TERRORISM NEWS

Oi! The chutzpah!

2008-05-29T16:10:00.005+01:00

Meanwhile, McClellan has come under criticism for what some say is speaking out too late. Former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke said McClellan should have shared his beliefs while at the White House.
Richard Clarke: “Most Americans figured out a long time ago that the war in Iraq was sold to them as a bill of goods through the Bush propaganda machine. So thank you, Scott, for telling us a blinding flash of the obvious. It wasn’t obvious in 2004, however. And when I said it in 2004, McClellan was part of the White House machine that attacked me for criticizing the Bush Administration and criticizing the war in Iraq."

Hang on a second. Wasn't Richard Clark Bill Clinton's 'counter terrorism advisor'? That's not so long ago. It makes me want to inform him that many people realised decades ago, that a 'war on terror' was a sham. So when Richard Clarke blows his own trumpet for having said in 2004 (why not in 2001 on Afghanistan?), that the war on Iraq was a piece of propaganda, he is in fact even more hypocritical than Scott McClellan, since he hasn't come out and done a mea culpa (however truthful) about his own participation in state propaganda. Clarke did apologise after retirement to the victims of the Twin Towers attacks and their families for not doing enough to prevent the attacks. A little too late, perhaps?

No attack on Iran says Bush mouthpiece

2008-05-28T23:54:00.002+01:00

NYT

The Jerusalem Post based its article on a report on Israel Army Radio, which cited a senior official in Israel. The official was quoted as saying that only the hesitancy of Mr. Bush’s secretaries of state and defense, Condoleezza Rice and Mr. Gates, stood in the way of an attack.
“An article in today’s Jerusalem Post about the President’s position on Iran that quotes unnamed sources — quoting unnamed sources — is not worth the paper it’s written on,” the White House press secretary, Dana M. Perino, said in a statement.

Watch this space.

Blair almost anihilated

2008-05-24T20:59:00.002+01:00

Haaretz

Blair spokesman Matthew Doyle, who was also on board, said Blair and others were unaware of the drama unfolding around them and only found out about it all when fielding calls from reporters.

What a pity. I would have loved the mental image of Lord Blair of Kut-al Amara (to quote Robert Fisk) wetting his underwear. Very imature, I know!

Terror in Tibet

2008-03-17T16:46:00.003Z

AFP

The Dalai Lama condemned on Sunday what he called China's "rule of terror" and "cultural genocide" in Tibet, calling for an international probe into unrest in his homeland.

I suppose Tibetans should count themselves lucky, that the mainstream media actually report such 'heinous' comments.

"Please investigate, if possible... some international organisation can try firstly to inquire about the situation in Tibet," the Buddhist spiritual leader said.

This is a man now branded a monster.
But China can rest assured: we in the democratic world will continue to buy 'made in China' en masse. We will continue to quiver before the 'yellow peril'. We will flock to your Olympic Games.
Since PRC refused to compete in the Olympics while Taiwan was competing under the name 'Republic of China', you'd think our 'democracies' could refuse to compete alongside, let alone in, a country which murders, terrorises and demonises a section of it's population. But no, democracy is ok at home, at best useless in our client states.

Ethnic cleansing and Genocide

2008-02-04T18:54:00.000Z

Maybe the following answers my previous question, at least partly.

AIC

A creeping transfer in the West Bank and a measured genocidal policy in the Gaza strip are the two strategies Israel employs today. From an electoral point of view the policy in Gaza is problematic, as it does not reap any tangible results; the West Bank under Mahmoud Abbas is yielding to Israeli pressure and there is no significant force that arrests the Israeli strategy of annexation and dispossession.

Semantics

2008-01-30T13:38:00.000Z

VOA

A senior U.S. diplomat says "ethnic cleansing" is underway in Kenya's Rift Valley in the aftermath of last month's disputed presidential election, but she says the violence does not rise to the level of genocide.

What exactly is the difference between 'ethnic cleansing' and 'genocide'? And, if there is a difference, what is the purpose of a 'senior U.S. diplomat' pointing out the difference in this particular case? Will it determine the appropriate response from the U.S.?
One is entitled to demand, that the origins of the violence be properly addressed, as well as the responsibilities of the democratically elected (?) government of Kenya, those of the political opposition and of the international community. But what am I complaining about?! As we can see above, serious talks are taking place while, to quote a phrase, the people suffer.

Suharto dies: we should cry?

2008-01-28T15:38:00.000Z

DemocracyNow!
DemocracyNow! 12/11/1997
Allan Nairn

It turns out the uplifting feeling I experienced when the anti-(Irak)war, fluent-chinese-speaking, environmentally-friendly Kevin Rudd was elected in Australia may have been quite naive.

What a pity President Carter wasn't as aware, in the late Seventies, of the 'situation' in East Timor as he is today of the 'situation' the Palestinians are in. Does that mean, I wonder, that a president today ought to have more information than three decades ago? In that case, there is hope. Or does it mean, that a president has less information than the rest of us? In that case, we're f***ed.

U.S. 'disability claims' from Iraq and Afghanistan reaches 245,034

2008-01-27T20:24:00.000Z

The Pentagon officially reported 72,043 battlefield casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan through Jan. 5, 2008. In addition, VA hospitals and clinics have treated 263,909 unplanned patients from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. On top of that, VA reported 245,034 disability claims from veterans of the two wars. Those are some of the disturbing new statistics released by the group Veterans for Common Sense which gathered that data through use of the Freedom of Information Act (typical of the rest of its secrecy, the Bush Administration doesn't just release this information to the public as a matter of course).

For obvious reasons the spotlight is usually placed on figures that report the number of tragic deaths from the two conflicts. However as the above data shows, the number of non fatal casualties is staggering, 245,034 disability claims! The sheer volume of families affected by this conflict both in Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.S. is beyond belief.

