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Iraq rejects permanent U.S. bases: adviser - Yahoo! News : "BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq will never allow the United States to have permanent military bases on its soil, the government's national security adviser said, calling the issue a 'red line' that cannot be crossed." "We need the United States in our war against terrorism, we need them to guard our border sometimes, we need them for economic support and we need them for diplomatic and political support," Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said.

allAfrica.com: Eritrea: A Caged People in Urgent Need of Global Action - and Prayers (Page 1 of 1) : "The people of Africa's youngest nation, 14-year-old Eritrea in the northeast, live as if locked up in a vast prison manned by a rogue communist regime. CISA is today able to reveal the sufferings of the tyrannized and poverty-stricken Eritreans, groaning under the weight of Africa's last single-party dictatorship. Prone to prolonged droughts, its economy destroyed by more than 30 years of war, Eritrea is one of the world's poorest countries, with up to 60 percent of its 4.6 million people surviving on less than a dollar a day."

PM Gordon Brown's message to British troops in Iraq | "Happy Christmas, your war is over!" | The Sun |HomePage|News

Oil-Rich Nations Use More Energy, Cutting Exports - New York Times : "The economies of many big oil-exporting countries are growing so fast that their need for energy within their borders is crimping how much they can sell abroad, adding new strains to the global oil market. Skip to next paragraph Multimedia In Oil States, Homegrown DemandGraphic In Oil States, Homegrown Demand Related Times Topics: Oil and Gasoline Series: The Energy Challenge Enlarge This Image Luis J. Jimenez for The New York Times Laura Jacobo and a new car. Experts say the sharp growth, if it continues, means several of the world’s most important suppliers may need to start importing oil within a decade to power all the new cars, houses and businesses they are buying and creating with their oil wealth."

Man Held by C.I.A. Says He Was Tortured - New York Times : "WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 — The first of the so-called high-value Guantánamo detainees to have seen a lawyer claims he was subjected to “state-sanctioned torture” while in secret C.I.A. prisons, and he has asked for a court order barring the government from destroying evidence of his treatment. The request, in a filing by his lawyers, was made on Nov. 29, before officials from the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged that the agency had destroyed videotapes of interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda that current and former officials said included the use of harsh techniques. Lawyers for the detainee, Majid Khan, a former Baltimore resident, released documents in his case on Friday. They claim he “was subjected to an aggressive C.I.A. detention and interrogation program notable for its elaborate planning and ruthless application of torture” to numerous detainees."

Civil rights group: Israel has reached new heights of racism - Haaretz - Israel News : "Racism against Israel's Arab citizens has dramatically increased in the past year, including a 26 percent rise in anti-Arab incidents, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel's annual report. Author Sami Michael, the association's president, said upon the release of the report that racism was so rife it was damaging civil liberty in Israel."

Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002 : "Yet long before 'waterboarding' entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge. With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan)."