They saw the uniforms and knew to run – Iraq Today, more better than Saddam Era?

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ: IRAQIS IN DANGER; U.S. SENATORS’ VISIT

They saw the uniforms and knew to run

By Borzou Daragahi

Times Staff Writer

December 15, 2006

Iraqis at a Baghdad market had expected this day, when gunmen swept in, opened fire and took people away. This is the example of America’s Democracy. Kurds and Shiites who ruling Iraq now, more brutal and barbaric than Saddam Hussein. This is the promises America to Iraqis people.

BAGHDAD — “They’re here! They’re here!”

The panicked cry rose from the crowd of shoppers and businessmen, sending them into a stampede past storefronts and shocked onlookers. Men, women and children fell over handcarts and folding chairs, knocking one another down, hiding behind buildings and seeking shelter in shops.

None knew who “they” were: uniformed men firing weapons in the air and herding people into trucks, just a few hundred yards from the edge of the U.S.-guarded Green Zone.

But most had suspected such a day might come to the Sinak market of downtown Baghdad. All knew to run at first sight of the uniformed gunmen who have become signature elements of the all-too-common mass kidnappings in the Iraqi capital.

“We weren’t really surprised,” said Hossein abu Marwa, an employee of an air conditioner shop in the sprawling market. “We face such threats on a daily basis. Sometimes we hear they’re coming from this side or that side. We don’t know who is shooting. We don’t know who is coming. Are they the resistance? Are they armed criminals? You don’t know if they’re Sunni. You don’t know if they’re Shiite.”

This time, at least five dozen people disappeared within minutes, stuffed into four delivery trucks and hauled away toward eastern Baghdad.

An Interior Ministry official reported later that at least 23 of the shopkeepers had been released unharmed in northern Baghdad, after showing their captors identity cards bearing names associated with Shiite Muslims.

The fate of previous victims of mass kidnappings has been brutal: Most show up dead within days, often with signs of torture, such as drill holes.

Thursday’s abduction took place in and around the auto-supply section of the open-air Sinak wholesale market, a few hundred yards from the headquarters of Iraq’s Defense Ministry.

It began around 10 a.m. when a convoy of about a dozen sport utility vehicles of the type often used by official security forces screeched into the market and sealed off the main roads, witnesses said.

Heavy gunfire erupted almost immediately.

Ghaith Abdul-Kahdem, owner of three shops in the marketplace, had been stuck in traffic and was arriving late for work, just as the kidnapping was unfolding. He heard the shots and saw police vehicles and quickly hid under a bridge.

“I saw the four-wheel-drive cars arrive, about 10 of them, as well as trucks for transporting prisoners,” he said. “I immediately realized something grave was going on.”

The shopkeepers said they clutched their guns as the drama began, fearful of criminals. When they realized the invaders came heavily armed and in official dress, they put their weapons away.

“They were men in uniform,” said Ahmad Jassem Saadi, 39, the owner of a leather jacket shop. “What could I do?”

“The raiders were selective at first,” Abdul-Kahdem said. “But after a while they started grabbing anybody.”

Saadi and other shopkeepers stood at the doors of their businesses and watched. “They detained a group of people, and then they started taking other sellers and even passersby,” he said.

“The people struggled. They were taken by force and put into trucks.”

Some described the trucks as the type used to transport milk and meat products.

Others said they were like armored vehicles used for transporting cash.

They began to fill up.

Abdul-Kahdem watched helplessly as the men stuffed four of his employees into the trucks.

The gunfire continued. The panic mounted.

Hassan Khafaji, shopping for a part to repair his broken-down 1990 Oldsmobile, lay on the ground as the shooting continued. He crawled to an alley, stood up and fled.

“I just kept running and running until I got somewhere safe,” he said.

Yassin Hashim, who works at a refrigerator motor shop within the market’s labyrinth of alleyways, helped an elderly man to his feet after the jittery mob knocked him to the ground. “He was too weak to get away,” Hashim said.

“Some people were running and screaming,” Saadi said. “Others were frozen in their place, watching.”

“They were just looking for a place to hide,” Hashim said. “Some people thought there were snipers.”

The ordeal was over within 15 minutes, witnesses said. A detachment of Iraqi soldiers arrived and sealed off the area. Some witnesses described the kidnappers as police commandos, but a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said the suspects wore army uniforms.

Afterward, Saadi gathered around a group of shopkeepers consoling a Christian restaurant owner, a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair, who was weeping. His son had been taken. “It was painful and I felt very sad,” Saadi said.

