Whistleblower News

(Guardian) – Pentagon hunts WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in bid to gag website

Soldier Bradley Manning said to have leaked diplomatic cables to whistleblower, plus video of US troops killing Iraqis Read More Here

(NewYorker) – No Secrets – Julian Assange’s mission for total transparency. – Read More Here

(TheDailyBeast) – Pentagon Manhunt

Anxious that Wikileaks may be on the verge of publishing a batch of secret State Department cables, investigators are desperately searching for founder Julian Assange. Philip Shenon reports. Plus, Daniel Ellsberg tells The Daily Beast: “Assange is in Some Danger.” Read More Here

(Rense) – Targeting Whistleblowers – Truth Telling Endangered – Stephen Lendman

On April 16, journalist John Cole wrote:

“The message is clear – you torture people and then destroy the evidence, and you get off without so much as a sternly worded letter. If you are a whistle blower outlining criminal behavior by the government, you get prosecuted.”

In fact, it’s worse. Under Bush, torture was official policy. It remains so under Obama who absolved CIA torturers, despite unequivocal evidence of their guilt. But leaking it risks criminal prosecution for revealing state secrets and endangering national security.

World War

(JoongAngDaily) – North Korea Makes Major Troop Shift, Postures For Direct Attack

The North Korean military has recently altered its wartime contingency plans against South Korea to concentrate on attacking the Seoul metropolitan region, a military source said yesterday. South Korean commanders will meet next month to discuss the change and their response to it. Read More Here

(JTA) – Abrams: U.S. must address Iran’s threat to Israel

A former Bush administration official said he hopes the United States will address the Iranian president’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map.”
“Israelis are living under the threat of annihilation every day,” Elliot Abrams, the Bush administration’s National Security Council senior director for Near East and North African Affairs, said April 25 at the Baltimore Zionist District’s “U.S.-Israel Relations In A New Era” symposium, the Baltimore Jewish Times reported. “If the world does not act, I believe Israel will act, and I hope the U.S. will.”
“We keep saying it’s unacceptable for Iran to have a bomb, but we don’t mean it. We mean it’s terrible, we don’t want it. But when Israel says it’s unacceptable, they mean it.” Read More Here

(WashingtonPost) – Ahmadinejad calls UN veto power ‘satanic tool’ – Read More Here

(WashingtonPost) – Chavez accuses US plane of `electronic warfare’

Without giving details, he said Venezuela’s military intelligence intercepted a conversation between the pilot and air traffic controllers in the northern Colombian city of Barranquilla. The aircraft conducted espionage operations, he said. Read More Here

(AntiWar) – Iran a Threat? I Mean, Really? – Ray McGovern

With all the current hype about the “threat” from Iran, it is time to review the record – and especially the significant bits and pieces that find neither ink nor air in our Israel-friendly Fawning Corporate Media (FCM). Read More Here

(WSWS) – US military escalates its dirty war in Afghanistan

The New York Times reported Sunday that American special forces units are operating in and around the Afghan city of Kandahar, assassinating or capturing alleged leaders and militants of the Taliban resistance ahead of the major US-NATO offensive scheduled for June. Read More Here

(HumanRightsWatch) – Iraq: Detainees Describe Torture in Secret Jail

Detainees in a secret Baghdad detention facility were hung upside-down, deprived of air, kicked, whipped, beaten, given electric shocks, and sodomized, Human Rights Watch said today. Iraq should thoroughly investigate and prosecute all government and security officials responsible, Human Rights Watch said. Read More Here

(Uruknet) – Iraq Today: Afflicted by Violence, Devastation, Corruption, and Devastation – Stephen Lendman

Seven years under occupation, Iraqis still cope with what Refugees International calls “a dire humanitarian crisis that sees huge numbers of displaced (and other Iraqis) struggl(ing) to survive,” a situation “for which the US bears special responsibility” but does nothing to correct. Read More Here

(RawStory) – Syria,Iran arm Hezbollah with improved missiles: US

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday accused Iran and Syria of arming Hezbollah with increasingly sophisticated rockets and missiles, saying the militia’s arsenal undermined stability in the region. Read More Here

(CNN) – Video: Iranian Jet Follows U.S. Aircraft Carrier –

7 million Iraqis exist below poverty line

(Uruknet) – Millions of Iraqis exist below the poverty line in a country which floats on oil and earned more than $60 billion from oil sales last year, said Mahdi Muhsen, the director of the Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology.

Muhsen said one fourth of Iraq’s nearly 30 million people live below the poverty line and that unemployment rates could hit 30% in some provinces.

Muhsen made the remarks as his organization gears toward national census scheduled for November 24 this year.

The poverty line for a single adult is 77,000 dinars per month, that is approximately $60. This means that at least 7 million Iraqis will have to make ends meet on two U.S. dollars a day.

