Israel has reacted angrily to a confidential Foreign Office document accusing it of illegally expanding Jewish settlements and routing the West Bank barrier to prevent east Jerusalem from becoming the Palestinian capital.
Officials described the document, drafted for an EU foreign ministers meeting earlier this week, as “anti-Israeli” and said it was further evidence the Foreign Office is “unrelentingly pro-Palestinian”. Britain makes more formal protests to Israel over its actions in the occupied territories than any other country.

The document warns Israeli actions are jeopardising peace and risk radicalising Palestinians. It recommends several measures to resist the Israeli tactic, including politically symbolic actions such as moving meetings with Palestinian officials from Ramallah to east Jerusalem.

An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said: “We would see that as problematic. There are agreements with the Palestinians where that isn’t supposed to happen. It would not be the actions of those who support Israel.”

An Israeli source said: “We are not in the slightest bit surprised that this should have come from the British. On the one hand they always say they understand Israel’s problems and want to be an intermediary and on the other they are accusing us and attempting to embarrass us. They cannot be trusted,” he said.
guardian.co.uk

The buyers and the sellers meet in corners, away from prying eyes. The deals are done after hurried negotiations, and bundles of notes change hands. But these are no ordinary transactions; the cash being traded is blood money.

In Iraq, a country being torn apart in a seemingly never-ending conflict, there is now an acute shortage of blood. And the worse the violence becomes, the higher its black market prices rise.

Faced with the crisis, the medical authorities will supply blood for operations and treatment only if families or friends of the victims can provide an equal amount in return. There are exceptions for the most serious of cases, when up to two litres are given free.

But on many occasions, relatives are unable to donate the blood because they are too old or ill themselves, or because they have a blood type the hospitals do not want because they already a preponderance of it.

And into this gap in the market fit people like Ali Mahmood Hashim, who, unemployed with three children to feed, is selling the only thing of worth he has left. “There is nothing else I can do,” he said outside the Bab al-Modam medical complex in central Baghdad. “Everything is expensive and we have no money. I am not forcing anyone to buy my blood, but there are always those willing to pay for it.”
independent.co.uk

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 25 (Xinhuanet) — With the first in-depth analysis of the air bubbles trapped in the ice core of east Antarctica, scientists have discovered that today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are the highest in 650,000 years.

The analysis highlights the fact that today’s rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, at 380 parts per million by volume, is already 27 percent higher than its highest recorded level during the last 650,000 years, reported scientists in two papers in the Nov. 25 issue of the journal Science.

One study chronicles the stable relationship between climate and the carbon cycle during the Pleistocene (650,000 to 390,000 years ago). The second paper documents atmospheric methane and nitrous oxide levels over the same period.

Carbon dioxide and methane, known as greenhouse gases, are blamed for global warming. Scientists believe that humans have been accelerating the global warming trend by emitting more greenhouse gas through industrialization.
xinhuanet.com

It seems that liberals will go to any lengths in order to protect the sanctity of President Clinton’s legacy, and it is getting downright aggravating. Take Joshua Micah Marshall, the Ivy-league liberal who publishes Talking Points Memo, an enormously popular online political blog with a pwog-centrist tilt, ala Eric Alterman. As Marshall recently wrote:

“[T]he president’s defenders have fallen back on what has always been their argument of last resort — cherry-picked quotes from Clinton administration officials arranged to give the misleading impression that the Clintonites said and thought the same thing about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as the Bushies did.”

Yeah, you’re not the only one, it makes my head spin too. I’m not exactly sure how one can cherry-pick President Clinton’s 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, which gave the US government the green light to whack Saddam for the slightest annoyance, whether fabricated or not. In fact, it was the former Iraq dictator’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction that were part of the Act’s foundation.
counterbias.com

Laura Bush was at the Colonial Fire Hall in Hamilton, N.J., telling about 700 pre-selected ticket-holding Bush faithful why they needed to vote for her husband.