By then, around 11:30, the streets had emptied. There were no customers and no shopkeepers. “I couldn’t work,” Saadi said. “We closed up the shop and went home.”

source:
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/latimes636.html

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Guantanamo Detainees To Be Held Even Without Evidence

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Guantanamo Detainees To Be Held Even Without Evidence

CON COUGHLIN – The Daily Telegraph

December 15, 2006

WASHINGTON — The hard core of detainees held at America’s Guantanamo Bay detention camp will be held indefinitely even if there is insufficient evidence to bring them to trial, a senior Bush administration official said.

Of the 435 detainees being held at Guantanamo, only 10 have so far been charged with terrorism-related offenses. A further 14 detainees — the so-called high value detainees such as the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — are also expected to face trial now that the U.S. Congress has passed the Military Commission Act, which will finally enable America to commence trials of Guantanamo detainees next year.

But of the remainder, an estimated 200 detainees face being held indefinitely at Guantanamo because they are deemed a threat to international security even though there is insufficient evidence to bring them before a military commission.

John Bellinger, the legal adviser at the U.S. State Department who is responsible for defending Guantanamo’s legal status, said the hard core of the detainees will continue to be held indefinitely either because they are considered a security threat or because there is nowhere to send them if the military authorities at Guantanamo decide to release them.

“The remaining people — other than the ones who have been approved for release — really do pose a threat,” Mr. Bellinger said in an exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph. “Ten percent of the people we have released have gone right back to fighting generally in Afghanistan. It’s hard to tell exactly how many people would go back to actual acts of terrorism, or whether they would just go back to fighting in Afghanistan.”

And despite repeated calls for the Bush administration to close Guantanamo, Mr. Bellinger was insistent that the American detention camp in Cuba would continue to hold detainees that were deemed a security risk.

“There are at this point no plans to transfer those people from Guantanamo out of Guantanamo,” he said. “At this point the trials will be held on Guantanamo.”

More than 700 people have been held at Guantanamo during the past five years. Most of them were detained during the war in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban in late 2001, while others have been transferred to the camp after being detained as part of America’s global war against international terrorism.

All the detainees receive a yearly combatant status review tribunal at which American military officials determine whether or not individuals continue to pose a security threat. Nearly 300 detainees have so far been released, and Mr. Bellinger said a further 100 had been cleared for release.

But Mr. Bellinger said Washington had been frustrated in its attempts to reduce the number of people being held at Guantanamo by the refusal of countries to accept released detainees.

“Many countries will just not take their nationals back,” said Mr. Bellinger. “We think it is somewhat hypocritical of international critics to keep calling for the closure of Guantanamo without offering a place for any of these individuals.”

But, Mr. Bellinger insisted, those detainees who are still classified a security risk will continue to be held at Guantanamo indefinitely. “When people say Guantanamo should be closed, do they really want” the detainees “to be released outright into their countries where they might go out and continue to pose a threat to the international community?”

In the case of alleged high-value detainees such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, they might never be released, even if it was not possible to bring a successful prosecution against them. “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is unlikely to be sent anywhere” other than Guantanamo, he said.

source:
http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=45212

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Global Action against Guantanamo

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Global Action against Guantanamo

Roads to Iraq

December 16, 2006 With Yesterday US Court decision of no jurisdiction to hear cases involving the remaining 435 prisoners challenging their detention at the US military base in Cuba. Amnesty International declared today 16 December as a global campaign against Guantanamo. Guantánamo detainees must be released immediately unless they are to be charged and given a fair trial. The funny thing is: It is the US is same country who condemning others for lack of human rights, as new statement put it: How can the US condemn torture in Argentina, political murders in Russia and censorship in North Korea when it promotes “kangaroo courts” at Guantanamo Bay?

source:
http://www.roadstoiraq.com/2006/12/16/global-action-against-guantanamo/

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Shot in the Head for Throwing Stones : Twilight Zone / Death sentence – Israel Zionist War Crime

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Shot in the Head for Throwing Stones : Twilight Zone / Death sentence – Israel Zionist War Crime

By Gideon Levy

What is now going through the mind of the soldier who fired a loaded weapon at a boy on the Sunday before last – and killed him? What was he thinking when he aimed at the boy’s head? Is he still thinking about his victim? Why does live ammunition have to be used against children, even if they are throwing stones at a armored vehicles? Don’t the soldiers have other means of punishment? And what about the security cabinet’s decision to promote calm in the West Bank, too?

On December 3, after all, the security cabinet decided that arrests in the West Bank would henceforth be made only with the authorization of the GOC Central Command – but apparently, in order to fire at the head of a boy and kill him, no authorization is required. It’s enough to get out of the jeep, aim and fire. The Israel Defense Forces, we know, opposes a cease-fire in the West Bank, too.

