A Delicate Resilience…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
… Hossam, 40 something, half Sunni, half Shia. No malice in his eyes. No meanness in his voice. An unassuming, unostentatious man. Nothing particular to him. No specific traits. Except a web of kindness and generosity that envelops you when you meet him. If you are tuned in that is… His father, 77 years old, was kidnapped by the sectarian Shia police. It is a miracle the father is still alive. He was tortured day and night for 7 days. He would be released for a sum of 350'000 dollars. Hossam didn’t have the sum. He sold everything he owned and borrowed some more in exchange for his father’s release from the so-called Iraqi police. He’s the only son and wanted his father alive at any cost. He managed to collect the sum, and drove to a godforsaken place to hand over the money in exchange for his father. The kidnappers sent a masked man to collect the money and told him his father will be released the following day. That following day, he received a phone call. One of the abductors told him. “The sum lacks 50 dollars. As a punishment for you, you are to go and fetch us, another 50'000 dollars.” But, I counted. It is exactly what you asked for – 300'00 dollars. There are no 50 dollars missing” Hossam recounts. “ Are you trying to mess with us ? Do you want your father totally dead, he is half dead already…So will you accept your punishment of an extra 50'000 dollars or do you want your father totally finished ?” Hossam spent other sleepless nights, gathering the extra 50'000 dollars ! for his 77 years old father’s release. He finally managed to give the rest of his “punishment money” to the police. His father was released 48 hours later, and not the following day as promised — an “extra punishment”— they said. Once the father released, the son immediately sent him outside of Iraq a few days later. He said to me “ His back was so black from torture, it was blacker than the shirt you’re wearing. It is a miracle he didn’t die…”…

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New Report by PCATI – No Defense: Soldier Violence against Palestinian Detainees
Public committee against Torture in Israel
A report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) published this morning reveals the widespread phenomenon of violence against bound Palestinian detainees by IDF soldiers and the almost absolute indifference of the IDF, the Ministry of Defense and the Knesset towards the existence of this phenomenon and the need to take action in order to eradicate it completely. The report titled “No Defense: Soldier Violence against Palestinian Detainees” focuses on a large number of incidents of violence against detainees after they had been arrested, bound, and no longer present a danger to the soldiers…

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The Weapon of Mass Destruction Is Cancer
R.B. Stuart
In March, 2003 my sister, Army Captain Chaplain Fran E. Stuart was deployed to Iraq with the rest of her battalion, from Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, the 101st Airborne. The uncharted desert would not only hold uncertainty for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, but if she survived during her one-year deployment, she would return to the U. S. forever changed. Although the changes that would occur two years to the day from her return home were changes she never could have fathomed. Not only had the desert sand, gun blasts and heat penetrated the armor of her psyche, but a carcinogen did too…Soldiers face a more deadly and rapidly moving carcinogen that covertly infiltrates all ranks, ethnicities, gender and ages from 21-57. Developing different stages and forms of rare cancers within 4-24 months, a portion are medevaced to WRAMC from Iraq already ill. Others, like my sister, are diagnosed two years post-deployment. Since soldiers are uninformed about depleted uranium (DU), they are not wearing protective gear and are unknowingly inhaling and ingesting the toxic dust…

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The Pentagon’s Stealth Corporations
Tom Engelhardt & Nick Turse
…Tens of thousands of defense contractors — from well-known “civilian” corporations (like Coca-Cola, Kraft, and Dell) to tiny companies — have fattened up on the Pentagon and its wars. Most of the time, large or small, they fly under the radar and are seldom identified as defense contractors at all. So it’s hardly surprising that firms like Harris and Evergreen, without name recognition outside their own worlds, can take in billions in taxpayer dollars without notice or comment in our increasingly militarized civilian economy. When the history of the Iraq War is finally written, chances are that these five billion-dollar babies, and most of the other defense contractors involved in making the U.S. occupation possible, will be left out. Until we begin coming to grips with the role of such corporations in creating the material basis for an imperial foreign policy, we’ll never be able to grasp fully how the Pentagon works and why we so regularly make war in, and carry out occupations of, distant lands…

