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The deteriorating security situation and absence of law and order has allowed sexual slavery to grow in Iraq, with traffickers able to sell victims without fear of punishment.

According to the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report, issued in June, Iraqi women and children are forced into prostitution and trafficked inside Iraq and abroad, to countries like Syria, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iran.

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The former military chief, who is expected to be a future top contender in the political arena, said that Israel must treat the Hamas-run Gaza Strip as an "enemy entity," and should "disengage" from being the provider of water, electricity, and goods to the volatile coastal strip where 1.4 million Palestinians live.

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And us, for three days and nights we would roam the rooms like animals in a cage, pacing back and forth...Praying, crying, bargaining, pleading, supplicating, begging, God, the Universe, the Darkness, the Silence, the Walls....

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[ 06 July 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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Abutting virtually every African slum are the castles of the unimaginably rich. There is little incentive for those who hold the reins of power to redirect investments away from themselves to the very poor, given the abiding conviction on the continent that they have an unlimited capacity to weather their punishing adversities - with the help of repressive security systems, of course.

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Reading a scientific paper on the train this weekend, I found, to my amazement, that my hands were shaking. This has never happened to me before, but nor have I ever read anything like it.

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China will use up to 350 million tons of oil this year, ten million tons more than last year, said an expert with the country's top economic planner.

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Though the U.S. is still the world's leading oil consumer, its might in the global petroleum business is dwindling.

Developing countries are locking up a bigger share of the world's oil and gas resources

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[ 06 July 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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are we stuck in a perpetually delusional rut of Woodstock-style symbolism, out doing a global rain dance instead of really changing our behavior ...
Al Gore could do a lot more good militating to get regular hourly passenger train service running between Nashville and Atlanta, or stomping his state, from Memphis to Chattanooga for swapping sales tax on regular merchandise for a higher tax on gasoline. Or, he could just put aside his pretensions for being a kind of global Wizard of Oz and just cut the shit and run for president of the US, where he might actually make a difference.

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But the tragic thing, of course, is that getting tattooed is not quite the same as accomplishing something with your life. In the end, you're just another loser with a grandiose and ridiculous tattoo.

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The Vatican said on Tuesday Christian denominations outside Roman Catholicism were not full churches of Jesus Christ.

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Mr Abbas told Italian TV that Hamas was supporting al-Qaeda in Gaza, but gave no evidence to back up his allegations.

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[ 10 July 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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Consumers will see the beginnings of a serious global oil and gas shortage within two years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned Monday.

The IEA predicts a combination of increasing world demand and inadequate supply from Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) nations will lead to a global oil and gas crunch by 2012, but also says the signs will become obvious by 2009.

"Not only does oil look extremely tight in five years time, but this coincides with the prospect of even tighter natural gas markets at the turn of the decade," the energy security watchdog for the 26-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in an oil market report.

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While most people ought to be thinking, "what will we eat", you just know they're thinking, "what will it cost to fill my SUV?" Oh, and aren't you glad politicians are too cowardly to take on Buzz and the auto-crooks and set fuel efficiency standards?

[ 10 July 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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A Mexican guerrilla group claimed responsibility for bomb attacks on natural gas pipelines owned by Mexico's state oil company, carried out today and last week.

The group, the Popular Revolutionary Army, said the sabotage will continue until President Felipe Calderon and the governor of the state of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz, return alive three missing members. Calderon ordered heightened security at Mexico's ``strategic installations,'' presidential spokesman Maximiliano Cortazar said.

The group's threat, posted to a Web site used by revolutionary organizations, adds to a sense of insecurity created by mounting drug violence that has killed more than 1,300 people this year. Calderon, whose popularity surged following his military crackdown on traffickers, now confronts an armed political group destroying state assets and refusing to recognize his presidency

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As Iraq continues to disintegrate, and our top generals and in-country ambassador predict that U.S. troops will need to die there for decades in order to prevent a full-scale regional blood bath, it is important to recall the reasons why we got into this mess. The marker of what will go down in history as "Bush's folly" is that this idiot of a president invaded a country that had absolutely nothing to do with terrorist attacks on the United States or WMD threats to America while coddling the military junta in Pakistan, which was guilty on both counts.

...

The Times quoted Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, as saying, "The reluctance to take risk or jeopardize our political relationship with Musharraf may well account for the fact that five-and-a-half years after 9/11, we are still trying to run bin Laden and Zawahiri to ground."

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Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs said he has received approval from the U.S. and Europe for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

"If we start military operations against Iran alone, then Europe and the U.S. will support us,” Avigdor Lieberman said following a meeting with NATO and European Union officials.

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Turkey's army has boosted troop levels in the restive southeast to more than 200,000, most of them stationed along the border with Iraq, security sources told Reuters on Friday.

Those sources, who declined to be named, said the unusually large buildup, which includes tanks, heavy artillery and aircraft, was part of a security crackdown on Kurdish rebels hiding in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq.

