When Michael wins we all win. Congratulations, Mr. Moore !!!

SiCKO- Michael Moore Interview On Real Time With Bill Maher - More amazing video clips are a click away


By Gregg Goldstein and Steven Zeitchik / Hollywood Reporter
NEW YORK -- Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" was named best feature and Michael Moore's health-care expose "Sicko" nabbed best documentary honors Tuesday night at the IFP's 17th annual Gotham Awards.
The victory for Paramount Vantage's "Wild" at the season's first awards show solidified the specialty division's campaign for the drama, a study of real-life adventurer Christopher McCandless. (The movie's budget made it ineligible for consideration at Film Independent's Spirit Awards). Penn himself wasn't present, but star Emile Hirsch accepted on behalf of the film, thanking its producers for casting him in the part, which called for a drastic physical transformation. "Before I got this role I was sitting on my couch 35 pounds overweight with a shaved head, so thank you," he said.
The Weinstein Co. also got a jump-start for what likely will be a campaign for "Sicko," considered a favorite in the Oscars' documentary category....

US soldier killed in Baghdad: military

A US soldier pay his last respects to fallen comrades.

There are those in the media and politics that don't mind mourning soldiers as the last bastion of hope for an illegal and immoral war.

U.S. soldiers kill Iraqis after vehicle doesn't stop
By Leila Fadel
McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD — For the second day in a row, U.S. soldiers Tuesday killed Iraqi civilians when they fired on a vehicle that they thought was a threat, the U.S. military said.
The U.S. military also reported that two soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Salah ad Din province. Two other soldiers were wounded. The military provided no further details on the incident and didn't release the names of the dead.
The shooting deaths of the civilians took place in the al-Shaab neighborhood of northern Baghdad. Two people died and four were injured when a U.S. soldier fired at a minibus that was transporting workers to a bank operated by the Iraqi Finance Ministry, the military said in a statement. But Iraqi police and employees at al-Rasheed Bank said four people were killed, including three women, and that two were injured.
The minibus was driving near a U.S. military outpost when it ended up on a road where only car traffic is permitted, the military said. U.S. soldiers signaled the minibus to stop, and when it didn't, one of them fired a warning shot.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/iraq/2004039248_iraq28.html



Two American soldiers killed in an explosion north of Baghdad
Associated Press - November 27, 2007 4:33 PM ET
BAGHDAD (AP) - The military says two U.S. soldiers have been killed in an explosion north of Baghdad.
They're the first U.S. combat deaths reported in five days. And in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, police say a burst of violence has killed at least 11 Iraqis, including seven who died when a suicide bomber attacked a police headquarters.
Meantime, the U.S. military says U.S. troops have been involved in two deadly shootings in Iraq involving vehicles trying to drive through roadblocks. One occurred yesterday, about 155 miles north of Baghdad. The military says troops shot at a vehicle speeding toward a roadblock after firing warning shots. Two men died immediately, and a child traveling with them died later of his wounds.
In a separate roadblock incident, U.S. troops fired at a bus in Baghdad as it tried to drive through a U.S. roadblock. Police say as many as four passengers were killed.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.nebraska.tv/Global/story.asp?S=7416438&nav=menu605_2


Tikrit official, US soldier killed, and six civilians hurt in Iraq
Posted : Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:46:00 GMT
Author : DPA
Baghdad - Six people were wounded in a bomb in Baghdad Thursday amid reports that a Tikrit councillor and a US soldier had been killed in separate attacks. The roadside bomb hit a public bus on Thursday morning, injuring six passengers on the main Palestine road in north-east Baghdad, police sources told the Voices of Iraq news agency.
The US military announced Thursday that a US soldier was killed in a small firearms attack in western Baghdad Wednesday.
The attack brings the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq in November to 35.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, the head of a district council was killed by armed men outside his home, a police officer, Badr Hamid, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/150200.html



