The United States military command in Iraq continues to talk about an alleged pipeline of Iranian weapons to Iraqi Shi'ites opposing the US occupation, implying that they have become dependent on Iran for indirect-fire weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
But US officials have failed thus far to provide evidence that would support that claim, and a long-delayed US military report on Iranian arms is unlikely to offer any data on what proportion of the weapons in the hands of Shi'ite fighters are from Iran and what proportion comes from purchases on the open market.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Where are those Iranian arms in Iraq?
The Mosul riddle
"Operation Peace" in Sadr City in Baghdad is and will continue to be spun by the Nuri al-Maliki government - and by America corporate media - as a resounding "success" in controlling Iraqi militias, in this case the Mahdi Army of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Meanwhile, under the global radar, an invisible war in Mosul drags on, officially against al-Qaeda in Iraq jihadis but in fact a barely disguised anti-Sunni mini-pogrom conducted by - what else? - government-embedded militias.
War abroad, poverty at home
Before Bush began his wars of aggression, oil was $25 a barrel. Today it is $130 a barrel. Some of this rise may result from run-away speculation in the futures market. However, the main cause is the eroding value of the dollar. Oil is real, and unlike paper dollars is limited in supply. With US massive trade and budget deficits, the outpouring of dollar obligations mounts, thus driving down the value of the dollar.
Each time the dollar price of oil rises, the US trade deficit rises, requiring more foreign financing of US energy use. Bush has managed to drive the US oil import bill up from $106 billion in 2006 to approximately $500 billion 18 months later--every dollar of which has to be financed by foreigners.
Without foreign money, the US “superpower” cannot finance its imports or its government’s operation.
McCain pastor: Islam is a 'conspiracy of spiritual evil'
Despite his call for the U.S. to win the "hearts and minds of the Islamic world," Sen. John McCain recruited the support of an evangelical minister who describes Islam as "anti-Christ" and Mohammed as "the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil."
McCain sought the support of Pastor Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, Ohio at a critical time in his campaign in February, when former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was continuing to draw substantial support from the Christian right.
At a campaign appearance in Cincinnati, McCain introduced Parsley as "one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide."
Iraq spending ignored rules, Pentagon says
A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.
The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash.
Israel contemplates giving up Golan Heights to Syria
Israel and Syria are making their first attempt for more than seven years to reach a comprehensive peace which, if successful, would mean Israel giving up the Golan Heights, seized in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Both governments confirmed in closely similar terms yesterday that they were taking part in "indirect" negotiations brokered by Turkey. The office of the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said: "The two sides have declared their intent to conduct these... talks without prejudice and with openness."
Iraq's top Shiite cleric quietly hints at harder views against US forces
Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric has been quietly issuing religious edicts declaring that armed resistance against U.S.-led foreign troops is permissible — a potentially significant shift by a key supporter of the Washington-backed government in Baghdad.
The edicts, or fatwas, by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani suggest he seeks to sharpen his long-held opposition to American troops and counter the populist appeal of his main rivals, firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Our mission is liberation, says Somali Islamist leader
The senior leader of Somalia's Islamist opposition vowed yesterday to expel US-backed Ethiopian troops by force and create an Islamic republic in the war-torn country on the Horn of Africa. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who led Somalia's Islamic Courts movement and who the Bush administration claims is a terrorist linked to al-Qaida, said Mogadishu's western-backed Transitional Federal Government was run by "traitors".
UN-sponsored peace talks that opened in Djibouti last week were doomed to fail unless Ethiopia first withdrew all its forces, . . .
Bush's endless hypocrisy on terror
Is a government guilty of terrorism if it harbors known terrorists? What should one say about a country that permits open fund-raising on behalf of a terrorist implicated in the mass killing of civilians?
What about a government that secretly arms a guerrilla army that wantonly kills and abuses civilians while seeking to overthrow an elected government?
If your answer to those questions is to recite George W. Bush’s dictum that a government that harbors or helps terrorists should be punished just like the terrorists, then you must turn your wrath on the U.S. government and the Bush family -- guilty on all the above points.
Has life in Iraq improved?
Trash pickup in most of Baghdad ended with the rule of Saddam Hussein. Now the garbage chokes the capital's streets and clogs the sewage pipes and canals, which overflow and burst. The sewage that leaks out of broken pipes seeps through the dirt of roads that were once paved, but now have mostly turned to dirt because the tracks of American tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles have destroyed the asphalt over five years of war.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Sex for bread in new Afghanistan
When Fatima returned home after years of living as a refugee, the teenage was aspiring to a promised better life in post-Taliban Afghanistan. She has since turned to selling her body to make a living.
"I had no other way but prostitution," the 19-year-old told Reuters on Monday, May 19. . . .
Fatima is not alone.