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Iraqi Kurdish officials say the Iranian military has shelled an area inside northern Iraq during fighting between Iranian forces and Kurdish rebels.

Spokesman for Iraqi Kurdistan security forces Jabbar Yawer confirmed Thursday's artillery attack in the Peshdar region.

In recent months, Iran's Revolutionary Guard forces have clashed with Kurdish insurgents in northwestern Iran. The rebels are believed to be linked to Turkey's separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is the target of a large-scale operation in southeast Turkey.

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The dollar was driven down against the Japanese yen this afternoon, hit by the news that Iran had asked Japan to pay for its oil purchases in the Japanese currency and not in dollars.

Iran has sent a letter to Japanese refiners, signed by Ali A Arshi, the general manager of crude marketing and exports for Iran's national Iranian Oil Company, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The letter asks for yen payments "for any/all of your forthcoming Iranian crude oil liftings." The request is for all shipments "effective immediately".

Japan's oil payments to Iran rose 12 per cent last year to 1.24 trillion yen (£5 billion).

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That is like the global school yard equivalent to a poke in the eye.

[ 13 July 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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President Vladimir V. Putin formally notified NATO governments today that Russia would suspend its obligations under the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, a major Cold War-era arms-limitation agreement, in response to U.S. plans to deploy a missile shield in Eastern Europe.

The decision ratcheted up tensions over United States plans for a missile shield, which Russia opposes, but also reflected an escalating trend of anti-Americanism and deep suspicion toward the West in Russia's domestic politics ahead of Russian presidential elections next March.

Russia's suspension will take effect in 150 days, according to a copy of the Putin's decree posted on a Kremlin Web site. That delay leaves open the possibility of further negotiation on the 1990 treaty, which resulted in a huge wave of disarmament along the former East-West divide in Europe.

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Tehran has made clear that it will not suspend enrichment as the UN security council has demanded, despite two earlier rounds of financial, travel and arms sanctions. A decision on a third round has been put off until September. "If there is another resolution, we will react with whatever we have," the senior official told western journalists. "So far we have answered legally, limiting [UN] inspections, and reducing cooperation with the IAEA within the legal framework.

"But if there is no legal option left, it is obvious we will be tempted to do illegal things. What is very important to us is our dignity, and we are prepared to act."

Iranian officials made it clear that one option was a formal break with the treaty and a total severance of relations with the IAEA, like North Korea in 2003.

However, said the senior official, unlike North Korea Iran had no intention of building a nuclear bomb, even though he claimed it had now installed enough uranium-enriching centrifuges to make one.

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[ 31 July 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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Schools have been given the go-ahead to take fingerprints from children as young as five - without asking their parents first.

Ministers issued guidance allowing heads to collect pupils' biometric data to use when taking the register, paying for lunch or using the library.

Schools can also take retina and iris scans and record children's voices, face shapes, hand measurements, handwriting and typing patterns.

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Saudi Sunni Muslim religious police assaulted and detained a group of mainly Iraqi Shi'ite pilgrims to Islam's holy city of Mecca this month, Saudi and Iraqi sources said on Monday.

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"My task as president of the United States is primarily to do one thing -- by the way, not to make sure everybody has health care or everybody's child is educated -- my task is to do one thing: to protect and defend this country.

"And that means to deter -- and I want to underline "deter" -- any kind of aggression, especially the type we are threatened with by Al-Qaeda, which is nuclear attack.

"I'm telling you right now that anybody that would suggest that we should take anything like this off the table [bombing muslim holy sites] in order to deter that kind of event in the United States isn't fit to be president of the United States."

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A very strong majority supports US engagement in the world and rejects the idea that the US should take a more isolationist stance. However strong and growing majorities show dissatisfaction with key aspects of the current US role in the world and see it as destabilizing. A majority supports US military bases on the soil of traditional US allies, though support for US military presence in the Middle East has become quite soft.

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The Russian navy plans on producing a new submarine-based missile system capable of carrying nuclear warheads in 2008 as part of a big increase in the country's spending on research, development and procurement of weaponry.

The navy will commission the new missile system, the planned core of a seaborne nuclear arsenal in the coming years, even though three consecutive test launches of the missile last year ended in failure. But a successful test in June has prompted officials to approve the start of production of the missile's components, according to comments made Sunday by Admiral Vladimir Masorin and reported by Russian media.

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American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. filed for bankruptcy, becoming the second-biggest residential lender in the U.S. to close down this year.

The filing adds to signs that late payments have spread to homeowners with good credit.

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Originally posted by Jingles:
That Kunstler blog is good.

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It is. I love today's installment (August 6):

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At the other end of the storyline are the many sad people who were the initial dupes in the racket: the poor shlubs who signed "creative" mortgage contracts to become notional home-owners and thus achieve their spot on the first landing of the American Dream staircase. I say "notional" home-owners because somebody who "buys" a "product" such as chipboard-and-vinyl McHouse with no money down is not really an owner of anything but rather a kind of glorified renter stuck with the additional burdens of paying property tax and maintenance costs for something really owned by another party (a notional landlord). And, of course, we all know by now that the payment terms for these loan contracts were slippery sliding indexes which uniformly tended to slide upward as interest rates re-set above the ludicrously low levels of 2003 - 2006.