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Playing chess with peoples lives
The Philistine
Yes, the truce was broken and yes Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for launching two (2) rockets into Israel hurting no one. They are pawns, sheep, marionettes. Hours before the two rockets were launched (From Gaza instead of the West Bank) the Israeli government had assassinated a senior Islamic Jihad member and a university student. The rockets were a response, a poorly thought out one. By launching the rockets from the region affected by the truce (or any region at all for that matter) only falls into the trap that Israel has set…

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Israel closes Gaza crossings after rocket attack
Reuters
Israel said it would not open its border crossings with the Gaza Strip on Wednesday in response to a Palestinian rocket salvo which breached an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. On Tuesday, Islamic Jihad militants fired several rockets into southern Israel, breaching the then five-day-old Gaza truce in what they called retaliation for the Israeli army’s killing of one of their commanders in the occupied West Bank. The crossings were to have opened at 8 a.m. (6:00 a.m. British time) to allow for imports, increased in scale under the truce, to reach the impoverished strip…

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US: 3 American troops killed in northern Iraq
AP
The U.S. military says three American soldiers and an interpreter have been killed in a bombing in northern Iraq. A command statement says the deaths occurred about 10:45 p.m. Tuesday in Nineveh province. That’s an area where Sunni insurgents are active and includes the city of Mosul, where operations against “al-Qaida” have been going on for weeks. No further details have been released…

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Losing Afghanistan (It Can’t Be Won)
Nato has to win in Afghanistan, the Taliban only needs not to lose
Tony Karon
…The Taliban, in fact, is banking on the fundamental weaknesses of the Karzai regime and the security arrangements that keep it in place. As Henry Kissinger famously noted as the Vietnam war drew to a close, “the guerrilla wins if he does not lose; the conventional army loses if it does not win”. And there’s no indication for the foreseeable future of the Taliban losing or the Nato forces winning. The Taliban needn’t try to hold territory; it simply needs to consistently demonstrate the inability of the Nato and government forces to control most of the country, always aware of the finite appetite of foreign armies for costly and futile expeditionary ventures. The Taliban knows this…

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What Bush’s Torture Attorneys Wanted from SERE
Tom Burghardt, Antifascist Calling…
The subversion of the rule of law by the George W. Bush administration was neither accidental nor contingent on executing its fraudulent “war on terror.” On the contrary, within weeks of the 9/11 terror attacks while the remains of the Twin Towers continued to smolder, the foundations of the American Republic were consciously undermined by high regime officials. Ideologically predisposed to governance via unlimited executive power, administration lawyers, many of whom identified with neoconservatism, exploited 9/11 as a salutary means to achieve an unsavory end: the creation of an authoritarian order where secretive—and highly-profitable—”public-private partnerships” served as a code for the “creative destruction” sought by their corporatist masters…

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Hamas urges factions exercise restraint; condemns IOF crimes in W. Bank
Palestinian Information Center
Hamas Movement has urged on Tuesday Palestinian resistance factions for self-control, and invited them to remain adherents to the Palestinian national consensus on the truce in the Gaza Strip. However, the Movement called on all concerned parties in the regional and international arenas to put pressures on the Israeli occupation government in order to stop its crimes against the Palestinian people in the West Bank. In a written statement he read, and a copy of which obtained by the PIC, Dr. Sami Abu Zuhri, the spokesman of Hamas Movement in Gaza Strip, said, “Hamas Movement confirms her adherence to the truce agreement, and calls on all Palestinian resistance factions to abide by what had been agreed-upon nationally”, explaining that Hamas was discussing the truce with Palestinian factions to keep it intact…

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Playing chess with peoples lives
The Philistine
Yes, the truce was broken and yes Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for launching two (2) rockets into Israel hurting no one. They are pawns, sheep, marionettes. Hours before the two rockets were launched (From Gaza instead of the West Bank) the Israeli government had assassinated a senior Islamic Jihad member and a university student. The rockets were a response, a poorly thought out one. By launching the rockets from the region affected by the truce (or any region at all for that matter) only falls into the trap that Israel has set…

