Violence returns to Anbar following months of relative quiet
Omar al-Mansouri, Azzaman
The western Province of Anbar is getting restive once again following months of relative quiet. Anbar is the largest Iraqi province in area and once was the scourge of U.S. invasion troops. Iraqi resistance groups as well as al-Qaeda had it as a main stronghold. The predominantly Arab Sunni province spearheaded anti-U.S. resistance in the country to the point that the mighty U.S. military was on the point of defeat there…

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Two, Three, Many Ni’lins
Kim Bullimore
More than 40 years ago, the Argentinean-born Cuban Revolutionary, Ernesto Che Guevara wrote in his message to the Tricontinental that the “forgotten peoples” of the world – the poor, oppressed and exploited – must “create two, three, many Vietnams”. Written at the time when the Vietnamese people were waging their courageous struggle against US imperialism, Che noted that rebellion must flourish across the tricontinent (Asia, Latin America and Africa) and around the world and that it was the duty of the dispossessed and oppressed to “liberate ourselves at any price”. Today, the rebellion advocated by Che Guevara can be found in the many courageous struggles of the oppressed around the world for liberation, freedom and justice. In Palestine, this rebellion is evident in the brave struggles of the Palestinian villages, towns and cities throughout the occupied West Bank and Gaza, who oppose the brutal Israeli occupation and the erection of the illegal apartheid wall…

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Fugitive Saddam deputy in ‘message’ to Iraq insurgents
AFP
Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri called on Iraqi insurgents to make a final push against US troops, in an audio message attributed to him on Tuesday. Ibrahim, the most senior member of Saddam’s regime still at large, urged Iraqis to “strike the enemy everywhere… to make this year… decisive for victory,” in the purported message aired by Dubai-based satellite Al-Arabiya. He called on President George W. Bush to “come clean about the scale of US losses” and to “end an experiment that has now lasted more than five years.”..

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If you haven’t heard about the first death since the truce took hold, it’s because he’s Palestinian
Mohammad, KABOBfest
This is a few days late, but the first fatality since the Gaza-Israeli truce took hold occurred on the 10th of July. Shockingly, he was a Palestinian, killed by Israeli soldiers near the border area. Salim Jumaa Hamidi, 18, was shot by Israeli soldiers near the Kissufim crossing on Thursday, July 10, 2008. He was unarmed, wearing a t-shirt and jeans. The soldiers say they warned him to turn back before shooting him in the stomach and shoulder. The wounds would not have been fatal had he received medical assistance. He was shot at around 4:00 am, but the Israeli military did not provide him with any medical assistance…

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Video
Guantanamo Bay interrogation video released – 15 July 08
AlJazeeraEnglish
Lawyers for a Canadian prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay have released a videotape showing him being interrogated. The pictures offer the first glimpse inside the secretive and isolated US prison in Cuba. In the video, a Canadian Security Intelligence Services agent is shown grilling Omar Khadr in 2003, when he was 15. The video shows him weeping, his face buried in his hands. Khadr also tells his captors he’s been tortured. The Canadian citizen is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan. Al Jazeera’s Dan Nolan tells the story…

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Crying Guantanamo Kid
IslamOnline.net
Lawyers of a Canadian kid held in the notorious US Guantanamo Bay have released a video tape showing the youngest detainee crying during interrogation sessions. “I lost my eyes. I lost my feet. Everything!” cried Omar Khadr in the ten-minute footage, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported on Tuesday, July 15. The video shows Khadr being questioned by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agents in February, 2003 at Guantanamo Bay. It shows Khadr wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and sitting at plain wooden table in an apparently windowless cell…

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Iraq announces competition to design new national flag
AFP
Iraq has announced a competition to design a new national flag and is calling on Iraqis and artists and designers inside and outside of the country to take part. Lawmaker Mufeed al-Jazairi announced the competition on Tuesday. He says interested people have until the end of September to submit their designs. Al-Jazairi says a committee will select three designs to be presented to the parliament, which will vote on a new flag by the end of this year…

