Meanwhile in Iraq

Iraq: At least 77 killed as bloody U.S. occupation continues: A blast in the Shurja market left 24 dead and 35 wounded Wednesday and came just two hours after rebels targeted an Iraqi army recruitment centre in the Shiite town of Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing 12 volunteers and wounding 38.

Iraqi minister says gunmen executed 13 soldiers: The 12-hour gun battle on Monday was among the bloodiest between Iraqi government forces and Shiite militiamen. The Defence Ministry had said 20 of its soldiers were killed.

Five more US soldiers die in Iraq: The US military announced the deaths of five US soldiers on Tuesday, bringing to 13 the number of troops that have died over the past three days.

Congressmember Murtha: " Disappointed" by Hillary Clinton's Refusal to Endorse Troop Withdrawal Plan: Democracy Now! interviews Congressmember John Murtha (D - PA) about his position on the Iraq war, the Haditha massacre and Sen. Hillary Clinton's refusal to endorse his troop withdrawal plan.

Iraqi minister cancels truce with Shiite militia: Iraq's defence minister has declared the army's truce with Shiite militants in the central city of Diwaniyah null and void, and demanded an inquiry into the killing of 13 soldiers.

Iraqi Hospitals Are War's New 'Killing Fields': Armed Shiite Muslim militiamen dragged the 43-year-old Sunni mason down the hallway floor, snapping intravenous needles and a breathing tube out of his body, and later riddled his body with bullets, family members said.

Dispatches: The Killing Zone

Dispatches reporter Sandra Jordan and producer Rodrigo Vasquez risk their lives to reveal the shocking level of daily violence and murderous hate in the Gaza Strip.

An American peace activist was crushed to death by an IDF bulldozer; a British peace protester was shot in the head by an IDF sniper and remains in a coma; and last weekend, a British cameraman was shot dead by the IDF.

Within hours of arriving Sandra and Rodrigo are shot at and tear-gassed by Israeli troops breaking up a memorial service for Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist crushed by an Israeli Army bulldozer two days before.

Broadcast Channel 4 - 05/19/06 Runtime 49 Minutes

Rummy’s Reverie: “The Media made me lose the War,” by Mike Whitney

08/30/06

Don Rumsfeld may be a lousy Secretary of Defense, but he’s the best buck-passer this country’s ever had.

Nothing is ever his fault. Not Guantanamo, not Abu Ghraib, not Falluja, not Haditha, not de-Baathification, not the insurgency; nothing. Ever.

Of course, ever since Saddam’s bronze torso hit the pavement in Fidros Square, the occupation has steadily unraveled and turned into a quagmire. But that’s not Rummy’s fault either. Like President Bush said, “He’s doin’ a heck-uva job”.

Sec-Def Houdini put his excuse-making talents on full-display yesterday in a speech at Fallon Naval Air Station in Nevada. He accused terrorist groups of “manipulating the media” to erode support for the war on terror.

“What bothers me the most,” he opined, “is the way they are actively manipulating the media in this country. They can lie with impunity…That’s the thing that keeps me up at night.”

Some of us were hoping that Iraq was keeping Rummy “up at night”…or maybe that niggling issue of torture and abuse that keeps popping up in the newspapers. But, noooo; it’s the looming specter of Zarqawi at his keyboard e mailing his hypnotic prose to unwitting Americans who are seduced by his vile propaganda.

Huh?

What exactly is Rumsfeld talking about? Or are these just the early signs of delirium praecox?

“The enemy is so much better at communicating,” he moaned. “I wish we were better at countering that because the constant drumbeat of the things they say—all of which are not true—is harmful.”

“Better at communicating”? Better than FOX News, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and the whole alphabet-soup of cable stations that pitch Rumsfeld’s flag-waving jingoism ad nauseum? Are Bin Laden’s scratchy video-tapes really that much of a threat?

How can the press corps (some of America’s best and brightest) sit through this rubbish? Isn’t there anyone in the crowd who’s plucky enough to put a stop to Rumsfeld’s ruminations by saying,

“No offense, Mr. Secretary, but you’re losing the goddamn war and you’re blaming it on some fictitious Islamic media which only exists in your fevered imagination.”

Rumsfeld’s precipitous decline into senility is painful to watch. At one time the square-jawed Rumsfeld embodied the swaggering self-confidence and élan of the Bush administration. His friendly banter with the adoring Washington press corps made him a darling among conservatives and elevated him to rock star status.

No one could lay a glove on old Rummy; he was too smart and too quick on his feet.

And, now this; an embattled old man, trying to cover his failures with one absurd diversion after the other?