Jamil Jabaji, 14, the “boy of the horses” from the Askar refugee camp in Nablus, had been throwing stones at an IDF Hummer making its way toward the camp, and a soldier killed him in cold blood. The vehicle was moving slowly, according to the children’s testimony, stopping every once in a while, in what the youngsters thought was a type of provocation, as though trying to lure them closer, until it stopped and two soldiers stepped out, aiming their weapons at them. No teargas, not even rubber-coated bullets. Live fire. A death sentence for stone-throwing.

Jamil liked horses, acted in the drama group of the local community center, took karate lessons, was the goalie of the children’s soccer team in the camp, and a member of the Boy Scouts. He was the tallest of the youngsters who stood on the cliff and threw stones at the jeep on the road below; maybe his height decreed his death. Maybe that’s why the soldier aimed specifically at his head. The one bullet that entered the forehead and exited at the back of the neck, spelled instant death.

The next day the children erected a memorial for Jamil – a small pile of stones and a floral wreath, with his photograph in the center – at the edge of the olive grove, not far from the horse ranch where his beloved steed, Musahar, is stabled. Precisely at the spot where he fell. Jamil is the third boy to be killed here in the past few years, between Askar and the settlement of Elon Moreh, which dominates the area from the ridge of a hill across the way.

The narrow alleys in the new Askar camp are now decorated with pictures of the slain boy. It’s cold in the Jabaji home and Grandma Askiya, swaddled in blankets, lies on her iron bed and spends all day staring at the photograph of her grandson, hanging on the opposite wall, wreathed in flowers. She is 78 and was born in Lod. Jamil was her youngest grandchild, the pampered baby of the family.

The father, Abed al-Karim, is not around. For most of his life he had worked in Eli’s sausage factory in Bnei Brak; now, when Israel has killed his son, he is out of the country and cannot afford to return to mourn for him. A few days before the tragedy he went to Jordan with his son Hamis, 19, who has a rare terminal disease. Hamis is due to have surgery in Jordan, and his father doesn’t have the money to return for the mourning period.

Wafiya, the bereaved mother, is wailing. She pulls Jamil’s schoolbag out from under her bed and hurls it furiously onto the floor. “Did they say he was ‘wanted’? He was afraid even to go to the outhouse in the yard by himself at night … I always had to go with him.”

A boy, Mohammed Masimi, enters the house, and the signs of shock are apparent in him as well. His face is frozen, he chews on his fingernails and stares vacantly. He was Jamil’s best friend. “I still don’t believe he is gone,” he mumbles softly.

The two grew up together from infancy in the camp’s alleys; together they went to the camp’s school a week ago Sunday, together they were in Grade 9, together they returned home at midday. Jamil told Mohammed that in the afternoon he would go to his drama group in the community center. Afterward Jamil asked his mother for a shekel, to buy a sandwich until lunch would be ready. He left and never returned. He probably bought the sandwich and then went to the horse ranch at the end of the alley, at the edge of the camp, to see Musahar. He went to see the horse every day, fed it sugar and brushed it. That Sunday he also went off to the ranch, until he and his friends noticed the army jeep coming down from Elon Moreh. About 10 children, most of them Jamil’s age, hurried to the nearby olive grove, under which passes the road that descends from the settlement toward the northern part of Nablus.

We now leave the house, too, following in Jamil’s last steps. In Mahmoud Adawi’s ranch the grayish horse is munching on hay. Five horses are locked in the skeleton of an empty truck; they are being trained for races. A few days before Jamil was killed, his Musahar won a competition in Jericho. Jamil never rode the animal – he was too heavy for a racehorse.

At the ranch we meet M. – a short, sweet boy with a chirpy voice, wearing a T-shirt that says Street Team – and A., a muscular kid of 15 whose hair is slicked down with gel, like most of the boys in the camp. M. and A. were among the boys who threw stones on that fatal Sunday. A.’s leg is scarred: In 2002 the IDF fired a shell at his home in the camp, killing four people, including his father and a boy of eight, and wounding him.

>From the ranch we head for the olive grove. M. leads us, speaking in his childish voice. An autumn sun is shining. The grove is well tended, its soil tilled and strewn with rocks. The homes of Elon Moreh overhang the hill, the black road winds down from it. The road passes by the foot of the grove, but because of its steepness, it is visible only if one stands on the very edge of the nearby cliff, which is about 10 meters high. From here the road continues to the Wadi Bazan checkpoint, which separates Nablus and the Jenin area.