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In Iraq — A Generation with No Education
One World
…Schools that are open are strained beyond capacity. In areas with huge influxes of internally displaced people, students now have to go to classes in shifts. What this means it that children are now getting little more than three hours of schooling a day, in classrooms with as many as 60 pupils. The reality for many of the kids is even if they are attending school, they have very little opportunity to learn. In volatile areas of the country, it is not uncommon for parents to keep their children home from school because of violence on the streets. They are afraid their children could get caught in the cross fire…

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Multiple bombings kill 40 in northern Iraq
Tim Cocks, Reuters
Bombers killed around 40 people and wounded scores in several attacks in northern Iraq on Tuesday, days after the government vowed to expand a crackdown against militants in a region where al Qaeda retains influence. In the worst attacks, two suicide bombers killed 27 people and wounded 68 when they blew themselves up outside an army recruitment centre in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, an Iraqi security source said. The U.S. military said 20 recruits were killed and 55 wounded, saying the attackers blew themselves up in a line of men outside the centre in Baquba, capital of Diyala province…

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Israel Targets Hamas Orphanages
Peter Hirschberg
Shopping malls. Schools. Medical centres. Charities, orphanages. Soup kitchens. These are the latest targets in the campaign the Israeli military is waging against Hamas in the West Bank. Israeli military officials have identified Hamas’s civilian infrastructure in the West Bank as a major source of the Islamic group’s popularity, and have begun raiding and shutting down these institutions in cities like Hebron, Nablus and Qalqilyah…

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“I do not struggle alone”
Dina Awad and Hazem Jamjoum writing from Ramallah, occupied West Bank, Live from Palestine
Ibrahim Bornat, 25, from the village of Bil’in in the occupied West Bank, was shot three times in the left thigh with dum-dum bullets by the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) on 13 June 2008. Like he does every week, Ibrahim was protesting against the construction of the separation wall in his village, which will effectively result in the annexation of 58 percent of the lands by Israel. One of the bullets Ibrahim was shot with that day hit the major artery in his leg, expanding and causing major nerve damage. He lost so much of his rare AB+ blood type that an urgent alert was sent out on the radio, the Internet and at local mosques for blood donations. As Ibrahim currently lies in pain at Ramallah Hospital, he does not know if he will ever be able to walk again…

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Ahmadinejad predicts better Iran-US ties after elections
Monsters and Critics
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday predicted that relations between Iran and the United States would improve following the US presidential election. ‘Regardless of who would become next (US) president, whether from this (Democratic) or that (Republican) party, that person would have more understanding with Iran,’ Ahmadinejad told state television. ‘The probability of talks in the future between the two sides in certain fields definitely exists,’ he said… Ahmadinejad further said there are already several requests by US non-governmental sections through the Swiss embassy – representing US interests in Iran – to hold talks with Iran, adding that these talks would eventually be held in line with national interests…

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Enabling tyranny
Paul Craig Roberts
I recently read that Brigitte Bardot, now in her 70s, was arrested as a hate criminal for complaining that Muslims in France slaughter sheep without first stunning them. The famous actress is known for her sympathy with animals, but the French government preferred to interpret her remarks as hatred for Muslims. Prosecutor Anne de Fontette promised to throw the book at Bardot. [Brigitte Bardot in race hate row, Daily Telegraph, (London) April 18, 2008] There are many incongruities here. The French are persecuting one of their own for taking exception to the practices of an alien culture. But then, perhaps this is just being broadminded. What really jumps out is: if Bardot’s animal rights position makes her a hate criminal, what does French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s foreign policy position make him? … If Bardot is a hate criminal under French law for complaining about how Muslims prepare their mutton, why isn’t President Sarkozy a hate criminal for supporting an American policy that has resulted in the deaths of 1,236,604 Muslims and the displacement of 4 million Iraqis?…

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Israeli settlers invade park in Beit Sahour, assault IMEMC Staff
IMEMC Staff
At least 150 Israeli settlers invaded the local park at Esh Ghrab in Beit Sahour and laid claim to the place, then held a barbecue at the location. Armed settlers arrived at the place, which is an evacuated military base owned by people and municipality of Beit Sahour Monday evening and brought with them barbecue grills and said they want to camp there for few days. As IMEMC reporter Ghassan Bannoura and photographer Rami Rishmawi approached the site, settlers started pushing them away although it was obvious that they are journalists…

