WHO KILLED YASSER ARAFAT?

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

It seems that there is no longer any doubt as to what killed Yasser Arafat. As was reported HERE the other day, he was poisoned.

Now the big question is…. WHO DONE IT???
Was it Israel?
Was it Fatah?
Was it his wife?

One day we will know the truth…. in the meantime the following might get some wheels in motion…

Who killed Yasser Arafat?
by Khalid Amayreh

Who killed Yasser Arafat? This is the question that has been boggling many people’s minds ever since the late Palestinian leader’s mysterious death in November, 2004.

Then, many people, politicians and ordinary citizens alike, even Arafat’s own physician, Dr. Ashraf al-Kurdi, seemed convinced that Arafat didn’t die a natural death and that he was actually killed as a result of a certain poisonous substance injected into his body probably by agents of the Israeli Mossad.

This writer spoke to Sakhr Habash, a close former aide to Yasser Arafat shortly after Arafat’s death. Habash, now ill as a result of a stroke, said that Arafat was killed by “ Israel ’s agents.”

I remember him telling me “they killed him, they killed him.” And when I asked him who he was alluding to, Habash said “he was referring to Arafat’s opponents within the Fatah organization.”

Habash gave no names, but anyone could conjure up some of the people he had in mind.

The PLO and the Palestinian Authority formed a commission of inquiry to look into the matter of Arafat’s death. However, the commission went into dormancy as soon as it was formed as all cues led to a dead-end or to inaccessible figures or sovereign foreign governments, e.g. France, that wouldn’t cooperate.

Nearly two weeks ago, Bassam Abu Sharif, another former aide to Yasser Arafat, held a surprise news conference in Ramallah, marking Arafat’s 78th birthday, in which he pointed out that Arafat did die of poison and that he possessed credible evidence proving his hypothesis.

Abu Sharif appealed to former French president Jacques Chirac to disclose the cause of Arafat’s death, or more specifically, to reveal the type of poison that killed the late Palestinian leader.

Meanwhile, it was reported recently that the Tunisian government decided to withdraw the Tunisian citizenship from Arafat’s widow Suha Tawil who reportedly moved to Malta where she is now living.

Neither the Tunisian government nor Arafat’s widow elaborated on the matter as some pan-Arab newspapers speculated that the Tunisian measure was prompted by a business dispute between the former Mrs. Arafat and her Tunisian partner.

However, there have been allegations and rumors that Suha Tawil possessed “hard information” about Yasser Arafat’s death and that she received a legal undertaking from the French authorities to keep “Arafat’s medical records confidential.”

Moreover, there have been consistent reports circulating in the occupied Palestinian territories alleging that Suha Tawil had reached a “deal” with the top Fatah leadership in the West Bank whereby she received millions of dollars in return for “keeping her mouth shut.”

And it seems that both sides to the deal have kept their part of the bargain. However, it is obvious that the alleged deal between Palestine’s First Lady, as some pliant Palestinian newspapers used to refer to Suha al Tawil, and the top Fatah leadership, has failed to bury the Arafat’s death affair in the grave of history once and for all.

This week, Ashraf al Kurdi revealed in an interview with the pan-Arab Al Jazeera TV that HIV antibodies were found in Arafat’s blood. When Kurdi uttered these words, the station immediately halted the interview.

Al Jazeera officials didn’t say why they stopped the interview with Dr. al Kurdi, a noted cardiologist and former Jordanian Minister of Health, but journalists working for the satellite station in the Occupied Palestinian territories intimated that the famous station probably was worried that Kurdi’s revelations might put it in a difficult situation vis-à-vis the Palestinian Authority, especially the Fatah group, who might harm al-Jazeera’s correspondents and workers in Palestine.

Al-Kurdi, undeterred by Al-Jazeera’s nervous reflexes, clarified the matter further during an interview with the Jordanian Ammon website this week. He said he believed that Arafat was deliberately infected with the AIDS virus in order to obscure the real cause of his death and also in order to tarnish his name, e.g. by creating the impression that Arafat may have been gay, a disgraceful trait in traditional Arab society.

Al-Kurdi, who was Arafat’s personal physician for 18 years, didn’t say how he was able to know that HIV viruses were found in Arafat’s blood and why he thought that the actual cause of his death was poison, not AIDS.

Al Kurdi left many questions unanswered when he pointed out that he was prevented from seeing the late Palestinian leader when his life was really deteriorating.

