Iraq arrests Saudi terrorist bomber in Diyala Province
Tehran Times Political Desk

TEHRAN — A Saudi Arabian terrorist who had been attempting to plant a bomb in Diyala Province has been arrested and his three accomplices killed in a shootout with security forces, a senior Iraqi police official announced on Sunday.

Diyala Province Police Chief Abdul-Hussein al-Shemri said the Saudi national is being interrogated, the Voice of Iraq website reported.

The deadliest of three suicide attacks in the area on Thursday struck a restaurant filled with Iranian pilgrims. The toll in that attack rose to 57, with Iranians making up the majority of the dead

Iraqi Govt Outraged After Deadly US Raid
Two Dead Civilians and Public Protests Make US Raid Costly Indeed
by Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com, 26 April 2009

A pre-dawn US raid this morning in the Iraqi city of Kut left two civilians dead and several others captured. Hundreds of local residents took to the streets to condemn the raid, while Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared the attack a violation of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the US and Iraq. He ordered two Iraqi security officials arrested over it, demanded the release of the captives, and for the US to turn over those responsible for the raid to the courts.

As is so often the case the official press release from US forces remained far disconnected from reality. It alleged that those captured included a “financier” for a Shi’ite militant group and six other “associates.” It also perplexedly claimed they were captured without incident even while describing the killing of two people, one they determined was “hostile” while the other was a woman.

Clinton: US to Keep Troops in Iraq if Violence Escalates

25 April 2009: Multiple simultaneous marches bring attention to the affairs of the World Bank & International Monetary Fund. It was all fun and games until somebody put an eye out. Includes critical visual analysis of why it turned so ugly so fast.

more info @
http://www.globaljusticeaction.org

Today, after months when we heard nothing further about the investigation, 6 people (one not a member of New Profile) had their privacy invaded, their computers taken, and were called in for investigation.

Dorothy Naor, New Profile, 26 April 2009

As some of you perhaps have heard, about ½ a year ago New Profile learned that it was under investigation. The charge, if I remember correctly, is that we incite youngsters not to enlist.

The charge is not true. We do provide space for youngsters to ask questions and to discuss and delve into matters that their contemporaries or family might be unwilling to discuss or that family and friends would have preconceptions about making it uncomfortable or inconvenient to discuss these matters. One such topic is refusal to enlist, but this is far from being the only topic. We hope to encourage youngsters to think—an undesirable quality in militaristic countries, where obedience is a foremost criterion.

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Tens of thousands of Gazans are still homeless and without basic services three months after the 18 January ceasefire.

17 April 2008

Jerusalem – A coalition of international aid agencies today warned that tens of thousands of Gazans are still homeless and without basic services such as piped drinking water three months after the 18 January ceasefire.

The agencies, including Oxfam International, CARE West Bank and Gaza, War Child Holland and Medical Aid for Palestinians, also called on the international community – and the European Union in particular which in the coming weeks will consider strengthening ties with Israel – to do more than pay lip service to the needs of the people of Gaza whose lives were torn apart during the three-week military operation.

[Read the report]

Watch Caryl Churchill’s play, Seven Jewish Children, which was written in response to the situation in Gaza in January this year

The United States continues to supply Israel with approximately $3 billion in military aid annually, which allows Israel to continue abusing Palestinians and preventing any meaningful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, writes guest columnist Huwaida Arraf.

By Huwaida Arraf
Special to The Times

WE Palestinians are often asked where the Palestinian Gandhi is and urged to adopt nonviolent methods in our struggle for freedom from Israeli military rule. On April 17, an Israeli soldier killed my good friend Bassem Abu Rahme at a nonviolent demonstration against Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land. Bassem was one of many Palestinian Gandhis.

One month prior, at another demonstration against land confiscation, Israeli soldiers fired a tear-gas canister at the head of nonviolent American peace activist Tristan Anderson from California. Tristan underwent surgery to remove part of his frontal lobe and is still lying unconscious in an Israeli hospital. In 2003, the Israeli military plowed down American peace activist Rachel Corrie with a Caterpillar bulldozer as she tried to protect a civilian home from demolition in Gaza. Shortly thereafter, an Israeli sniper shot British peace activist Tom Hurndall as he rescued Palestinian children from Israeli gunfire. He lay in a coma for nine months before he died.

Despite the killing of these unarmed civilians and documented evidence of systematic human-rights abuses, the U.S. continues to supply Israel with approximately $3 billion in military aid annually, allowing Israel to continue abusing Palestinians and preventing any meaningful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

[Read the article]