Female suicide bomber wounds 7 US troops
BAGHDAD (AP): A woman wearing an explosives belt blew herself up near an American patrol northeast of Baghdad – a rare female suicide bombing that wounded seven US troops and five Iraqis, the US military said Wednesday. More Iraqi refugees, heartened by reports of the lull in violence in Baghdad, were beginning to return and on Wednesday a convoy of over 800 people was expected in the Iraqi capital after an overnight bus ride from Damascus, Syria. Khaled Ibrahim, 45, from central Baghdad, said Tuesday he was so homesick after having been away for a year, that he wanted to give it a try after hearing things in Iraq have improved. “If I go and discover that the situation is not stable I will come back” to Syria, said Ibrahim, with his wife, three sons and two daughters in tow.

http://www.arabtimesonline.com/client/pagesdetails.asp?nid=8693&ccid=11



The Iraqi government is stated to be blaming the lone survivor for the killings.

Journalist Challenges Iraqi Government
18 hours ago
BAGHDAD (AP) — An Iraqi journalist Wednesday challenged government denials that 11 of his relatives were slaughtered in their Baghdad home, urging authorities to show that his claim was false by letting "all my family appear on television."
Dhia al-Kawaz, editor of the Jordan-based Aswat al-Iraq news agency, had said masked gunmen stormed the family home and killed two of his sisters, their husbands and their seven children as they ate breakfast. Al-Kawaz himself has lived outside Iraq for 20 years.
The media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders condemned the attack and claimed Iraqi police at a nearby checkpoint failed to intervene.
The Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, insisted that the deaths — which reportedly occurred Sunday in the Shiite militia infiltrated neighborhood of Shaab, never took place. Al-Kawaz's agency is widely identified with Saddam Hussein's illegal Baath Party.
"I have spoken with the mother of al-Kawaz and she categorically denies that the family has been liquidated," al-Dabbagh said at a news conference. Iraqi state television also said al-Kawaz's mother reported by telephone that the family was fine and said she had disowned her son for his false claims.
But al-Kawaz responded by appearing on Al-Jazeera and other Arab satellite stations to issue his challenge.
"I ask the spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh to let all of my family appear on TV," al-Kawaz told Al-Jazeera television.
Interior Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf told Sharqiyah television that his department had no record of the deaths and "the morgue they didn't receive bodies from one family."
"I don't know what the purpose of creating such issue is," he said. "The Interior Ministry doesn't conceal such information."
Efforts by The Associated Press to independently confirm or refute the report have not been successful. The Shaab neighborhood is among the most dangerous in Baghdad, and many Iraqi journalists fear asking too many questions there.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gN9HkJjgzJk8AdIqodFCn9ZkH4OAD8T6VK000



Lawsuit, Grand Jury Focus on Blackwater
By LARA JAKES JORDAN – 1 day ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal grand jury investigating Blackwater Worldwide heard witnesses Tuesday as a private lawsuit accused the government contractor's bodyguards of ignoring orders and abandoning their posts shortly before taking part in a Baghdad shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.
Filed this week in U.S. District Court in Washington, the civil complaint also accuses North Carolina-based Blackwater of failing to give drug tests to its guards in Baghdad — even though an estimated one in four of them was using steroids or other "judgment altering substances."
A Blackwater spokeswoman said Tuesday its employees are banned from using steroids or other enhancement drugs but declined to comment on the other charges detailed in the 18-page lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed Monday on behalf of five Iraqis who were killed and two who were injured during the Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square. The shootings enraged the Iraqi government, and the Justice Department is investigating whether it can bring criminal charges in the case, even though the State Department promised limited immunity to the Blackwater guards.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g8j2u56IMqRcZhCnXxakvpIEJ3-QD8T6ANL00



US Military Deaths in Iraq at 3,878
By The Associated Press – 16 hours ago
As of Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007, at least 3,878 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,159 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
The AP count is three higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Wednesday at 10 a.m. EST.
The British military has reported 173 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, South Korea, one death each.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gqgQCcv26kB1dkgZRZNHmbn_1J8gD8T70URO1