“They used to call me whenever he had a simple common cold, but when his life started to deteriorate , his wife, Suha, wouldn’t allow me to travel with him to the hospital in Paris; no doctor at the French military hospital contacted me for details about his health, and after he died, the current Palestinian Chairman didn’t allow Arafat’s grave to be reopened in order to determine the cause of his death.”

Interestingly, al Kurdi’s revelation that Arafat’s blood contained the HIV virus was previously unknown and certainly unconfirmed. This writer interviewed al-Kurdi on Arafat’s death nearly two years ago, and he made no reference to the infectious disease.
Hence, one is prompted to ask what is the source of al-Kurdi’s revelations? And who has a vested interest in making these revelations at this time? And is there a certain “insider” trying to blackmail or expose the culprits for money or political concessions or both?

Moreover, why did Suha Arafat prevent Ashraf al-Kurdi from seeing her husband after he was transferred to the military hospital in Paris? Also, does her expulsion from Tunis have anything to do with some undeclared revelations about her possible complicity or culpability in Arafat’s death.?

These and other questions are awaiting satisfactory answers.

Khalid Amayreh, a frequent contributor to ZioPedia.org, lives in Occupied East Jerusalem.

source:

http://desertpeace.blogspot.com/2007/08/who-killed-yasser-arafat.html

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

U.S. Media Ignores Estimate of 1 Million Iraqi Deaths

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

U.S. Media Ignores Estimate of 1 Million Iraqi Deaths

Robert Naiman, Huffington Post

Posted August 14, 2007

Yesterday a radio interviewer in South Africa asked me what had been the response of the “mainstream media in the United States” to Just Foreign Policy’s ongoing estimate of the Iraqi death toll from the U.S. invasion and occupation, which on Thursday crossed the one million mark.

Sadly, I had to report that it has been ignored by mainstream media, even the wire services. But this is hardly surprising. A main motivation for constructing the web counter was to keep the “Lancet study” alive. The “Lancet study,” you’ll recall, was a study published last fall in the British medical journal The Lancet, which estimated that more than 600,000 Iraqis had had been killed as a result of the invasion as of July 2006. The media largely buried the Lancet study when it was published – and have largely ignored the question of the overall death toll from the U.S. invasion – so it’s little surprise that they have ignored our attempt to shine a light on this question.

The Lancet study is the only existing study that uses the method accepted all over the world for estimating deaths due to large-scale violent conflict: a cluster survey. Its principal deficit for understanding the current situation is that the survey it was based on is now a year old, so that when people want to invoke the Lancet study to describe the death toll, they are likely to say, “a year ago the death toll was over 600,000″ – leaving out what has happened since. Since the Lancet study is “old news,” it’s progressively easier to ignore it over time. It was this problem that gave us the idea of constructing an ongoing, rough update.

The tally of deaths reported in the Western media by Iraq Body Count, although it gives an inaccurate picture of the overall death toll, does have the advantage that it is regularly updated. So while the Iraq Body Count tally, by itself, doesn’t help us understand the overall death toll, it does give us some information about the trend over time, because one can compare, for example, the Iraq Body Count tally today with the Iraq Body Count tally from July 2006.

Thus, we constructed our ongoing online estimate – for which we provide the code so you can include it on your own web page – by extrapolating from the Lancet estimate using the trend provided by Iraq Body Count.

Our extrapolation assumes that Iraq Body Count is capturing a fixed proportion of the true level of deaths over time. This is a conservative assumption, because it is likely that Iraq Body Count is capturing a smaller share of the true death toll over time, as reporting from Iraq becomes progressively more difficult. By assuming that Iraq Body Count captures a constant share, we will tend to underestimate the true death toll.

Note that the number we focus on is the Lancet estimate of excess deaths due to violence. Thus, we understate the death toll by ignoring, say, increased deaths due to cholera which could be attributed, at least in part, to the destruction resulting from the U.S. invasion and occupation.

Note further that a straight-line extrapolation from the Lancet study – ignoring any increase in the death rate in the last year from the average between March, 2003 and July, 2006 – an average that includes the first year of the occupation, when by all accounts the death rate was lower – would still result in more than 750,000 excess deaths due to violence.

Increasingly, the U.S. occupation is described as a passive onlooker to the violence. This is deeply misleading for two reasons. First, the civil war – or civil wars – that have been unleashed in Iraq was a predictable – and predicted – result of the U.S. invasion. Everything is predicted if one searches enough, but in this case, for example, James Baker gave the threat of unleashing a civil war as a key reason why the U.S. didn’t go to Baghdad in 1991, so it’s absurd to treat this as an unforeseeable consequence. Second, the picture is being obscured by underreporting in the U.S. of deaths from U.S. air strikes, raids, and shooting at checkpoints.