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Clusterfuck Nation

And this one is really good too:

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The air waves and internet sites are full of blather now about ending the "war" and bringing the troops home. The presidential candidates are agonizing over their various positions on the Iraq adventure. I'd like to hear one of them tell me how Atlanta is going to function without Middle Eastern oil, or how Wal Mart will move its merchandise from San Pedro to Lansing without a "warehouse on wheels," or how the thousands of yellow school bus fleets will carry on next September.

Actually, instead, I'd like to hear talk about drastically reforming our zoning laws to discourage any more suburban development or a pitch to allow some of our tax money to fund a US passenger rail revival. I'd like to see a candidate refuse to attend a Nascar race on the grounds that it's an unconscionably stupid fucking waste of energy resources. I'm waiting for one of these birds to tell the American people the truth: you can't have it both ways. you can't get our military out of the Middle East without changing the way we live.

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Both ways

[ 06 August 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

Sales of cardboard boxes up

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The number of U.S. homes facing foreclosure surged 58 per cent in the first six months of the year, the latest sign of growing problems in the mortgage industry, a data firm said Monday.

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Amin's father Pierre - grandfather of the MP murdered last November - founded the Phalange in 1936 after being inspired by the Nazi Berlin Olympics. "I thought Lebanon needed some of this order," he admitted to me shortly before his death; the original Phalange dressed in brown shirts and gave the Hitler salute. But they had turned themselves into a neo-respectable right-wing party by 1982 when they were enthusiastically supported by the invading Israeli army which hoped that Amin's brother Bashir would be elected president. Alas, Bashir turned out to be less pro-Israeli than the then-defence minister, Ariel Sharon, hoped, and was himself murdered in a bomb attack shortly before his inauguration.

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The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.

Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress. Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.

Described as China's "nuclear option" in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.
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It would also cause a spike in US bond yields, hammering the US housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession. It is estimated that China holds over $900bn in a mix of US bonds.

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A new law expanding the government's spying powers gives the Bush Administration a six-month window to install possibly permanent back doors in the nation's communication networks. The legislation was passed hurriedly by Congress over the weekend and signed into law Sunday by President Bush.

The bill, known as the Protect America Act, removes the prohibition on warrantless spying on Americans abroad and gives the government wide powers to order communication service providers such as cell phone companies and ISPs to make their networks available to government eavesdroppers.

The Administration pushed for passage of the changes to close what it called a "surveillance gap," referring to a long-standing feature of the nation's surveillance laws that required the government to get court approval to capture communications inside the United States.

While the nation's spy laws have been continually loosened since 9/11, the Administration never pushed for the right to tap the nation's domestic communication networks until a secret court recently struck down a key pillar of the government's secret spying program.

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Regarding China and the US dollars - a couple of years ago, when I listened regularly to Madge Weinstein's podcast (very crude and rude, btw, but funny and very politically sharp), she and a couple of her guests were often talking about how China "owns" America economically, not only because of the trade deficit but also because (I think - I'm no economic genius) China owns so much US money. They also went on about petrodollars, a concept which I falter with - I understand it in flashes of understanding here and there when it's explained to me, and then I forget again.

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Australian athletes will stay away the Beijing Olympics until the last minute, hoping to avoid air pollution and food problems in the Chinese capital.

Australian IOC member John Coates, after meeting Tuesday with heads of other Olympic delegations and Beijing organizers, called Beijing's choking pollution "a prevailing worry for most of us."

"We will be not recommending a long period in China before the games," Coates said, a day before the countdown clock reaches one year until the games open. "That only is going to increase the possibility of respiratory or gastric illness - particularly if you are not living in the village."

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Now swallow Australia's concern over Chinese air quality against the backdrop of Australia's position of denial on climate change and these few grains of salt:

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Gladstone will be a major winner from Australia's booming coal exports to China, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade, Mark Vaile, said today...

"The Port of Gladstone handled almost 1.3 million tonnes of coal for the China market in 2004-05. The figure can be expected to grow rapidly in the years to come, as a result of China's rapid growth and the possible Free Trade Agreement that we are negotiating.

"There is only one threat to our coal exports and the future of Gladstone: the Australian Labor Party, which still wants Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

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[ 07 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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At first, Tefahot residents received Christina with open arms when she arrived at the moshav to look for a home, assuming that she had just made aliyah. After finding out that she was in fact a Christian from Romania, and her husband a Druze from the Galilee, residents began making threats.

“The moment they found out he was Arab, the threats began,” Christina said. “They informed me that they wouldn’t accept the young children to the kindergarten, and they wouldn’t allow them on the school bus.

“One of the neighbors said rocks would be thrown at us, and another neighbor threatened to burn down the house with the children in it,” Christina added.