Terror in Gaza

2008-01-22T18:04:00.000Z

Haaretz

The Israeli human rights organizations Adalah and Gisha yesterday petitioned the High Court of Justice for an urgent interim injunction to prevent Israel from continuing to restrict the industrial diesel oil supply to the Gaza Strip. They said the shortage deriving from Israel's deliberate cuts in recent weeks culminated in the dramatic closure of the border crossings on Friday. The power cuts caused a shortage of drinking water and damage to the hospitals' function already on January 5, when Gaza's electric power's production was cut by 30 percent. But the High Court of Justice dismissed their request.

Bypassing the blockage of nations

2008-01-15T17:37:00.000Z

From the BBC

Solving the world's environmental ills may mean re-thinking the role of nations and national governments

'And before anyone hits the comments form at the bottom of the page to say this is just the sort of leftist, neo-socialist, anti-libertarian, collectivist rubbish they would expect from a BBC environment correspondent, I want to emphasise that I am certainly not advocating some kind of global government'...

Here

Bush calls for contiguous, sovereign and independent Palestinian state

2008-01-10T23:36:00.000Z

US President George W Bush has said Israel must end its occupation of some Arab land to enable the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

He also urged a solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees that would involve paying them compensation. It is thought to be Mr Bush's strongest public statement pressing Israel to give up land it seized in the 1967 war.

He was speaking in Jerusalem following two days of separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. He has been trying to encourage the two sides into peace talks, and says he wants a peace deal signed by the time he leaves office in January 2009.

Mr Bush said in a statement: "It is vital that each side understands that satisfying the other's fundamental objectives is key to a successful agreement."

He said this would require:

A secure recognised and defensible borders for Israel

A viable, contiguous, sovereign and independent Palestinian state

He added: "Agreement must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people."

Article from the BBC

The saying 'give a million monkeys a million typewriters and a thousand years and they'll give you Shakespeare' comes to mind. Well it appears that if you give George Bush enough time eventually he will say something sensible! It is a rare, yet notable occasion when this site gives praise to this current U.S. President but this is one such occasion. Will his words bring forth change... almost certainly not, but we will see...

Please read our Comment rules before commenting on this article.

Iranian TV: Pentagon Video, Audio Fake

2008-01-09T22:28:00.000Z

Iran accused the United States on Wednesday of fabricating video and audio released by the Pentagon showing Iranian boats confronting U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf.

The video from Sunday's incident shows small Iranian boats swarming around U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz. In the recording, a man speaking in heavily accented English threatened, "I am coming to you. ... You will explode after ... minutes.''

"The footage released by the U.S. Navy was compiled using file pictures and the audio has been fabricated,'' an official in Iran's Revolutionary Guards was quoted as saying by the state-run English-language channel Press TV.

State TV did not give the name of the Revolutionary Guard official and did not offer more details about how the official knew the footage was ``fabricated.''

Source

The video footage can be seen Here

I have seen more provocative acts of naval aggression the last time I went to the Seaside. Take away the audio and you are left with two men in a small boat. It would not surprise me if the audio was faked, but assuming that it's genuine then it seems we are left with what looks like a juvenile prank.

Why U.S. strategy on Iran is crumbling

2008-01-06T18:59:00.000Z

'Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos," Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Gulf dignitaries in Bahrain last month. But in reality, everywhere you turn, from Qatar to Saudi Arabia to Egypt, you now see Iranian leaders shattering longstanding taboos by meeting cordially with their Arab counterparts.

The Gulf has moved away from American arguments for isolating Iran. American policymakers need to do the same.

Continue reading at the Source.

Common sense at last? Or simply a lack of any reasonable cause?

Unicef report: 'Little respite for Iraq’s children'

2008-01-04T20:32:00.000Z

' An estimated two million children in Iraq continue to face threats including poor nutrition, disease and interrupted education'.

'Iraqi children were frequently caught in the crossfire of conflict throughout 2007. Insecurity and displacement continues to cause hardship for many in the most insecure parts of the country and further eroded access to quality essential services country-wide. Iraq remains volatile; however conditions begin to allow for more a concerted effort to deliver assistance'.

“Iraqi children are paying far too high a price,” said Roger Wright, UNICEF’s Special Representative for Iraq. “While we have been providing as much assistance as possible, a new window of opportunity is opening, which should enable us to reach the most vulnerable with expanded, consistent support. We must act now.”

Available information from different sources shows that:

Children in remote and hard-to-reach areas were frequently cut off from health outreach services.

Only 20 per cent outside Baghdad had working sewerage in their community, and access to safe water remains a serious issue.

An average 25,000 children per month were displaced by violence or intimidation, their families seeking shelter in other parts of Iraq.

By the end of the year, approximately 75,000 children had resorted to living in camps or temporary shelters (25 per cent of those newly-displaced since the Samarra shrine bombing in February 2006).

Hundreds of children lost their lives or were injured by violence and many more had their main family wage-earner kidnapped or killed.

Approximately 1,350 children were detained by military and police authorities, many for alleged security violations.

Only 28 per cent of Iraq’s 17 year olds sat their final exams in summer, and only 40 per cent of those sitting exams achieved a passing grade (in south and central Iraq).

Many of 220,000 displaced children of primary school age had their education interrupted, adding to the estimated 760,000 children (17 per cent) already out of primary school in 2006'.

Source

Television is not the truth!

2008-01-03T19:06:00.000Z

'A movie made many years ago that perfectly describes the situation today about television and the main stream media. It resonates louder and sounds more accurate today than it did when the movie was made'.

24,000 civilian Iraqi deaths in 2007 - report

2008-01-02T23:10:00.000Z

US-LED coalition and paramilitary forces in Iraq were responsible for some 24,000 violent civilian deaths in 2007, according to an independent group monitoring casualties in the war-ravaged country.