Rumsfeld should be on the front porch shooing kids off the lawn not steering the world’s most powerful military towards an impending catastrophe.

We need new leadership; pronto. Rumsfeld can swap his stories about Bin Laden Media with his fellows at the Senior Center, not from the podium at the Pentagon.

Cluster bombing of Lebanon 'immoral' UN official tells Israel

· Humanitarian chief says civilians are killed daily
· Annan urges Olmert to end Gaza blockade

The Guardian

"Israel faced a stinging rebuke from the UN yesterday when the world body's humanitarian chief expressed shock at the "completely immoral" use of cluster bombs in Lebanon and Kofi Annan called for a rapid end to the conflict in Gaza.
Jan Egeland said civilians were facing "massive problems" returning home because of as many as 100,000 unexploded cluster bombs, most of which were dropped in the last days of the war.

"What's shocking - and I would say to me completely immoral - is that 90% of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution," Mr Egeland said. "Every day people are maimed, wounded and are killed by these ordnance."

Earlier, the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, called on Israel to end its closure of the Gaza Strip and to halt the fighting that has claimed the lives of more than 200 Palestinians in the past two months."

Hizbullah's victory has transformed the Middle East

George Galloway in Beirut
Thursday August 31, 2006
The Guardian

"As the smoke clears from the battlefield of the 34-day war in Lebanon, it would be a mistake to count the cost only in fallen masonry and fresh graves. All is changed, changed utterly, by the defeat that the whole of Israel is now debating, from the cabinet through the lively press to the embittered reservists at the falafel stall. Practically the only person in the world who claims Israel won the war is George Bush - and we all know his definition of the words "mission accomplished".

If the fierce thicket of the Iraqi resistance stopped the Bush war spreading to Syria then the extraordinary Hizbullah victory has surely made the world think again about an attack on Iran. But the main - and maybe the most welcome - shift in the 40-year-old paradigm of the Israeli-Arab conflict is the puncturing of the belief in a permanent and unchallengeable Israeli military superiority over its neighbours and the hubris this has induced in Israeli leaders - from the sleek Shimon Peres through the roughhouse of Binyamin Netanyahu to the stumbling Mr Magoo premiership of Ehud Olmert."

Annan’s “Moral Mission” for Israeli Hegemony

By Kurt Nimmo

"It is disgusting the way United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan crawls to the psychopath Ehud Olmert and begs him to lift the criminal air and sea blockade of Lebanon. “Israel will pull out once there is a reasonable level of forces there,” Olmert lied.

Israel will never leave Lebanon and the “reasonable level of forces” argument is a transparent canard, as Israel will not sign off on its occupation no matter the number of foreign troops occupying Lebanon.

As the pathetic Kofi Annan crawled to Israel for “talks” with the Zionist mafia dons of the criminal state, he did not mention the UN Charter, specifically Article 51, stipulating the right of self-defense.

If Annan had any cojones and was anything but a servile bureaucrat, he would have brought up Israel’s pathological violation of countless UN resolutions, mostly calling upon Israel to comply with basic principles of international law embodied by the UN Charter.

UN Security Council resolutions, uniformly nixed by the United States, include the most egregious violations, including: attacking Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria; obstructing peace and violating the Fourth Geneva Convention; changing of the status of Jerusalem (i.e., stealing it by military force and ethnically cleansing Arabs); building settlements in occupied territories; expulsing Palestinians (a polite way to say ethnic cleansing); denying human rights, and more, ad nauseam.

Of course, if Israel agreed to release Lebanese prisoners in exchange for the Israelis captured after violating Lebanese sovereignty, the entire matter would come to an end. But Israel has no intention of releasing Lebanese prisoners or negotiating with Hezbollah.

The idea here is to use the prisoners to crank up the heat on Syria and eventually, Iran, the cardinal target of the Israeli and American effort.

Olmert, Gillerman, and the mafia dons of Israel don’t give a whit about Karnit Goldwasser and her husband, a pawn in an ongoing effort to subjugate Arabs and Persians to Zionist hegemony."

Chavez vows solidarity with Syria against U.S., Israel

"DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez pledged solidarity on Wednesday with Syria in its struggle against Israel and the United States and predicted the demise of U.S. "imperialism."

"Syria and Venezuela share the same firm positions and a resistance to imperialism and imperialist aggression," Chavez told a news conference after talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, speaking in Spanish through an Arab interpreter.

"This age will witness the end of American imperialism," he said, pointing a laser pen at a map of the world showing countries where Washington has intervened militarily or whose governments it has helped to topple over the last 50 years.

