFreeVoice
On Friday, Israelis in war ships launched two rockets targeting Palestinian fishermen on the shore line outside the Sudaniyya seaside area of the northern Gaza Strip,.The Israelis assaults continued on Saturday morning when Palestinian fishermen was targeted with machine guns damaging their boats, outside the shoreline of Tal As-Sultan, in the western parts of Rafah in southern Gaza Strip.These Israeli attacks inside Palestinian territorial waterlines is a direct violation of the truce, which went in to effect on June 19 between the Israeli occupant and the Palestinian homeland resistance…

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Video: Palestinian farmer kidnapped, bound and abused by settlers
International Solidarity Movement
On the 5th of July, Palestinian farmer Medhat Abu Karsheh, 30 years old, was attacked on his land by armed settlers from the illegal outpost of Asaeel, south of Hebron. Abu Kersheh was kidnapped and bound to a pole for several hours in the burning sun next to the outpost. Settlers brutally battered him and according to witnesses threw hot water over him. Around 10 am international and Israeli human rights activists arrived to the illegal outpost Asaeel finding the Palestinian farmer Medhat Abu Karsheh from the village Samoa tied to a pole. The kidnapping and the abuse started approximately two hours earlier…

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A Present…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
I did apologize for not remembering your day of “Independence”. Now, I really want to extend to you my warmest wishes on that “honorable” occasion. Please accept this humble present from me to you…

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Dispatching honesty
rdeck
I have read several thousand books my life; Alma and I have thousands in our personal library today. Out of those thousands, few really stand out. One of those that does is the 1977 book, Dispatches by Michael Herr, which describes the author’s experiences in Vietnam as a war correspondent for Esquire. I read it decades ago and still remember parts of it as if I had finished reading it last week…Now we’re in another war, or two wars, and there are no reporters there. That’s hyperbole, of course. There are reporters there and I’m sure some of them, mostly non-Americans, are reporting them vividly and honestly. But the American corporate media has deliberately forgotten the wars. Now and then, there is a brief note about some small action. But nobody is covering the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan with any degree of honesty, any degree of completeness. The increasing number of American airstrikes that kill Iraqi civilians by the hundreds, thousands go unreported. The atrocities by American troops and American mercenary troops are not examined or reported. The fact that a quarter of the people of Iraq are now refugees — if Americans were displaced by war to the same extent, we would have 70 million refugees, 70 MILLION! — is hidden from the American people. Not that the American people would care very much…

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“Will you remember my name?”
Iqbal Tamimi, Palestine Think Tank
When one Israeli person is killed or kidnapped, the media makes sure every single person hearing the news would know the name of that person, giving the incident a human dimension. But this has never been the case with Palestinians who have been killed, imprisoned or kidnapped by the Israeli authorities. Palestinians are considered as a demographically abundant population, it is alright not to know their names; they are ignored on a human level. Their names are never mentioned. When Palestinians are killed you only hear about numbers, their blood is diluted by the media manipulators who do not have the decency to respect human life on both sides. This is why I thought of mentioning the names of a few young Palestinian men who died inside Israeli prisons…

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Iraqi pilots face foes from past
Nizar Latif, The National
Her husband was an elderly man, almost 70, and he suffered from diabetes, so Umm Alia had assumed he would be as safe as anyone could be in post-invasion Iraq. Who would bother to hurt him? They were not a rich family, they were not influential and they were living out a humble retirement on a military pension in relative anonymity. Yet none of these factors proved to be any kind of protection. One day Abu Alia went out shopping and he disappeared, never to be seen again alive by his family. His past, as an Iraqi air force fighter pilot, had apparently caught up with him… That was 2005. Almost three years later, no arrests have been made and, more than likely, no real investigation ever took place. Authorities rarely bother with such formalities in Iraq. Umm Alia said she believes her husband was killed because he had taken part in air raids on Tehran during the bloody eight-year war between Iran and Iraq. Hard facts are difficult to find in Iraq, but there are indications that a systematic campaign has been carried out to eradicate former Iraqi air force officers. Scores are reported to have been killed, and hundreds of ex-air force personnel have gone missing or disappeared into hiding…

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Az Zahar: due to western meddling, internal Palestinian dialogue at square one
PNN
Hamas leader and Foreign Minister, Mahmoud Az Zahar said that the Palestinian dialogue has “returned to square one.” He told Saudi’s Al Watan that there is no dialogue now “because there is no capacity among officials in Ramallah to hold a dialogue due to the US and European veto.” Even the failure of the Palestinian Unity Government, which would have in many minds ended the Fateh – Hamas split, could not work as stated by most pundits because the United States refused to deal with Hamas…

