Thousands of Iraqis are marching against US Occupation

Thousands of people are marching in Baghdad this Saturday to protest a proposed

U.S.-Iraqi security agreement that would extend the presence of U.S. troops in the

country after the end of the year.

Protesters shout:

"End the U.S. occupation of Iraq!"

'No, no, America!'"

THE GENOCIDE OF THE IRAQI PEOPLE

1,273,378 IRAQIS DEATHS

DUE TO THE US-LED INVASION OF IRAQ IN MARCH 2003

Kurdish suspects arrested for attacks on Assyrians in Mosul

Six Arrested for Attacks on Assyrian in Mosul
GMT 10-17-2008

Assyrian International News Agency

Mosul (AINA) -- A spokesman for Iraq's defense ministry confirmed on Friday the capture of six men suspected of perpetrating attacks on the Assyrians in Mosul. Sources have told AINA that four suspects are residents of the Kurdish region and are affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (headed by Massoud Barazani) in northern Iraq, as shown by their ID cards. The affiliations of the two other suspected is not yet known. American forces in Mosul declined to comment on the arrests.

The number of Assyrians driven out of Mosul in the past two weeks has risen to 15,000, or about 2500 families (AINA 10-16-2008). Threats, intimidation and murder by unidentified groups have instilled fear and panic in the Christian Assyrian community, causing a massive exodus into the Assyrian villages in the Nineveh Plain. Thirteen Assyrians have been killed in the past four weeks. At least three Assyrians homes were bombed on Saturday. Letters have been left instructing the Assyrians to leave the city immediately or face reprisal.

The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) issued a formal condemnation on Wednesday on the attacks against the Assyrians and rejected accusations it has any involvement. Several observers in Iraq have accused the Kurds of carrying out the attacks in Mosul for political reasons ahead of coming elections (AINA 10-17-2008).

The Nineveh Plain area, east of Mosul, is heavily populated by Assyrians and other non Muslim, non Kurdish minorities. The KRG has announced it wants to annex the Nineveh Plain as well as other parts of the Nineveh province.

Cholera disease spreading to the north of Iraq

IRAQ: Cholera deaths rise to eight as disease spreads
15 Oct 2008 09:39:40 GMT 15 Oct 2008

BAGHDAD, 15 October 2008 (IRIN) - About 500 confirmed cholera cases have been registered in Iraq since the latest outbreak of the disease on 20 August. Eight people have died, a government spokesman said on 14 October.

"So far there have been 479 cases in 12 provinces: Babil 230 cases, Baghdad 73, Diwaniyah 61, Basra 50, Karbala 39, Najaf nine, Anbar eight, Maysan three, Arbil two, Samawa two, Kut one and Diyala one," said Ihsan Jaafar, director-general of the public health directorate and a spokesman for the ministry's cholera control unit.

Jaafar told IRIN cholera-related deaths had reached eight, with two new death cases in Qadissiyah and Babil provinces south of Baghdad.

Those who have died of the disease are a 10-year-old girl, a 61-year-old man, a child over five in Babil Province, two children under five in Qadissiyah Province; a three-year-old boy in Maysan; and an adult and a child in Baghdad.

Spreading north?

There is evidence of the disease spreading north: two cases were confirmed in Arbil, a city some 350km north of Baghdad. The disease was previously confined to central and southern Iraq.

"We are continuing to intensify our measures in all fields such as raising awareness among residents, and monitoring restaurants and food and drinks-related factories and stores; we have already closed a number of them and destroyed tonnes of material," Jaafar said.

According to Richard Finkelstein, co-author of Medical Microbiology, cholera occurs primarily during the summer months, possibly reflecting the increased presence of the organism in rivers and lakes during these months, as well as the enhanced opportunity for it to multiply in unrefrigerated foods.

The Iraqi Health Ministry and the World Health Organization have blamed the country's rundown water and sanitation infrastructure for the outbreak.

Cholera is a gastro-intestinal disease typically spread by contaminated water. It can cause severe diarrhoea, which in extreme cases can lead to fatal dehydration. Treating drinking water with chlorine and improving hygiene conditions can prevent the disease.
sm/ar/cb

About that budget surplus in Iraq...