According to RAWA, an independent organization of Afghan women, prostitution has become widespread in conservative Afghanistan since the 2001 US ouster of Taliban.
Analysis: Should YouTube censor al-Qaida?
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., called Monday for YouTube to take down al-Qaida videos that users had posted, but the site said most of the videos his office had flagged did not contain material that violated their guidelines and rejected his request that they act to remove all material from U.S. designated terror groups.
Global Peace Index: Israel hits rock bottom
Iceland is the world's most peaceful nation while Israel ranked 136th out of 140 nations, according to the "Global Peace Index," compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
The study ranked the United States 97th out of 140 countries according to how peaceful they were domestically and how they interacted with the outside world.
The United States slipped from 96th last year, but was still ahead of foe Iran which ranked 105th. It, however, lagged Belarus, Cuba, South Korea, Chile, Libya and others which were listed as more peaceful.
Olmert: Peace talks with Syria are a 'national obligation'
Hours after Israel and Syria announced that they had agreed to hold indirect peace talks, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Wednesday evening that he was "fulfilling a national duty" by pursuing the negotiations with Syria.
In simultaneous announcements shortly before noon, Damascus and Jerusalem announced they were engaging in indirect negotiations brokered by Turkey. Ankara made a similar statement at the same time.
At the heart of the negotiations is the return by Israel to Syria of the Golan Heights . . .
Genocide in Iraq?
Whether or not the administrations of Bush Senior, Clinton, and Bush Junior intended to commit genocide in Iraq is irrelevant because the consequences of the bombings and sanctions could have been predicted by any reasonable person. The actions of these administrations clearly resulted in mass killing, serious bodily and mental harm, and the infliction of conditions calculated to bring about Iraq’s physical destruction in whole or in part. Iraq is a clear-cut case of genocide.
The carnage resulting from this genocide clearly exposes the disparity between the professed principles of American foreign policy and its manifest practice.
YouTube won't take down all Islamist video
Google has refused a request from U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Ind.-Conn., to remove videos produced by terrorist groups from its video-sharing site YouTube.
In a statement posted on the YouTube blog, the company said that it had taken down some of the videos identified by Lieberman's staff because they contained hate speech, gratuitous violence or in other ways violated community standards.
House passes bill to sue OPEC over oil prices
The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.
The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.
Bush team criticizes new report about Iran
The White House released a statement disputing a report in The Jerusalem Post that a senior administration official had told Israelis during the president’s visit last week that Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney supported military action against Iran.
The statement, following an even angrier attack on NBC the day before, appeared to reflect a heightened sensitivity to what Mr. Bush’s aides view as mischaracterizations of his intentions in confronting Iran over its pursuit of nuclear enrichment, its involvement in Iraq and its support of the militant Islamic groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian areas.
Design revamp for '$100 laptop'
The wraps have been taken off the new version of the XO laptop designed for schoolchildren in developing countries.
The revamped machine created by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project looks like an e-book and has had its price slashed to $75 per device.
OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte gave a glimpse of the "book like" device at an unveiling event at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The first XO2 machines should be ready to deliver to children in 2010.
Agreement in Lebanon to end political crisis
The deal was also expected to lead to the formation of a cabinet in which Hezbollah, supported by Iran and Syria, along with its allies will enjoy the veto power it had sought in the negotiations .
Under the terms of the agreement, the government will also debate anew electoral law designed to provide better representation in the country’s sectarian system of power-sharing.
FBI kept 'war crimes file' at Guantanamo
Many of the abuses the report describes have previously been disclosed, but it was not known that F.B.I. agents had gone so far as to document accusations of abuse in a “war crimes file” at Guantánamo. The report does not say how many incidents were included in the file after it was started in 2002, but the “war crimes” label showed just how seriously F.B.I. agents took the accusations. Sometime in 2003, however, an F.B.I. official ordered the file closed because “investigating detainee allegations of abuse was not the F.B.I.’s mission,” the report said.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Rumsfeld: 'Why not another 9/11'
In a newly-released tape of a 2006 neocon luncheon meeting featuring former War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, attended by ex-military "message force multiplier" propaganda shills Lt. General Michael DeLong, David L. Grange, Donald W. Sheppard, James Marks, Rick Francona, Wayne Downing, Robert H. Scales and others, Rumsfeld declared that the American people lack "the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the 'threats'" -- and need another 9/11.
When DeLong complained about a "lack of sympathetic ears" in Congress, and a lack of interest among the general American public, Rumsfeld responded, "What's to be done? The correction for that, I suppose, is another attack."
'Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term'
US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran in the upcoming months, before the end of his term, Army Radio quoted a senior official in Jerusalem as saying Tuesday.
The official claimed that a senior member of the president's entourage, which concluded a trip to Israel last week, said during a closed meeting that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action was called for.