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Hamas condemns war crime charges against Sudanese president
Palestinian Information Center
The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas has strongly condemned the war crime charges submitted to the International Criminal Court against Sudanese president Omar Hassan Al-Bashir at the backdrop of Darfur conflict. The chief prosecutor of the ICC accused Bashir of “committing crimes against humanity” in the western Sudanese province of Darfur, which Sudan had categorically denied. “This step [of the ICC prosecution] proves beyond reasonable doubt that the UN and its arms were hijacked by the US administration, and turned into tools it mobilizes and utilizes for its political ends,” the Movement asserted in a statement it issued and a copy of which was obtained by the PIC…

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Attachment…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
…How easily we get attached. We get attached to family, people, places, things, ideas and causes…or anything else… And when we are meant to leave, our pain and that of those around us, is proportional to our attachment. Except for objects. They don’t give a damn if you love them or not…But you do.The more attached we/they are, the harder it is to let go. The less attached, the easier… Attachment is often underestimated and misunderstood. On the one hand we need attachment to realize ourselves and on the other, attachment can prove to be our greatest handicap. I agree, it is a mind fuck. How to strike the balance is a lifetime endeavor. Not that I have done so myself. I keep oscillating…

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Canada deports U.S. deserter who opposes Iraq War
Allan Dowd, Reuters
Canada deported on Tuesday the first of some 200 Americans who deserted the U.S. military and sought refugee status to protest against the Iraq War. Robin Long, 25, was removed a day after a Federal Court judge in Vancouver rejected his claim that he would suffer irreparable harm if returned to the United States. He fled across the border in 2005 as his army tank unit was preparing to deploy to Iraq…

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Ahmadinejad predicts better Iran-US ties after elections
Monsters and Critics
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday predicted that relations between Iran and the United States would improve following the US presidential election. ‘Regardless of who would become next (US) president, whether from this (Democratic) or that (Republican) party, that person would have more understanding with Iran,’ Ahmadinejad told state television. ‘The probability of talks in the future between the two sides in certain fields definitely exists,’ he said… Ahmadinejad further said there are already several requests by US non-governmental sections through the Swiss embassy – representing US interests in Iran – to hold talks with Iran, adding that these talks would eventually be held in line with national interests…

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Barack Obama purges Web site critique of surge in Iraq
JAMES GORDON MEEK, NYDaily
Barack Obama’s campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, the Daily News has learned. The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a “problem” that had barely reduced violence… Obama’s campaign posted a new Iraq plan Sunday night, which cites an “improved security situation” paid for with the blood of U.S. troops since the surge began in February 2007. It praises G.I.s’ “hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics and enormous sacrifice.” …

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Iran denies oil market rumour of nuclear deal
Reuters
A senior Iranian official denied on Tuesday a rumour in the oil market, cited by some traders, that suggested Tehran had reached a deal on its disputed nuclear programme with the United States. Oil plunged more than $9 in early trade to below $136 a barrel amid growing concerns about the economy of the world’s top energy consumer, with some traders mentioning talk of an accord between Tehran and Washington. “Such reports (on a deal) are psychological war to undermine talks (between Iran and world powers). Iran will never make a deal on its legitimate rights,” the official told Reuters…

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Hamas-Israel Prisoner Swap Remains Elusive
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
Despite intensive mediation efforts by Egyptian officials, a delegation from Palestinian resistance faction Hamas departed Cairo Saturday (Jul. 12) without securing a prisoner exchange deal with Israel. According to local analysts, fresh swap proposals — featuring the release of long-time Israeli captive Gilaad Shalit — continue to run up against Israeli obduracy. “The respective positions of Israel and Hamas are still miles apart,” Abdel-Halim Kandil, political analyst and editor-in-chief of independent weekly Sout al-Umma, told IPS…

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