The First Lady went through the usual litany of what she believed were her husband’s accomplishments, frequently invoking the memory of 9/11. And then she told the crowd why the nation needed to support her husband’s war. “It’s for our country, it’s for our children and our grandchildren, that we do the hard work of confronting terror and promoting democracy,” said the First Lady.

That’s when Sue Niederer, a 55-year-old teacher and Realtor, standing at the back of the hall, just couldn’t take it any more. “If the Iraq war is so necessary,” she called out, “why don’t your children serve?” That’s when the Secret Service came by, when Republican volunteers pushed and shoved her, and raised Bush campaign signs around her to block her from talking and to prevent the media from turning their cameras to her. A few in the crowd had tried to come to her defense, one person shouting out, “She has a right to speak. She’s a mother.” But, the “right to speak” was drowned out, as were Niederer’s own comments, by the partisan chant, “Four More Years! Four more years!”—just in case Niederer or anyone else had anything to say that the crowd thought might be high treason.

Until she spoke out, exercising what she believed were her First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, most had not seen her shirt. Shortly before she spoke out, she put on a T-shirt with a picture of her 24-year-old son, and the words, “President Bush, You Killed My Son.”
counterbias.com

There are 15,000 cases of Hepatitis in Al-Sadr Town, one of Baghdad’s most impoverished neighborhoods, a study has revealed.

The study was conducted by doctors and scientists concerned with the living standards of the town, where more than 1.5 million people live.

The investigators belong to Martyr al-Sadr Bureau, an organization working under the umbrella of the Iraqi political faction late by the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Moqtada’s followers help in securing the predominantly Shiite town and offer humanitarian aid to the needy.

The latest hepatitis figures are the result of a comprehensive investigation by the bureau in which 140,000 households were covered.

Moqtada’s organization, which also includes a military wing, is highly disciplined and exercises almost full control of al-Sadr Town in Baghdad.

Hashem Mohammed, a leader of Moqtada’s organization, said the group decided to undertake the investigation when it found that the government and the health ministry did not have the capacity to carry out such study.

The investigation shows dramatic increases not only in hepatitis, a serious disease of the liver, but also in cases of major communicable diseases.

The study’s findings contrast sharply with official figures under which hepatitis cases are estimated at 1,500 in the town.

But Mohammed cast severe doubts on official documents, saying there was no way for the health ministry to have a clear picture of the worsening health conditions in the town.

He said officials figures rely on visits to the general hospital and does not include visits to clinics and health centers the group operates.

The sewage system in the city does not function properly and heavy water from open sewers inundates streets.

The study says a laboratory examination has found the tap water heavily polluted.

“Untreated water seeps into pure water pipes. The average of untreated water in the pure water pipes is no less than 40%,” the study says.

The al-Sadr Town is Iraq’s most densely populated area. It is a warren of two-story houses separated by narrow streets with open sewers.
azzaman.com

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Nov 23 (IPS) – A year after the U.S.-led “Operation Phantom Fury” damaged or destroyed 36,000 homes, 60 schools and 65 mosques in Fallujah, Iraq, residents inside the city continue to suffer from lack of compensation, slow reconstruction and high rates of illness.

The Study Centre for Human Rights and Democracy based in Fallujah (SCHRD) estimates the number of people killed in the city during the U.S.-led operation in October and November 2004 at 4,000 to 6,000, most of them civilians. Mass graves were dug on the outskirts of the city for thousands of the bodies.

Last week, the Pentagon confirmed that it had used white phosphorus, a chemical that bursts into flame upon contact with air, inside Fallujah as an “incendiary weapon” against insurgents. Washington denies that it is a chemical weapon, as charged by some critics, and that it was used against civilians.

Compensation payments promised by Iyad Allawi, the U.S.-backed interim prime minister at the time of the operation, have failed to materialise for many residents in the city, who lack potable water and suffer electricity cuts on a daily basis.

“People were paid almost 20 percent of what they were promised by Allawi, which was just 100 million dollars,” said Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji, a resident of Fallujah and spokesperson for the city’s governing council.

