PART III: Detention Has a Wide, Destructive Impact in Iraq – Forced Entry Into the Mind
Nick Mottern and Bill Rau, t r u t h o u t | Report
… To more fully understand the nature of the US “counterinsurgency tool” that operates in the US detention system in Iraq, Consumers for Peace submitted questions to TF-134 over the last three months. TF-134's responses, excerpted below, outline a concerted program of re-education and inducement designed to persuade Iraqis to accept the control of the US-Iraqi occupation government. TF-134 says Iraqis are detained only because they present a threat of violence. The very existence of the re-education program indicates that decisions about holding people in US detention facilities may also be based on the desire to convert Iraq’s resistance fighters into active or passive supporters of the US-Iraqi government. According to TF-134, Iraqis are deeply involved in determining how prisoners will be categorized and segregated in prison and in the re-education process. TF-134 affirms that those who are captured by US forces are not permitted to have the help of legal counsel in seeking their freedom or in any other aspect of their handling. As will be discussed, the final decision on their freedom is in the hands of the US military…

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Persecution
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
…Contrary to other Arab countries where Christian minorities exist, like in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan or Palestine, intermarriage between Christians and Muslims was common in Iraq. I am a living proof. Good God, I can’t believe what you sub humans have done to Iraq and its different sects… What is this irony of history, where under a fundamentalist christian occupation, a “born again” occupation, the true Christians are persecuted. What is this ? Will someone explain it to me for God’s sake ! Cockburn and Co, and we all know what they stand for today, were quick to blame Al-Qaeda, and fundamentalist Islam. But Cockburn and Co being the hypocrites that they are, another subgroup of Pharisees, failed to tell you the truth, as usual. The ones who have been driving out the Iraqi Christians from Mosul are none other than your “wonderful” Kurds…

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Urgent appeal for resettlement of ex-Iraq Palestinians
UNHCR
In the lead up to UNHCR’s bi-yearly informal consultations with resettlement countries tomorrow (Wednesday 15 Oct.), UNHCR has issued an urgent appeal for the resettlement of Palestinian refugees. Most have been stranded for over two years in two camps at the Iraq-Syrian border and in Baghdad, while a small group has been stranded in Al Hol camp in Syria. Of the estimated 34,000 Palestinians in Iraq in 2003, less than 15,000 remain in Iraq – including 2,943 Palestinian refugees currently living in the border camps at the Iraq-Syrian border. Of those in the border camps, 358 families (1,278 persons) are considered to be highly vulnerable – having life-threatening diseases, needing urgent medical treatment or fearing persecution if they return – and therefore are in urgent need of resettlement…

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An injury to one
Hussein Al-alak
…How can either the British or Iraqi regimes be treated with any credibility, when the talk of “progress” is constantly being discredited by facts, when Asia News reported recently that “a Christian of the Chaldean rite, was recently shot dead in front of his home in the neighbourhood of Nor, the same neighbourhood where Fr. Ragweed Gani and three deacons were killed in 2007, and where Archbishop Paulo Farj Rahho was kidnapped and killed” only this year. (…)
Reasons why the Iraqi Government have chosen to ignore the plight, which must be added, never occurred under the government of Saddam Hussain, are because the British and American “trained” Police force have decided to turn a blind eye, as one senior Police Office even admitted, “Sometimes it is better to close your eyes towards some facts” but Iraqi’s are not closing their eyes and are uniting with Iraq’s Christians against this ethnic cleansing…

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Iraq’s missing generation
The future of Iraq hinges on its young, but far too many of them have been driven into exile
Elizabeth Ferris and Navtej Dhillon
… In 2002, before the US invasion, around 60% of Iraq’s population was under the age of 30 – many with high school and university education. Today, too many of those young people are among the 2.2 million Iraqi refugees living in countries such as Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. As Iraq takes important steps towards national reconciliation and economic development, no one is paying attention to young Iraqi refugees. Their plight is largely portrayed through a sectarian lens. But when the focus shifts to the age of those uprooted, it is clear that a large number are young men and women, struggling with displacement at the prime of their life. Rather than building their future careers and families, their plans are on hold and their hopes are in limbo…