The children relate that they began to run along the cliff and threw stones at the Hummer; the road is still littered with them. The vehicle, they said, traveled slowly, stopping every few meters. They are convinced that this was done to make them throw more and more stones, and to come ever closer to the edge. The children fell into the trap. They spread out on the cliff, Jamil in the middle, busy throwing. And then the vehicle came to a full stop and two soldiers got out. They aimed their rifles and fired four bullets at the children.

Jamil was hit in the head and crumpled. The others ran for their lives in panic. Only M. and A. stayed behind, trying to drag their friend’s body. But Jamil was a heavy boy and with their small arms they were unable to move him, until Ali Abu Sanafa, who lives in the last house before the olive grove, arrived on the scene, and helped them evacuate the boy. Jamil was taken in a taxi to Nablus’ Rafidia Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The children say that his brains had spilled onto his clothes.

Why did you throw stones, I ask the children from Askar. Little M. offers his shy smile and says nothing. A. says, “It’s a game.” Since the tragedy they have not dared come back here. It was here, too, that another boy, Oday Tantawi, 14, also fell; over there Bashar Zabara, who was 13, died. Both of them were killed in the olive grove, just meters from the makeshift memorial for Jamil. The owner of the ranch says that Jamil sometimes came by at six in the morning, before going to school, to feed his horse.

Jamil did not have a room of his own. He shared a double bed. There is no table in the house. On the wall hangs a certificate attesting that Jamil has achieved a yellow belt in Shotokan karate. His mother also shows his Boy Scouts certificate, with the image of a boy in a blue tie, light-blue shirt and blue beret.

In the camp’s community center a young volunteer from Sweden explains to a refugee girl where Africa is on the colored map on the wall. Jamil’s photograph has already been pasted on the glass door. The center’s director, Yusuf Abu Saraya, says that Jamil participated in most of the center’s activities, but liked the drama group especially. Here is his photograph, showing him standing on the stone stage in the well-kept playground, a gift from Europe, his face painted with war colors.

“We hope the army will not come to Askar anymore,” Abu Saraya says. “It is hard to prevent the children from throwing stones. There is no army base here, only a refugee camp. The olive grove is the only place where the children can leave the crowded camp and breathe fresh air. Jamil is not the first boy to be killed there.”

Abu Saraya adds: “The Israelis do not say they killed a boy. They say they killed someone who was endangering the soldiers’ lives. But what child can endanger the lives of soldiers? Sometimes they say the boy was armed – but what child can carry a rifle? What excuse do they have to come here at all? If you want to defend your country, do not come to Askar. From here you do not defend Tel Aviv. Askar does not endanger Tel Aviv.”

The IDF Spokesperson’s response: “At the behest of the military advocate general, an investigation has been launched by the military police into the circumstances surrounding this incident. At the culmination of this inquiry, the findings will be submitted to the advocate general’s office.”

source:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/801268.html

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

“When There’s No One Left to Blame What Are You Going to Do Now, Israel?”

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

“When There’s No One Left to Blame What Are You Going to Do Now, Israel?”

By VIRGINIA TILLEY

Johannesburg, South Africa

December 15, 2006

Now that three small boys have been killed by assassins’ bullets, and a Hamas judge dragged from his car and murdered, perhaps you are pleased. The Palestinians are finally succumbing to your plots, you think. The long-planned bottle has finally been sealed, in which the “drunken cockroaches” can only crawl around, shooting each other.

Maybe you are sitting back in your national chair, rubbing your hands together in triumph, watching the Palestinians finally turn on each other, slowly becoming what you always claimed they were. Maybe you are repelled, secure in your sense of superiority.

But have you thought about what you are you going to do, if Palestinian leadership you despise finally disintegrates?

You have brought them to this pass, of course. You worked for decades to achieve exactly this. You bribed, terrorized, expelled, maimed or killed their leadership, banned or killed their visionaries and philosophers, fanned and funded Hamas against Fatah or Fatah against Hamas, trashed their democracy, stole their money, walled them in, put them on a “diet”, derided their claims, and lied about their history to the world and to yourself.

But what are you going to do, Israel, if five million Palestinians are finally living leaderless under your sovereignty? What will you do, when they lose their capacity to negotiate with you? Have you thought that, within the territory you control, they are as many as you? And that now you are destroying their unified voice? Have you thought about what will happen to you if they truly lose that voice?