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First the Execution, then the Trial: Rewriting Gitmo “Evidence”
The Real News
The Bush administration wants to rewrite official evidence against Guantanamo Bay detainees before they come under scrutiny by civilian judges for the first time. While the government has stood behind the evidence for years, they now want to submit new records, which would allow them to add intelligence and expand their reasoning for holding the detainees…

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Washington mulls sending envoys to Iran
UPI
The U.S. government is considering sending envoys to Iran for the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution to boost contact between the two nations. The U.S. State Department was considering opening a so-called interests section in Tehran to handle such issues as visa processing and other consular services, Financial Times reported Tuesday. Currently, the United States operates an interests section in Cuba in lieu of an embassy. Iran already has a similar presence in Washington…

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ALL QUIET ON THE GAZA FRONT … BUT
Desertpeace
Recent actions of the occupying Israeli government in the West Bank would never give one the impression that there is a feeling of calm in the Gaza Strip. One hoped that the truce would also be reflected by a cessation of hostilities in all of occupied Palestine. Israel seems to have had a method to their madness when they divided Palestine in two… treating each entity separately. While the guns remain silent in the Gaza area, they are not so in the occupied West Bank. The wall of apartheid is continuing to be built, uprooting Palestinian villages and olive groves. The ethnic cleansing continues… in reality, nothing has really changed…

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Olmert, Barak: We will respond to Qassam fire
Barak Ravid, Amos Harel, Yuval Azoulay and Fadi Eyadat, Haaretz
Security consultations conducted Tuesday by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak indicate that Israel will respond to a Qassam rocket attack that Israel described as a breach of the cease-fire which was agreed with Hamas last week. The rocket fire constitutes a “blatant violation of the cease-fire on the part of Palestinian groups in the Strip,” Olmert said Tuesday, after being informed of the attack upon his return from Egypt, where he met with President Hosni Mubarak to discuss the cease-fire. Olmert and Barak “agreed on methods of response,” the Prime Minister’s Bureau said. “We will not provide further details.”…

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War News for Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Iraq Today
MNF-Iraq is reporting the deaths of two Multi-National Division – Center Soldiers from small arms fire attack near Salman Pak on Monday, June 23rd. Three other soldier were wounded in the attacks. MNF-Iraq is reporting the deaths of two Coalition forces soldiers (Multi-National Division – Baghdad) from an explosion inside the District Advisory Council building in a southern neighborhood of Sadr City district on Tuesday, June 24th. two civilians serving with Coalition forces soldier were wounded in the attack. One Coalition forces soldier and three DAC members were also wounded in the attack. CNN is reporting that “a direct hire civilian employee of the Department of State and a Department of Defense civilian employee.” were also killed and ten Iraqis were wounded in the blast. ABS-CBN is now reporting that one of the civilians is an Italian citizen. The Sheffield Telegraph is reporting the death of a British a security guard. David Mathews suffered horrific injuries to both his legs when an explosive device hit the side of the armored vehicle he was travelling in…

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IRAQ: Whoever Wins, They Lose
Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail*
But Abdulla Hamid, a city resident, expressed deep concern over Obama’s recent speech at the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. “What hope is there in a man who wears the Israeli flag and calls for a Jewish state with a unified Jerusalem,” Hamid told IPS. “ Obama clearly couldn’t care less about the Palestinians and the Arabs.” Hamid referred to the fact that Obama appeared at the speech with a lapel pin comprised of both the U.S. and Israeli flags. In his speech, Obama’s call for a unified Jerusalem omitted Palestinians’ demands for their share of Jerusalem, which is a sacred city for them too…”The U.S. strategy is firm and unchanging,” a political analyst at Diyala University told IPS on condition of anonymity, given widespread fear of U.S. forces. “It makes no difference whether one wins or the other. The general strategy is well established, and is never affected by the changing of the president.” “I do agree with this point of view,” local merchant Abdul-Rahman told IPS. “During the nineties we wished that Bill Clinton would win in order to stop the economic sanctions that caused us so much suffering. When Clinton became president, sanctions remained as they were, and even worsened.”…