Press polluted with speculations on Barzani and PKK leadership
The New Anatolian / Ankara
27 November 2007
Press reports that the Iraqi Kurds had captured PKK terrorist leaders Murat Karayilan and Cemil Bayik and had handed them over to Turkey kept the Turkish media buzzing with excitement for days but nothing happened.
Then came a new wave of speculations centered on Iraqi Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani. There were claims that Barzani had secretly left northern Iraq and was abroad. Confusion prevailed until the Iraqi Kurdish administration explained Barzani was abroad on a private visit.
On Wednesday night newsrooms of the major TV stations were shaken with the story that PKK leader Murat Karayilan had been captured in northern Iraq and had been handed over to Turkish authorities in Erbil.
The New Anatolian contacted sources in Erbil and was told the reports are absolutely false. Iraqi Kurdish authorities said the Turks have to get used to the idea that "a Kurd will never capture a Kurd and hand him or her over to a Turk."

http://www.thenewanatolian.com/tna-29758.html



Top Turk court says to consider shutting Kurd party
Fri Nov 23, 2007 4:30am EST
ANKARA, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Turkey's Constitutional Court said on Friday it had accepted a request from a lower court to examine whether to shut down a pro-Kurdish political party.
State prosecutors have signalled they want to shut down the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), which has 20 members of parliament, over its suspected ties to Kurdish guerrillas and its calls for autonomy for Turkey's southeast.

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL23204199



‘The DTP should not be closed,’ says Kurdish intellectual Metiner
Mehmet Metiner, a Kurdish intellectual, says the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) would benefit the most from a forced closure of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP).
“If the DTP is closed down, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party [PKK] would be able to give the Kurds in Turkey the message that the government doesn’t like Kurds. And internationally, the closure of parties hasn’t been well received in democratic regimes. So the PKK aims at presenting a bad picture of the government both domestically and internationally,” said Metiner, a columnist at Turkish daily Bugün and lecturer at Bahçeşehir University in İstanbul.
He added the DTP would be in effect closed by popular vote if the judiciary waits a little longer, because the party has been steadily losing support.

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=127932&bolum=8



Kurdish oil deals draw criticism from some Iraqi lawmakers who fear precedent for oil industry
BAGHDAD: The Kurdish regional government's oil deals with foreign companies drew sharp criticism Thursday in the Iraqi parliament, with some lawmakers saying the contracts set a dangerous precedent for the future of Iraq's vast oil industry.
Kurdish authorities have signed more than a dozen contracts with foreign companies amid objections by Oil Ministry officials in Baghdad, who consider the deals illegal.
During the Thursday parliamentary session, Shiite lawmaker Waiel Abdul-Lateef described the unilateral Kurdish moves as a "dangerous issue" that could pave the way for other Iraqi provinces to sign contracts without the knowledge of the central government.
"Provincial officials now can sign oil contracts and nobody can stop them," he said.
Abdul-Lateef complained that the central government in Baghdad has no control on Kurdistan region, which has enjoyed broad autonomy since 1991.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/29/africa/ME-GEN-Iraq-Oil-Contracts.php



Washington’s Kurdish Quandary
November 29, 2007
From theTrumpet.com
America’s geopolitical impotence is being exposed in the rugged hills of northern Iraq.
The Turkish military has buzzed with activity in recent months. Nearly 100,000 soldiers and a vast array of tanks, heavy artillery and military aircraft have been deployed along Turkey’s border with Iraq. The build-up is a response to increased attacks on Turkey by Kurdish rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (pkk), a tenacious terrorist group operating from the northern hills of Iraq that is bent on establishing a territorial Kurdish state in southeast Turkey, as well as parts of Syria, Iraq and Iran.
Multiple parties have much at stake in this ruckus, but no one, not even Turkey, has as much to lose as the United States.
The reason for this is essentially a matter of options. Everyone involved has them except America. For Turkey, this conflict is about securing its sphere of influence by checking the ambition of the pkk more than it is defending itself from full-scale invasion. No one, including the pkk, thinks for a second that the Turkish military lacks the ability to level the Iraqi mountains that provide refuge to the Kurdish rebels.
The invasion of northern Iraq by the Turkish military would be a nightmare for America, especially the administration of President George W. Bush. A large-scale guerrilla-style conflict would spark chaos in what is the most stable region of Iraq, drain critical manpower and resources away from the volatile south, and cast a grenade in what is already a fragile Iraqi government.
Iraq could literally combust….

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=4480.2755.0.0