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Israel’s democratic facade erodes
Ziyaad Lunat, The Electronic Intifada
Recent riots in the Israeli town of Acre have attracted unwanted attention towards its Arab residents, Palestinian citizens of Israel who make a third of the city’s population. The disturbances began after Jewish extremists attacked a Palestinian man for driving during the religious holiday of Yom Kippur, when traffic in Israel largely comes to a halt. This was followed by an outbreak of violence during which Jewish mobs attacked the Palestinian neighborhood in Acre’s old city, throwing stones and torching homes. These events have been interpreted by mainstream media as an aberration in Israel’s model “democracy.” The BBC echoed official Israeli discourse, emphasizing that the so-called “Israeli-Arabs” “have full rights as Israeli citizens.” Meanwhile, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Acre “a shining example of co-existence.” However, the latest disturbances have brought to the fore a deeper issue: the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from inside Israel by Israeli Jewish extremists…

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Iraqi Christians’ murders condemned
AlJazeera.net
Muslim scholars have spoken out against a spate of attacks against Christians in northern Iraq, after more than 12 members of the community were killed in recent weeks. The condemnation from the Organistation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) came on Tuesday, as Iraq’s government pledged to send officials to the ethnically mixed city of Mosul to investigate the attacks (…) Kanna, like other Christians, said he hinted that there might be government involvement. “I don’t want to accuse anyone, but I am saying that [those carrying out attacks] are wearing police uniforms,” he said…

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Lacking an Accord On Troops, U.S. and Iraq Seek a Plan B
Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer
With time running out for the conclusion of an agreement governing American forces in Iraq, nervous negotiators have begun examining alternatives that would allow U.S. troops to stay beyond the Dec. 31 deadline, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. Neither side finds the options attractive. One possibility is an extension of the United Nations mandate that expires at the end of the year. That would require a Security Council vote that both governments believe could be complicated by Russia or others opposed to the U.S.-led war. Another alternative would amount to a simple handshake agreement between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Bush to leave things as they are until a new deal, under a new U.S. administration, can be negotiated…

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Doctors refuse to work in Karbala following threats
Azzaman
Up to 200 doctors in the religious city of Karbala have closed their clinics, the head of the union of Iraqi physicians and dentists in the city said. Ali Abutaheen said the strike, which has crippled public medical services in the city, comes following threats by tribal leaders to kill some doctors. The tribal chieftains blame the physicians for the death of their followers in operation rooms…

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Baghdad housing prices soar under sectarian shadow
CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer
An arrow in central Baghdad points down a side-street to a glass door with a sign that reads: “Ali’s Office.” That’s where real estate broker Hadi Abbas Ali has greeted clients for 25 years. Now Ali is witnessing a boom of sorts in the Iraqi capital, where real estate prices have doubled in some areas. But a sectarian shadow hangs over the boom. Buyers don’t look for a river view or simply the best deal in town. Safety-conscious Shiites seek housing in walled-in areas dominated by their sect, and Sunnis stick to their own as well…

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Afghan insurgency spreads, attacks rise sharply: U.N.
Louis Charbonneau
The insurgency in Afghanistan has spread beyond Taliban strongholds in the south and east while the number of attacks in the country has reached a six-year high, a top U.N. envoy said on Tuesday. Violence in Afghanistan this year is worse than at any time since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the militant Islamist Taliban in 2001 and fears are growing among NATO members that they are losing both the military campaign and the support of ordinary Afghans…

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Death of a 3 Year Old in Gaza Due to Israeli Siege
WAFA
Medical sources announced, Tuesday afternoon, that the victims of diseases untreated due to the Israeli siege on Gaza Strip rose to 252 Palestinians. The number of Palestinian Citizens who passed away as a result of illnesses untreated due to the siege imposed on Gaza Strip, for over 15 months, rose to 252 Palestinian citizens. The latest incident was the death of a three year old child, Hani Al-Hasayneh. Medical sources reported to WAFA that, “the child died of lack of a necessary protein for the nutrition of the brain”. The child was not allowed to go outside the Gaza Strip for treatment, and passed away as a result…

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Acre: a fractured history
Hatim Kanaaneh, The Palestinian Chronicle,
…Before the Nakba my maternal grandmother and two aunts lived in Akka (Arabic for Acre) and it was usual for people to travel there on horseback or, more commonly, on the back of a donkey. My grandmother would come to visit us in our village, Arrabeh, and surprise us with a variety of presents: candies for the young and silk kerchiefs for the adults. For my mother she brought the special gift of a piece of red rubber sheeting fashioned out of the inner tube of a car tire. The wooden cot my mother used for her babies was the envy of the village womenfolk for the rubber sheet that protected it from soiling. My grandmother, Sitti Rahmi (Grandma Mercy) we called her, pulled rank over her village hosts and would bring her own personal supplies and utensils with her including a lot of snuff and a private ‘sharbi’ or small ceramic water jug…