The Iraq Body Count (IBC) whose figures are tallied from media reports, morgue and hospital data, non-governmental and other sources, said in a report that there were between 22,586 and 24,159 violent civilian deaths in Iraq during the past year.

Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007

2008-01-02T23:05:00.000Z

'Eritrea has replaced North Korea in last place in an index measuring the level of press freedom in 169 countries throughout the world that is published by Reporters Without Borders for the sixth year running'.

'There were slightly fewer press freedom violations in the United States (48th) and blogger Josh Wolf was freed after 224 days in prison. But the detention of Al-Jazeera’s Sudanese cameraman, Sami Al-Haj, since 13 June 2002 at the military base of Guantanamo and the murder of Chauncey Bailey in Oakland in August mean the United States is still unable to join the lead group'.

Check out the position of your country on the list here.

This report has been out for quite a while now, but I was unable to post it at the time of release. I feel that it is important to keep up with these yearly reports as we did in back in 2006 and 2005.

The 2007 International Privacy Ranking

2007-12-31T21:47:00.000Z

(click map to enlarge)

Each year since 1997, the US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International have undertaken what has now become the most comprehensive survey of global privacy ever published. The Privacy & Human Rights Report surveys developments in 70 countries, assessing the state of surveillance and privacy protection.

Source and further details

According to this survey, if you live in the USA, Russia, China or The United Kingdom then the battle for your privacy is already lost...

Hat tip to life's journey who posted on this yesterday.

Is this the beginning of the end in Iraq?

2007-12-31T17:13:00.000Z

Source: The Independent

Some 19 US soldiers have been killed so far in December, the lowest number of American military fatalities in a single month since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. As recently as May this year, 135 US soldiers were shot dead or blown up by Iraqi guerrillas.

The fall in US casualties is one of the most surprising events of 2007. At the beginning of the year, the American army in Iraq seemed to be clinging on by its fingertips as more and more of the country came under the control of Sunni and Shia warlords. Twelve months later, US units are peaceably patrolling districts of Baghdad where once they faced ambushes at every street corner.

Viewed from the White House, events in Iraq seem to be one of the few optimistic developments in the series of crises facing it in the central core of the Islamic world, as the fragility of the US position is underlined by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, one of its main allies, in Pakistan.

Iraqis and the outside world are equally perplexed as to what this means. Are we seeing the beginning of the end of the fighting in Iraq, a conflict which has now gone on for longer than the First World War? Or is it a lull in the violence that is bound to end because Shia, Sunni, Kurd and American are as divided as ever?

Significant changes have taken place in Iraq this year. The most important is that part of the Sunni Arab community, the core of the insurgency against the US occupation, has changed sides and is now fighting al-Qa'ida in alliance with the US military. This dramatic switch in allegiance occurred primarily because the Sunni Arabs, only 20 per cent of Iraq's population, were being overwhelmed by the Shia, the branch of Islam to which 60 per cent of Iraqis belong.

The US and British armies have examined many past guerrilla wars, looking for parallels which might prove useful in combating the Iraqi insurgency.

British generals were once particularly keen on proudly citing their actions in Malaya and Northern Ireland as providing rich experience in anti-guerrilla warfare. Most analogies were highly misleading. "Basra was the exact opposite of Northern Ireland and Malaya," a British officer told me in exasperation. "In the latter we were supported by the majority communities while we fought the Roman Catholic and Chinese minorities. In southern Iraq our main problem is that we had no real local allies."

The Americans suffer from a similar problem in central Iraq. Outside Kurdistan, it is difficult to find an Iraqi who supports the US occupation for more than tactical reasons. Seldom mentioned, for obvious reasons, is the one recent anti-guerrilla war which has many similarities to that being fought by America in Iraq. This is Russia's successful re-conquest of Chechnya between 1999 and the present.

In a similar way to al-Qa'ida in Iraq, the Islamic fundamentalists in Chechnya, invariably called Wahabi, played an increasingly central role in the armed resistance to the Russian occupation. But the savagery of their fighters alienated many anti-Russian Chechens and eventually split the insurgency. I remember being astonished that Chechen human rights workers, who usually denounced Russian atrocities to me, were prepared to co-operate with the Russian army to attack the Wahabi. Often their motive was a blood feud against a Wahabi commander who had killed their relatives.

The parallels between Iraq and Chechnya should not be carried too far. The US has effectively raised a Sunni militia force which may soon total 100,000 men, many of them former insurgents. They are armed and paid for by the US, but regard the Shia-Kurdish government with deep suspicion. Many Sunni commanders speak of taking on the Shia militia, the Mehdi army, which has been stood down by its leader, Muqtada al-Sadr.

It is a bizarre situation. One experienced Iraqi politician told me that al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which never had much connection with Osama bin Laden's organisation, had effectively split last year. A sign of this was when somebody betrayed the location of its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to the US military, which bombed his hideout and killed him. Some of the so-called "Concerned Citizens" militiamen now on the US payroll are former al-Qa'ida fighters, though the US is still holding hundreds of men in Guantanamo, accusing them of being associates of al-Qa'ida.

The US has had real operational successes on the ground in Iraq this year, but there is little sign yet of Iraq being pacified. Local warlords in Sunni areas have switched from attacking US forces to working with them, but they might easily switch back tomorrow. As with the British in Basra, the Americans lack long-term allies that can stand on their own feet without US assistance.

This is one of the dangers of the continuing US presence. The longer it goes on, the more the government of Iraq becomes incapable of existing without US support. The government in the Green Zone is a hothouse plant that would wither and die without the American military presence. Although prime minister Nouri al-Maliki complains about the way in which the US controls the Iraqi army, he makes little practical effort to move out of the Green Zone or establish his practical independence. The US may say that it will leave when the Iraqi government can stand on its own two feet, but the continuing occupation makes sure that day does not come.

Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are very different countries, but they are the terrain in which President Bush chose to test America's status as a superpower. They are also countries where it is difficult to win a decisive victory because power is so fragmented. Successes often turn out to be illusory or exaggerated. For instance, the Taliban was so swiftly overthrown in 2001 because the local warlords, whom the Taliban had bribed or intimidated into supporting it, found that the US offered bigger bribes and its bombers were more intimidating. They changed sides once again, though very few of them went out of business.

The same is true of Iraq today. Iraqi parties, movements and communities have an extraordinary ability to withstand outside pressure. Most of them survived Saddam Hussein and are not going to buckle under anything the US can do to them.

Bhutto : a reaction

2007-12-27T17:28:00.000Z

Things which must be disseminated

Surprise surprise

2007-12-04T12:08:00.000Z

US intelligence tells us Iran stopped it's nuclear weapons programme four years ago.

What's new?

A secular state, they say?

2007-11-25T18:25:00.000Z

Terror and justice

2007-10-31T12:18:00.000Z

How could people bomb innocents like those who were victims in Madrid on 3/11 asks one of the survivors? They were 'normal' people, he says. One can only agree with such a sentiment. How could one disagree? One has to however, seek answers. It's not about feeling sympathy for bombers, but it's about trying to understand in order to prevent further suffering.
Of course, for the sake of decency, as well as honesty, one should before anything else put things into perspective. On march 11th 2004 in Madrid, 191 people were killed and 2050 wounded. On september 11th 2001 in New York, 2974 died. On July 7th 2005 in London, 52 people were killed and 700 were wounded (source: Wikipedia). If we were to count the numbers of people killed in bombings by western forces and others supported financially as well as militarily by western nations, where would one start? In the Second Lebanon War of 2006 over a thousand lebanese lost their lives under israeli fire. In the invasion phase of the 2003 Iraq war, 7,299 iraqi civilians were killed. 290 Iranian civilians were killed when the airliner they were travelling was downed by USS Vincennes during the Iran-Iraq war. (Source: Wikipedia).
Coincidentally perhaps, today in Spain, some of those responsible for the March 7th attacks were condemned while simultaneously a bill has been approved which formally condemns Franco's dictatorial and terrorist regime. Though of course the mainstream media does not link the two events, what comes to mind is a certain paradox. We all accept justifiably, that those responsible for the deaths of 191 innocent civilians in Madrid should be brought swiftly (and democratically) before the law, and yet condemning an equally (in numbers no doubt more) horrifying period of spanish history, takes over thirty years, and still there are those who complain (mainly right-wing conservatives). This seems to me to be a fitting example of the double-standards with which our media and authorities treat history and contemporary events.
On this day, the BBC aired a programme dealing with the upcoming Annapolis Israel/Palestine peace conference. Several commentators from the region or elsewhere were questioned. None of whom I had personally heard of. None but one palestinian commentator mentioned the hypocrisy of the 'offers' made by Israel and the US to the palestinians. Commentators such as Amira Hass, the israeli journalist who lives in and reports from Gaza, Robert Fisk, the British journalist who has spent thirty years living in and reporting from Beirut on the middle east and the arabo-muslim world, Noam Chomsky, who has written extensively and with excellent sourcing about the 'conflict' and US-Israeli rejectionism, Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery, or Meron Benvenisti, former Jerusalem mayor and proponent of a binational state were not interviewed.
Recently, the US congress was censored in it's attempt to officially recognise the ottoman genocide of Aremenians in 1915 by Turkey and it's lobby. At least it's relatively uncontroversial to speak of a turkish lobby in the US. Meanwhile, Israel continues to deny the Armenian Holocaust and the Ukrainian Holocaust (for example). It is up to historians to decide what is holocaust and what is not, and not politicians, according to Israel. Maybe it should apply this wisdom to all holocausts.
Mr Zapatero has claimed, that justice has been done. But where are Bush, Blair, Howard, Aznar, Berlusconi and all the others before them? Are they behind bars?

Mobilisation in Aotearoa

2007-10-19T10:56:00.000+01:00

NZHerald

A series of protests against this week's anti-terror raids have taken place across the country.

As many as a thousand people joined a march in Whakatane to complain about children being caught up in the police operation.

A good sign perhaps. I just hope the solidarity will be the same if and when the police are heavy-handed against muslims.

Murder of Lucky Dube, 17th October 2007

2007-10-19T10:07:00.000+01:00

M&G

Born into a single-parent family, times were tough for a black boy born into poverty under the Group Areas Act and the pass laws of the time. Dube's parents had separated before he was born. His mother was the only breadwinner in the family and was forced to relocate to find work, leaving Lucky and his siblings, Thandi and Patrick, to be cared for by his grandmother.

Dube began working as a gardener at the age most children enter school. He later joined a school himself. Although clearly underprivileged and despite being taught in
Afrikaans, he excelled and joined the school choir. He was a natural performer and when the choirmaster walked out of the practise session one day, Dube took over. His popularity among his teachers and peers grew dramatically, according to his website.

Do you know the truth about Lockerbie?

2007-10-16T01:28:00.000+01:00

Robert Fisk

After writing about the "ravers" who regularly turn up at lectures to claim that President Bush/the CIA/the Pentagon/Mossad etc perpetrated the crimes against humanity of 11 September, I received a letter this week from Marion Irvine, who feared that members of her family run the risk of being just such "ravers" and "voices heard in the wilderness". Far from it.

Ahmadinejad at Columbia

2007-10-12T14:43:00.000+01:00

Since President Ahmadinejad of Iran was invited to Columbia University in the United States, I think the least we can do, in the interest of free information, is to listen to what he had to say. I would be very interested in having a debate about his speech, and more precisely his answers to the questions put to him. I would certainly have issues to raise with him if I was given the chance, most noteably on gays and women's rights in Iran.
It seems to me, however, that, whatever we may think of his honesty, he clearly answered the questions put to him by Lee Bollinger in his utterly subjective introduction to Ahmadinejad.
For now, I have one question: If President Bush of the United States was invited to speak at an iranian university, would he go? More importantly, what would he say?