Why does this matter? Obviously, we have a responsibility to understand the world as best we can, and nowhere is this responsibility greater than in trying to understand the consequences of the actions of our government. But the question is particularly urgent, because there is a major effort underway to rehabilitate the war politically, by cherry-picking – and misinterpreting – current developments. The surge is working, we are told: it must be given more time. If the scale of the overall death toll from the U.S. invasion becomes part of the debate, this sleight-of-hand will be much harder to maintain.

source:

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m35438&hd=&size=1&l=e

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

US Coalition death toll in Iraq hits 4,000

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

US Coalition death toll in Iraq hits 4,000

Story Highlights

• Most Iraq war coalition casualties have been U.S. military service members
• Others hail from various support countries, such as UK, Italy, Poland, Ukraine
• Car bomb in Baghdad shopping center kills nine, wounds 17

Sara Salazar kisses the grave marker of a grandson, Army Pfc. Bruce Salazar, in Fort Stewart, Georgia, on Thursday.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — The number of coalition military deaths in the war in Iraq has reached 4,000.

The gloomy milestone was reached as a U.S. general said there has been a rise in insurgents booby-trapping houses.

Most of the fatalities throughout the Iraq war have been U.S. military service members, with 3,705 deaths. That number also includes seven civilians working for the Pentagon.

The nearly 300 others hail from countries, such as Italy, Poland and Ukraine, that have supported the U.S. effort, which began in March 2003.

The numbers are based on a CNN Library count of official figures from the various countries involved in the Iraq war.

On Friday a roadside bombing killed a U.S. soldier in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said. Two others were wounded. They were all from Multi-National Division-Baghdad.

Three U.S. soldiers died in Baghdad on Thursday, the U.S. military said. Two of the dead died from a “non-battle related cause.” In addition, a Task Force Lightning soldier was killed by enemy gunfire in Baghdad province.

Forty-six U.S. troops have died this month. Britain, which has command of coalition troops in southern Iraq, has suffered 168 deaths, 132 of them in hostile circumstances.

The United States has about 162,000 troops in Iraq; 11,500 are from other countries, the State Department says.

Next month, Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker are scheduled to present a progress report on Iraq to Congress.

While debate continues as to whether the deployment of more U.S. troops to Iraq is working, insurgents are stepping up their efforts by rigging bombs in houses that U.S. and Iraqi soldiers try to enter and clear. See a timeline of deadliest attacks in Iraq »

Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, director for operations for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, described a few recent instances in which improvised explosive devices have gone off in buildings where there were U.S. and Iraqi soldiers.

“It has occurred in Baghdad and in other sites as well,” Ham said.

The devices are set up like booby traps, but with a large explosive similar to those used in roadside bombs, he said. He does not know if any of the home booby traps have used armor-piercing devices.

Meanwhile, a coordinated attack against the Yazidi minority, which killed 500 civilians, was described by Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon as an attempt to influence U.S. public opinion.

Tuesday’s truck bombs that targeted the villages of Qahtaniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair, in northern Iraq near the border with Syria, were a “trademark al Qaeda event” designed to sway U.S. public opinion against the war, Mixon said Wednesday. Watch the grim aftermath of the suicide bombings »

He called the attacks on Kurdish villages of the Yazidi religious minority “ethnic cleansing.” There has been very little security in the area where the bombs exploded, officials say. Sunni extremists have been blamed for the attacks.

Mixon said the car bombings were attempts to “break the will” of the American people and show that the U.S. troop escalation — the “surge” — is failing.

In another blast Thursday morning, a bomb in a parked car exploded at a busy shopping center in central Baghdad, killing at least nine people and wounding 17, Iraq’s Ministry of Information said

In Diyala province Wednesday, the U.S. military reported 21 insurgents killed in an “unprecedented combined action” effort of Iraqi police and citizen volunteers.

The joint force of police and the volunteers, who call themselves the Baquba Guardians, “defeated a coordinated attack” by 40 to 60 “al Qaeda terrorists” in the southern Buhriz region near Baquba, the U.S. military said in a Thursday statement. Coalition attack helicopters backed up the fighters.

The U.S. military is leading two major offensives against Diyala insurgents — Arrowhead Ripper in Baquba and Lightning Hammer in the Diyala River valley.

“Baquba should be proud of their security forces and their citizen guardians today,” said Col. Steve Townsend, commander, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division.

“All fought side-by-side and soundly defeated a complex attack from a determined enemy. This thing could have been much worse had those suicide bombers reached their targets.”