The two violent attacks on the house prompted its landlord to cancel the contract

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More than 1,000 civilian contractors have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion more than four years ago, according to Labor Department records made available Tuesday.

In response to a request from Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., the Labor Department revealed that 1,001 civilian contractors had died in Iraq as of June 30, including 84 during the second quarter of the year.

So far in 2007, at least 231 contractors working for U.S. firms have died in Iraq.

Those contractor fatalities are in addition to the 3,668 military personnel the Defense Department had confirmed dead in Iraq from the start of the war in March 2003 until today.

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After more than 20 million years on the planet, the Yangtze river dolphin is today officially declared extinct, the first species of cetacean (whale, dolphin or porpoise) to be driven from this planet by human activity.

An intensive six-week search by an international team of marine biologists involving two boats that ploughed up and down the world's busiest river last December failed to find a single specimen.

Today, the scientific report of that expedition, published in the peer-reviewed journal of the Royal Society, Biology Letters, confirms the dolphin known as the baiji or white-fin in Chinese and celebrated for its pale skin and distinctive long snout, has disappeared.

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Coral reefs in much of the Pacific Ocean are dying faster than previously thought, according to a study released Wednesday, with the decline driven by climate change, disease and coastal development.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill found that coral coverage in the Indo-Pacific -- an area stretching from Indonesia's Sumatra island to French Polynesia -- dropped 20 percent in the past two decades.

About 600 square miles of reefs have disappeared since the 1960s, the study found, and the losses were just as bad in Australia's well-protected Great Barrier Reef as they were in poorly managed marine reserves in the Philippines.

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Roadside bomb attacks on American troops in Iraq reached an all-time high last month, accounting for more than one third of all combat deaths.

The increase in the number of casualties caused by the sophisticated explosive devices comes at the height of the "surge" of United States forces which, the Pentagon claims, is broadly a success.

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This week the Russian and Chinese militaries are conducting a joint military exercise involving large numbers of troops and combat vehicles. The former Soviet Republics of Tajikistan, Kyrgkyzstan, and Kazakstan are participating. Other countries appear ready to join the military alliance.

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Wall Street's deepening fears about a spreading credit crunch sent stocks plunging again Thursday, with the Dow Jones industrials extending their series of triple-digit swings and falling more than 380 points. The catalyst for the market's latest skid: a French bank's announcement that it was freezing three funds that invested in U.S. subprime mortgages.

The announcement by BNP Paribas raised the specter of a widening impact of U.S. credit market problems. The idea that anyone _ institutions, investors, companies, individuals _ can't get money when they need it unnerved a stock market that has suffered through weeks of volatility triggered by concerns about tight credit and bad subprime mortgages.

A move by the European Central Bank to provide more cash to money markets intensified Wall Street's angst. Although the bank's loan of more than $130 billion in overnight funds to banks at a low rate of 4 percent was intended to calm investors, Wall Street saw it as confirmation of the credit markets' problems. It was the ECB's biggest injection ever.

The Federal Reserve added a larger-than-normal $24 billion in temporary reserves to the U.S. banking system.

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After 10 minutes in the hot, barely breathable air, I panicked. I don't suffer from claustrophobia, but this enclosure triggered it. There was no guard in sight and no way of calling for help. I banged on the door and the glass wall. A male security officer finally approached and gave the newly arrived detainee a disinterested look. Our shouting voices were barely audible through the thick door. "What do you want?" he yelled. I said I didn't feel well. He walked away. I forced myself to calm down. I forced myself to use that toilet. I figured out a way of sleeping on the bench, on my side, for five minutes at a time, until the pain became unbearable, then resting in a sitting position and sleeping for another five minutes. I told myself it was for only one night.

As it turned out, I was to spend 26 hours in detention. My crime: I had flown in earlier that day to research an innocuous freelance assignment for the Guardian, but did not have a journalist's visa.

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Mr Ahmadinejad led a high-ranking Iranian delegation to Kabul in a demonstration of growing Iranian influence in Afghanistan, where the US, Britain and other western powers are engaged in a bitter struggle with the Taliban.

The visit - Mr Ahmadinejad's first to Afghanistan - was tailor-made to provoke alarm within the Bush administration, which accuses Tehran of destabilising its efforts while claiming that the Taliban is being armed with Iranian weapons. Iran, which is mainly Shia, denies helping the Taliban, whose puritanical Sunni ideology it has condemned.

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At least 175 people were killed when three suicide bombers driving fuel tankers attacked residential compounds home to the ancient minority Yazidi sect in northern Iraq on Tuesday, an Iraqi army captain said.

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Dozens of gunmen wearing Iraqi security uniforms stormed the building of the state oil marketing company in Baghdad and kidnapped a deputy oil minister on Tuesday, a police source told Xinhua.

Deputy Oil Minister Abdel Jabar al-Wagaa, along with four other officials, were abducted after gunmen raided the State Oil Marketing Organization complex in eastern Baghdad, the source said on condition of anonymity.