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The Capitalist Shakedown
William Bowles
…I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started this essay on the Capitalist Shakedown that’s going on around us, totally disconnected from us even, due to some pretty nifty media work and, I might add, thirty years of revanchism on the part of our political masters to disconnect us all from the political process. But millions of us are affected by this crisis but without any kind of input into how it should be solved, and most especially from our trade unions, what’s left of them anyway, who have failed to voice any kind of alternative to this insanity. We have no voice with which to speak, so we are once more being dragged into a crisis not of our making. But a crisis that is endemic to the system and one the rest of us will pay for, unless that is, we take steps to halt it…

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Arab Israeli arrested for driving on Jewish holiday
AFP
Israeli police arrested an Arab Israeli man who drove his car during the Yom Kippur holiday in an incident which sparked four nights of rioting in the northern town of Acre, police said on Tuesday. “Tawfik Jamal was remanded in custody for three days for reckless endangerment and harming religious sensitivities,” said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld…

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Friendly fire in Iraq — and a coverup
The Army says no, but a graphic video and eyewitness testimony indicate that a U.S. tank killed two American soldiers. The mother of one soldier demands answers.
Mark Benjamin, Salon
Once a cop, always a cop. Asked if she wanted to see a graphic battle video showing her son Albert bleeding to death, Jean Feggins, retired from the Philadelphia Police Department, said yes. “Listen, I’ve moved dead bodies of people I don’t even know,” she told me, as she sat on a brown couch in the den of her West Philadelphia row house. “I need to know everything. Because he is not a stranger. That’s my baby. That’s my child.” When Pfc. Albert Nelson died in Iraq in 2006, the Army first told Feggins that he might have been killed by friendly fire, and then that it was enemy mortars. She says she never believed the Army’s explanation. “I always felt like they were lying to me,” she said. “I could never prove it.”…

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Sadrists reject Odierno’s remarks
Roads to Iraq
For the first time, Iranian officials admit that Muqtada Al-Sadr is in Qom – Iran to finish his religious studies getting the title “Mujtahid” by 2010 which allows him to issue valid Fatwas. His study is supervised by two high-ranked Ayatollahs, Ayatollah Seyyed Kazem Ha’iri and Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Harodi Iran’s judiciary chief…

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Three NATO soldiers killed in roadside blast in Afghanistan
DPA
Three NATO-led soldiers were killed on Tuesday in a roadside bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan, the military said. The soldiers were part of more than 50,000 NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that have been deployed to Afghanistan from 40 nations following the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001. ISAF did not reveal the nationalities of the dead soldiers, nor did it say where in the eastern region the incident took place. Most of the forces operating in the eastern region under the alliance’s command are from the US…

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AMS issues fatwa prohibiting long-term pact
Aswat al-Iraq
The Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS – Sunni organization) on Monday issued a fatwa prohibiting signing the long-term Iraqi-U.S. security agreement, accusing governmental officials and lawmakers who would approve it of betrayal, according to a release issued by the association. “The long-term security pact between Iraq and the U.S. administration occupying the country, if it is signed, is considered religiously prohibited and obsolete, and creates no commitments that Iraqis should abide by,” said the release that was received by Aswat al-Iraq…

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Multiple Meltdowns Simultaneously
Winter Patriot
In Iraq, “nervous negotiators” are trying to create an alternative pretext to “justify” the continuing war crime our “leaders” would prefer to describe as “liberation”. And the Iraqis have “opened bidding” on contracts to develop the oil fields (…) Meanwhile, the “legal” proceedings at Gitmo have been revealed to be even more of a farce than we ever imagined…

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Banks dictate conditions of US financial bailout
Alex Lantier
…While the best-connected firms will profit immensely from the bailout, the bourgeoisie and its political representatives insist there is no money for elementary social needs of the working class, such as foreclosure relief, universal health care and the right to a secure retirement. The major presidential and vice presidential candidates have uniformly called for cuts in existing, already inadequate, programs such as Social Security and Medicare…

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