“We still have a great deal of work to do against al Qaeda in Iraq, and we have great deal of work to do against al Qaeda networks in northern Iraq,” Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a Multi-National Force-Iraq spokesman, said Wednesday.

The number of U.S. military deaths stands at 3,705, and the number in August so far is 47, according to a CNN count of Pentagon figures.

source:

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/16/iraq.main/index.html?section=cnn_latest

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Backspin for War : The Convenience of Denial

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Backspin for War

The Convenience of Denial

By Norman Solomon

08/17/07 “ICH ” — – The man who ran CNN’s news operation during the invasion of Iraq is now doing damage control in response to a new documentary’s evidence that he kowtowed to the Pentagon on behalf of the cable network. His current denial says a lot about how “liberal media” outlets remain deeply embedded in the mindsets of pro-military conformity.

In mid-August, the former CNN executive publicly defended himself against a portion of the “War Made Easy” film (based on my book of the same name) that has drawn much comment from viewers since the documentary’s release earlier this summer. As Inter Press Service reported, the movie shows “a news clip of Eason Jordan, a CNN News chief executive who, in an interview with CNN, boasts of the network’s cadre of professional ‘military experts.’ In fact, CNN’s retired military generals turned war analysts were so good, Eason said, that they had all been vetted and approved by the U.S. government.”

Inter Press called the vetting-and-approval process “shocking” — and added that “in a country revered for its freedom of speech and unfettered press, Eason’s comments would infuriate any veteran reporter who upholds the most basic and important tenet of the journalistic profession: independence.”

But Eason Jordan doesn’t want us to see it that way. And he has now fired back via an article in IraqSlogger, which calls itself “the world’s premier Iraq-focused Web site.” Jordan runs that Web site.

The journalist who wrote the Aug. 14 article, Christina Davidson, was in an awkward spot: “War Made Easy” directly criticizes her boss, and it was the subject of the article.

Davidson’s only assessment of the film that wasn’t favorable had to do with its criticisms of Jordan. “While there’s no doubt that journalistic laziness contributed to the uncritical re-broadcasting of the Bush administration’s official line,” she wrote, “Solomon takes it a little too far in trying to make the case that all of the cable networks were actively complicit in promoting the war. Solomon bases his reasoning primarily on one choice quote from Eason Jordan, former CNN news chief and current CEO of IraqSlogger’s parent company, Praedict.”

In fact, the film provides a wide range of evidence that “all of the cable networks were actively complicit in promoting the war” — the result of chronic biases rather than “journalistic laziness.” And CNN, like the rest of the cable news operations, comes in for plenty of tough scrutiny in the documentary. As the magazine Variety noted in a review of “War Made Easy” on Aug. 13, “Fox News is predictably bashed here, but supposedly neutral CNN gets it even harder.”

CNN is among the news outlets at the core of the myth of “the liberal media” — perpetuated, in part, by the fact that people are often overly impressed by the significance of rhetorical attacks on some media organizations by more conservative outlets. (Before his resignation from CNN in 2005, Eason Jordan was himself subjected to denunciations from the right — for allegedly skewing news coverage to curry favor with the Baghdad government during Saddam’s rule and, after the invasion, for reportedly stating that U.S. troops had targeted some journalists in Iraq.) But antipathy from right-wing pundits is hardly an indication of journalistic independence.

Stretching to defend Jordan’s CNN record, IraqSlogger complains that the CEO of its parent company is unfairly characterized in the film: “Solomon assumes that Jordan was seeking the blessing of Pentagon officials on the propriety of his choices, when in fact he was just doing a boss’s duty.”

The article then provides a quote from Jordan, supplying his explanation to set the record straight: “Employers routinely vet prospective employees with their previous employers. In these cases, we vetted retired generals to ensure they were experts in specific military and geographic areas. The generals were not vetted for political views.”

The explanation can only flunk the laugh test.

Eason Jordan was CNN’s chief news executive when, on April 20, 2003 (a month after U.S. troops invaded Iraq), he appeared on CNN and revealed that he’d gotten the Defense Department’s approval of which retired high-ranking officers to put on the network’s payroll. “I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, for instance — ‘At CNN, here are the generals we’re thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war’ — and we got a big thumbs-up on all of them. That was important.”

With war euphoria riding high, Jordan was eager to shore up his — and CNN’s — image as cooperative pals of the nation’s military commanders. Now, Jordan is trying some backspin with the claim that he was merely checking job references.