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Too many Americans built no cushion into their budgets, and mortgage companies, focusing on the fees generated by new mortgages, did not encourage them to do so.

Just as the collapse of the real estate bubble was predictable, so are its consequences: housing starts and sales of existing homes are down and housing inventories are up. By some reckonings, more than two-thirds of the increase in output and employment over the past six years has been real estate-related, reflecting both new housing and households borrowing against their homes to support a consumption binge.

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Despite the recent assurances of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the subprime mortgage industry’s problems appear to be spreading across the globe like the Ebola virus. The turmoil has spread to such an extent that within the space of 48 hours, France, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, Australia and Japan had moved in unison to release a total of $326 billion into the financial system.

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Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Home Depot Inc., the two largest U.S. retailers, said the housing slump, rising mortgage defaults and high energy prices will depress earnings for the year.

``U.S. consumers continue to be under difficult pressure economically,'' Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott said on a recorded call today. ``It is no secret that many customers are running out of money toward the end of the month.''

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, fell $2.35, or 5.1 percent, to $43.82 at 4:02 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading for the biggest drop since July 2002. Home Depot lost $1.72, or 4.9 percent, to $33.52. It has declined 17 percent this year.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
At least 175 people were killed when three suicide bombers driving fuel tankers attacked residential compounds home to the ancient minority Yazidi sect.

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Members of the Yazidi community worship an archangel, sometimes represented by a peacock figure. Some Christians and Muslims believe the angel they revere to be the devil.

Yazidis are uncertain whether to identify with the Kurds or campaign for separate rights:

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The community's problems began when the Saddam regime fell, and the village - formerly in the Kurdish self-rule area - was linked once again to the nearby city of Mosul, a centre of Sunni radicals.

Not only are they a minority, but their faith is not accorded the same respect by Muslims as Christians or Jews, both of which are mentioned in the Quran as protected "Peoples of the Book".

For many Kurds, the Yazidis are guardians of their ancestral faith.

The Yazidis claim that their religion dates back at least six millennia, and associate it with the early Persian religion of Mithraism.

The remnants of their scripture - much of which was lost during the persecutions of the Ottoman Empire - are written in Kurdish.

For this, even Muslim Kurds accord Yazidis respect.

"They are the real Kurds," said one member of the Kurdish Democratic Party, whose eyes light up at their mention. The 21-pointed sun on the Kurdish flag is a Yazidi symbol, he observes.

For many Muslim Arabs, however, the Yazidis are devil-worshippers due to their veneration of Taous Malek, the Peacock Angel, who is identified with Iblis or Shaitan, the Arabic names for Satan.

Whereas Muslim theology says the angel was punished by God for refusing to bow to man, Murad says, the Yazidis hold that he was rewarded for recalling God's earlier commandment to worship no other deity.

Demonstrators bearing banners declaring that "Yazidis are a nationality of themselves, separate from the Kurds", gathered outside Iraq's Governing Council on March 8, demanding special recognition in the constitution.

These Yazidis say they sought protection from Saddam, but that they were betrayed.

"Saddam said ‘Yazidis are a flower in my garden' and they were faithful. They had an honourable role in defending Iraq during the Iranian war, and many of Saddam's guards were Yazidi," said demonstration leader Amin Farhan Jejo.

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"Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned
By Jeremy Grant in Washington

Published: August 14 2007 00:06 | Last updated: August 14 2007 00:06

The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.

David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”.

These include “dramatic” tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.

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Turmoil in the subprime mortgage market spread again yesterday — this time to a type of short-term security held by money market mutual funds. These funds have become the investment of choice for many people seeking a safe haven.

Standard & Poor’s, the ratings agency, warned yesterday that it might downgrade several issuers of commercial paper, a short-term I.O.U. by companies that promise to repay loans typically within a few weeks to a year.

In these cases, S.& P. said, the commercial paper was backed by residential mortgages.

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Sentinel Management Group Inc., the Illinois-based cash-management firm that oversees $1.6 billion, froze client withdrawals

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Countrywide Financial Corp., the biggest U.S. mortgage lender, fell 13 percent, the most since the 1987 stock-market crash, after Merrill Lynch & Co. raised the possibility of bankruptcy.

``Effective insolvency'' would result if creditors force Countrywide to sell assets at depressed prices or investors lose confidence in its ability to raise cash, Kenneth Bruce, a Merrill analyst in San Francisco, said in a research note today.

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At a time when the United States is widely regarded in the Middle East as a military aggressor and faces plummeting popularity around the world, Iran is taking advantage of the situation to boost its own image and forge closer ties with its neighbors.

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More than 600,000 people in war-ravaged southern Somalia are suffering from severe malnutrition in a part of country that used to be considered its "bread basket", according to an aid agency report.

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Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani said he opposes creation of a Palestinian state at this time and would take a tough stand with Iran, including destroying its nuclear infrastructure "should all else fail."

Outlining his foreign policy views in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, Giuliani said "too much emphasis" has been placed on brokering negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians — an apparent swipe at President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who have been pushing both sides for final status negotiations despite Hamas' takeover of Gaza in June.