Maybe you really believe that, if you only feed Fatah money and guns, Fatah will reclaim power from the Hamas and restore the craven puppet Palestinian government of your dreams. Maybe you actually believe that Fatah can revive the wreck of Oslo, step out of the rubble of PA offices, and reclaim the driver’s seat of the Palestinian nation as before. Maybe you are telling yourself that, with just a few more inter-factional scuffles and assassinations and little more starvation, the entire Palestinian people will turn on Hamas and eject it from power in favor of grinning Mr. Abbas.

But why would you believe all this, when the only other test-case, Iraq, is in ruins and the US and UK are desperately trying to flee?

Do you really still live so deeply in your own fantasies that you believe Palestinian resistance is just the product of bad or obdurate leadership? That no collective memory of expulsion and dispossession sustains the spirit of collective resistance that will always and inevitably transcend that leadership? Do you really believe that, if only you can crush or co-opt Hamas and Fatah, five million people will simply disappear forever from your world–trail off across the Jordanian or Egyptian borders into the endless desert, clutching clothes, kids, and tarnished mementos, in some great reprise of 1948?

Do you actually think that, if the international community finally lets you off the hook of negotiating with the people you have dispossessed and discredited, you will somehow walk free at last, your crimes against them forgotten?

We know you are still pursuing the old, fatal, futile fantasy: finally to redeem the Zionist dream by demolishing Palestinian nationalism. To break Palestinian national unity on the rocks of occupation. To reduce the Palestinians to Indians on reservations who decline into despair, alcoholism and emigration. To make them irrelevant to you.

But here is news for you, Israel. The Native Americans haven’t given up to this day. Damaged and reduced as they are, they know their history and remember their grievances. They are marginal only because they are one percent of the US population. The Palestinians are five-million strong, equal to you in numbers. And they live within your borders. When their leadership ruins itself, bashing each other like rams fighting to the death, they will finally turn their five million pairs of burning eyes on you, for you will be the only power left over them. And you will be defenseless, because your paper shelter – your Fatah or PA quislings – will be damaged goods, cracked vessels, discredited, gone. And it will then be you and those you have disenfranchised – you and the Palestinians, in one state, with no Oslo or Road Map myth to protect you. And by then, they will truly hate you.

Then perhaps it will dawn on you what you have done, when the disintegration of Palestinian national unity spreads out like a tsunami through the Middle East, meeting up with the tsunami spreading out from Iraq, to lay the region waste and rebound on you.

Watching you create this catastrophe for yourself, we think you are simply suicidal. We could just watch, but your road to ruin promises too much suffering to too many people. Still, to avert your unilateral suicide pact with the Palestinians, to whom can we turn?

We could appeal to Hamas at last to mobilize the rank and file, who alone have the capacity to launch civil disobedience on the mass scale necessary to paralyse Israel’s iron fist, but Hamas has no experience with this method, and now its statesmen are cornered by the guns you gave to Fatah thugs.

We could appeal to the leader of the Fatah thugs, Mr. Abbas, shuffling at the feet of Israeli power, to find some spine. Or to the ubiquitous Mr. Erekat, who never had a political vision in his life, to develop one overnight.

We could appeal to the Fatah thugs to reject Mr. Abbas and Mr. Erekat and the fat cement contracts you gave them to build the Wall that imprisons them, and seek a high road they have never glimpsed.

We could appeal to the microscopic PFLP and DFLP, clutching their old programs too stale to chew and consumed by their acrid, decades-old bitterness and rivalry with Fatah, to lift their heads at long last beyond the old and new grievances.

We could appeal to the US, but no one bothers to do that.

We could appeal to the EU, but no one bothers to do that, either.

We could appeal to the world, but it only stands aghast.

We could appeal to the world media, but it is frozen with its ass in the air.

We can only appeal to you, Israel. To think what you are doing, if not to care.

For you are crafting your own destruction.

You have been so effective in this great national project because you work from experience. Even the most courageous, principled, and sensible people, as you learned, cannot withstand a concentration camp indefinitely. At some point, as the Holocaust historians have tracked with such pathos, humanity breaks down. Individual heroism may survive as memoirs, but order, humanity, and finally human feeling decays into factional squabbles and man’s inhumanity to man. You learned all too well and bitterly how this cauldron can melt down the very fabric of a society and shatter people. The lesson is burned, literally, into your national memory. And you are bringing those lessons to bear, attempting to purge Zionism’s tragedy by bringing Gaza to ruin.

But if you actually reap the chaos you are crafting for the Palestinians, you will find that no one else is responsible for these five million civilians except you.

So what will you do, Israel, with five million people living under your rule, when you can no longer pretend to the world that you intend to negotiate with them? What will you do with people you detest, and who finally utterly detest you, when visions of coexistence have finally failed? You will be the only sovereign power over them. You will be able neither to digest them nor to vomit them out. And they will stare at you.