Muhsen revealed more alarming figures regarding abject poverty.

“Half the population of Iraq live in abject poverty,” he said.

He said some impoverished provinces, like Muthanna in the south, suffered more than others.

Source: Uruknet

The New ‘Forgotten’ War: Iraq Occupation Falls Into Media Shadows – Dahr Jamail

“The Western world that slaughtered Iraq and Iraqis, through 13 years of sanctions and seven years of occupation, is now turning its back on the victims. What has remained of Iraq is still being devastated by bombings, assassinations, corruption, millions of evictions and continued infrastructure destruction. Yet the world that caused all this is trying to draw a rosy picture of the situation in Iraq.”
-Maki Al-Nazzal, Iraqi political analyst
As Afghanistan has taken center stage in U.S. corporate media, with President Barack Obama announcing two major escalations of the war in recent months, the U.S. occupation of Iraq has fallen into the media shadows.

How the US Occupation of Iraq Destroy and Undermine Women’s Rights – Dahr Jamail and Abdu Rahman

(IPSNews) – Under Saddam Hussein, women in government got a year’s maternity leave; that is now cut to six months. Under the Personal Status Law in force since Jul. 14, 1958, when Iraqis overthrew the British-installed monarchy, Iraqi women had most of the rights that Western women do.

Now they have Article 2 of the Constitution: “Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation.” Sub-head A says “No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.” Under this Article the interpretation of women’s rights is left to religious leaders – and many of them are under Iranian influence.

Video: Anthony Lawson Demolishes Gordon Brown Iraq ‘Evidence’

With Anthony Lawson around who needs the Chilcot Inquiry? The art of questioning performed here by Lawson is not presented at the Iraq Inquiry. In Britain 2010, war criminals are yet to be challenged.

Top Project Censored Story of 2009: U.S. War Machine Kills Over One Million Iraqis

(ProjectCensored) – Over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion, according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the mass killings of the last century—the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia’s infamous “Killing Fields” during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s.

Iraqi Oil Minister Accused of Mother of All Sell-Outs

(Truthout) – To public fury, the country is handing over control of its oilfields to foreign companies.

America’s Warfare State – Lining the pockets of Pentagon contractors

“On my last day in Iraq,” veteran McClatchy News correspondent Leila Fadel wrote August 9th, “as on my first day in Iraq, I couldn’t see what the United States and its allies had accomplished. …I couldn’t understand what thousands of American soldiers had died for and why hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had been killed.”

Obama as Joker Explained

Michael Shaw, over at Huffington Post, does not seem to understand the Obama-as-Joker poster. “Regarding the image specifically, I’m interested in your read, particularly Obama in chalky white face. Besides the allusion to the President as a psychopath and more insidiously, a man behind a mask, does the chalk exploit race by suggesting the man is playing at being white?

Another Outrage – Cindy Sheehan

Last week, after being bombarded with pseudo-patriotic images of graveyards, gravestones and flags, I decided to begin posting images of maimed and killed Iraqis, but especially children and transform the mega-pseudo-patriotic Memorial Day to Remembrance of Victims of US Empire Day.

Day Of The Dead – Cindy Sheehan

I was on an airplane flying to Orange County from Sacramento to attend the al-Awda Conference; which is a Palestinian Right’s Conference. Al-Awda translates to “The Returning, “ when the Pilot voice filled the cabin to make an announcement that I think went unnoticed by most of my fellow passengers, but I heard it.

MSM: AP Exclusive – Secret tally has 87,000 Iraqis dead

BAGHDAD – A previously undisclosed Iraqi government tally obtained by The Associated Press shows that at least 87,215 Iraqis have been killed in violence since 2005.

It was Never about Democracy

After 12 years of merciless US-backed sanctions, all Iraq needed was one small push to descend into total chaos. Yet many Iraqis still waited to see what the US would offer. What they got was complete absence of security, hundreds of thousands of jobs losses, and death and torture at the hands of US forces with the help of some ‘favoured’ Iraqis.

Let the Numbers Speak

Dear Friends,
I pride myself in being a scientist and a researcher. I built my academic career on theories and numbers. As a teacher, I teach my students that everything is based in science – everything has reason. For this reason, I am always frustrated with myself when I find I am overwhelmed with feelings on specific topics.

Ron Paul: We killed a million Iraqis

“So yeah,” Paul acknowledged. “We want to get rid of a bad guy in Iraq — we did. But … another one million Iraqis got killed. Believe me, they weren’t all terrorists. … But nevertheless, it pleased Osama bin Laden.”

Tens of Thousands of Iraqis Mass for Anti-SOFA Protest

At least 50,000 Iraqis joined a protest in the streets of Baghdad today, organized by followers of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, chanting anti-US and anti-occupation slogans and waving banners opposing the controversial Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which would keep US troops in Iraq through 2011.