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Palestinian Sources Say Israel Still Preventing Sick From Leaving Gaza
RedOrbit, TX
… the occupation forces are still refusing to increase the number of sick people allowed to leave for treatment in the hospitals of Israel, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, or those of neighbouring Arab countries. Dr Mu’awiyah Hasanayn, director-general of the Ambulatory and Emergency Department at the Ministry of Health, said that there has been no increase whatsoever in the number of sick people leaving the Gaza Strip for treatment. During an interview with Al-Ayyam, Hasanayn also noted that Israel is still insisting on allowing only about 20 patients to cross daily, whereas about 150 were allowed to cross prior to the tightening of the siege a year ago. He warned of the consequence of Israel continuing to adopt this policy, which led to the deaths of about 200 patients last year. If Israel continues with the same policy in dealing with sick people, he expects an increase in the number of patients who will die. Hasanayn said: “The Ministry of Health has not received any indication or promise from the Israeli side that it will increase the number of patients leaving for treatment.”…

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Iran’s Nuke Letter “Nothing New” Say Leakers
Cernig
Anonymous Western officials have leaked what they say are aspects of Iran’s letter to EU chief negotiator Javier Solana, charging that the letter is “nothing new”, although the Western governments involved have declined to discuss the letter’s contents “on record”…It apparently made no mention, in particular, of any “freeze on freeze” deal, and an Iranian spokesman close to President Ahmadinejad said yesterday that “Iran’s stand regarding its peaceful nuclear program has not changed.”…

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‘New Atmosphere Created on Iran N-Case’
Alalam News Network, Iran
Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Saturday that a new atmosphere in Iran’s nuclear activities has been created. The Minister said Solana’s visit to Tehran along with the talks between both sides on the commonalties of the two proposed packages has created a new atmosphere and we believe that this has brought a new potential to resolve Iran’s nuclear issue…
On Iran’s response to the proposed package by the group 5+1, he said that Iran has offered a package to international community and the UN secretary general which underlined that the country is ready to hold talks on the most important global developments such as global security, energy crisis, food crisis as well as regional developments. “In the package, Iran, as a big country, has voiced readiness to play a much more active role in current developments in the sensitive Middle East region,” the Minister said…

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‘Police called us smelly Bedouin, then they started to beat us’
Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondent
Sabri al-Jarjawi, a 25-year-old resident of the Negev town of Segev Shalom who was severely beaten by police in Ashkelon three months ago, died of his wounds last weekend. Al-Jarjawi’s family claims that two detectives from the Lachish district brutally beat him after calling him a “smelly Bedouin.” The family has petitioned the High Court, requesting that both detectives be suspended from duty and that the investigation into al-Jarjawi’s death be quickly concluded. The police internal affairs division responsible for investigating officers said any decision on a possible suspension would be made following the results of pathological tests on the victim’s body…

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Bulldozer attack: Cut off East Jerusalem, says Israeli minister
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian,
Israel’s deputy prime minister, Haim Ramon, yesterday called for some Arab districts of East Jerusalem to be cut off from the city in the wake of the attack by a Palestinian construction worker who killed three people when he seized control of a bulldozer in the city centre. The attacker, Hussam Dwayat, 30, drove a large bulldozer from a construction site into oncoming traffic on Wednesday, crushing cars and toppling a bus before he was eventually shot dead at the wheel. He was from the Sur Baher district of East Jerusalem and was the second Palestinian resident of Jerusalem to carry out a major attack in the city in the past four months…

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Shalit is not more important than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners
Comment by Khalid Amayreh in O. East Jerusalem
One of the most repulsive expressions of Israeli racism is the firmly-held belief that a Jew is superior to and more important than a non-Jew. According to this unholy principle, which most Israeli Jews see as an unquestionable truism, a Jewish life is more important than a non-Jewish life, and a Jewish blood is far more important than a non-Jewish blood. Unfortunately, it is upon this manifestly racist concept that the entire Israeli justice system is based…

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Anger over Afghan air raid deaths
AlJazeera.net
At least 15 people, including a woman and a child, have been killed in a US air raid in eastern Afghanistan, a provincial governor has said. The US military said its raid in Nuristani province hit anti-government fighters who had earlier launched mortar attacks on a nearby army base. But Tamim Nuristani, the governor, told Al Jazeera that two cars carrying civilians, including doctors from a local clinic, were hit by missiles from US helicopters. “The Americans told people around the base to leave [the area], and they left. About 700 metres from the district office they bombed,” he said. Nuristani said that although a mistake by US forces may have caused the deaths, the incident was “inexcusable because [the US] knew that these civilians were leaving the area.”…

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Cracked Nuts…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
… – Let me taste those walnuts, I said – Which ones the American or the local ? – Let me taste the American ones first — as if I needed to. He handed me this half walnut that looked big, well built, in good shape and put it in the palm of my hand. I picked it up, looked at it one more time and took it slowly to my lips. Sniffed it first a little and put it in my mouth. Damn, Damn! It has this old stale, molded, rotten taste. That took me out of my sensual mode right back to reality. – What the hell is that? This tastes rotten despite the appearances. Disgusting! At that point, the man from Iraq said in a very loud voice in his strong Moslawee accent and he did take me by surprise. Is there anything American that is not rotten ? Anything at all ? Everything American is rotten. I felt of surge of hopeful beauty rising up in me again, tinged with the bitter sadness in his voice…The inner smile I had initially felt inside of me, moved up and lit my face like the golden colored olive oil trapped in the bottles in front of me. I turned to him and said “You said it. Thank you for making my day”…