According to Deraji, who is also a biologist and co-director of the SCHRD, Iraq’s current prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, had agreed to continue with the second and third compensation payments to people inside Fallujah who had suffered the loss of a loved one or damaged property during the fighting, after he was pressured by the U.S. embassy.

“But now he [Jaafari] has stopped the payments,” Deraji told IPS. “So now there is no payment to the people and we all continue to suffer.”

This month, U.S. Marine Col. David Berger, who is commander of the 8th Regimental Combat Team and responsible for Fallujah, told reporters, “[Fallujah’s residents] don’t see any progress, they don’t see any action. They hear a lot of words, a lot of promises, but not a lot of product.”
dahrjamailiraq.com

11/25/05 “ICH” — — The Indian writer Vandana Shiva has called for an “insurrection of subjugated knowledge.” The insurrection is well under way. In trying to make sense of a dangerous world, millions of people are turning away from the traditional sources of news and information and to the World Wide Web, convinced that mainstream journalism is the voice of rampant power. The great scandal of Iraq has accelerated this. In the United States, several senior broadcasters have confessed that had they challenged and exposed the lies told about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, instead of amplifying and justifying them, the invasion might not have happened.

Such honesty has yet to cross the Atlantic. Since it was founded in 1922, the BBC has served to protect every British establishment during war and civil unrest. “We” never traduce and never commit great crimes. So the omission of shocking events in Iraq – the destruction of cities, the slaughter of innocent people, and the farce of a puppet government – is routinely applied. A study by the Cardiff School of Journalism found that 90 per cent of the BBC’s references to Saddam Hussein’s WMD suggested he possessed them and that “spin from the British and U.S. governments was successful in framing the coverage.” The same “spin” has ensured, until now, that the use of banned weapons by the Americans and British in Iraq has been suppressed as news.
informationclearinghouse.info

A Tale of Extraordinary Renditions and Double-Standards

German Islamic extremist Mohammed Haydar Zammar has been locked in a dungeon in Damascus for the past four years as part of Washington’s post-9/11 “extraordinary renditions” program. By placing the man with suspected ties to the Hamburg al-Qaida cell in Syrian hands, the United States is allowing Damascus to commit torture so that it doesn’t have to.

Syria’s Far-Filastin prison is like an iceberg. The most treacherous part lies hidden beneath the surface.

Its visible part is a white, two-story building in the drab style of socialist prefab construction, about as plain-looking as the former Berlin headquarters of the East German secret police, the Stasi. This unassuming-looking building in the Massa section of the Syrian capital, a five-minute drive from downtown Damascus, is the Syrian military intelligence agency’s nerve center.

But the building’s external appearance is deceptive. A staircase winds downward from the ground floor into dark basement corridors—the prison’s torture wing—lined with cells secured by double metal doors. This underground section makes Far-Filastin one of the world’s most notorious prisons, a blend of Alcatraz and Abu Ghraib. That this is a place to be feared is just as evident above ground, where signs identifying the prison as a military zone and banning photography are an ominous warning to passersby and taxi drivers alike, who prefer to give the place a wide berth.
axisoflogic.com

Syria tortures prisoners for us.

Only three Democrats voted on the issue of the Iraq war, last Friday. The rest followed Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s directives, a continuation of her “strategy” of insulating the pro-war wing of the party, centered in the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), from the wrath of the party’s base, which is now overwhelmingly anti-war. For the DLC’s sake, Pelosi smothers the party’s progressive wing – of which she was once a proud member. Thus, the San Francisco congresswoman maintains the fiction of a united House Democratic front, to disguise the flaccid reality: the pro-war faction has veto power over Democratic Iraq policy – a veto exercised by Pelosi, herself.

Of the 42 Black Caucus members in the House, only one dared buck Pelosi’s discipline: Cynthia McKinney (GA), joined by New York’s Jose Serrano and Florida’s Robert Wexler.

The three faced the choice of defying Pelosi (and, in McKinney’s case, the CBC leadership’s similar attempts to put forward a face of unity without purpose) or to take advantage of the only chance available since October, 2002 to express an unqualified NO to the Iraq war.
blackcommentator.com