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Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday warned Israel of a "great surprise" in the event of another war between the Lebanese guerrilla group and the Jewish state.

Marking the first anniversary of the end of last year's war between Hezbollah and Israel, Nasrallah said his group did not want conflict but described readiness as a duty. The United States and Israel were "beating the drums of war", he said.

"If you think -- oh Zionists -- about launching a war on Lebanon, I will not promise you surprises such as those which happened (in the last war), rather I promise you a great surprise which could change the fate of the war and the fate of the region," Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

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U.S. existing home sales fell nearly 11 percent in the second quarter from last year's levels as the residential real estate market's slump continued, an industry group said Wednesday.

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A plenum of the Permanent Commission of Mexico’s Congress today denounced the humiliations, abuse, violations of human rights and deaths of immigrants in U.S. border facilities.

A proposal by legislators from the Convergence for Democracy Party asked the foreign minister to intervene in order to clarify the circumstances of the death of a Mexican citizen, Rosa Contreras.

A few days ago, Contreras died at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in El Paso, Texas where she was being held.

The woman, who was two months pregnant, died three hours after complaining of pain behind her knee, when her blood pressure dropped and she lost consciousness.

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Mexico After the Elections, the exhaustion of predatory neoliberalism, etc

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Residents of the settlement of Elon Moreh in the West Bank have cut a pipe carrying drinking water to a nearby Palestinian village, and are using it to fill a small swimming pool located at a picnic site, which was itself built on land owned by the village.

The pipe, which carries water to the village of Dir al-Khatab, was rerouted in order to fill the pool. The pipe channels fresh drinking
water into the pool and drains dirty water back into the village's water system.

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On an agricultural research station south of Manila a group of scientists are battling against time to breed new varieties of rice as global warming threatens one of the world's major sources of food.

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Mankind's response to climate change will shift how the world gets its energy and is already making "green barons" out of early investors in renewable energy, clean technologies and carbon trading.

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The fire burned strong for 45 days and 45 nights, blanketing the village with ash and torching the young cassava plants in Ada Baniba's field. As she weeded, the flames flared out of the leaking oil pipeline behind her.

It wasn't that no one could put the fire out. It was that no one would -- not the oil company that owned the pipeline, not the government and not the villagers breathing the fumes.

The tale of Kegbara Dere's fire shows just how desperate the long-neglected communities of Nigeria's oil-rich river delta have become.

The average Nigerian still survives on less than $2 a day, despite the country's $20 billion rise in oil exports to the United States over the past five years.

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With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States stood tall -- militarily invincible, economically unrivalled, diplomatically uncontestable, and the dominating force on information channels worldwide. The next century was to be the true "American century," with the rest of the world molding itself in the image of the sole superpower.

Yet, with not even a decade of this century behind us, we are already witnessing the rise of a multipolar world in which new powers are challenging different aspects of American supremacy -- Russia and China in the forefront, with regional powers Venezuela and Iran forming the second rank. These emergent powers are primed to erode American hegemony, not confront it, singly or jointly.

How and why has the world evolved in this way so soon?

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The American Psychological Association ruled Sunday that psychologists can no longer be associated with several interrogation techniques that have been used against terrorism detainees at U.S. facilities because the methods are immoral, psychologically damaging and counterproductive in eliciting useful information.

Psychologists who witness interrogators using mock executions, simulated drowning, sexual and religious humiliation, stress positions or sleep deprivation are required to intervene to stop such abuse, to report the activities to superiors and to report the involvement of any other psychologists in such activities to the association. It could then strip those professionals of their membership.

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The association decided against a blanket measure that would have kept psychologists from working in interrogation facilities altogether. Many critics of that measure, including several government experts, said that psychologists play an essential role in these settings, both in terms of safeguarding detainees and in helping to debunk the belief that coercion and humiliation are effective interrogation tactics.

"If we lose psychologists from these facilities, people are going to die," said U.S. Army Col. Larry James, chief of the department of psychology at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, just before the APA's Council of Representatives took a vote.

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Relying upon the concerns of the US Army in preventing deaths is like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank.

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Leonard S. Rubenstein, executive director of the group Physicians for Human Rights, said the psychologists had fooled themselves into thinking their continued presence at detention facilities would make a difference when they were actually playing only a support role.

"It is unfortunate the APA did not recognize you cannot practice ethical psychology in interrogation settings in the context of pervasive violation of human rights," he said.