“Often journalists blame the government for the failure of the journalists themselves to do independent reporting,” I note in the documentary. “But nobody forced the major networks like CNN to do so much commentary from retired generals and admirals and all the rest of it.” What Jordan did on behalf of CNN “wasn’t even something to hide, ultimately. It was something to say to the American people on his own network, ‘See, we’re team players. We may be the news media, but we’re on the same side and the same page as the Pentagon.’ And that really runs directly counter to the idea of an independent press. And that suggests that we have some deep patterns of media avoidance when the U.S. is involved in a war based on lies.”

Part of that deadly avoidance comes when powerful news executives do the bidding of the Pentagon — and then, later on, claim that they did nothing of the kind.

Norman Solomon is the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For information and excerpts from the book, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com

source:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18203.htm

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Thursday, 16 August 2007

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Thursday, 16 August 2007

Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice.

• US admits three more American soldiers killed in Iraq.
• Shi‘i sectarian Jaysh al-Mahdi militia abducts, murders two men on visit to relatives in prison.
• US forces blow up houses of residents in al-Jihad neighborhood of Baghdad, injuring three residents.
• Sectarian murder spree continues: 15 more bodies recovered in Baghdad Wednesday.
• Puppet “Lion Brigade” troops block shipments of food, cooking gas from going into al-Mada’in – then steal the gas and distribute it to relatives.
• British installations in al-Basrah attacked.
• Resistance bomb wounds four puppet policemen in Kirkuk midday Thursday.
• Local leader of Fadilah party gunned down in ad-Diwaniyah as rival Shi‘i sectarian collaborationist parties battle each other for control of southern Iraq.
• Resistance bomb destroys US mine sweeper in al-Mada’in.

Baghdad.

US claims one more American killed in “non-combat” situation in occupied Iraq.

In a dispatch posted at 12:48am Baghdad time just after midnight Friday morning, the Aswat al-‘Iraq news agency, which was set up by Reuters and the U.N. Development Agency, reported that the American military had admitted that one more of its troops had died in what it called a “non-combat” situation on Thursday.

Aswat al-‘Iraq reported a US announcement as saying that the death occurred in Baghdad but in keeping with the US practice of concealing the facts regarding American losses in Iraq, it offered few other details.

US admits two more American soldiers killed in Iraq on Wednesday.

In a dispatch posted at 9:15pm Baghdad time Thursday night, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that the US military admitted that two more of its troops had been killed to the north of Baghdad on Wednesday.

The AMSI reported that a statement issued by the American occupation authorities on Thursday announced that two US soldiers were killed in offensive operations in Baghdad. Six more American troops were wounded in the attack, the US statement added.

US carries out airborne landings in ‘Arab Jabbur area of Baghdad’s southern suburbs.

In a dispatch posted at pm Makkah time Thursday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that US airborne troops attacked a desert area in the southern area of Baghdad today.

Mafkarat al-Islam reported a number of houses in the ‘Arab Jabbur area to the south of Baghdad, claiming that they were being used by the Iraqi Resistance.

Earlier in the week the Americans announced that they were launching another offensive against the Iraqi Resistance employing some 4,000 men in airborne attacks in the Tigris River valley to the south of the occupied Iraqi capital.

Shi‘i sectarian Jaysh al-Mahdi militia abducts, murders two men on visit to relatives in prison.

In a dispatch posted at 12:14pm Baghdad time midday Thursday, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that the Shi‘i sectarian Jaysh al-Mahdi militia have kidnapped and killed two Iraqi civilians – Mujbil Samir ad-Dulaymi and Khalid Walid al-Jabburi – both residents of the al-Furat neighborhood in western Baghdad.

The AMSI correspondent reported that the Jaysh al-Mahdi militia, which is loyal to Shi‘i sectarian cleric Muqtada as-Sadr, a collaborator with the US occupation, abducted the two men from the al-Baladiyat housing area which is also home to many Palestinian refugees.

AMSI reported that ad-Dulaymi and al-Jabburi were last seen when paying a visit to relatives of theirs who were being held in a prison run by the US-installed “Iraqi Ministry of Interior” on Monday, 13 August. Their decomposed bodies were found in the al-Mashtall area Thursday morning, 16 August.

The Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq denounced this murder as another “cowardly act,” and declared that it was holding the US occupation and its puppet regime fully responsible for the crime. It also urged Iraqis to exercise utmost caution when going into areas controlled by the sectarian militias.

US forces blow up houses of residents in al-Jihad neighborhood, injuring three residents.