Severns Guntzel, Electronic Iraq,
Oct 14, 2008

We've heard a lot about Iraq's $79 billion budget surplus--which always seems to raise eyebrows but never the question: how exactly has Iraq found itself with a surplus? Iraq's Finance Minister explains. This is from a United Press International report:

Speaking with the Council on Foreign Relations, Iraqi Finance Minister Bayan Jabr Solagh said August reports of a budget surplus of as much as $79 billion through 2008 fail to take into account the true nature of the Iraqi financial system."The surplus or the excess in money that people talk about is money that was not spent (in August)," he said. "We are spending it now through the budget process."

The minister said the budget surplus is at the Iraqi Central Bank and not the development fund for reconstruction in New York. Solagh said the Central Bank deposits, which total no more than $30 billion, are used to back the Iraqi currency."It is not surplus; it is the federal reserve," he said. "It is the reserve of Iraq. That means we cannot have a fixed currency without it."

Association of Muslim Scholars issues fatwa prohibiting long-term pact

October 13, 2008
BAGHDAD / 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.

“The Iraqi politicians who are in the executive (government) or legislative (parliament) authorities who would pass this treaty are considered careless regarding the interest of the Uma (Muslim’s nation), the prophet (Mohammed) and Muslim Iraqis and others,” it said.

“This agreement includes concessions made by Iraqis, government and people, in all directions to their enemies, the American occupiers and their allies,” it added.

“It also embraces a military alliance with an occupying non-Muslim country; therefore it is religiously prohibited and obsolete,” it noted.

“In Islam, Muslims are not allowed to form military alliances with non-Muslims to battle Muslims,” it asserted.

MH (S)/SR

Kurdish groups behind attacks on Assyrians in Mosul: Iraqi MP

GMT 10-12-2008 Assyrian International News Agency
Baghdad (AINA) -- Osama Al Najifi, a member of Iraq's parliament, told the Iraqi Independent Press Agency on Sunday he holds the Iraqi government responsible for what is happening to the Assyrian Christians in Mosul, and accused the "Kurdish militias" for carrying out the acts of ethnic cleansing.

Al Najifi, a native of Mosul, claimed the Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the Kurdish Asayesh intelligence service are carrying out the attacks under the cover of the Iraqi military.

He pointed out the military forces in Mosul are completely infiltrated by the Kurdish militia. Al Najifi said the Kurds carry out the attacks against the minority groups in order to Kurdify the city and change its demographic balance.

Osama Al Najifi is a Sunni Arab and has a long record of defending the rights of the minorities in the Iraqi parliament.

He emphasized that the Kurdish parties have had de facto control over Mosul for more than one year and are trying to control the city and change its demographic identity to serve Kurdish interests.

Al Najifi also blamed the Iraqi government for being absent from Mosul, accusing the "big parliamentary groups" of making political agreements which are preventing the national government from having control over the province of Nineveh and its provincial capital Mosul.

PKK claims deadly attack on police bus in Turkey

The terror organization, PKK, claimed responsibility Sunday for a machine-gun attack on a police bus in southeastern Turkey last week that claimed five lives.

Wednesday's attack in southeastern province of Diyarbakir was a "successful action" by the PKK terrorists, AFP quoted a statement posted on the terrorist organization's web site as saying.
The police bus came under fire just as parliament in Ankara extended by a year the government's mandate to order cross-border military action against PKK hideouts in neighboring northern Iraq.

The police have detained nine people in connection with the incident, among them three alleged PKK terrorists believed to have taken part in the attack.

http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/home/10103793.asp?gid=244&sz=54245

The Anti-Muslim Smear Machine Strikes Again?

by Isabel Macdonald

October 11, 2008

In the midst of remarkably cynical election-time mud-slinging, the Obsession campaign is truly in a class of its own.

Over the past weeks, 28 million copies of the anti-Muslim propaganda film Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West have been delivered to the doors of newspaper subscribers in swing states.

The 2006 documentary, which has been a mainstay of David Horowitz's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week," describes "radical Islam" as a menace comparable to Adolf Hitler that, according to the film's website, "is threatening, with all the means at its disposal, to bow Western civilization under the yoke of its values."

