URUK Net 16 March, 2010: The Rabbi, the Priest, the Imam and Egypt’s Steel Wall
The Rabbi, the Priest, the Imam and Egypt’s Steel Wall
By Mohammed Omer
March 16, 2010 – THE STEEL WALL Egypt is building along its nearly nine-mile border with the Gaza Strip extends almost 60 feet underground. Its purpose is to prevent Palestinians from digging the tunnels that have become Gaza’s only lifeline. “The steel wall is a serious threat that will make life impossible for us here in Gaza,” said Abu Ayman, one of thousands of workers at the smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. The 41-year-old man, who declined to give his full name, explained that this is the only job that allows him to feed his four children, wife and two elderly parents. “What do you expect us to do,” he asked, “when there is a high rate of unemployment, and no other means of survival?”…
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Going Home: Returning to Iraq after 10 years
Hela Rahman
March 16, 2010 – Driving through the streets of Baghdad is a heartbreaking experience. Rubbish lies uncollected, roads bear the scars of exploded munitions and impoverished children play outside destroyed buildings, fires still smouldering amongst the rubble. There is no green now, only dust and sand. There are no ambitions for the people of Iraq bar one – to survive another day. This is the Iraq of today. This is my homeland. When I look back it doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t seem like I actually went to a country almost half a world away, a country invaded and occupied since 2003 by Western forces, a place that has suffered over a million civilian casualties and that continues to suffer day after day. Not having been back to Iraq since 1999 I didn’t really know what to expect…
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How Iran’s Workers Fight Ahmadinejad’s Neoliberal Cutbacks
The Iranian Tsunami
By CONN HALLINAN
When most Americans think about the recent upheavals in Iran, it is about marches demanding democracy and challenging the June 12 presidential election. March 16, 2010 – …The face of those protests is the “Green Movement”—so called because its supporters wear green—that put millions of people into the streets of Teheran and other large cities throughout the country. Largely unseen, and rarely reported on, however, are thousands of strikes, slow downs and sit-ins by workers challenging the erosion of trade union rights and the government’s drive to privatize the economy, plus instituting policies that will impoverish tens of millions of people. According to Amin, over the next few months the government will begin dismantling $20 billion a year in subsidies for gasoline, water, electricity, rice, flour, bus fare, and university tuition. “The Iranian people made these things, fought for these things,” says Amin. “They are all that is left of the [1979] revolution.”…
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Imagine that, Iraqis think Nouri is the US favorite
The Common Ills
March 16, 2010 – The latest election results in Iraq point to a heated and possibly lengthy power struggle between the Shiite coalition led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and the rival secular slate led by Ayad Allawi. That is not a surprise, but it is still worrying. The above is from the New York Times’ editorial “The Day After.” And, yeah, it’s a surprise. It’s a huge surprise. For a number of reasons. 1) It’s a surprise because the Western media has (since Monday of last week) repeatedly insisted that Nouri is the winner. They’ve offered that gas baggery as ‘reporting’ and, yes, they continue to do so. So that it could be a two-person game at this point would be very, very surprising to those who trusted the media…
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US drone attack kills Pakistanis
Aljazeera.net
March 16, 2010 – A suspected US drone attack in the restive northwest Pakistan has killed at least 11 people and wounded two others. The unmanned aircraft fired four missiles at compounds apparently used by pro-Taliban fighters in North Waziristan, destroying two of the hideouts, sources said on Tuesday. Pakistani security officials confirmed the strikes near the village of Datta Khel west of Miranshah, in the mountainous tribal region…
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Six Iraqis died in our custody, British officer tells Baha Musa inquiry
Deborah Haynes
March 16, 2010 – At least six Iraqis died while being held in British military custody during the first two months of the war in Iraq, a public inquiry has been told. Lieutenant-Colonel Nicholas Mercer, the former head of the Army’s legal team in the country, also disclosed that there was a shortage of troops dedicated to looking after detainees and said that Britain treated the issue as a low priority, regarding it as an “inconvenience” rather than an obligation under international law…
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Simon Wiesenthal Center launches PR campaign to whitewash Jerusalem desecration
Philip Weiss