And we will stare at you, too.

Because there will be no one left to blame, and no one to take care of them, except you.

* Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science, a US citizen working in South Africa, and author of The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock (University of Michigan Press and Manchester University Press, 2005). She can be reached at tilley@hws.edu.

source:
http://www.counterpunch.com/tilley12152006.html

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

US Terrorize The World – 26 Dzulqaidah 1427 H (17.12.06)

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America’s War? More Than 655,000

http://tinyurl.com/usq4x

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In Bush’s War 2942
http://icasualties.org/oif/

The War in Iraq Costs $350,659,549,751 – See the cost in your community
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182

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9/11 : Global Action against Guantanamo

With Yesterday US Court decision of no jurisdiction to hear cases involving the remaining 435 prisoners challenging their detention at the US military base in Cuba.

Amnesty International declared today 16 December as a global campaign against Guantanamo.

Guantánamo detainees must be released immediately unless they are to be charged and given a fair trial.

The funny thing is: It is the US is same country who condemning others for lack of human rights, as new statement put it:

How can the US condemn torture in Argentina, political murders in Russia and censorship in North Korea when it promotes “kangaroo courts” at Guantanamo Bay?
http://www.roadstoiraq.com/2006/12/16/global-action-against-guantanamo/

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9/11 : Guantanamo Detainees To Be Held Even Without Evidence

WASHINGTON – The hard core of detainees held at America’s Guantanamo Bay detention camp will be held indefinitely even if there is insufficient evidence to bring them to trial, a senior Bush administration official said.

Of the 435 detainees being held at Guantanamo, only 10 have so far been charged with terrorism-related offenses. A further 14 detainees – the so-called high value detainees such as the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – are also expected to face trial now that the U.S. Congress has passed the Military Commission Act, which will finally enable America to commence trials of Guantanamo detainees next year.
http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=45212

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9/11 Video : Evidence that the U.S. Government Planned & Executed 9/11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVzQfa_V1jw

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9/11 : Criminalizing Compassion in the War on Terror

Muslim Charities and the Case of Dr. Rafil A. Dhafir
http://www.forusa.org/fellowship/nov-dec06/KatherineHughes.html

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Iraq : ‘We’re Going to Win’

Now Bush is ready to gamble his presidency on a last-ditch effort to defeat the Sunni insurgency and establish a sustainable democracy in Iraq. He is prepared to defy the weary wisdom of Washington that it’s too late, that the war in Iraq is lost, and that Bush’s lone option is to retreat from Iraq as gracefully and with as little loss of face as possible. Bush only needed what his press secretary, Tony Snow, called a “plan for winning.” Now he has one.

Let us remember a few facts that Bush is ignoring :
1. There were no WMDs in Iraq.
2. The American people know this.
3. Both Bush and Blair KNEW there were no WMDs in Iraq before the invasion even started.
4. The American people know this, too.
5. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11.
6. Iraq was not aiding Al Qaeda.
7. The American people know all this as well.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/095rxgyi.asp

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Britain never thought Saddam was threat – diplomat

The British government never believed Saddam Hussein posed a threat to British interests and warned the US that toppling him would lead to “chaos”, according to a Foreign Office diplomat closely involved in negotiations in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15921.htm

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Evidence shows no case for Iraq war

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s case for attacking Iraq has been dealt a new blow with the release of once-secret evidence from a former British diplomat who dismissed the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2006/1215/breaking12.htm

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Army chief accused of lying about Britain’s readiness for Iraq war

An inquest into the death of a British tank commander killed in Iraq has heard a tape he recorded three days before his death, in which he accuses the Army of telling “a blatant lie” by saying that British troops were ready for war, and tells his wife, “I just want to come home.”
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article2079339.ece

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John Major leads calls for inquiry into conflict

Sir John Major led calls for an independent inquiry into Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq after the revelations by a former British senior diplomat that contradict the Prime Minister’s case for the conflict.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2079340.ece

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Iraq is a disaster: old warriors have their say

SOME of the nation’s most senior military figures from the past two decades have delivered a blistering assessment of the US-led coalition’s strategy in Iraq, saying Australia must urge the Americans to change course.

Eight former military chiefs and the present RSL president said the coalition strategy had failed and must be overhauled.
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/age36.html

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America Loses Another War

Maybe you don’t agree. Maybe you say wait wait wait, it’s not over at all, and we haven’t lost yet. Isn’t the fighting still raging? Can’t we still “win” even though we’re still losing soldiers by the truckload and thousands of innocent Iraqis are being brutally slaughtered every month
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15918.htm

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Stop the Funding of the War!