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IRC Commission on Iraqi Refugees: Statement of the Commissioners
International Rescue Committee
A major humanitarian crisis, largely hidden and ignored, is engulfing Syria and Jordan. Iraqis of different religions, ethnicities, and backgrounds have been fleeing death, kidnapping, and protracted violence. Because they are not huddled in camps these refugees do not get the attention and help the deserve from the U.S. and the international community. Many have been severely traumatized and lead deperate lives in Damascus and Amman. Compounding the problem, some reporting has perpetuated myths that they are wealthy or more recently that the crisis is abating and they are beginning to return to their homes in Iraq. Neither the U.S. nor the rest of the world is paying sufficient heed: external help provided by regional countries and major international donors has been half-hearted and woefully insufficient…

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Baghdad blast kills 12, including 5 Americans
Monsters and Critics
A United States diplomat was among at least five US citizens, six Iraqis and an Italian killed in an explosion Tuesday at a municipal government office in Baghdad’s volatile Sadr City district, US officials said. Steven Farley, a State Department employee, was killed along with two US troops and two civilian employees of the US Department of Defence in a blast during a meeting of the local district council, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. The US embassy in Baghdad confirmed six Iraqis and one Italian were among the dead in the attack, which occurred as council elections were set to take place in the area. At least three members of the council and seven other Iraqis were wounded, Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency reported…

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Iraqi Gov’t prepares for Diala offensive-Defense advisor
Voices of Iraq
An Iraqi Defense official on Tuesday said the governmen ordered military preparations for a new drive in Diala province. “Iraqi government set plans to crack down on all volatile areas across the country ahead of the provincial scheduled to be held next October”, Brig. Gen. Mohamed al-Askari, media advisor for the Defense Ministry, told Aswat al-Iraq-Voices of Iraq(VOI). The Defense advisor noted “military units have been training and gathering intelligence information in preparation for Diala military operation”…

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Taliban attacks up 40 percent in east Afghanistan: US general
Andrew Gray, Reuters
Insurgent attacks in eastern Afghanistan rose by 40 percent in the first five months of this year over the same period a year ago, the U.S. commander of NATO forces in the region said on Tuesday. While insisting NATO was making progress in establishing stability, Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser said he was “nowhere near” being able to state those efforts had achieved irreversible momentum…

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The Surge Is Working? Not If You Read the Latest GAO Report
Mitchell Bard
The statement is made in the U.S. media, over and over again, as if it is as factual as the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening: “The surge is working.” But just because the media has parroted the talking points of the Bush administration and John McCain’s campaign in making such an assertion, it does not make it true. And a report released by the U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) yesterday does something that McCain and the White House probably wish would not be done: actually evaluating progress in Iraq against the goals the administration laid out in January 2007 when undertaking the surge. Guess what? In many material ways, the surge isn’t working. Sorry to rain on the parade of CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, etc. with the facts…

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A BIG LOSS
Malcom Lagauche
Yesterday I opened my e-mail messages and the subject line for the first one read: “Memorial for George Carlin.” I thought, “Oh no. Not George Carlin.” When I opened the message it stated that Carlin died on Sunday evening of a heart attack. The Humanist Association of San Diego announced a memorial celebration of Carlin’s life to be held next week. Many non-U.S. citizens may not know of George Carlin. He was a comedian who broke all the rules of hypocritical social mores in the U.S. Nothing was sacred to Carlin when it came to exposing duplicity, falseness, and outright stupidity. In the 1960s and 1970s, Carlin was in the forefront of the war of freedom of speech…

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2 NATO troops killed in Afghanistan
Xinhua
Two soldiers of the NATO-led International Assistance Security Force (ISAF) were killed on Tuesday in two separate attacks by anti-government militants in eastern and southern Afghanistan, said the ISAF. One ISAF serviceman died from wounds inflicted when the vehicle struck an explosive device planted on the roadside in eastern province of Nangarhar, said the ISAF in a statement. Meanwhile, another ISAF soldier was killed during an engagement with insurgents in Sangin district of southern Helmand province..