Iraqi troops push deep into Sadr City
Iraqi troops pushed deep into Sadr City Tuesday as the Iraqi government sought to establish control over the densely populated Shia enclave in the Iraqi capital.
By midday, Iraqi forces had driven to a key thoroughfare that bisects Sadr City and taken up positions near hospitals, police stations and the political headquarters of Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel cleric. There was no significant resistance and no American ground forces were involved in the operation.
Demolished by the Pakistan army: the frontier village punished for harbouring the Taliban
An estimated 200,000 villagers have been displaced since the Pakistani army attacked the mountain redoubt of Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban and a suspect in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto four months ago.
The operation was called zalzala - Urdu for earthquake. One of the first villages they hit was Spinkai, nestled under a line of jagged hills at the gateway to the Mehsud stronghold in South Waziristan.
The army swept through with helicopter gunships, artillery and tanks that crunched across a parched riverbed. After four days of heavy fighting - 25 militants and six soldiers died, the army said - the militants retreated up the valley.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Delay sought in Guantanamo 9/11 case
Army Maj. Jon Jackson said the defense team does not have enough access to the detainee and to secure facilities where classified material must be reviewed for the first U.S. war-crimes trials since World War II. He asked a military judge to postpone the June 5 arraignment for Mustafa Al-Hawsawi.
The defendant is accused of helping the Sept. 11 hijackers obtain money, clothing, traveler's checks and credit cards.
How to rule the world after Bush
Many business leaders have fond memories of the "free trade" years of the Bill Clinton administration, when chief executive officer salaries soared and the global influence of multinational corporations surged.
Rejecting neo-conservative unilateralism, they want to see a renewed focus on American "soft power" and its instruments of economic control, such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization (WTO) - the multilateral institutions that formed what was known in international policy circles as "the Washington Consensus". These corporate globalists are making a bid to control the direction of economic policy under a new Democratic administration.
Obama's swept away by sea of supporters 2 days before Oregon vote
The Democratic presidential hopeful spoke to the biggest crowd of his campaign - an estimated 65,000 people packed into a riverside park for an afternoon rally at a sun-splashed scene on the banks of the Willamette River in Portland, Ore.
Another 15,000 were left outside, fire officials estimated.
Myanmar says ASEAN can lead cyclone aid effort
Myanmar agreed Monday to an international relief effort led by its regional allies to help more than two million cyclone victims still critically short of life-saving food, shelter and medicines.
As the junta declared three days of national mourning, the UN's top aid official John Holmes got a first-hand look at the scale of a disaster that has left at least 133,000 people dead or missing,
AP IMPACT: Thousands killed by US's Korean ally
Grave by mass grave, South Korea is unearthing the skeletons and buried truths of a cold-blooded slaughter from early in the Korean War, when this nation's U.S.-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950.
With U.S. military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea. Women and children were among those killed.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
U.S. General apologizes for desecration of Koran
A day after the American military confirmed a soldier had used a Koran for target practice at a shooting range, the commander of United States troops in Baghdad apologized to local leaders and tribal sheiks, saying he was asking for their forgiveness.
Pakistan army takes issue over U.S. missile attack
The Pakistan army has taken issue with coalition forces in Afghanistan over a missile attack launched by a U.S. drone aircraft that killed 14 people, an army spokesman told Reuters on Saturday. Two missiles hit a house on Wednesday in the village of Damadola in Bajaur, a Pakistani tribal region where al Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamist militant groups are active, a security official said.
Iraqi court rulings stop at US detention sites
In the eyes of Iraqi justice, Yahya Ali Humadi is a free man.
To the U.S. military, he's another of the detainees in yellow jumpsuits held at the sprawling Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.
Humadi — ordered released nine months ago after an Iraqi judge dropped all charges — now spends his days in a legal limbo. It's one that has confronted and confounded thousands of other Iraqis since 2003 who have been freed by their nation's courts but remained in U.S. custody.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Treaty for cluster bombs expected during upcoming conference
Delegates from more than a hundred countries will open a conference in Dublin on Monday that will try to hammer out a treaty banning the production, use, stockpiling or transfer of cluster munitions - bombs or artillery shells packed with up to several hundred bomblets or submunitions that are sprayed over wide areas of territory.
Major producers and stockpilers of cluster munitions, the United States, Russia and China, will be absent and are opposed to a treaty, but disarmament experts liken the cluster treaty to the Ottawa Treaty of 1997 banning land mines, which was shunned by the major powers but has proved influential in shaping the policies of countries outside the convention.
Israel's secret fears
Israel marks its 60th birthday in a climate of increasing racism, intolerance, corruption and militarism. A nation that has long seen itself as one of the most misunderstood is now almost unable to understand the world beyond its borders. Fear and anxiety provide the mood music of the celebrations.
What do a billion Muslims really think?
