Category: World News & Politics

So, in the end of the day, the Iraqis will have full sovereignty, they just shouldn’t interfere with what’s going on in the country.

Iraq’s new government is starting to take shape, with U.S. officials leaking names of a prime minister and president, but it’s still unclear what power, if any, they would have over the country with a vast U.S. army hanging around.

Five weeks before the interim government is due to take over from the U.S. occupation authority on June 30, U.S. officials are hinting that the prime minister will be Hussain Shahristani, a nuclear scientist who paid for his defiance of Saddam Hussein with torture and years of imprisonment in Abu Ghraib and exile.

The US thinks that it has to be a Shi’ite. It also has to be someone who is not seen to be beholden to any particular faction or party and yet not be so much of a technocrat that he has no standing with the parties.
And Shahristani fits that profile.

As for the president, expectations are pointing at Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni who was foreign minister in the 1960s.

Vice presidential choices are expected to be Ibrahim Jaafari, a medical doctor who is spokesman of the Dawa Party, and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani.

Anyway, it’s still up to Lakhdar Ibrahimi to make the final decision and choose who will be taking what role.

Maybe this new government will actually be better than the current useless governing council, but I still don’t think they’ll be able to do much. I expect the US will still be controlling everything and telling them what to do.
Still, I hope they’ll try to get some good things done for the people of Iraq.

[More: Reuters]

So, after it happened to George W. Bush a while back, it’s the turn for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry to be Google-bombed.

An effort by some conservative bloggers has pushed the candidate’s campaign website to the top of the result list when the word “waffles” is typed into Google.

But Kerry’s campaign is smarter than Bush’s and they’re trying to capitalize on the prank.

The campaign has purchased Google AdWords, sponsored links that come up beside results when certain words are searched. The short links also refer to Kerry’s website, but suggest users “read about President Bush’s Waffles.”

Google-bombing has fast become a popular prank on the Web. Bloggers have found they can manipulate search results by hyperlinking unsavory labels to individual pages. The trick also works on Yahoo, Lycos and AltaVista.

I think this is really cool and interesting. And if the prank gets to the stage where it works, it actually shows how many people think that way and should send a clear signal to whoever the prank is targeted at.

If you can’t (or don’t want to) stop the people abusing prisoners, you can always stop the people taking the pictures!

“Look, if Americans can be convinced that the President of the United States is even barely literate, they can be convinced of anything. You know, the fact that every American isn

What’s that again? oh yeah, freedom of expression and choice.
Maybe we should change it to “freedom of oppression” so that nobody’s confused about what it really means.

“The demolitions are part of an ongoing war against Palestinian civilians that goes far beyond terrorist attacks. So disproportionate is the Israeli response, so indiscriminate in its attacks upon an innocent civilian population — some 1,200 houses have been demolished in Gaza the past three years — that Israeli actions can only be described as state terrorism. Attacks on non-combatant populations, collective punishment and the demolition of homes are all illegal under international law and constitute war crimes…”

Jeff Halper, the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions

The Israeli Chief of Staff, Moshe Ya’alon, was quoted as saying on Saturday Israel will continue to demolish homes in Rafah, irrespective of what the rest of the world thinks.

“In the past, we destroyed many homes, and apparently we will destroy many more homes in the future.”

As for Dan Gaillerman, Israel’s UN ambassador, he says:

“The resolution did not call on Israel to stop its activity and did not call on Israel to stop the demolition of houses”

In addition to that, two senior Israeli officials say the number of homes destroyed by occupation forces in the southern Gaza Strip is being exaggerated.

Deputy PM Ehud Olmert and Israel’s ambassador to the US, Daniel Ayalon, went so far as to accuse some Palestinians in the Rafah refugee camp of damaging or demolishing their own houses.

Asked why Palestinian homeowners would destroy their own property, Ayalon replied:

“Maybe they are painting, I don’t know, or wanted to do some renovations and this is a good way to do it.”

As for Rabbi Dov Lior, Chairman of the Jewish Rabbinical Council, he says:

“…a thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail”

So Chalabi, the favourite US toy in Iraq for the past few years, who had all the support of the pentagon and US government and was expected to be installed as the next Iraqi president has now simply burned out.

A few days ago, the US announced they’d be stopping secret payments to the Iraqi National Congress (INC), headed by Ahmad Chalabi.

And yesterday his home and office were raided by the Iraqi police and American troops seeking evidence of fraud, embezzlement and kidnapping by members of his Iraqi National Congress – and perhaps an explanation of his dealings with Iranian intelligence.

Now we all know that he is a crook. He’s even sentenced to prison in Jordan for embezzlement.
And we all know that he was lying all along and providing fabricated and wrong information to the US.
And we all know that Iraqis hate him, feel no connection with him, and that he has no following on the ground.
So is it possible that the US and the CIA are only realizing this now?!
Or maybe at first, they didn’t care because he was telling them what they wanted to hear, but now that things have turned sour, they want to hold him accountable for it?

Anyway, now he’s lying some more by engaging in a political war with the US administration and saying that all this is happening because he’s asking for the US to give full sovereignty to the Iraqis and leave.
But, that’s obviously a load of bullshit. He’s just trying to win the people on his side.

I think this is the end for Chalabi and that he should just run back to where he was hiding while he still can.
He’s a total disgrace to his country.

Scenes of grief and desolation in Rafah.

Rafah and Gaza continue to experience ongoing Israeli military operations at this very moment !

Israel has killed more than 30 Palestinians this week, demolished buildings and homes, purposely targeted peaceful protesters (most of them children) and terrorized people.

The United Nations passed a resolution condemning the killing of Palestinian civilians in southern Gaza and calling on Israel to stop demolishing homes there.
Incredibly the US did not veto this resolution and simply abstained.
But what difference does all this make on the ground?
Words and useless resolutions don’t do anything for the people being killed and their families.
Action has to be taken to stop these acts of crime and state terrorism!

The Electronic Intifada urges all concerned people to contact international and government officials to demand immediate action to halt Israel’s assault on Rafah refugee camp in Gaza. Israel is in the process of committing major war crimes with total impunity…