March 16, 2010 – More grotesque news. At a time when Israel has declared two sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to be Jewish heritage sites, showing that it has no sign of creating any kind of viable Palestinian state, grim tidings from Haaretz: A rabbi declares that work is going to begin on the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance atop a historic Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, despite international protest of the desecration…
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Israel-U.S. Tensions Continue to Percolate
By Jim Lobe*
March 16, 2010 – Despite assurances by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Tuesday that the United States and Israel share a “close, unshakeable bond”, the week-old crisis between the two allies continued to percolate here Tuesday. Washington cancelled a planned trip to the region by its special Middle East peace envoy, while its top regional military commander warned that the failure to make progress in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and the “perception” that the U.S. favoured Israel in that conflict were damaging to U.S. security interests and allies in the Arab world…
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Iraq snapshot – March 16, 2010
The Common Ills
Tuesday, March 16, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, the counting of ballots continues, the US military announces another death, Gen David Petraeus is not in favor of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (despite what some outlets are ‘reporting’), he did offer curious remarks re: the draw-down, in DC peace activists are gathering, and more…
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The New ‘Forgotten’ War
Iraq occupation falls into media shadows
Dahr Jamail
March 16, 2010 – As Afghanistan has taken center stage in US corporate media, with President Barack Obama announcing two major escalations of the war in recent months, the US occupation of Iraq has fallen into the media shadows. But while US forces have begun to slowly pull back in Iraq, approximately 130,000 American troops and 114,000 private contractors still remain in the country (Congressional Research Service, 12/14/09)-along with an embassy the size of Vatican City…While U.S. newspapers have been following the lead-up to the Iraq elections, there has been virtually no coverage of the mass arrests Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki’s government is busy conducting in predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq…
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US military created private spy and murder squad in Afghanistan
By Patrick Martin
March 16, 2010 – A long-time US military official used Pentagon funding to establish a private intelligence and assassination network in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a report Monday in the New York Times. The network was shut down after the CIA station chief in Kabul objected to a competing military-backed intelligence operation, the newspaper said. The article identified the official as Michael D. Furlong, a 25-year veteran of the Air Force who is now a senior Pentagon civilian employee, working at the US Strategic Command at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. He reportedly diverted money from a $22 million contract to gather cultural and political information about Afghanistan and funneled it to at least two private firms which employed former intelligence and military Special Operations personnel…
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America’s Secret Prisons
Stephen Lendman
March 16, 2010 – On January 28 in TomDispatch.com, Anand Gopal headlined, “Night Raids, Hidden Detention Centers, the ‘Black Jail,’ and the Dogs of War in Afghanistan,” recounting unreported US media stories about killings, abductions, detentions, interrogations, and torture in “a series of prisons on US military bases around the country.” Bagram prison, for example, is “a facility with a notorious reputation for abusive behavior,” including brutalizing torture and cold-blooded murder. Even worse is the “Black Jail,” a facility consisting of individual windowless concrete cells with bright 24-hour lighting, described by one former detainee as “the most dangerous and fearful place” in which prisoners endure appalling treatment…
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Ayad Allawi takes a narrow lead over Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq election
Oliver August
March 16, 2010 – Ayad Allawi, the former Iraqi Prime Minister, took a narrow lead last night in parliamentary elections that seem set to herald months of political deadlock. With 80 per cent of votes counted, Mr Allawi, a secular Shia, was ahead by 9,000 votes. He appears to have won five provinces and Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, has taken seven. Even if he wins, Mr Allawi faces formidable obstacles to taking power. His Iraqiya bloc is projected to win 87 seats in the 325-member parliament, exactly the same as Mr al-Maliki’s State of Law Alliance. Both will have to find coalition partners…
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Video: Fierce clashes in Jerusalem as protests spread
Middle East Monitor
March 16, 2010 – Fierce confrontations have broken out in the early hours of Tuesday in many parts of occupied Jerusalem after Zionist settlers opened a synagogue next to Al Aqsa Mosque and declared their intention to lay the foundation stone of the so-called third temple. Some of the fiercest clashes erupted between young Palestinians and the Israeli occupation forces on the outskirts of the Issawiya village, as stones were hurled at the occupation forces who responded with tear gas canisters, stun grenades and live bullets. There are reports of many casualties…
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Violence continues across East Jerusalem, West Bank
Ma’an News
March 16, 2010 – An Israeli police officer was shot in the hand north of Jerusalem on Tuesday evening, an official said. The unidentified officer was taken to a hospital in the French Hill neighborhood, Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said. Rosenfeld told Ma’an that police cordoned off the area, in the Ras Al-Amoud district north of Jerusalem, while searching for the suspect…
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PFLP: Meet occupation’s settlement crimes in Jerusalem with popular revolt
PFLP – Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
March 16, 2010 – The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine called on March 16, 2009 to confront the occupation’s campaign of settlement and Judaization of Jerusalem with a popular uprising that can pave the way for an alternative strategy and a unified national leadership. Only a mass popular mobilization can fully meet the challenges imposed by the occupation’s aggressive expansionist offensive against the land, people and holy sites of Palestine!…
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U.S. Army officer reveals ethnic cleansing in Afghanistan
Dave Markland
March 16, 2010 – Last fall, an American special forces commander acquired the fawning nickname “Lawrence of Afghanistan” after he published a study on military tactics in Afghanistan. Based on his own experiences, Major Jim Gant advocated for an alternative to reigning counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy and apparently caught the attention of General McChrystal, who widely redistributed the report…
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‘Israeli Government knew of Jewish terrorist’s plan to open fire on Shfaram bus’
By Jack Khoury
March 16, 2010 – Newly discovered footage of a terrorist attack perpetrated by an Israel Defense Forces soldier in the Arab town of Shfaram five years ago indicates that authorities were aware of plans to commit the attack, a lawyer representing Israeli Arabs suspected of taking part in the subsequent lynching of the gunman said Sunday. In August 2005, Eden Natan-Zada opened fire in a passenger bus in Shfaram with his army-issued M-16 assault rifle, killing four. Immediately following the attack, a large crowd gathered around the bus, surrounding the gunman and beating him to death…
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Israeli Spy Under the Guise of a Journalist
Kawther Salam
March 16, 2010 – In the hours after the midnight on last Sunday, the Egyptian authorities arrested an Israeli at the border of Rafah together with members of the a drug gang which smuggles Africans into Israel. Yotam Feldman, who is suspected of being an Israeli spy, was arrested while trying to cross into Israel with a number of illegal African migrants. He had no identification papers. During the questioning by the Egyptian police, he claimed to be a journalist and that he was preparing a report about the smuggling of Africans into Israel. Feldman had no press card, no ID which could prove his profession or identity…
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Israel’s apartheid: Making Palestinians pay for Hitler’s crimes
By Suzanne Weiss
March 16, 2010 – A year after a murderous Israel’s assault, the war on the people of Gaza continues. Gaza is still under siege – still surrounded by walls and checkpoints. Its people are denied the necessities of life and the right to rebuild and shape their future. For me, as a survivor of the holocaust, the tragic situation in Gaza awakens memories of what I and my family experienced under Hitlerism – the ghetto walls, the killings, the systematic starvation and deprivation, the daily humiliations. The tragedy of Palestine is, of course, different from the holocaust. Israel has no gas chambers. Its government does not strive to kill all the Palestinians. Israel’s intention is, instead, to take the Palestinians’ homeland and property and to deprive them of civil and human rights. Every case of oppression is unique, but the struggle for justice is indivisible. As we then fought for freedom for European Jews, we now call for freedom for the Palestinians…
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Flyer calls on non-Jews to ‘leave the land’
Ma’an News
March 15, 2010 – Right-wing ultra-orthodox Jews handed out Arabic fliers calling on “non-Jews to leave the land of Israel,” in the streets of Jerusalem on Sunday, witnesses reported. The fliers, quoting Torah and Qur’an, used scripture to urge Palestinians living in the city to leave. “The Old Testament says the land of Israel is small and belongs to Jews only. Others are not allowed to stay permanently,” the flier read..