FREE BURMA!

2007-10-04T13:11:00.000+01:00

FREE BURMA!

News from Burma

2007-09-27T10:32:00.000+01:00

Ko Htike's blog

Now, the government is trying to make a diversion. They give 10,000 kyats (around $7) & a set of Thin Gan(yellow robe) to "Swan Arr Shin"(like USDA which the form as a group that to crash down violently to protester) team and make them to pretend as Monks. Then, command to destroy the Islamic Mosque. This intends to become a fight between Buddhisms & Islams. So, if u hear or see the news that the monks are destroying the Mosque, these are not real monks. They are just fakes. As u all know, the real monks have no intention like that. So, give this information to Islams who u know and tell them

West Abu Dis/East Abu Dis

2007-09-26T12:24:00.000+01:00

Special dedication to Moonlite.

(NB: No checkpoint for kilometres. Especially on the israeli holiday of Yom Kippur)

Separation

2007-09-04T11:39:00.000+01:00

Via Anelli, Padua, Italy

US/Mexico

Belfast

Israel/Palestine

Sydney

The right-wing fascistic nutter is correct

2007-09-03T12:23:00.000+01:00

Jerusalem Post

Ariel Sharon instructed our youth to “charge the hilltops”. The State allowed water and electricity link-ups, provided infrastructure and roads, encouraged the settlement of the outposts with grants and financial incentives. There is no such thing as an illegal outpost. Some were erected with the State turning a blind eye, some were authorized behind closed doors with a wink or a handshake. But there is no such thing as an illegal outpost.

Iran's nuclear program

2007-08-31T17:22:00.000+01:00

From Reuters via Common Dreams:

VIENNA - Iran’s uranium enrichment program is operating well below capacity and is far from producing nuclear fuel in significant amounts, according to a confidential U.N. nuclear watchdog report obtained by Reuters.

A senior Iranian nuclear official said the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) report showed U.S. suspicions about Tehran’s nuclear intentions were baseless.

Feeling a whole lot safer

2007-07-07T16:54:00.000+01:00

The murky waters of diplomacy and TWAT

2007-07-02T11:11:00.000+01:00

Robert Fisk

No word, of course, of the Saudis' habit of chopping off the heads of "criminals" after grotesquely unfair trials. In an unprecedented year for executions, the kingdom's swordsmen - the job is sometimes passed on father to son as was once the case in Britain - managed to hack off 100 heads by the middle of this month. But then again, you'd have to avoid any such references when British investment in Saudi Arabia is worth at least £6b. That, no doubt, is one reason why Abu Henry boasted to his Saudi friends - according to the same government magazine - that in Riyadh "we've been proud of our visa policy, where 95 per cent of Saudis applying for a visa before 9am on a workday obtain their visas by 2pm the same working day". Phew. Now that is something. The Saudis, you may remember, provided 14 of the 19 killers of 11 September, 2001; quite a record for a little kingdom, and one which in other circumstances - had the murderers been from Chad, say, or Mali - would not have been rewarded with quite so generous a visa policy.

Skeletons in the Closet

2007-06-27T03:14:00.000+01:00

Some highlights from the newly released CIA documents via the National Security Archive:

Top Ten Most Interesting "Family Jewels"
Released by the CIA to the National Security Archive, June 26, 2007

1) Journalist surveillance - operation CELOTEX I-II (pp. 26-30)

2) Covert mail opening, codenamed SRPOINTER / HTLINGUAL at JFK airport (pp. 28, 644-45)

3) Watergate burglar and former CIA operative E. Howard Hunt requests a lock picker (p. 107)

4) CIA Science and Technology Directorate Chief Carl Duckett "thinks the Director would be ill-advised to say he is acquainted with this program" (Sidney Gottlieb's drug experiments) (p. 213)

5) MHCHAOS documents (investigating foreign support for domestic U.S. dissent) reflecting Agency employee resentment against participation (p. 326)

6) Plan to poison Congo leader Patrice Lumumba (p. 464)

7) Report of detention of Soviet defector Yuriy Nosenko (p. 522)

8) Document describing John Lennon funding anti-war activists (p. 552)

9) MHCHAOS documents (investigating foreign support for domestic U.S. dissent) (pp. 591-93)

10) CIA counter-intelligence official James J. Angleton and issue of training foreign police in bomb-making, sabotage, etc. (pp. 599-603)

Plus a bonus "Jewel":
Warrantless wiretapping by CIA's Division D (pp. 533-539)

Lord Blair of Palestine

2007-06-25T23:37:00.000+01:00

Robert Fisk

Of course, he'll be in touch with Mahmoud Abbas, will try to marginalise Hamas, will talk endlessly about "moderates"; and we'll have to listen to him pontificating about morality, how he's absolutely and completely confident that he's doing the right thing (and this, remember, is the same man who postponed a ceasefire in Lebanon last year in order to share George Bush's ridiculous hope of an Israeli victory over Hizbollah) in bringing peace to the Middle East...

(...)

His visits - especially to the late King Hussein - came to nothing, of course. But Waldheim's ability to draw a curtain over his wartime past does have one thing in common with Blair. For Waldheim steadfastly, pointedly, repeatedly, refused to acknowledge - ever - that he had ever done anything wrong. Now who does that remind you of?