Chavez denounced what he called Israel's "Nazi crimes" in Lebanon during the recent war and said the Jewish state should pull its remaining troops out of that country and also out of the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in 1967.

"Nothing equals the Nazi crimes Israel has committed in Lebanon and against the Palestinians," said Chavez, who arrived in Syria on Tuesday evening from Malaysia.

Chavez's popularity shot up across the Arab world after he ordered Venezuela's envoy to Israel home earlier this month to protest Israel's military offensive against Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. Many civilians died in the fighting.

He has threatened to break off diplomatic ties with Israel."
---
VIVA CHAVEZ!!

Arabic T-shirt sparks airport row

An architect of Iraqi descent has said he was forced to remove a T-shirt that bore the words "We will not be silent" before boarding a flight at New York.
Raed Jarrar said security officials warned him his clothing was offensive after he checked in for a JetBlue flight to California on 12 August.

Mr Jarrar said he was shocked such an action could be taken in the US.

US transport officials are conducting an inquiry after a complaint from the US Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

JetBlue said it was also investigating the incident but a spokeswoman said: "We're not clear exactly what happened."

'Authoritarian regimes'

Mr Jarrar's black cotton T-shirt bore the slogan in both Arabic and English.

He said he had cleared security at John F Kennedy airport for a flight back to his home in California when he was approached by two men who wanted to check his ID and boarding pass.

Mr Jarrar said he was told a number of passengers had complained about his T-shirt - apparently concerned at what the Arabic phrase meant - and asked him to remove it.

He refused, arguing that the slogan was not offensive and citing his constitutional rights to free expression.

Mr Jarrar later told a New York radio station: "I grew up and spent all my life living under authoritarian regimes and I know that these things happen.

"But I'm shocked that they happened to me here, in the US."

After a difficult exchange with airline staff, Mr Jarrar was persuaded to wear another T-shirt bought for him at the airport shop.

"We Will Not Be Silent" is a slogan adopted by opponents of the war in Iraq and other conflicts in the Middle East.

It is said to derive from the White Rose dissident group which opposed Nazi rule in Germany.

Congressmember Weiner Gets It Wrong On Palestinian Group He Tried To Bar From U.S.

AMY GOODMAN: After I spoke with [Congressmember John Murtha], I talked to New York Democratic Congressmember Anthony Weiner. In May, Weiner successfully added an amendment to a House bill banning aid to the Palestinian Authority. The amendment would outlaw the Palestinian delegation at the United Nations and kick them out of the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: You called for the Palestinian delegation to the UN to pack their bags, or more specifically, to pack their “little Palestinian terrorist bags.”

REP. ANTHONY WEINER: Right, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

REP. ANTHONY WEINER: Well, for the longest time, the Palestinian -- the PLO Mission -- PLO hasn’t been an accepted voice of the Palestinians for the longest time. Congress has said very clearly back in the 1980s, as recently as the middle of the 1990s, that they were not welcome here in the United States. And frankly, the PLO is an organization that, frankly, no longer seems to represent anyone, but they're still considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

AMY GOODMAN: So would you call the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas a terrorist?

REP. ANTHONY WEINER: No.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, the people who are at the UN --

REP. ANTHONY WEINER: Not the Mission of the Palestinian Authority. This is the PLO Mission. Mahmoud Abbas does not represent -- I hope he doesn't represent the PLO. He certainly doesn't say he does. He represents the Palestinian Authority. The PLO is a terrorist organization. It’s acknowledged it’s a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. And the only reason that they're still there is because a court ruled that they were an adjunct of the United Nations, and thus there were two conflicting laws that are in place about -- one that says the PLO has to leave the United States and the other that says that missions to the United Nations may stay. And so, frankly, I think that what I tried to do with the amendment you're referring to is just clarify the PLO is not welcome in the United States, nor should they be.

AMY GOODMAN: They represent the Palestinian government. The Palestinian government is led -- the president is Mahmoud Abbas.

REP. ANTHONY WEINER: Not true. The PLO Mission, the PLO Mission. The Palestinian Liberation Organization is a terrorist organization and is acknowledged that by the United States government. The Palestinian Authority, which is headed by Mahmoud Abbas -- arguably that doesn't represent the Palestinian people anymore since the election either, but that’s a whole different story. But the PLO is a terrorist organization, and I believe that they should lose their quasi-diplomatic status, as they no longer represent anyone -- any of the Palestinians, and they are considered a terrorist organization.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Anthony Weiner. He called for kicking the Palestinian delegation out of the United States. But is his information accurate? Not his point of view, just the facts. Norman Finkelstein joins us in our Firehouse studio, professor of political science at DePaul University in Chicago. His latest book is called Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. The facts, Professor Finkelstein?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The facts can become a little technical, because there are multiple organizations now operating in the Occupied Territories, but Mahmoud Abbas was the successor to Yasser Arafat, when Arafat passed away and he became the chairman of the Palestinian -- PLO chief -- chairman of the PLO Executive. So he's clearly a member of the PLO. That, I don't think, is a matter of dispute.