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As we were leaving the hospital, one of the doctors grabbed my hand and also told me that he was sorry about Casey. In a quiet voice, he told me that even though it is sad for me to have lost a son that it was so that I could lead America towards peace and use my sorrow to help the people of Iraq, "inshallah." I lost my faith after Casey was killed and it is so profound to witness the faith of the Iraqi people when their country has been decimated for no reason, their national treasures and antiquities destroyed or defiled by barbaric acts, one million people dead, six million people displaced, and so many wounded and ill that can't access medical care. This trip has been so difficult for us as people with hearts, but it has also reminded me how fortunate we are to live in a country that has been almost virtually free from war on our soil for about 150 years, but also so angry that we allow it to happen to other peoples on their land on an almost continuing basis. Also, to think that anything is going to change if a Democrat gets into office is naïve. Bill Clinton is a Democrat who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis more than George. Throughout US History political parties have interchanged the White House and NOTHING has ever changed. The fascist power elite will always use their puppet in the White House to kill other people for their benefit and profit.

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[ 21 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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The number of foreclosure filings reported in the U.S. last month jumped 93 percent from July of 2006 and rose 9 percent from June, the latest sign that homeowners are having trouble making payments and finding buyers during the national housing downturn.

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In many ways, the leading Democrats, both those running for office and those currently holding office, are a far greater insult to American values than the conservative standard-bearers for the policies of Cheney. No one of substance takes seriously the manic ranting of the Hannity/Limbaugh/Coulter triad. These Democrats, on the other hand, have mastered the art of compromise to the point that they stand for nothing at all—this at a time in American history when the policies of the administration, derived from the dark abyss of Bush’s soul, Cheney, provide the most concrete example of what we as Americans should be standing against.

The Democrats need to stand for something. Cheney has provided the sort of political ammunition that would enable them to fight, and win, a constitutional battle over the heart of America, the kind of defining struggle which I believe the vast majority of Americans would rally around. Unless the Democrats start separating themselves from the policies of the Bush administration, and take an active role in outing and suppressing the true evil that is Dick Cheney, all they will achieve in the coming years is a change in the titular political orientation of America, without the kind of deep-seated break from the failures and crimes of the past six-plus years that have taken our nation, and the world, right up to the edge of chaos.

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An estimated 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours each year worldwide and the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, according to a new report.

American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found.

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Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the biggest underwriter of U.S. bonds backed by mortgages, became the first firm on Wall Street to close its subprime-lending unit and said 1,200 employees will lose their jobs.

Shuttering BNC Mortgage LLC will cut third-quarter earnings by $52 million, Lehman said in a statement today. Lehman, led by Chief Executive Officer Richard Fuld, bought Irvine, California- based BNC in 2004 and used it to expand in lending to homeowners with poor credit or heavy debt loads. The job cuts are equivalent to about 4.2 percent of Lehman's workforce of more than 28,000.

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In a clear sign that the credit crunch is still affecting the nation's largest financial institutions, the Federal Reserve agreed this week to bend key banking regulations to help out Citigroup (Charts, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (Charts, Fortune 500), according to documents posted Friday on the Fed's web site.

The Aug. 20 letters from the Fed to Citigroup and Bank of America state that the Fed, which regulates large parts of the U.S. financial system, has agreed to exempt both banks from rules that effectively limit the amount of lending that their federally-insured banks can do with their brokerage affiliates. The exemption, which is temporary, means, for example, that Citigroup's Citibank entity can substantially increase funding to Citigroup Global Markets, its brokerage subsidiary. Citigroup and Bank of America requested the exemptions, according to the letters, to provide liquidity to those holding mortgage loans, mortgage-backed securities, and other securities.

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A clash between troops and Kurdish rebels near Turkey's southeast border with Iraq left 10 rebels and two soldiers dead, the military said Saturday.

The fighting erupted Friday near Uludere, a town in Sirnak province, when the troops called for the rebels to surrender but were met with gunfire, the military said in a statement on its Web site.

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U.S. forces have rebranded one of the main insurgent groups in Iraq and now use the term "concerned local nationals" to refer to a group that once claimed responsibility for killing scores of Americans.

The updated vocabulary for referring to the 1920 Revolution Brigade, described by a U.S. commander on Saturday, is a sign of the abrupt change in tactics that has seen U.S. forces cooperate with former Sunni Arab enemies.

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The scale of the human disaster in the Iraq war has become clearer from statistics collected by two humanitarian groups that reveal the number of Iraqis who have fled the fighting has more than doubled since the US military build-up began in February.

The Iraqi Red Crescent Organisation said the total number of internally displaced has jumped from 499,000 to 1.1 million since extra US forces arrived with the aim of making the country more secure. The UN-run International Organisation for Migration says the numbers fleeing fighting in Baghdad grew by a factor of 20 in the same period.

These damning statistics reveal that despite much- trumpeted security improvements in certain areas, the level of murderous violence has not declined. The studies reveal that the number of Iraqis fleeing their homes ­ not intending to return ­ is far higher than before the US surge.

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the U.S. helicopter attack caught many in the Shiite community controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr's Al Mahdi Army asleep on their roofs, where they go to escape the stifling heat of apartments that get only an hour or two of electricity each day.

Hospital officials reported two women's bodies among those brought to two area morgues, and an al-Sadr spokesman said four women were among the dead. Angry relatives and neighbors of the killed and injured vowed retribution as they carried the victims' coffins through the teeming streets.