The economics of oppression

2007-06-22T23:51:00.000+01:00

Israeli 'security fence'. MOFA French-language web page. Title: "saving lives"

Naomi Klein

Discussions of Israel's military trade usually focus on the flow of weapons into the country - US-made Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy homes in the West Bank, and British companies supplying parts for F-16s. Overlooked is Israel's huge and expanding export business. Israel now sends $1.2bn in "defence" products to the United States - up dramatically from $270m in 1999. In 2006, Israel exported $3.4bn in defence products - well over a billion more than it received in American military aid. That makes Israel the fourth largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain. (...) It's no coincidence that the class projects at Ben-Gurion that so impressed Friedman have names like Innovative Covariance Matrix for Point Target Detection in Hyperspectral Images, and Algorithms for Obstacle Detection and Avoidance. Thirty homeland security companies have been launched in Israel during the past six months alone, thanks in large part to lavish government subsidies that have transformed the Israeli army and the country's universities into incubators for security and weapons start-ups - something to keep in mind in the debates about the academic boycott. (my emphasis - Jez)

Orwellian nightmare

2007-06-20T12:10:00.000+01:00

BBC

They have been trying to flee Gaza after it was taken last week by Hamas militants from their rivals Fatah.

(...) Israel's Physicians for Human Rights has sent a petition to the Supreme Court to force the authorities to offer immediate medical treatment to those needing it.

Suddenly, because Israel and its allies along with the official media, have decided, that Gaza has been 'taken over' by its democratically-elected government, suddenly there are refugees deserving to be rescued from their democratically-elected government. One wonders where those refugees were over the years when their homeland was being bombarded by Israeli planes and helicopters.

Is this man a Terrorist B***ard?!

2007-06-20T01:05:00.000+01:00

IHT

A day earlier, on May 23, the disease control centers alerted the Atlanta office of Customs and Border Protection, a part of the Homeland Security Department, that a man with a serious medical condition might try to enter the United States and the information was entered in the department's computer system.

(...)

Speaker's new wife, Sarah, fought back tears as she told ABC about the horrible things she had heard said about her husband: that he was a terrorist, that he should have been eradicated.

Threat Level: Orange!

2007-06-19T03:17:00.000+01:00

Beware of hamburger.

The end of a Nazi

2007-06-18T08:15:00.000+01:00

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin showing U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim a map of Israel and the distribution of Jewish settlements in Arab lands

Robert Fisk

So the old rogue is dead. That is all I could say when I heard yesterday that Kurt Waldheim had reached the end of his days at 88.I spent months, years, investigating his dark past in what we now call Bosnia, when he - let us not be coy about this - was part of the Bosnien-Kampfgruppen of Wehrmacht Army Group E of General Löhr, fighting "terroristen" (yes, indeed, the Nazis called them terrorists, just as they talked about the "RAF Terroristenfliegen") in the Balkans. Waldheim had been secretary general of the UN, had lectured UN officers in Lebanon on the lessons of "terrorism" and, well - as was later to ruminate - he knew about that, didn't he?

Israel and the west get what they want. Or do they?

2007-06-17T21:24:00.000+01:00

Robert Fisk

For that is what it is about - control - and that is why we hold out, and withdraw, favours from their leaders. Now Gaza belongs to Hamas, what will our own elected leaders do? Will our pontificators in the EU, the UN, Washington and Moscow now have to talk to these wretched, ungrateful people (fear not, for they will not be able to shake hands) or will they have to acknowledge the West Bank version of Palestine (Abbas, the safe pair of hands) while ignoring the elected, militarily successful Hamas in Gaza?

Does the west want a 'moderate' Palestinian government and an end to violence, or does it wish to provoke more violence?

This is what they call 'hard talk'

2007-05-25T18:00:00.000+01:00

George Galloway may be a provocative and mischievous s.o.b. ('scuse my french), and one may wish to quibble with his choice to shake Saddam Hussein's hand (I don't think I would want to shake either his hand or Tony Blair's-but then I am not a politician) or his reference to god, but there is nothing in what he says, in this interveiw at least, which I could define as wrong, either morally or politically. The so-called journalist opposite him tried desperately - with the use of petty linguistic attacks, quotes out of context or by repeatedly insisting Galloway abide by a different set of morals from the leaders who led us to war - to provoke Galloway into getting agitated, and in my opinion he failed miserably.

From the oustide at least, Respect does seem to be the only real political opposition, as far as Iraq anyway. Galloway may enjoy the glory of his role, but that doesn't minimise in anyway the truth of what he points out: that Bush and Blair are not only criminals but also murderers; that it would therefore be morally justifiable for a victim or the relative of a victim of these murderers to want to seek revenge, even though no humanist would ever call for murder; that the best thing UK and US soldiers can do is to disobey illegal orders as Nüremberg did in fact state.
Furthermore, I also believe the question of patriotism posed by the interviewer is not only off topic, but is yet another desperate attempt at provocation. I could not agree more with Galloway when he says being of such and such a nationality is an accident of bith. Not merely as voters, but especially as citizens of a democratic country, we are however responsible for the actions of our government.

Honest reporting

2007-05-23T23:27:00.000+01:00

Robert Fisk

It is too simple to claim that this is Syria's work. Syria may have an interest is watching this destabilisation, even - through its security networks - assisting these groups with logistics. But other organisations might have found common interest; the Iraqi insurgents, for example, even the Taliban, perhaps equally small groups in the Palestinian occupied territories. That's how these things work in the Middle East, where there is no such thing as responsibility - only a commonality of interests. Perhaps the Americans might have learnt something about this if they had not two years ago insulted the Syrians for allowing fighters into Iraq - at which point, the Syrians halted all military and intelligence co-operation with the US.

Some might claim it doesn't matter who is behind Fatah al-Islam. However, if we can't count on the media (there isn't much to expect from politicians) to report the facts rather than shortcuts, then what is the point of the media? To manufacture consent?