In a dispatch posted at 11:48am Baghdad time Thursday morning, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that US occupation troops on Wednesday blew up four houses in the ad-Dubbat area of the al-Jihad neighborhood, No. 883, injuring three local residents and heavily damaging adjacent houses.

The AMSI correspondent reported eyewitnesses as saying that American troops surrounded the area and then launched a campaign of raids and searches of several houses. They then planted explosives and blew up a number of those homes, in the process injuring three local people who had to be taken to a local popular clinic for treatment.

US forces regularly blow up houses that they regard as “suspicious.” Just in recent days, the Americans have blown up at least 10 houses in the al-Ghazaliyah and al-Khadra’ districts as well as a large number of homes in the al-‘Amiriyah district – either by planting explosives in them or by rocketing them from the air.

Mysterious car bomb kills nine in Baghdad’s ar-Rusafah Square Thursday morning.

In a dispatch posted at 10:18am Baghdad time Thursday morning, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that a car bomb exploded in the middle of Baghdad on Thursday morning.

The AMSI reported a source in the puppet police as saying that an explosives-laden car went off near ar-Rusafah Square damaging several buildings and cars in the area and killing four civilians. Six other civilians were also wounded in the blast, by preliminary count.

A short while later, in a dispatch posted at 10:43am Makkah time Thursday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the explosion had claimed the lives of nine people and injured 17 more.

Sectarian murder spree continues: 15 more bodies recovered in Baghdad Wednesday.

In a dispatch posted at 10:11am Baghdad time Thursday morning, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that the Iraqi puppet police recovered the bodies of 15 more victims of sectarian murder that had been dumped in various parts of occupied Baghdad on Wednesday.

The AMSI reported a source in the puppet police as saying that the bodies had been taken to the Forensic medicine institute in Baghdad.

Diyala Province.
Al-Mada’in.

Resistance bomb destroys US mine sweeper in al-Mada’in.

In a dispatch posted at 11:03am Baghdad time Thursday morning, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a mine sweeper vehicle in the Barid al-Mada’in area.

The AMSI reported that the blast destroyed the mine sweeper, but US forces quickly sealed off the area where the attack took place, making it impossible for anyone to approach or to find out the nature or extent of casualties, if any.

Puppet “Lion Brigade” troops block shipments of food, cooking gas cylinders from going into al-Mada’in – then steal the gas and distribute it to relatives.

In a dispatch posted at 11:03am Baghdad time Thursday morning, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that puppet “Lion Brigade” troops confiscated cooking gas cylinders that they found on trucks headed into the town of al-Mada’in, 25km southeast of Baghdad.

The AMSI correspondent reported that the puppet troops declared that there were “terrorists” – meaning Iraqi Resistance fighters – in the town and they prevented trucks loaded with the gas cylinders from getting into the city. They then took the cylinders and distributed them in the al-Wardiyah area which is where the Shi‘i sectarian “Lion Brigade” troops in the unit came from. The puppet “Lion Brigade” troops distributed the gas cylinders free of charge to their friends and relatives in al-Wardiyah and threatened to kill the owners of the shipment if they objected.

Earlier, the same “Lion Brigade” puppet troops prevented a shipment of flour from getting into al-Mada’in, using the same excuse, namely that “terrorists” were in the city.

Unexplained mortar shell kills civilian in al-Mada’in.

In a dispatch posted at 10:18am Baghdad time Thursday morning, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that a mortar shell of unknown origin landed in the al-Mada’in area, 25km southeast of Baghdad.

The AMSI reported that the blast killed one civilian and wounded two more.

Al-Qadisiyah Province.
Ad-Diwaniyah.

Ad-Diwaniyah locked down in the face of Shi‘i sectarian infighting.

In a dispatch posted at 9:19pm Baghdad time Thursday night, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that the puppet authorities in the city of ad-Diwaniya, 180km south of Baghdad, declared a curfew starting at 7pm local time Thursday afternoon and lasting until 6am Friday morning.

The AMSI reported a puppet police spokesman in the city as saying that the lockdown was prompted by a “deterioration of security” in ad-Diwaniyah where a number of political and religious figures and officers in the puppet security forces have been gunned down recently. The spokesman said that the curfew was designed to prevent further losses to the puppet security forces and to forestall fighting between rival Shi‘i sectarian groups battling for control of the city.

Local leader of Fadilah party gunned down in ad-Diwaniyah as rival Shi‘i sectarian collaborationist parties battle each other for control of southern Iraq.