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Iraq tries to appease Iran, avoid U.S. Gov’t anger
Mohammed A. Salih
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sought in early June to alleviate Iran’s concerns about a security deal between his country and the United States. Mr. al-Maliki strove to appease both Iran and the U.S., treading lightly between the two, which are vying for hegemony over Iraq. Speaking June 7 alongside Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in Tehran, Mr. al-Maliki pledged that “Iraq will not be used as a military launch pad” against Iran. But his apparent reassurances to Iran over the contentious security deal can hardly be mollifying to Iranians and perhaps at worst, in their view, denote Mr. al-Maliki’s determination to maintain a strong relationship with the U.S…

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Divide and conquer
Ghassan Khatib
…And because, in Israel’s strategic thinking, the future of the West Bank is different from the future of Gaza, the current division between the two Palestinian areas is very comfortable for Israel. Israel began the policies and practices that separated the West Bank from Gaza. Those policies were unfortunately consolidated as a result of the fighting between Fateh and Hamas and the eventual military takeover by Hamas. It can therefore be expected that Israel will resist any attempt at Palestinian reconciliation and instead continue to encourage the current separation, thus leaving itself two different leaderships to talk to in the two areas of occupied Palestinian land…The ceasefire agreement is consistent with the strategic Israeli objective of undermining the prospects of an independent Palestinian state emerging in the occupied territories…

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Lebanese President: country nearing self-destruction
BASSEM MROUE, AP
The Lebanese president warned Tuesday that the country’s divisions have pushed it to the verge of self-destruction — sounding an alarm to the rival factions amid renewed sectarian fighting. Michel Suleiman spoke at a meeting of Lebanon’s top 15 Christian and Muslim religious leaders, who convened at the presidential palace after two days of sectarian clashes in the northern city of Tripoli left eight people dead and 40 wounded. Suleiman said the country’s political and religious leaders must find a starting point to solve the crisis and heal the wounds…

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Welcome to Israel!
Sabbah’s blog
This is a true, amazing and shocking firsthand story that details the ‘welcoming package’ waiting for you at Israeli borders. (Try to imagine how Palestinians are treated at checkpoints!!!)…

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The Deputy Mustafa Barguti: The Assassinations in Nablus Aim to Demolish the Truce
Laila Ewaiwi – IMEMC
The General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative Dr. Mustafa Barghouti condemned the crime that the Israeli occupation committed in Nablus today 24-6-2008, which led to the killing of Iyad kanfar a fourth year student of Arts in Najah University and 23 year old Tariq Jom’a Abu Ghali. Barghouti stated, “Israel’s actions aim to demolish the truce agreement through going back to using the policy of assassinations and what they have done in Nablus presents a serious escalation.”…

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Israeli forces kill two Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus; Islamic Jihad threaten retaliation
Ma’an news
The Israeli army assassinated a Palestinians student from An-Najah University and a prominent leader of the Al-Quds Brigades in Nablus early on Tuesday morning. Israeli special forces raided the students’ second floor building in the Al-Sal’ous neighborhood in the Al-Makhfiyeh area of western Nablus and shot dead 24-year-old Iyad Khanfar, a fourth-year student at An-Najah and 23-year-old Tariq Juma’a Abu Ghali, one of the most prominent Al-Quds Bridages commanders in the northern West Bank. He had survived five previous assassination attempts. Five others were also detained for a period of time…

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No One Is Safe (II): FISA Is Only the Prelude to Nightmare
Arthur Silber
I indicated the other day that, as odious and destructive of liberty and privacy as the new FISA “compromise” bill is, there is one perspective from which the momentous to-do about this legislation is very badly misplaced. The selective focus on FISA misses the crucial larger picture in a way that ensures that the ruling class’s hold on increasingly tyrannical power will never be consistently or seriously challenged — which is, of course, precisely what the ruling class wants. In one sense, I certainly won’t criticize those who protest the FISA legislation so vehemently, because I favor almost anything that throws a monkey wrench into the operations of our monumentally awful and oppressive federal government. However, and it is an exceptionally large however, if the protests about FISA remain the sole (or even the major) focus of their complaints about the surveillance state, the protesters will make a very large gift to those who wish to oversee, regulate and control every aspect of our lives…