Think outside the box

2007-05-22T09:49:00.000+01:00

Robert Fisk

Well, Mr Siniora claimed it was an attempt to destabilise Lebanon - a good guess, to put it mildly - and Saad Hariri, son of the former prime minister murdered here more than two years ago, called the armed men "evil-doers who had hijacked Islam". This is the same Saad Hariri whom at least one American reporter - I refer to Seymour Hersh - suggested was indirectly helping to funnel Saudi money to these same gunmen in a recent article in The New Yorker. The Shia Muslim Hizbollah are supposed to be the bad guys in this scenario, not a Sunni group. But Tripoli is the most powerful Sunni city in Lebanon - so powerful that not a drop of alcohol wets its restaurant tables - and the men and women running in terror across Tripoli's streets yesterday were also Sunnis. So are the Syrians really concocting an "al-Qaida" in Lebanon? And who are its enemies? The Nato army of the UN force in southern Lebanon, perhaps? But surely not the Lebanese army, the very same army which bravely prevented civil war last January? Yet in 2000, an al-Qaida-type group also ambushed the Lebanese army in northern Lebanon. Was this, too, supposed to be a Syrian invention?

Robert Fisk

The soldiers are polite, courteous with journalists. This must be one of the few countries in the world where soldiers treat journalists as old friends, where they blithely allow them to broadcast from in front of their positions, borrowing their newspapers, sharing cigarettes, chatting, believing that we have our job to do. But more and more we are wondering if we are not cataloguing the sad disintegration of this country. The Lebanese army is on the streets of Beirut to defend Siniora, on the streets of Sidon to prevent sectarian disturbances, on the roads of southern Lebanon watching the Israeli frontier and now, up here in the far north, besieging the poor and the beaten Palestinians of Nahr el-Bared and the dangerous little groupuscule which may - or may not - be taking its orders from Damascus.

One thing is for sure, if Fatah al Islam is an Al Qaeda group backed by Syria, that would surely be a novelty. It may not be an impossibility, but we should be wary of the language of politics and media which throws wild accusations around.

Thus Blowhards Spake

2007-05-18T02:09:00.000+01:00

The Same McCain?

2007-04-26T23:15:00.000+01:00

Senator McCain argues for immediate troop withdrawal from Somalia 1993

Straight talk indeed... The only problem is that the Senator starts to sound a little hypocritical when he says things like this...

Irony isn't dead it seems...

UN criticises Iraq human rights

2007-04-25T19:06:00.000+01:00

From the BBC

The UN has sharply criticised the Iraqi government's human rights record, in the two months since a security plan was launched in the capital, Baghdad. The UN mission for Iraq said Iraqi authorities had failed to guarantee the basic rights of about 3,000 people they had detained in the operations.

The report said four million Iraqis were at risk because of lack of food.

A statement from the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki dismissed the report as lacking credibility. The UN Assistance Mission in Iraq report again called for access to Iraqi government files on civilian casualty figures. The Iraqi authorities disputed figures in the previous UN report.

The UN said in January that 34,452 civilians were killed and more than 36,000 wounded in 2006. These figures were much higher than any issued by Iraqi government officials. The UN said those figures were provided by Iraqi government ministries.

The UN report, which covers the period from the 1 January to 31 March 2007, said that some 3,000 thousand people have been arrested in security sweeps since the Baghdad security plan began in mid-February and it condemned Iraq for failing to guarantee due process rights to those taken in.

It also criticised the court system in general saying that deliberations at some trials involving life imprisonment or the death penalty only lasted for minutes. Overall, more than 37,000 people are being held in Iraqi and American-run prisons, many of whom have not been charged or sent for trial.

The report describes the situation in Iraq as a "rapidly worsening humanitarian crisis". It said daily living conditions were worsening despite billions of dollars earmarked for reconstruction efforts - an estimated 54% percent of Iraqis lived on less than a US dollar a day while the unemployment rate had risen to 60%.

In wide ranging report on many aspects of life in Iraq, also highlights the deterioration of the freedom of expression affecting media and media workers, religious and ethnic minorities and academics who are continuously targeted by religious extremists and armed groups in all areas of Iraq.

Universities were being targeted with 200 academics killed since 2003, and 12,000 doctors had fled the country.

The report also describes how there was collusion between the Iraqi security forces and militia groups involved in the sectarian violence.

Source.

You can read the full UN report here (pdf file)

An interesting first hand account on the current 'surge' can be found here.

Looking from the sides

2007-04-17T12:36:00.000+01:00

John Pilger

In my experience, most people do not contort their morality and intellect to comply with the double standards of rampant power and the media's notion of approved evil - of worthy and unworthy victims. They would, if they knew, grieve for all the lives, families, careers, hopes and dreams destroyed by Blair and Bush. The sure evidence is the British public's wholehearted response to the 2004 tsunami, shaming that of the government. Certainly, they would agree with Robert Jackson, the chief counsel of the United States at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders. "Crimes are crimes," he said, "whether we do them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."

Bigotted and vicious? Apply within.

2007-04-13T21:48:00.000+01:00

Funny how institutions that give individuals power over others tend to attract the worst individuals. From Democracy Now!:

The jailed Palestinian professor Sami Al-Arian is claiming to have suffered new abuse at the hands of prison guards. Al-Arian has been transferred from North Carolina to a new prison in Virginia. He recently ended his 60-day hunger strike at the urging of his family. He had lost 53 pounds and become too weak to walk. Earlier today we spoke to Sami al-Arian’s daughter Laila for an update on Sami’s condition.

Laila al-Arian: “On Thursday morning one day before my father was supposed to have been released from prison after his four year imprisonment [under his initial plea deal] he was assaulted by racist guards. They took away his legal materials. At one point an officer was stripping my father and asked him ‘Where are you from, Afghanistan?’ My father refused to [answer] the question but [the guard] kept repeating it several times. And then he finally told my father “‘It doesn’t matter where you’re from. If I had my way, you wouldn’t be in prison, I’d put a bullet in your head and get it done with. You’re nothing but a piece of [expletive].’ My father told him ‘Why do you say that? You don’t know me.’ The guard replied: ‘I know enough about all you guys. You’re all pieces of [expletive]. You can go pray to the f--- that you pray to.’ My father asked the guard what his name was, he refused to answer. His lieutenant also continued hurling obscenities at my father. He kept squeezing his handcuffs and restraints tighter and tighter till my father was numb for four hours from the trip from Petersburg to Alexandria, Virginia. They just kept telling him to shut the f--- up and each time they would tighten his shackles to increase the pain. It’s important to say that this same guard who harassed my father yesterday back in January he told him ‘You’re a terrorist, I can tell by your name. So this is clearly a pattern from these guards and nothing is being done to stop this kind of harassment and abuse.’”