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Gush Shalom: Maria Aman, a disabled Palestinian infant versus the state of Israel
Gush Shalom
On July 7 2008, at 9 a.m., a High Court hearing will be held to look into the expulsion of Palestinian infant Maria Aman who was severely injured during a targeted attack in Gaza. Her doctors are concerned her life may be endangered if she is forced to transfer to a hospital in Ramallah. In May 2006, infant Maria Aman was severely injured during a targeted attack in Gaza. Her mother, older brother, grandmother and aunt were killed in the attack. Maria, now seven years old, is completely paralyzed, will have to be connected to an artificial respiration machine for the rest of her life, and is still hospitalized in the Alyn Pediatric and Adolescent Rehabilitation Hospital in Jerusalem. The Ministry of Defense is seeking to expel the infant to a rehabilitation institution in Ramallah. According to the doctors who are treating Maria, a transfer to Ramallah will endanger her life…

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Iran says its nuclear stance unchanged
Reuters
Iran said on Saturday its nuclear stance had not changed and it was ready to hold talks with world major powers over its disputed nuclear programme based on international regulations. “Iran’s stance has not changed (on uranium enrichment) and we are ready to hold talks on the common points of the P5+1 incentives package and Iran’s package,” government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham told a weekly news conference…

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Maliki Warns US Against Invading Iran
Alalam News Network, Iran
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has warned the US against using of Iraqi territory for launching any military strikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Al-Iraqiya television reported. Maliki made the warning in a video link talk with the US President George W Bush Friday, Al-Iraqiya said. The Arabic-language network said in its report that Maliki voiced concerns about “any military measure against Iran over its nuclear program, saying he would not allow the Iraqi soil, airspace and waterways to turn into a base for striking regional states, Iran in particular…

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Hidden Casualties
Eric Ruder
A year and a half ago, Scott Eiswert, a specialist in the Tennessee Army National Guard, returned from Iraq, only to face an escalating battle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). When he learned that his unit would deploy again soon, he felt he could no longer stave off the pain. On May 16, his wife Tracy and his three daughters discovered his body after he shot himself in the family’s home. Pfc. Jason Scheuerman left a note nailed to his barracks closet in Iraq. “Maybe finally I can get some peace,” wrote the 20-year-old man. Then he stepped inside the closet and shot himself. His parents only found out about the note after a yearlong fight to cut through military red tape and discover what happened to their son. Scott and Jason are just two of the thousands of military personnel whose service in Iraq and Afghanistan plunged them into a place so dark that they took their own lives…

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WhatReallyHappened.com attacked again. Who next?
World Press Network
There is great concern on the repeated attacks on the alternative media sites sites which spotlight corruption, abuse of power, and the agenda of the neo-con war-criminals. We have seen both direct attacks as well as indirect attacks via censorship (e.g. of www.uruknet.info ) from some of the mainstream search engine sites. During the last week, one of the leading sites, WhatReallyHappened.com, has been attacked, and today the site is now down. Who next ?…
UPDATE : WRH is back up!…

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MOHAMMED OMER SPEAKS OF HIS ORDEAL LIVE ON RADIO
Desertpeace
Award-winning journalist and Flashpoints contributor Mohammed Omer beaten and tortured by Israeli secret police, we speak to him in his hospital bed; also, Ali Abunimah responds to the attack and speaks about the anti-Palestinian stance of the major presidential candidates…

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Palmyra, Obama and Pascal’s Bet
Could Anyone be “Worse” Than Bush?
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
… The day I was in Palmyra the Emperor Bush II gave his speech in the Knesset, a slab of rhetoric so exuberant in its homage to Israel that the New York Times had to reprimand him editorially for bad taste. In its immediate aftermath I had an opportunity to ask a member of the Syrian cabinet, Dr Bouthaina Shaaban, whether she thought the installation of a new U.S. president next January would diminish the forebodings which she had just been outlining with great passion, from the continuing human catastrophe in Iraq, to the horrors of Israel’s siege of Gaza, to the U.S.’s obvious intent to provoke another terrible civil war in Lebanon. (For the record, Dr Shaaban does not think a war with Iran was likely.) She didn’t hesitate to answer me by saying she envisaged no change, if a candidate such as Barack Obama settles into the Oval Office next January. The continuous policy of the United States is to divide and rule, she exclaimed, has been and will be for the foreseeable futuree, to fan schism and internecine bloodletting in the region, to set Arab against Arab, whether it be the communities of Lebanon or the Shia and Sunni in Iraq…

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I linked to Uruknet and immediately started to get spam warnings from Blogger…
Edna Spennato, earthheal.blogspot.com/
It’s madness. Last night I was putting up links to news sites on my blog earthheal.blogspot.com/ It was easy to link to all of them except Uruknet. I had to try about 5 times before it went through. That was the first weird thing. Finally managed to get the link up, and then later posted something else and suddenly to do so I needed to do word verification… and when I clicked on their link, this below is the message they sent back (…) This is what it says on my blog now: This site is currently being threatened with closure as a “spam site” by Blogger (Google) for linking to the news site, Uruknet, a link we do not intend to remove. There is a relentless campaign going on to silence Uruknet, by Google…

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