In a dispatch posted on its website Thursday, Quds Press reported that armed men shot and killed Shaykh al-Budayri, the Imam of the Ansar al-Fadilah organization and a prominent member of the Shi‘i sectarian al-Fadilah (Virtue) party in the city of ad-Diwaniyah, 180km south of Baghdad on Wednesday night.

Quds Press reported a source in the puppet security forces as saying that gunmen shot and killed al-Budayri in front of his home in the an-Nahdah neighborhood of the city at 9pm local time Wednesday evening. The attackers sprayed him with machinegun fire, killing him instantly, and then fled the scene.

The source said that five bullets ripped through al-Budayri’s body badly mangling it. It was the first time that a member of the Fadilah Party had been assassinated in ad-Diwaniyah where fighters for the Jaysh al-Mahdi Shi‘i sectarian militia have been battling American troops and the puppet security forces, most of whose members in the city are drawn from rival Shi‘i sectarian parties such as the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council and al-Fadilah.

Until March this year, the Fadilah Party was a member of the dominant Shi‘i sectarian political coalition known as the “United Iraqi Alliance (UIA)” that controls the puppet regime in Baghdad and includes the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, the Da‘wah Party, the Muqtada as-Sadr Movement, the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chelebi, and other Shi‘i sectarian groupings. But on 7 March 2007, the Fadilah Party announced it was pulling out of the UIA, which it criticized for carrying out excessive sectarian bloodshed.

Immediately thereafter, the main groups within the UIA – the Badr Brigades of the SIIC and the Jaysh al-Mahdi of the Muqtada as-Sadr movement – launched campaigns throughout southern Iraq to drive the Fadilah party out of the local power centers it occupied, sparking protracted turf wars in al-Basrah and ad-Diwaniyah.

At-Ta’mim Province.
Kirkuk.

Resistance bomb wounds four puppet policemen in Kirkuk midday Thursday.

In a dispatch posted at 4:50pm Baghdad time Thursday afternoon, the Aswat al-‘Iraq news agency, which was set up by Reuters and the U.N. Development Agency, reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a puppet police patrol near the cotton gin in the center of Kirkuk at midday Thursday.

Aswat al-‘Iraq reported an official in the puppet police as saying that the blast wounded four puppet policemen in the patrol They were admitted to Kirkuk General Hospital for treatment.

Resistance bomb wounds puppet police official in Kirkuk midday Thursday.

In a dispatch posted at 1:27pm Baghdad time Thursday afternoon, the Aswat al-‘Iraq news agency, which was set up by Reuters and the U.N. Development Agency, reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded in the Dumiz Junction area, 5km south of Kirkuk at midday Thursday.

Aswat al-‘Iraq reported a source in the puppet security forces as saying that the blast wounded Colonel Hadi al-Bayyati, the official in charge of the Kirkuk puppet police, and lightly injured one of his bodyguards. Both were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.

Al-Basrah Province.
Al-Basrah.

British installations in al-Basrah attacked.

In a dispatch posted at 11:55am Baghdad time Thursday morning, the Aswat al-‘Iraq news agency, which was set up by Reuters and the U.N. Development Agency, reported that the British had admitted that their installations in the southern city of al-Basrah had again come under attack at dawn Thursday.

Aswat al-‘Iraq reported the British as announcing that attackers fired RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades and light arms at the British camps. The official announcement said that no casualties or losses had resulted from the latest attacks.

http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?mod=art&lapage=../en_articles_2007/0807/iraqiresistancereport_160807.htm

Sources:

http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=52865&NrIssue=1&NrSection=1

http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=52828&NrIssue=1&NrSection=1

http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=52803&NrIssue=1&NrSection=1&ALStart=20

http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=52790&NrIssue=1&NrSection=1&ALStart=20

http://www.islammemo.cc/article1.aspx?id=49232

http://www.islammemo.cc/article1.aspx?id=49228

http://www.islammemo.cc/article1.aspx?id=49221

http://www.islammemo.cc/article1.aspx?id=49219

http://www.islammemo.cc/article1.aspx?id=49211

http://www.islammemo.cc/article1.aspx?id=49208

http://www.qudspress.com/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=22923&NrIssue=1&NrSection=3

http://www.qudspress.com/look/sarticle.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=22929&NrIssue=1&NrSection=1

http://www.qudspress.com/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=22906&NrIssue=1&NrSection=3

http://www.qudspress.com/look/sarticle.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=22910&NrIssue=1&NrSection=1

http://www.qudspress.com/look/sarticle.tpl?IdLanguage=17&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=22927&NrIssue=1&NrSection=1