Since the momentous events of Sept. 11, 2001, countless news stories, TV commentaries, and books have speculated on the causes of terrorism, the attitudes of Muslims, and a purported clash of civilizations between Islamic societies and the West.
What has not been available is any reliable measure of the viewpoints of ordinary Muslims, who constitute 20 percent of the global population.
That is no longer the case. Through an ambitious six-year project that involved hour-long, face-to-face interviews with residents in nearly 40 nations, Gallup has plumbed the perspectives of Muslim men and women – urban and rural, educated and illiterate, young and old.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Arrogance of a superpower
What Ike Skelton is really proposing is that the Iraqi people pay for the cost of rebuilding what has been destroyed by the United States. We're not meant to flinch when politicians talk of making Iraqis pay for their own enslavement. On the contrary, we're supposed to get indignant over the fact that the Iraqis aren't cooperating.
The response of Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq's independent auditing organization, was entirely appropriate. "America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq," Basit said. "This is an immoral request because we didn't ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003, we didn't have all these needs."
The US-Iran sound bite showdown
We are back to the situation of Ahmadinejad's 2005 alleged threat to "wipe Israel off the map". What he actually said then, quoting his personal icon, the leader of the Islamic revolution in 1979, ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was that the "regime occupying Jerusalem should vanish from the pages of time". Yes, this means regime change - as much as the Bush administration always wanted regime change in Tehran. It does not mean a call for a nuclear holocaust.
Globalization's victors hunt for the next low-wage country
What can Western companies do when China's factory workers start demanding better wages and conditions? Easy — just transfer production to a cheaper country. China's loss is Vietnam's gain.
Hamas condemns the Holocaust
Neither Hamas nor the Palestinian government in Gaza denies the Nazi Holocaust. The Holocaust was not only a crime against humanity but one of the most abhorrent crimes in modern history. We condemn it as we condemn every abuse of humanity and all forms of discrimination on the basis of religion, race, gender or nationality.
And at the same time as we unreservedly condemn the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews of Europe, we categorically reject the exploitation of the Holocaust by the Zionists to justify their crimes and harness international acceptance of the campaign of ethnic cleansing and subjection they have been waging against us - to the point where in February the Israeli deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai threatened the people of Gaza with a "holocaust".
Lebanon's pro-western cabinet rescinds decisions against Hezbollah that triggered violence
The U.S.-backed Cabinet on Wednesday reversed measures against the militant Hezbollah movement that set off Lebanon's worst violence since the 1975-90 civil war. . . .
Clashes between government supporters and opponents broke out last week after the Cabinet challenged Hezbollah with decisions to sack the airport security chief for alleged ties to the group and to declare the militants' private telephone network illegal.
Maliki stalls US plan to frame Iran
The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to endorse US charges of Iranian involvement in arms smuggling to the Mahdi Army, and a plan to show off a huge collection of Iranian arms captured in and around Karbala had to be called off after it was discovered that none of the arms were of Iranian origin.
The news media's failure to report that the arms captured from Shiite militiamen in Karbala did not include a single Iranian weapon shielded the US military from a much bigger blow to its anti-Iran strategy.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Rethinking Israel after sixty years
Israeli Independence Day 2008, marking the sixtieth anniversary of the rise of the Jewish State on the ruins of Palestinian society, should be cause more for sober reflection and reevaluation than for celebration. True, Israeli Jews have much to celebrate. Only a few weeks ago the shekel joined the fifteen strongest currencies in the world, and with an economy fueled by diamonds, arms, high-tech, security services, and tourism, Israel's economy is booming. . . . What's not to celebrate?
A lot, it turns out, though most of it exists beyond the bubble that insulates the Israeli public from its wider reality, and so does not dampen public celebrations. After sixty years, however, several fundamental developments have materialized which were not anticipated by the Zionist movement nor Israel's founding, but which must be squarely acknowledged and addressed.
Jaipur curfew imposed as bombings toll passes 80
The death toll from the serial bomb blasts in Jaipur rose to more than 80 people today, as police imposed a day-long curfew across the heritage city.
The seven explosions saw busy markets, a jewellery bazaar and a Hindu temple covered in blood and left more than 200 people were seriously injured. Jaipur is the capital of the western desert state of Rajasthan and is one of India's premier tourist spots, known for its pink sandstone palaces. . . .
No one has claimed responsibility for the explosions. Although the attacks hit Muslim businesses, suspicion has fallen on the banned Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islamia (HuJI), a Islamist group said to be operating from Bangladesh.
Over 50,000 dead, missing or buried in China quake
More than 50,000 people are dead, missing or buried under rubble after China's devastating earthquake, officials said Wednesday as the full horror of the disaster began to emerge.
Rescue teams who punched into the quake's stricken epicentre reported whole towns all but wiped off the map, spurring frantic efforts to bring emergency relief to the survivors.