For the groups behind the film's distribution, the goal seems pretty clear: Scare the holy hell out of millions of voters in swing states about a possible Muslim takeover of the U.S. It's hard to see the targeting of electoral battlegrounds as anything other than an attempt to help John McCain get elected--perhaps by capitalizing on the widespread whispering campaign that Obama is a "secret Muslim."

And one has to admit that the Obsession campaign's marketing plan has been quite slick. After all, what better way to disseminate hate propaganda than under the unassuming guise of a documentary film delivered in Americans' daily newspapers? A plan that, sadly, many newspapers were all too happy to go along with for the sake of corporate profits.

While a handful of newspapers--the Greensboro, N.C., News & Record, the Detroit Free Press, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch--have taken the ethical stance of refusing to carry the DVD (the News & Record called it "fear-mongering and divisive"), some 70 papers, including the New York Times, have delivered it to their subscribers as a paid advertising supplement.

There has really just been one small glitch in the plan: The public doesn't seem to be buying it.

Newspapers that carried the DVD have faced floods of complaints from readers, and the past week has seen protests and press conferences denouncing the film.

The problem, it would appear, is that many readers simply do not accept the notion their newspaper should provide a cover for hate propaganda.

As one Durham, N.C., News & Observer reader put it, "I cannot believe that I was sent the hate-inflaming, fear-mongering video disk Obsession in my newspaper! What will you enclose next? KKK robes?"

The public, it turns out, is a much a tougher sell than the corporate media. Major corporate media outlets have for years been citing the anti-Muslim pundits featured in Obsession as "experts."

For example: Steve Emerson has been invited regularly on NBC and described as an "anti-terror expert," despite the fact his research has been repudiated many times over. This is an "expert" who initially blamed the Oklahoma City bombing on Middle Eastern terrorists, and who is now going around claiming that the Bush State Department is collaborating with extremists.

And then there's Daniel Pipes. While he's repeatedly been cited by the media as an "expert" on Islam and the Middle East, he has warned that "the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims" entail "true dangers" for American Jews, and led a witch hunt against a public school official who was slated to run an Arabic-language charter school in New York City.

Just a month before a critical election, there are no signs that the anti-Muslim mud-slinging campaign is going away. In fact, the secretive nonprofit called the Clarion Fund behind the Obsession campaign just came out with a brand new DVD, The Third Jihad, featuring Mark Steyn--who, as FAIR's new report documents, has warned of the "demographic decline" posed by Europe's emerging Muslim population, and suggests there are lessons for Europeans in the Balkan example of ethnic cleansing.

You can read all about Emerson, Pipes and Steyn in a new report that's just been released called "Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation" . The report profiles 12 top anti-Muslim pundits, including prominent talkshow hosts Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.

The media's long record of failing to challenge (and often enabling) anti-Muslim smears should leave us quite worried about how this final leg of election '08 will play out: Will the media continue to provide a platform to the anti-Muslim smear machine, or will they uphold standards of responsible journalism?

Isabel Macdonald is Communications Director for FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)
www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/11-1

Former German MP slams US Iraq occupation

Jürgen Todenhofer

German writer

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:59:45 GMT


Former member of the German parliament Jurgen Todenhofer has criticized the Iraq war and claims that the US manipulates the media to its benefit.

Dr. Todenhofer, who traveled the world to Iraq last year, is the author of two bestseller about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In his latest book “Why Do You Kill, Zaid?” the author tells the story of a young man who joins resistance groups after US military forces arrest and murder his brother.

Todenhofer's book is an attempt to shed light on the other side of the story of the Iraq war. It reports how Iraqi people talk about the war, when there are no heavily-armed US soldiers in the vicinity. The author also raises doubts about official figures on civilian casualties in Iraq. Todenh0fer suggests the figure could be even as high as 200 casualties every day.

Todenhofer claims that the Pentagon prevents journalists from entering conflict areas and says that if the true face of the US military presence in Iraq were to be revealed, the majority of the world would support Iraq's militants against the occupation.

Earlier this year, the 67-year-old German writer bought three full pages in the New York Times in an attempt to educate Americans about the conflicts that their government manufactures around the world. "Why do you kill, Zaid?" attempts to give a fresh perspective on the Muslim world and reveal the true nature of the devastating and costly US endeavor in Iraq.

The royalties from the book will be donated to a children's home in Afghanistan and a hospital for children in Congo.

NAT/WY