http://www.iraq-amsi.org/news.php?action=view&id=18947&814110fa310606b51e14e37064837dbd

http://www.iraq-amsi.org/news.php?action=view&id=18946&388a580bfb8a48c4baeebd7b5e95c36b

http://www.iraq-amsi.org/news.php?action=view&id=18939&e1d09ec588e107aca4796b26cdc97b56

http://www.iraq-amsi.org/news.php?action=view&id=18937&f90f95b5553818a48f36d23f94eae26b

http://www.iraq-amsi.org/news.php?action=view&id=18936&f0608843c2ece17419b340ceba9f6852

http://www.iraq-amsi.org/news.php?action=view&id=18932&82b22ebbb2ac223e69f3340464461278

http://www.iraq-amsi.org/news.php?action=view&id=18930&e0e34acb91a00a27db3ca054c0e45aa0

http://www.freearabvoice.org

http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?header=res1&mod=gis&rep=rep

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

German student expelled for questioning 9/11

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

German student expelled for questioning 9/11

Posted Aug 16, 2007 11:01 AM PST

Category: 911

An 18 year old student was expelled from his school in Duisburg Germany for questioning the 9/11 official story. During a lesson about Globalisation the teacher showed the students a video regarding September 11, produced by the main stream media Spiegel TV. After viewing the students where asked give their comments, whereby Doninik raised his hand and said, he sees a lot of discrepancies in the official account and does not believe it. He said, the US government is full of lies about what happened on that day. The teacher got all upset and told him to leave the class room. Later he was told to see the headmistress and she then summoned Dominik and said to him, she does not want to hear any criticism of the US government from him, because it is anti-American and also the language used by neo-Nazis. She then expelled him from the school for two days.

Sig Heil!

source:

http://alles-schallundrauch.blogspot.com/

===

-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Dictatorship : Think Tank Calls For Bush to Be Dictator For Life

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Dictatorship : Think Tank Calls For Bush to Be Dictator For Life

Source: Rogue Government – Lee Rogers

Published on Thursday, August 16, 2007.

Family Security Matters a neo-conservative based think tank has published an article advocating that George W. Bush should be a dictator for life. The organization has since taken the article down, but is still viewable via this cached link.

Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy: By Philip Atkinson

The article written by Philip Atkinson states that Bush would fail his country by becoming an ex-President or can achieve greatness by becoming President-for-Life Bush in order to bring sense to Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Atkinson is bluntly advocating that Bush should become dictator for life with these outrageously anti-American statements.

From the article:

President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

Atkinson also advocates that Bush should get rid of everyone in Iraq through military force and repopulate the country with Americans.

From the article:

If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.

Although these statements by Atkinson are completely insane and entirely anti-American, the author also shows complete ignorance as to the type of government the United States is supposed to be. The author states that Bush is a victim of Democracy when in fact the United States is not a Democracy.

From the article:

Yet in 2007 he is generally despised, with many citizens of Western civilization expressing contempt for his person and his policies, sentiments which now abound on the Internet. This rage at President Bush is an inevitable result of the system of government demanded by the people, which is Democracy.

The inadequacy of Democracy, rule by the majority, is undeniable – for it demands adopting ideas because they are popular, rather than because they are wise. This means that any man chosen to act as an agent of the people is placed in an invidious position: if he commits folly because it is popular, then he will be held responsible for the inevitable result. If he refuses to commit folly, then he will be detested by most citizens because he is frustrating their demands.

Although I do agree that Democracy is a horrible form of government, Atkinson’s argument holds no water since we do not have a Democracy in this country. The United States is in fact a Constitutional Republic, so it is not possible for Bush to be a victim of Democracy.

Unfortunately, Atkinson might get his wish of a Bush dictatorship. The HSPD-20/NSPD-51 directives issued by Bush states that the President is to have complete control over all three branches of government during a catastrophic emergency. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security plans for continuity of government operations have been kept secret from Congress.

Either way, Atkinson the author of this article is clearly an insane individual who hates America. From advocating the colonization of Iraq with Americans as well as a Bush dictatorship, it is clear this individual needs some serious help. It also leaves questions as to the judgment of this Family Security Matters organization considering they openly published this anti-American trash. An investigation by Free Market News Network, found that Family Security Matters is actually a front group for the Center for Security Policy a group that Vice President Dick Cheney is a known associate of. Removing the article was clearly a means of damage control and it shows how rabid and insane the neo-conservative base has become. This article shows that today’s neo-conservative is nothing more than the 21st century equivalent of a Nazi in pre World War II Germany.

source:

http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=4022

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW