Liberation; Truth’s Traitor
Felicity Arbuthnot, UN Observer
The world is about to witness more “justice” in Iraq. It will be summary execution, ordered by a U.S. convened Court, under United States and United Kingdom jurisdiction and responsibility, as occupying forces. Another trial, another lynch mob, this time of Iraq’s former Deputy Prime Minster and Foreign Minister, Tareq Aziz, which began on 29th April and will resume on 20th May. He stands trial with Ali Hassan al-Majid, already sentenced to death for the campaign against the Kurds in the late eighties (whatever about the shocking harshness of the retribution, many had ceded to Iran, against their own country, during the US driven, eight year Iran-Iraq war, a treasonable offence in any language) and Saddam Hussein’s half-brother, Watban Ibrahim al-Hassan, former Interior Minister Sabbawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, Mizban Khudier Hadi, former Revolutionary Command Council Member, Saddam Hussein’s former secretary, Abid Hamid Mahmud, former Finance Minister Ahmed Hussein Khudier and the former Governor of the Central Bank of Iraq, Essam Rasheed Khuwaish…

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More on the concoction of Ethno-sectarianism…
Arab Woman Blues II – Silent Reflections…
I really urge to watch this video in 2 parts and do so very carefully. I really urge to listen to the Iraqis guests -Pachachi, Bayati and Al-Mukhtar. I agree with the third guest by the way. The reason I am asking you to take time to watch this program is because it will provide you with vital and important information on the American/Iranian ethno-sectarian agenda in Iraq. And it will also confirm to you, what I have endlessly repeated in all of my previous posts, namely that there was NO sectarianism in Iraq prior to the Occupation. The words of the Shiite Imam to the same effect in the 2nd part of the program when discussing Iraqi marriages before and after the US-Iranian occupations is just an added proof. Even though I don’t agree with him when he says that the sectarianism didn’t spill into other Arab/Muslim countries. Yesterday there were clashes in Yemen between government forces and Shias…

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Troops accused of passing captives to Afghan torturers
Tom Hyland, The Age
PRISONERS captured by Australian and Dutch troops in Afghanistan allege they have been beaten after being handed over to the notorious Afghan secret police. While the Australian Defence Force says there is no evidence prisoners taken by Australian troops have been mistreated, official documents show three have complained they were beaten around the head by secret police after being captured by the Dutch-Australian taskforce. The Dutch documents show prisoners are routinely handed over to Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS), which human rights groups accuse of torturing and abusing prisoners…

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Iraq says no hard evidence of Iran support for militia
AFP
Iraq said on Sunday it has no evidence that Iran was supplying militias engaged in fierce street fighting with security forces in Baghdad. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said there was no “hard evidence” of involvement by the neighbouring Shiite government of Iran in backing Shiite militiamen in the embattled country. Asked about US reports that weapons captured from Shiite fighters bore 2008 markings suggesting Iranian involvement, Dabbagh said: “We don’t have that kind of evidence… “

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Troops mass as attack on Mosul looms
Abdulhussain al-Khurafi, Azzaman
The government is massing troops for an imminent attack on the northern city of Mosul, the interior minister said. The minister Jawad al-Bolani said the government has deployed “elite units” in the city, home to nearly three million people and currently one of the most violent places in the country. U.S. troops will assist with aerial bombardment, logistics and artillery. U.S. marines will intervene if necessary…

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US aid to Israel
Palestine Monitor
– Israel and the US have a long-established special relationship. The US was the first country to recognise the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
– Israel is considered America’s closest non-NATO ally in the Middle East, a region that is geopolitically crucial to the US.
– The close relationship between the two states is reflected in the volume of aid Israel receives from the US. Since World War II Israel has been the largest overall recipient of US aid: from 1949-2006 Israel received more than $156 billion of direct US aid.

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IRAN: Hakim’s son on Tehran, Baghdad, Washington tangle
LATimes.com
For nearly three decades, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite Muslim families and Washington’s closest partner in the Iraqi government has maintained strong ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Mohsenhakim Abdelaziz Hakim, leader of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, or SIIC, and a relatively moderate Shiite leader who is a key player in his country, plays a tricky balancing act, maintaining cordial ties with both the U.S. and Iran at a time of unprecedented international tension between the two longtime rivals…

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ISRAEL WILL SOON BE AT PEACE WITH ITSELF
Desertpeace
There is an old Yiddish expression that goes….”es’retsic azoi”…. it basically means that if you repeat something enough times you might actually believe it. So is the case with Condi’s multi visits to Israel to bring about a Peace agreement…. she actually believes she is making progress. RAMALLAH – U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday said that a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians was still possible by the end of the 2008.Sure…. at the rate Israel is killing the Palestinians, Israel will be at peace with ITSELF!…

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Iraqi first lady escapes attack
Aljazeera.net
The wife of Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, has escaped unhurt after her convoy was hit by a roadside bomb. The attack in the centre of the capital on Sunday wounded four of her bodyguards but left Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, the first lady, unhurt, the president’s office said. “One of the vehicles of Ms Hero Ibrahim’s convoy hit an improvised explosive device in the road this morning,” an office statement said. “She was heading to the National Theatre to attend a cultural festival.”…

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Al-Sadr Refuses to Meet Baghdad Delegation In Iran
By RFE/RL analyst Kathleen Ridolfo
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki dispatched a delegation of leading Shi’ite figures to Iran last week in order to present Tehran with mounting evidence of Iran’s support for rogue militias in Iraq. But Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia continues to battle Iraqi and U.S. forces in Baghdad and other areas and who has been in Iran for months, refused to meet with the delegation…Al-Sadr spokesman Salih al-Ubaydi told Al-Sharqiyah television on May 1 that the delegation, comprised of Shi’ite politicians from the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) was “fishing in troubled waters.” Al-Ubaydi said the Sadrists were reluctant to divulge the whereabouts of al-Sadr for political and security reasons. He acknowledged to AFP on May 1 that al-Sadr and other leading members of the so-called Al-Sadr Trend are in Iran…

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IOF troops bulldoze 220 dunums of lands, demolish 9 Palestinian homes
Palestinian Information Center
Israeli occupation forces demolished nine Palestinian civilian homes and bulldozed 220 dunums of cultivated lands during their incursion into Abbassan east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Legal sources told PIC reporter that the IOF wreaked such vast destruction in less than 12 hours on Thursday. They said that the IOF soldiers uprooted hundreds of olive and palm trees other than destroying glasshouses and water wells. The sources noted that the IOF destruction bared the Zionist security fence separating the area from 1948 occupied lands, which made movement in the area hazardous due to the daily firing by IOF tanks and soldiers….

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Turkey ‘kills 150 Kurdish rebels’
BBC News
Turkish air strikes in northern Iraq this week left more than 150 Kurdish rebels dead, the Turkish army says. “According to initial estimates, this operation allowed us to neutralise more than 150 terrorists,” the army said in a statement on its website. A PKK spokesman said that only six rebels were killed and they were from a different faction. Turkey has staged several cross-border raids into northern Iraq over the past few months in pursuit of the rebels…

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Video: Sami Al Hajj returns to Sudan – 02 May 08
AlJazeeraEnglish
Sami Al Hajj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera, had not tasted freedom since 2001. But now he is in his homeland Sudan after spending six years at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was held without charge or trial. The frail and sick looking man was delivered to Sudanese authorities in Khartoum. There he had an emotional reunion with his family as he arrived at hospital. Amr Al-Kahky, who worked with al Hajj before his imprisonement, went to meet him and sent this report from Khartoum…

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Bishops told to remove crucifixes at Jerusalem’s Western Wall
Ma’an News
Irish religious leaders on a visit to the Middle East were unable to visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Thursday morning after a security official ordered them to remove their crucifixes, Yussef Dorkhom, Counsellor for the General Delegation of Palestine said in a press release. The local bishop accompanying the delegation, Dr Munib Younan, told the officials the request was a breach of a protocol agreed between the Israeli government, the Christian leadership in the city and the Jewish Rabbinate…

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Four U.S. Marines killed in Iraq
Reuters
Four U.S. Marines were killed by a roadside bomb in the western Iraqi province of Anbar on Friday, the U.S. military said on Sunday…

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The Ahrar Center for Detainees’ Studies demands the release of six detained reporters
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
On the World Press Freedom Day, May 3, the Ahrar Center for Detainees’ Studies demanded Reporters Without Borders Organization and the International Journalists Union to defend six Palestinian reporters imprisoned by Israel. The Center added that most of the detained reported are under administrative detention orders without charges or trial. Fuad Al Khuffash, head of the center, said that on this day “we should all remember those reporters who are capturing the suffering of the Palestinian people and the truth; they all ended in prison for that”…

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Video: Inside Iraq – Iraq’s sectarian policies – 02 May 08 – Part 2
AlJazeeraEnglish
Will Iraqi PM Nuri Al-Maliki’s government heed the call to end sectarian policies?

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Gaza sewage overflowing into Mediterranean Sea
Afghanistan Sun
With treatment plants out of action due to a lack of fuel, sewerage plants in Gaza are overflowing. Massive amounts of sewage have had to be dumped into the Mediterranean Sea to prevent an outbreak of disease. Now the United Nations is concerned the overflow into the sea will contaminate the water with bacteria making it unsafe for swimming. Local fishermen are already saying the sewage is killing fish in the area….

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Not again!!!!
Mohammed, Last of Iraqis
…During the ordeal many things were running through my head, I was thinking about the previous trouble that I have faced and remembered the comments; that really helped me to be cool, I was thinking about my dead friend; Omar who was killed by the Iraqi army in a situation like mine, he was talking with my other friend on the phone when he reached a checkpoint for the Iraqi army in Harthia neighborhood so he placed the phone aside and my friend could hear everything through the phone…it was so similar to my case but they took him and the next day his dead body was found in a garbage!!! I know you are bored from the same story being told over and over by me but this is what the ordinary Iraqis go through everyday despite the countless explosions and assassination. That’s the army and police that should protect us!! How funny…May God burn alive all those who were responsible for this…

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May 3, 2008: 5 GIs, 1 US Contractor, 2 Georgian Soldiers, 44 Iraqis Killed; 122 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
At least 44 Iraqis were killed and 122 more were wounded in the latest violence. Turkey reports that 150 PKK rebels were killed during their activities in northern Iraq, but there is no confirmation of that figure. Five American and two Georgian servicemembers were killed in separate incidents. Also, the family of a US contractor reported his death from a roadside bomb explosion…

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 3 May 2008
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice.
In a dispatch posted at 2:13pm Baghdad time Saturday afternoon, the Yaqen News Agency reported that the US military announced Saturday that a Marine who had suffered severely disfiguring burns and underwent 100 surgical operations in the ensuing 17 months has finally died of his wounds. Yaqen reported that the Marine was severely wounded when his Humvee crashed on the way to the military camp in ar-Ramadi, 110km west of Baghdad, on 21 February 2005….

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