AMY GOODMAN: And the issue of the PLO being on the list of terrorist organizations of the Justice Department?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: My recollection is -- I don't want to be -- I’ll be as precise as I can. The PLO was on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations until 1988. In 1988, there were these famous words that George Shultz had made Arafat recite in public.

AMY GOODMAN: The Secretary of State under Reagan.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Yeah, Secretary of State George Shultz. And at that point, he was -- the PLO was removed from the list of terrorist organizations, and the United States openly had diplomatic relations or ultimately was able to meet with the PLO. I’m sure your listeners will recall, before then there was the incident with Andrew Young having met with the PLO when it was a terrorist organization -- officially a terrorist organization. But afterwards, it was removed from the list.

AMY GOODMAN: So, for almost 20 years, it's been removed and the PLO has had a mission to the United Nations.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, the PLO Mission to the United Nations began, if my memory serves, in 1974. The PLO Observer Mission began at the UN. Some of your older listeners will recall that's when Arafat gave that famous speech at the United Nations, “The Gun or the Olive Branch.” So the Mission, I think, began in 1974, and right now the PLO is pretty much considered an ally of the United States against Hamas. So it's kind of peculiar that Mr. Weiner should be venting his ire at the PLO. Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO are considered U.S. allies. We work with Dahlan, who’s the main PLO representative in Gaza. He heads up their security forces, works with the CIA, works with Israel. These are our people.

CARTOON OF THE DAY

THE ARAB IDENTITY
I have finally found mine!

THE HERO IN JENIN IS NOT A PALESTINIAN
Necklaces with small portraits of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, right, and the Hezbollah flag, left, are displayed for sale in the West Bank town of Jenin, Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2006. In the background is the Hezbollah flag. (AP Photo)

Population in Jews-only colonies in occupied West Bank rises

Agence France Presse

JERUSALEM, Aug 29 2006-- The overall number of Israelis
living in the occupied West Bank has increased by 2.7
percent during the last six months, according to
statistics published by the interior ministry on Tuesday.

Around 7,000 more Israelis live in the Palestinian
territory than six months ago, taking their overall
population in the West Bank to 260,042, according to
statistics that exclude some 200,000 Israelis living in
annexed east Jerusalem.

This article excludes the additional
180,000 Israeli settlers living illegally in the parts of
Jerusalem occupied by Israel since June 1967-Ali Abunimah

Since late 2004, when there were 241,494 Jewish settlers
in the West Bank, the Israeli population in the territory
has increased by 7.5 percent, according to figures
published in Israel's Maariv newspaper.

Israel dismantled all 21 settlements built in the Gaza
Strip and withdrew all its troops and settlers from the
territory in August and September 2005.

When Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took office on May 4, in
keeping with his ambition to redraw his country's
permanent borders, he said the continuation of scattered
Jewish settlements in the West Bank was "endangering"
Israel.

However, his intentions to withdraw from large parts of
the West Bank and so uproot tens of thousands of settlers
while effectively annexing the largest settlement blocs
have been put on ice after Israel's war in Lebanon.

This article excludes the additional
180,000 Israeli settlers living illegally in the parts of
Jerusalem occupied by Israel since June 1967-Ali Abunimah

YOUR RELATIVES DON'T COUNT!
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (L) meets families of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons during his trip to the West Bank city of Ramallah August 30, 2006. (REUTERS)

Palestinian and foreign demonstrators hold signs addressed to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan during his visit in the West Bank town of Ramallah Wednesday Aug. 30, 2006.(AP Photo)

U.S.: Settlers assaulting American Citizens

"In recent months, citizens of Western nations, including Americans, involved in pro-Palestinian volunteer efforts were assaulted and injured in the Occupied Territories by Israeli settlers and harassed by the (Israeli army). Those taking part in demonstrations, nonviolent resistance, and direct action are advised to cease such activity for their own safety," it said.

A LIGHT MOMENT WITH A WAR CRIMINAL

YOUR 10,000 PRISONERS DON'T MATTER TO ME
U.N Secretary-General Kofi Annan, left, speaks to the relatives of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. (AP Photo)

WHATEVER YOU SAY, MASSA!

YESSA, MASSA.

PUPPETS OF THE EMPIRE, UNITED