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Two explosions in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad have killed at least 36 people, and injured about 60 others, according to officials.
The two explosions on Saturday came within minutes of each other, the police said. A later report suggested there had been three explosions.

"To be precise, a total of five explosive devices were used. We now have at least 36 people killed and 60 people injured," Balwinder Singh, Hyderabad police chief, told reporters.

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Whatever it was that struck Jim Lauderdale did a terrifying job of it.

Sent to Walter Reed with oral cancer in April 2005, he underwent his first extensive and disfiguring surgery, removing half his tongue to get to tumors in the mouth and throat. A second surgery followed a month later to clear out more of those areas.

Five months later, another surgery removed a new neck tumor. Then came heavy chemotherapy and radiation.

Shortly after, he had a massive heart attack, undergoing another surgery to place stents in his arteries. Two weeks later, the cancer was back and growing rapidly, forcing a fourth surgery in January 2006.

By this time, much of his neck and shoulder tissue was gone, and doctors tried to reconstruct a tongue, using tissue from his wrist. He couldn't swallow, so was fed through a tube into his stomach.

Just weeks later, four external tumors appeared on his neck - "literally overnight," his wife said. Suffering severe complications from the chemo drugs, Lauderdale endured 39 radiation treatments, waking up one night bleeding profusely through his burned skin. The day after his radiation ended, new external tumors erupted at the edge of the radiation field, flabbergasting his doctors.

"As this aggressive disease grew though chemoradiation, it was determined at this point there was no chance for cure,"

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Sales of previously owned homes fell to a five-year low in July and the glut of unsold properties climbed to the highest since 1991 as the U.S. housing slump dragged on.

With no recovery in sight for housing, lower property values and higher mortgage costs threaten to weaken consumer spending, economists said. The Federal Reserve this month acknowledged a growing risk to economic growth because of the rout in credit markets. Stocks weakened.

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Kazakhstan ordered Eni SpA to halt work at the world's biggest oil discovery in 30 years as the Central Asian country follows Russia's lead in seeking greater control over its natural resources.

The Eni-led Kashagan development was suspended for at least three months because of ``environmental violations,'' Environment Minister Nurlan Iskakov said on state television today. Kazakh officials also told Eni to halt construction of a refinery for allegedly violating safety rules and opened a criminal probe into alleged customs violations by an Eni unit.

``This is an attempt to replicate Russia's success with Sakhalin-2,'' said Dmitry Loukashov, an oil and gas analyst at Alfa Bank in Moscow. Russia's environmental watchdog threatened to derail Royal Dutch Shell Plc's $22 billion Sakhalin-2 venture before the Hague-based company agreed to cede control to state- run gas exporter OAO Gazprom in December.

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Iraq's deadly insurgent groups have financed their war against U.S. troops in part with hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. rebuilding funds that they've extorted from Iraqi contractors in Anbar province.

The payments, in return for the insurgents' allowing supplies to move and construction work to begin, have taken place since the earliest projects in 2003, Iraqi contractors, politicians and interpreters involved with reconstruction efforts said.

A fresh round of rebuilding spurred by the U.S. military's recent alliance with some Anbar tribes - 200 new projects are scheduled - provides another opportunity for militant groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq to siphon off more U.S. money, contractors and politicians warn.

"Now we're back to the same old story in Anbar. The Americans are handing out contracts and jobs to terrorists, bandits and gangsters," said Sheik Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, the deputy leader of the Dulaim, the largest and most powerful tribe in Anbar. He was involved in several U.S. rebuilding contracts in the early days of the war, but is now a harsh critic of the U.S. presence.

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Four of five members of the board of a campaign promoting President Bush's policies in the Iraq war are Republican Jews.

The board of "Freedom's Watch" includes Ari Fleischer, Bush's former press secretary; Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition; Bradley Blakeman, a senior White House staffer in Bush's first term; and Mel Sembler, a longtime RJC leader and former ambassador to Rome.

Brooks told JTA that the fifth member, William Weidner, a casino operator in Las Vegas, is not Jewish. However, Weidner's wife, Lynn, is Jewish and is active in that city's federation. Blakeman is the group's president.

Brooks said it would be a mistake to regard the group as having a Jewish direction.

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George Bush yesterday ramped up the war of words between the US and Iran, accusing Tehran of threatening to place the Middle East under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust and revealing that he had authorised US military commanders in Iraq to "confront Tehran's murderous activities."

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President Bush: After months of unfair treatment that has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department, Judge Gonzales decided to resign his position, and I accept his decision. It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.

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Ding Dong! The witch is dead! Alberto Gonzales has resigned. Here's some White House spin.

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"The Americans are handing out contracts and jobs to terrorists, bandits and gangsters," said Sheik Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, the deputy leader of the Dulaim, the largest and most powerful tribe in Anbar.

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The only Army officer to face a court-martial for the notorious detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was exonerated of mistreating detainees by a military jury yesterday, ending a series of prosecutions that stretched over more than three years.

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