View The Video – Sign The Petition. Support H.R. 4232: Introduced by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15920.htm

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Bush ready to send more troops to Iraq

President George W Bush is poised to increase troop numbers in Iraq as part of a dramatic new strategy designed to regain control of Baghdad and suffocate the Sunni insurgency
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/16/wirq116.xml

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U.S. preparing surge of forces into Iraq?

The 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division is expected in Kuwait shortly after the new year, a senior Defense Department official told The Associated Press on Friday. The official requested anonymity because the plans had not yet been announced.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16234949/

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Iraq War : They saw the uniforms and knew to run

Iraqis at a Baghdad market had expected this day, when gunmen swept in, opened fire and took people away.

“They’re here! They’re here!”

The panicked cry rose from the crowd of shoppers and businessmen, sending them into a stampede past storefronts and shocked onlookers. Men, women and children fell over handcarts and folding chairs, knocking one another down, hiding behind buildings and seeking shelter in shops.

None knew who “they” were: uniformed men firing weapons in the air and herding people into trucks, just a few hundred yards from the edge of the U.S.-guarded Green Zone.

But most had suspected such a day might come to the Sinak market of downtown Baghdad. All knew to run at first sight of the uniformed gunmen who have become signature elements of the all-too-common mass kidnappings in the Iraqi capital.
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/latimes636.html

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Video: Casual acts of resistance to American Occupation

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8847ff8c72&p=1

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Video: The Iraqi resistance destroying american vehicle west Bagdad

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8594b28395&p=1

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Video: Iraqi resistance blow door off humvee

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=babc10e5b4&p=1

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Video: Jaami attacks BlackHawks

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fc5954bcdd&p=1

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U.S. military deaths in Iraq at 2,942

As of Friday, Dec. 15, 2006, at least 2,942 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,359 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061215/ap_on_re_us/iraq_us_deaths

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Three U.S. troops killed in Iraq fighting, December among deadliest months of war

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Three more U.S. troops died in fighting this week, the military said Friday, raising to 54 the number of Americans killed in Iraq in December – nearly half of them in Anbar.

The month is shaping up to be one of the deadliest for Americans since the war started, especially for those trying to tame the Sunni-led insurgency in the volatile province west of Baghdad.
http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=172253

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 15 December 2006.

• American casualties reported after two Iraqi Resistance bombs blast US column south of al-Hadithah Friday morning.
• Resistance car bomber blasts into joint US-Iraqi puppet army checkpoint in al-Fallujah leaving one US soldier, three Iraqi puppet army troops reported dead.
• US launches campaign to install spy cameras around al-Fallujah to try to combat escalating Resistance attacks against US forces in the city.
• Resistance sets fire to US headquarters in Samarra’ with powerful mortar barrage Thursday evening, following American abduction of children of tribal Shaykh.
• Resistance bomb reportedly kills US soldier in al-Latifiyah Thursday afternoon.
• Resistance blasts joint US-Iraqi puppet army camp near ‘Anah Friday morning.
• Resistance forces mount two attacks on US headquarters in Hit railroad station Thursday evening.
• Resistance bomb blasts puppet police patrol in Kirkuk Friday morning.
• Resistance fighters ambush puppet police patrol in eastern al-Mawsil.
• Resistance bomb targest puppet police patrol in al-Mawsil.
• US troops blow up electronics repair shop in al-Mawsil, arrest proprietor on “suspicion” of helping the Resistance.

http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?mod=art&lapage=../en_articles_2006/1206/iraqiresistancereport_151206.htm

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Deadly Militia Attack Against Palestinians in Baghdad Sparks Appeal

At least nine people, including several children, were reportedly killed and many others were wounded when local militia shelled the Al Baladiya area of the Iraqi capital for three hours yesterday, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees

(< “http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/4581863b4.html&#8221; >UNHCR).
http://newsblaze.com/story/20061215084332tsop.nb/newsblaze/TOPSTORY/Top-Stories.html

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Shot in the Head for Throwing Stones : Twilight Zone / Death sentence

What is now going through the mind of the soldier who fired a loaded weapon at a boy on the Sunday before last – and killed him? What was he thinking when he aimed at the boy’s head? Is he still thinking about his victim? Why does live ammunition have to be used against children, even if they are throwing stones at a armored vehicles? Don’t the soldiers have other means of punishment? And what about the security cabinet’s decision to promote calm in the West Bank, too?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/801268.html

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“When There’s No One Left to Blame What Are You Going to Do Now, Israel?”