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Iraqiya Party Head: Iran Rigging Election Results
Aswat al-Iraq
March 16, 2010 – Iranian intelligence is working on rigging parliamentary election results through its agents in Iraq, the head of the Al-Umma Al-Iraqiya Party said on Tuesday. “We cannot remain silent now that the rigging has reached this level,” Mithal al-Allusi said in a statement issued by his party and received by Aswat al-Iraq news agency…
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Afghanistan Enacts Law That Gives War Criminals Blanket Immunity
Jason Leopold
March 16, 2010 – A law that provides blanket immunity and pardons former members of Afghanistan’s armed factions for war crimes and human rights abuses committed prior to December 2001 was quietly enacted three years ago by parliament, despite previous assurances by President Hamid Karzai that he would not sign it or allow it to take effect. According to Waheed Omer, Karzai’s spokesman, the amnesty law was enacted because it was approved by two-thirds of parliament and therefore did not need Karzai’s signature. Parliament is made up largely of former warlords who were accused by Afghans and human rights groups of war crimes…
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Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception
by Stephen Lendman
March 15, 2010 – Journalist Henry Siegman titled his August 2007 London Review of Books article, “The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam,” calling it likely “the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history.” This writer omits most likely calling it the no-peace peace process, stillborn from inception, while Haaretz writer Gideon Levy, on March 7, 2010, wrote “There has never been an Israeli peace camp,” saying “let’s call the child by its real name: The Israeli peace camp is still an unborn baby,” the mother yet to become pregnant given decades of Israeli-Washington rejectionism. In September 2009, former IDF chief of staff and current Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs, Moshe Ya’alon, said Jews have an “unassailable right (to) settle anywhere, particularly here, (in) the land of the Bible,” and earlier called the peace process a useful fiction “to sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people.”…
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Letter to Rachel Corrie’s family and Washington State legislators
Mohamed Khodr
March 16, 2010 – …This coming March 16 will be the seventh anniversary of Israel’s deliberate murder of a 23 year old young idealist college student from Olympia, Washington named Rachel Corrie. Her story and the shocking photos of her murder can be found in the links below. For seven years Israel has denied and falsified the story of this American citizen’s murder, albiet with the silence and usual paralysis of our government when the issue has to do with Israel…The blatant and open murder of an American citizen by Israel was met by utter callousness and silence by the White House, Congress, and the main stream media. The enormous and heart wrenching pain her parents have endured all these years have been suffered alone without any substantial support from our government whose main responsibility is the protection of its citizens..
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Ayad Allawi takes a narrow lead over Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq election
Oliver August
March 16, 2010 – Ayad Allawi, the former Iraqi Prime Minister, took a narrow lead last night in parliamentary elections that seem set to herald months of political deadlock. With 80 per cent of votes counted, Mr Allawi, a secular Shia, was ahead by 9,000 votes. He appears to have won five provinces and Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, has taken seven. Even if he wins, Mr Allawi faces formidable obstacles to taking power. His Iraqiya bloc is projected to win 87 seats in the 325-member parliament, exactly the same as Mr al-Maliki’s State of Law Alliance. Both will have to find coalition partners…
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psst… voices calling loud
Eva Barlett
March 16, 2010 – Today, the latest in growing demonstrations in the Israeli-imposed “buffer zone”, demonstrators again protested this lethal Israeli ban (shoot to kill threat) which renders roughly 30% of Gaza’s best agricultural land off-limits and under which in August 2009 the UN’s OCHA reported 33 Palestinian civilians (among them 11 children) had been killed and another 61 civilians (among them 13 children) injured. From January 18 2009 to September 15 2009 alone, ISM reported 7 civilians (among them 4 children) killed and 28 (among them 8 children and 2 women) injured by Israeli soldiers in the border regions. Bearing in mind that the Israeli assaults on farmers and civilians in the border regions have continued, and that these assaults occur far beyond the 300 metres that Israeli authorities say make up the “buffer zone” [the actual off-limits area veering up to 2 km in some areas], those protesting weekly have serious, valid concerns…
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The writing on the wall
Toufic Haddad
March 16, 2010 – Half a dozen teenagers rattling spray paint cans and adjusting ventilation masks stand before a large blank canvas at a cultural centre in Bethlehem. The youngsters are part of a posse of graffiti artists whose work can be found on the stone facades across the West Bank town. Today, however, the group has not come to break any laws. They have been invited to paint a mural to inaugurate the opening of Gaza Graffiti, a photo exhibition currently travelling the West Bank that will soon make its way to nine other towns across Palestine, and later to Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon…
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Review: Finkelstein’s transformation to victim hero in “American Radical”
Max Blumenthal
March 15, 2010 – One night about two weeks ago, while I was walking down Bleecker Street in New York City’s West Village, I crossed paths with Norman Finkelstein. He was wearing a light jacket and eating a banana, seemingly impervious to the bitter wind and heavy snowfall pouring from the sky. I told Finkelstein that a YouTube clip of him parrying attacks from Zionist student activists during a speech he gave at the University of Waterloo was gaining popularity online. “Well, that scene hasn’t been very good for me,” he remarked in a near whisper…
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- URUK Net 26 March, 2010: CIA report into shoring up Afghan war support in Western Europe
- URUK Net 2 March, 2010 – A Trillion Dollar War So Neo-Cons COULD Have Bank Robber Chalabi Run Iraq
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- URUK Net 23 March, 2010 Part 2: World Water Day: Thirsty Gaza residents battle salt, sewage
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