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Settler attacks in Asira al-Qibliya
International Solidarity Movement
The village of Asira al Qibliya has during the last month suffered from several attacks by Israeli settlers. The settlers usually show up each Friday and Saturday, aiming for the houses in the outskirts of Asira. During the last week at least three houses were attacked. Large parts of Salman Mountain, where the villager have their farming land and grow things such as wheat and lentils, was also set on fire by the soldiers…During the attacks the settlers have thrown stones though windows, crashed a car, stolen and killed cattle, torched fruit treas and farmland, fired live ammunition on the houses and water tanks, thrown gas grenades and painted stars of David over the house facades. The families living in the exposed houses are scared, the children can’t play freely outside anymore and the adults witnesses of troubles to sleep worrying of the settlers…

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Jerusalem subjected to comprehensive process to Judaize the land, rights and sanctities
PNN
The Christian and Islamic Front for the Defense of Jerusalem and its Holy Sites, accuse the “occupying state of conducting a campaign to Judaize the holy city, its intellectual rights, land and holy shrines.” One need only look at the situation on the ground to validate the accusation. Dr. Hassan Khater, Secretary-General of the Front, said that Israeli settlement numbers are “not advertised in the media.” He continued, “Regarding settlements, what is written does not reflect the truth. The problem is much larger, as are the numerical figures. There are dozens of units built every day here without having to pass through even bidding and tendering.”…

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Report: Iraq social and refugee crisis is worsening
Sandy English, WSWS
According to a report issued last week by the human rights organization Amnesty International, the plight of nearly 5 million Iraqis displaced from their homes since the American invasion of 2003 is worsening in nearly every respect. The report observes the “crisis has steadily increased in size and complexity.” One in eight Iraqis is now internally displaced or a refugee…The report cites the atrocious living conditions in most of Iraq as an additional factor driving people to flee the country. According to Oxfam, in 2007 70 percent of Iraqis had no access to clean drinking water and 43 percent were living on less than a dollar a day. Child malnutrition has increased from 19 percent in 2003 to 28 percent last year. About half of Iraqis who have fled their homes remain in other parts of Iraq because of the increasing restrictions on leaving the country. Denial of access to refuge abroad is at least in part due to the actions of the Iraqi government, which—along with its American masters—has a vested interest in reducing the number of people fleeing the country…

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Reporters Say Networks Block War Reports
Brian Stelter, The New York Times
Getting a story on the evening news isn’t easy for any correspondent. And for reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is especially hard, according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. So she has devised a solution when she is talking to the network. “Generally what I say is, ‘I’m holding the armor-piercing R.P.G.,’” she said last week in an appearance on “The Daily Show,” referring to the initials for rocket-propelled grenade.” ‘It’s aimed at the bureau chief, and if you don’t put my story on the air, I’m going to pull the trigger.’” Ms. Logan let a sly just-kidding smile sneak through as she spoke, but her point was serious. Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever…

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War News for Monday, June 23, 2008
Iraq Today
MNF-Iraq is reporting the death of a Coalition Force soldier (Multi-National Division – North) in three roadside bomb attacks on Coalition force patrols in Diyala province on Friday, June 29th. Five other soldier were wounded in the attacks. IC Publications is reporting the death of a U.S. soldier from small arms fire in Madain Iraq on Monday, June 23rd. Five additional soldiers were wounded in the attack as reported by the U.S. military. CJTF-101 is reporting the deaths of four coalition soldiers from an IED attack in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan on Saturday, June 21st. Two other soldiers were wounded in the attack…

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Masri: This lull is unlike the previous ones which were not under Arab auspices
Palestinian Information Center
MP Mushir Al-Masri, the secretary-general of the Hamas parliamentary bloc, stated that the truce agreement concluded between the Palestinian factions and the Israeli occupation would not be like the previous ones which were not under Arab auspices and did not impose any obligations on Israel. In a press statement, MP Masri said that Hamas resorted to calm to break the suffocating siege imposed on the Gaza people for two years with the aim of toppling Hamas and its political project…

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