Now that three small boys have been killed by assassins’ bullets, and a Hamas judge dragged from his car and murdered, perhaps you are pleased. The Palestinians are finally succumbing to your plots, you think. The long-planned bottle has finally been sealed, in which the “drunken cockroaches” can only crawl around, shooting each other.
http://www.counterpunch.com/tilley12152006.html

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Different narratives in the Middle East

No, Israelis are not Nazis. But it’s time we talked of war crimes
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2079304.ece

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John Berger and 93 other authors, film-makers, musicians and performers call for a cultural boycott of Israel

THAT’LL teach ‘em!
http://www.pacbi.org/announcements_more.php?id=415_0_5_0_M

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Abbas calls for early Palestinian elections

Abbas said parliamentary and presidential polls should be held at the earliest opportunity, but appeared to leave the door open to the ruling Hamas by saying renewed efforts should be made to form a government that could lift Western sanctions.
http://tinyurl.com/yxakra

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Poll call a ‘risky political move’

As president, however, Mr Abbas does not have authority to order the new elections and he has referred the matter to the Palestinian election commission to see whether or not they can be held.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6186033.stm

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Israel says it supports Abbas on poll

ISRAEL said today it supported moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas after his call to hold early presidential and parliamentary elections.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20941409-23109,00.html

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U.S. welcomes call for early Palestinian elections

The United States on Saturday welcomed a call by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for fresh elections, expressing hopes it would quell violence in the Palestinian territories and pave the way for a unity government that could work toward peace with Israel.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N16435963.htm

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Blair, backs Palestinian president’s call for new elections

Blair, on the Egyptian leg of a Middle East peace effort, backed Abbas’ announcement of new elections as a way of breaking the political impasse between rival Palestinian groups — a call immediately condemned by his rivals in the militant Hamas
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/16/africa/ME_GEN_Mideast_Britain_Blair.php

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AXIS OF EVIL WELCOMES CALL FOR NEW PALESTINIAN ELECTIONS

Bush and Blair have both done such a marvelous job of running their own countries, they are now advising the Palestinians how to run theirs as well. If they hadn’t meddled from the day Hamas was elected and hadn’t sabotauged every efffort of theirs to try to form a government and rule there most likely wouldn’t be the strife we see today.

What on earth makes them think that the Palestinians will change their votes this time? What on earth makes Abu Mazan think the same? All three might be in for a big surprise and all three might just find themselves on the job market very soon along with their buddy Olmert.

The political situation in the Occupied Territories is a mess at the moment, an early election just might be what is needed to get rid of the rivalries involved and see what happens if Hamas gets a total majority in the election… that is the outcome I predict. Following is a Reuters report about the situation….

US, UK welcome call for early Palestinian elections
http://desertpeace.blogspot.com/2006/12/axis-of-evil-welcomes-call-for-new.html

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DICTATORSHIP : Academic to be Tried for Attending Holocaust Conference

If the holocaust is a fact ‘supported by mountains of evidence’, why are they throwing historians in prison to prevent them from speaking?
http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&hn=39233

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66% Think U.S. Spies on Its Citizens

Two-thirds of Americans believe that the FBI and other federal agencies are intruding on privacy rights as part of terrorism investigations, but they remain divided over whether such tactics are justified, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released yesterday.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/12/AR2006121201310_pf.html

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Aussie Man Wearing Anti-Bush T-Shirt Not Allowed To Board Flight

An Australian man was denied permission to board a connecting flight within Australia unless he removed the T-shirt titled “World’s #1 Terrorist” with a picture of U.S. President George W. Bush.
http://www.wayodd.com/aussie-man-wearing-anti-bush-t-shirt-not-allowed-to-board-flight/v/5954/

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The Real Culprit: Corpocracy

The Democratic tide in the recent elections is, potentially at least, a force to be reckoned with. Now, citizens-who-care can watch to see if these new members of Congress will squander their mandate in hopelessly fruitless witch hunts on the so-called “issues,” while the real culprit continues to bedevil them. That real culprit? – corpocracy[i] (rhymes with “hypocrisy”).
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15924.htm

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Come 2008, Will Kucinich and the “New Democrats” Fool Us Again?

Democrats, worried about not appearing “hawkish” enough-that is willing to invade small countries and slaughter large numbers of innocents-are attempting to out-neocon the perfidious neocons.

“If you think a new wind is blowing in Washington in terms of security issues because the Democrats are going to take over Congress, you probably have another think coming,” Christopher Hellman of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation told OneWorld, according to Aaron Glantz.
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=696

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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW