Haditha victims’ kin outraged as Marines go free
Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers
Khadija Hassan still shrouds her body in black, nearly three years after the deaths of her four sons. They were killed on Nov. 19, 2005, along with 20 other people in the deadliest documented case of U.S. troops killing civilians since the Vietnam War. Eight Marines were charged in the case, but in the intervening years, criminal charges have been dismissed against six. A seventh Marine was acquitted. The residents of Haditha, after being told they could depend on U.S. justice, feel betrayed. “We put our hopes in the law and in the courts and one after another they are found innocent,” said Yousef Aid Ahmed, the lone surviving brother in the family. “This is an organized crime.” No one disputes that Marines killed 24 men, women and children in this town in four separate shootings that morning…

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Entire Palestinian village threatened with expulsion
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News
Israeli military forces have told the residents of the village of Arab ar-Ramadin that they will all be expelled from their homes in the coming weeks, as part of the Israeli project of expansion onto Palestinian land in the West Bank. Since the Israeli government began construction of their Annexation Wall on the village’s land in 2004, the residents of Arab ar-Ramadin have maintained an increasingly tenuous hold on their ancestral lands, which have been rendered inside ‘Israeli’ area, due to the placement of the Wall….

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New Estimate Triples Number of War Deaths Over Past 50 Years
VOA
A new study finds that wars killed three times more people in the past fifty years than other reports have estimated. Researchers studied wars in thirteen countries between nineteen fifty-five and two thousand two. They estimate that almost five and a half million people were killed, including almost four million in Vietnam. Ziad Obermeyer is a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He and other researchers designed a new way to estimate deaths from wartime violence. Current methods used during conflicts have been criticized for a risk of underreporting or overreporting deaths….

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Settlers in the West Bank don’t honor truces
The Philistine
Israeli security officials said Friday that students from a far-right Jewish theological seminary at a West Bank settlement recently built a crude rocket and fired it at a nearby Palestinian village, although it failed to reach its target. The officials said troops in the area heard a loud explosion and initially thought Palestinians were attacking the settlement of Yitzhar, where the seminary is situated. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident, which occurred about two weeks ago, is still being investigated by police and agents of the Shin Bet security agency. Police spokesman Danny Poleg said detectives searched the settlement Thursday and questioned residents but made no arrests..

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“Occupiers cannot also be liberal”: An interview with Ilan Pappe
Apostolis Fotiadis
Support for an academic boycott of Israeli universities exposed Ilan Pappe to death threats last year, forced him to resign as senior lecturer of political science at the University of Haifa, and leave the country. His argument that the creation of Israel in 1948 was followed by a policy of cleansing Israeli territory of Palestinians, his support to Hamas resistance despite rejecting its political ideology, and the denouncement of Israeli academia for justifying the occupation of Palestine have made him an unwanted person in Israel. But still he remains a firm believer that the only way to improve this reality is by exposing its worst aspects. Pappe now teaches history at the University of Exeter in Britain…

In an interview with Inter Press Service correspondent Apostolis Fotiadis, Pappe discusses the situation in Palestine today, and the Arab-Israeli conflict 60 years after it began.

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APS – the Bloody American Crime Against a Family in Mosul
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
In Monday midnight, the American occupation forces break into the house of Marwan Hazem locating behind Baghdad bus station near the electricity department in Mosul City. These forces blew the house main door without any prior warning and shot the owner and three of his children. These children were Akram, Radwan and Ahmed who were immediately killed. As usually these forces smashed all the house’s furniture and contents, also smashed the family’s car. Then these occupation forces arrested four other sons. This heinous crime is not new to the barbarism of these forces, but this time comes in the context of provoking the people of the city, after the calm in the city despite sending tens of thousands of occupation troops and government forces….

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Iraqi Government newspaper: Agreement could be “non-strategic” so as not to require parliamentary approval
Arablinks
The GreenZone newspaper AlSabaah says today (Saturday June 21) there is a move to “change” the aim of the current SOFA negotiations into something called a “framework of operation, “ in order to avoid the requirement for parliamentary approval. Reporting on last week’s video-conference between Maliki and Bush, the paper says in the story-headline: “Bush and Maliki study SOFA and move toward converting it into a ‘framework of operation’, and [something completely unrelated] there is support for inclusion of Iraq in the Gulf Cooperation Council.”…

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Just out of Israeli dungeons:
Palestinian lawmaker says “Israel is punishing us for refusing to die”
From Khalid Amayreh in Hebron
A Palestinian lawmaker recently released from Israeli captivity has accused Israel of “adopting Nazi tactics” and applying them to Palestinian prisoners. Bassem al, Za’arir, 45, who lives in the town of Sammou, south west of Hebron, won a seat in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in the January, 2006. However, a few months later , Za’arir and dozens of other Islamic-oriented lawmakers, cabinet ministers, mayors and other elected officials, were violently abducted by undercover Israeli soldiers as part of a sweeping crackdown on Hamas supporters and sympathizers…Al-Za’arir called the treatment meted out to Palestinian prisoners as “essentially barbaric.” “They treat us very much like the Nazis treated Jews during WWII. Yes, there are no gas chambers, but the mentality, the vindictiveness and the virulent hostility is the same. “The way they treat Palestinian prisoners is designed to humiliate, to insult, to torment, to inflict as much emotional and psychological pain as possible.”…

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Thirty-two troops have died in Afghanistan during June, 19 in Iraq
CNN
Five foreign troops were killed Saturday in Afghanistan, bringing the number of NATO and U.S.-led coalition troop deaths in June to 32 — more than in Iraq. Foreign troop deaths in the Afghan war have been exceeding those in the Iraq conflict in recent weeks, according to figures compiled by CNN. The trend reflects a surge in attacks and clashes during the warmer months in Afghanistan, where U.S.- and NATO-led troops have been fighting tenacious Taliban militants. At least 32 troops assigned to the U.S.-led coalition and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force have died in Afghanistan in June. At least 12 Americans, nine Britons, two Canadians, one Pole, a Romanian and a Hungarian have died in Afghanistan in June. The nationalities of six other fatalities have not been released. In comparison, 19 coalition troops have died in June so far in Iraq, comprising 18 Americans and one from the Republic of Georgia. During May, 23 coalition troops died in Afghanistan and 21 died in Iraq….

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Democrats Legalize Bush’s Crimes
Robert Parry, Consortiumnews.com
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims that a key positive feature of the new wiretap “compromise” is that the bill reaffirms that the President must follow the law, even though the same bill virtually assures that no one will be held accountable for George W. Bush’s violation of the earlier spying law. In other words, in the guise of rejecting Bush’s theories of an all-powerful presidency that is above the law, the Democratic leadership cleared the way for the President and his collaborators to evade punishment for defying the law…

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Torture from the Top Down
Scott Horton
In a series of hearings, Congressional leaders are trying to get to the bottom of a few simple questions: Who initiated the use of torture techniques in the “war on terror”? What was the process by which it was done? On whose authority was it done? The use of torture techniques became a matter of public knowledge four years ago. In response to the initial disclosures, the Bush Administration first decided to spin the fable of a handful of “rotten apples” inside of a company of military police from Appalachia and scapegoated a handful of examples in carefully managed and staged show trials…

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A FORGOTTEN “DAY OF INFAMY”
Malcom Lagauche
Many countries have one or two days a year that indicate a national tragedy. In the U.S., December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, is labeled a “day of infamy.” Almost 60 years later, September 11, 2001 surpassed December 7 as a rallying cry for U.S. solidarity. Iraq, a country much smaller than the U.S., and never as large a player on the international scene, can claim several days of infamy: January 17, 1991 (the beginning of Desert Storm); February 14, 1991 (the destruction of the Amiryah Bomb Shelter); March 20, 2003 (the start of the U.S. illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq); and April 9, 2003, (U.S. forces enter Baghdad) among others. But, one date that gains little international attention is imbedded in the hearts and minds of most Iraqis: June 26, 1993. On that date, the U.S. military, under the command of Bill Clinton, ordered 23 Tomahawk guided missiles to demolish the headquarters of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence services, in central Baghdad. Twenty of the missiles hit the agency complex, while “only” three missed their targets. A jubilant Clinton took to the airwaves and proclaimed victory. He was happy that only three missed their mark. One could think he was addressing the public about the score of a sporting event. Of the three that missed, one destroyed the home of Layla al-Attar, killing her and her husband, and blinding her daughter. Layla al-Attar was the director of the Iraqi National Art Museum and a leading Arab artist who was revered in Iraq m! uch the same as Norman Rockwell was in the U.S…

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It’s the Iraq War that’s Killing the Economy, Stupid!
Bob Kendall
As billions are going down the drain in Iraq, this wild misadventure is destroying the once strong U.S. dollar. Traders today are considering, due to the drastic dollar decline, ceasing to use the battered U.S. dollar as the world’s bench mark currency. Don’t blame the international currency traders for contemplating this possibility. Blame Bush! With the British pound now worth twice the value of the U.S. dollar and the Euro over 50 percent higher than the dollar’s value, the U.S. economic plight is quite apparent…. More than one hundred years ago, in speaking of American, British historian Lord Macaulay warned, “Your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth, with this difference, that the empire came from without and your Huns and vandals will have been engendered within your own country, by your own institutions.”..

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Judy Miller Is Back
Bernard Chazelle
In the early seventies, Saddam Hussein nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company, a US-UK-French consortium that had a monopoly on Iraqi oil. 4,000 US troops made the ultimate sacrifice to bring back the good old days. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields Note that, if not for Sarkozy’s passionate ass-kissing, the word “Total” would be missing from the previous paragraph…The NYT can’t figure out how we pulled that off…The Times piece is meant to bring antiwar types to the Cheney camp. The logic is this: “You hated that war, I know, but look, Iraq does not have the technical expertise to handle its own oil, so whether we like it or not, it’ll be handed over to foreign companies. Now would you rather have the Chinese or Russians take control? We lost so much in this horrible war that we hate so much. So don’t we deserve a tiny consolation prize? Plus, look, the process was opaque but apparently fair. At least we couldn’t find any US oil expert to tell us otherwise.”…

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UNRWA: The Israeli siege destroyed life in Gaza
Palestinian Information Center
Karen Abu Zaid, the UNRWA commissioner-general, called Friday for lifting the unjust siege imposed on the Gaza Strip two years ago immediately, pointing out that it destroyed life in the Strip in which half and one million Palestinians, mostly refugees, are living. In a statement on the occasion of the world refugee day, Abu Zaid said: “In Gaza, the policies of closure and indiscriminate punishment devastate lives, causing mass despair, threatening to destroy hopes for peace.”…

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Six foreign soldiers slain in Afghanistan
AFP
Six foreign troops including a Polish national were slain in bombings in Afghanistan on Saturday, the forces said, making it the deadliest day for international soldiers in the war-torn nation this year. Four of the foreign troops serving in the US-led coalition were killed when insurgents attacked them with an improvised bomb and small arms fire just outside the southern city of Kandahar on Saturday, the force said. “Four coalition service members were killed and two more were seriously wounded today in an IED (improvised explosive device) strike while conducting operations in Kandahar province,” a statement from the force said. A coalition spokesman later said the “complex attack” included a roadside bomb explosion followed by small arms fire just west of the volatile city. The soldiers’ nationalities were not revealed. Another soldier serving under the same deployment died in a similar bomb explosion overnight in the southwestern province of Farah, the force said. In another bomb attack like the ones that killed the troops serving in the US-led coalition, a Polish soldier in the separate NATO-led International Security Assistance Force was killed in the eastern province of Paktika, ISAF and the Polish defence ministry said….

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UNICEF REJECTS BLOOD MONEY
Desertpeace
Thirty some odd years ago, when I was still living in Canada, my son decided to donate his ‘proceeds’ from ‘Trick or Treating’ to UNICEF. He was aware of the conditions endured by children in other parts of the world and wanted to help them. This seemed to have upset some of the zionists living in the area, their attitude being ‘UNICEF helps Palestinian children so we won’t help them’….. Typical! The positive side of their rantings resulted in my son getting involved in local ‘Read-a- Thons’ to raise even more money for the Organisation. He spent an entire summer collecting pledges from people to be ‘paid’ after he read a certain number of books…. and there were many and he raised quite a sum of money….

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MP Khudari: No breakthrough in Gaza problems so far
Palestinian Information Center
MP Jamal Al-Khudari, the head of the popular anti siege committee, on Saturday told a press conference that no breakthrough in solving Gaza problems was made so far despite the truce. Khudari said that calm has been achieved in Gaza Strip and there are promises of a breakthrough as of tomorrow Sunday but the economic, agricultural and health conditions in the Strip were still unchanged. He explained that factories are still closed, farmers unable to export their products and patients could not travel abroad for treatment…

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Pro-Israeli Lobby Group to Be Launched in SA
Shafiq Morton
A story in the Jerusalem Post of May 22 “World Christian legislators meet in DC to buttress support for Israel” has passed by unnoticed in South Africa. In a country where robust debate on the Middle East still exists, and where AIPAC-style lobby groups are not able to shout down criticism of Israel, it is surprising. One would have thought that African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) leader the Rev Kenneth Meshoe’s most recent pro-Zionist utterance – the intention to form a pro-Israeli lobby in our very own South African parliament – would have elicited a barrage of public comment…

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US: Democratic Congress approves war funding, legalizes domestic spying
Bill Van Auken
In an across-the-board capitulation to the Bush White House, the House of Representatives voted at the end of this week to approve another $162 billion to fund the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while also passing legislation that legalizes the administration’s domestic spying program. President George W. Bush appeared in the White House Rose Garden Friday morning to praise the Democratic House leadership for supporting these two prongs of Washington’s so-called war on terror: military aggression abroad and an assault on basic democratic rights at home….

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UNICEF Rejects Support From Israeli Billionaire Known for Constructing Settlements on Palestinian Lands
Justice M.E.
A senior advisor to UNICEF’s Director said in a letter today that UNICEF will reject all partnerships with, or financial support from, Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev. Leviev had previously provided UNICEF with support by sponsoring fundraising events in France. Leviev’s past support for UNICEF is featured in a number of places on his company’s website. UNICEF’s rejection of Leviev’s support followed meetings with Adalah-NY, letters from organizations and Palestinian communities advocating a boycott of Leviev’s companies, and a visit by UNICEF officials to Jayyous, one of the Palestinian communities where a Leviev company is building Israeli settlements. Leviev’s diamond-mining companies in Angola have also been accused of serious human rights abuses…

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US envoy slams Israel over ‘illegal importation of pistachios from Iran’
Nahum Barnea, Ynet
The US and Israel are at odds about Iran’s “weapon”: Ten days ago, US Ambassador to Israel Richard H. Jones wrote a severe letter to Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On, with copies sent to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and two of his ministers. In the letter, Jones accuses Israel of secretly trading with Iran and transferring foreign currency to the country, in direct violation of an Israeli law prohibiting trade with enemy states. The fuss is over something Iran is famous for, though perhaps less than its nuclear ambitions; namely pistachio nuts. The American government accused Israel of buying Iranian pistachios under the guise of trade with Turkey, despite the US’s objection…

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APNewsBreak: US asks to rewrite detainee evidence
MATT APUZZO, AP
The Bush administration wants to rewrite the official evidence against Guantanamo Bay detainees, allowing it to shore up its cases before they come under scrutiny by civilian judges for the first time. The government has stood behind the evidence for years. Military review boards relied on it to justify holding hundreds of prisoners indefinitely without charge. Justice Department attorneys said it was thoroughly and fairly reviewed. Now that federal judges are about to review the evidence, however, the government says it needs to make changes…

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SuperCorridor Defeat? Don’t Bet On It
Stephen Lendman
The title refers to the I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) portion of the North American SuperCorridor Coalition (NASCO) project. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) announced that, for now at least, it nixed this part of the $184 billion scheme calling for: — a 4000 mile toll road network of transportation corridors; — 10 lanes or 1200 feet wide….

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Changes in Palestinian Demographics
Iqbal Tamimi
85% of the Palestinian population has been expelled by Israel since the Nakba. This has transformed Gaza into the most densely populated area in the world. The number of the Palestinian population has increased seven fold since the Nakba in 1948 despite the plight and the tragic circumstances as stated by the Head of Palestinian Statistics Dr. Lwai Shabana. The Palestinian plight is a dark stage in modern history. The Palestinian population was expelled from its homeland, the people deprived of their lands, homes and properties. They were forced to seek refuge all over the world, facing all kinds of suffering and woes…

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Ceasefires, national aspirations & my hopes
From Occupied Palestine, With Love
These are important days in Palestine. Thursday at 6am, a ceasefire, or rather ´period of calm´ began in the ongoing war in Palestine and Israel. Following negotiations between the Gaza-based Hamas government, the state of Israel, and other parties, a formal ceasefire began yesterday and remains stable in this moment. The ceasefire deal contains a six month time line and is intended to end a period of violence that has killed seven Israeli soldiers and civilians and more than 400 Palestinian fighters and civilians….

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Iraqi Sunnis after the Awakenings
Marc Lynch
Mohammed Abu Rumman, a Jordanian journalist who follows the Iraqi Sunni scene very closely, has a fascinating article up at al-Hayat on recent developments there. It’s a detailed, rich essay, which makes a few key points. First, Awakenings leaders seem to be uncertain about their future and about American intentions, with unpredictable ramifications – possibly moving them into the political process and integration into the state, possibly inflaming them against American ‘betrayal’. Second, the emerging Sunni political scence is intensely fragmented, with a bewildering array of parties and movements competing rather than any coherent Sunni bloc. Is Iraq really entering a post-Awakenings period? What would that mean?…

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