Al-Arian remains in jail despite a jury’s failure over a year ago to return a single guilty verdict on any of the 17 charges brought against him. The U.S. government had accused him of being a leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He eventually signed a plea deal with the government in exchange for being released and deported. He was scheduled to be released in April. But in January judge James Moody Jr. sentenced him to an additional 18 months in jail for refusing to testify before a Virginia grand jury.

Turkish army seeks OK for Iraq raids

2007-04-12T23:53:00.000+01:00

(AP) Turkey's military asked the government Thursday to approve attacks on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, signaling growing frustration over a lack of action against the guerrillas by Iraqi and U.S. forces.

Such action could put an overstretched U.S. military in the middle of a fight between two crucial partners, the Turks and the Iraqi Kurds, and Washington urged Turkish restraint. A recent surge in Kurdish attacks in southeastern Turkey has increased the pressure on Turkey's military to act.

"An operation into Iraq is necessary," Gen. Yasar Buyukanit told reporters.

Buyukanit said the military already has launched operations against separatists in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeastern region bordering Iraq.

"Our aim is to prevent them from taking positions in the region with the coming of spring," he said, adding the rebels generally intensify attacks as melting snow opens the mountain passes.

Recent clashes have killed 10 soldiers and 29 guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, Buyukanit said.

His call steps up pressure on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to take a harder line against Kurdish guerrillas and their leaders in northern Iraq. There is strong public support for such a move, but the possibility of high casualties could make the government nervous ahead of elections that must be held by November.

If Erdogan's government does ask parliament to approve an incursion, a key consequence would be strained ties with Washington — which fears an offensive would provoke a fierce reaction from Kurdish groups in Iraq that are key allies of U.S. forces.

The United States also sees Turkey as a crucial ally, strategically straddling Europe and the Middle East. But some Turks question just how strong their ties should be with Washington if it refuses to side with them against the rebels.

Read the full article at the Source.

The Turkish authorities have been hinting as such a prospect for some time. Events in Iraq will spiral beyond recognition if Turkish troops are ordered across the border.

Study shows Bush, Blair making world less safe

2007-04-12T00:18:00.000+01:00

The US-led and British-backed war on terror is only fuelling more violence by focusing on military solutions rather than on root causes, a think tank warned Wednesday.

"The 'war on terror' is failing and actually increasing the likelihood of more terrorist attacks," the Oxford Research Group said in its study, titled "Beyond Terror: The Truth About The Real Threats To Our World."

It said Britain and the United States have used military might to try to "keep the lid on" problems rather than trying to uproot the causes of terrorism.

It said such an approach, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq, had actually heightened the risk of further terrorist atrocities on the scale of September 11, 2001.

"Treating Iraq as part of the war on terror only spawned new terror in the region and created a combat training zone for jihadists," the report's authors argued.

It pointed out that the Islamist Taliban movement is now resurgent, six years after it was overthrown in 2001 by the US-led invasion in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

"Sustainable approaches" to fighting terrorism would involve the withdrawal of US-led forces from Iraq and their replacement with a United Nations stabilisation force, it said.

It also recommended the provision of sustained aid for rebuilding and developing Iraq and Afghanistan as well as closing the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where most suspects are held without charge or trial.

And it called for a "genuine commitment to a viable two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."

The study warned that military intervention in Iran over its nuclear ambitions would be "disastrous," calling instead for a firm and public commitment to a diplomatic solution.

See the CNN video report at the Source.

Teetering on the Brink of Disaster

2007-04-10T23:02:00.000+01:00

In mid-September 2006, CNN invited retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, previously a strategic scholar at various U.S. Army War Colleges, to discuss the probability of a U.S. military strike against Iran.

Responding on how close, in his opinion, the Bush Administration was away from giving the go-ahead order regarding Iran, Gardiner unmistakably said: "It’s been given. In fact, we’ve probably been executing military operations inside Iran for at least 18 months. The evidence is overwhelming."

He is now promptly interrupted by his interviewer’s anticipatory obedience, who recalls that the President had underlined that he wanted diplomacy to work in order to convince the Iranian government to stop enriching uranium. Quoting Bush, in an interview by David Ignatius of the Washington Post from the day before, with the words "I would tell the Iranian people that we have no desire for conflict," CNN’s familiar face Wolf Blitzer turns back to Gardiner and repeats his initial question. Almost desperately the colonel replies with great emphasis: "We are conducting military operations inside Iran right now. The evidence is overwhelming, from both the Iranians [and] Americans, and Congressional sources."

Read the full article at the Source

Iraqi Shias protest in holy city

2007-04-10T03:40:00.000+01:00

Thousands of Iraqi Shias have demonstrated in the holy city of Najaf, calling for US-led troops to leave Iraq. The protesters were responding to an appeal by cleric Moqtada Sadr, who branded US forces "your arch enemy" in a statement.

The demonstration marks four years since US troops entered Baghdad and ended the rule of Saddam Hussein.

Further reading.

Cuba slams US’ double standard on terrorism

2007-04-09T01:01:00.000+01:00

Cuba yesterday slammed what it said was the US’ double standard on terrorism after a US federal judge ordered the release of an anti-Castro activist convicted in the deadly downing of a Cuban jet.

“The court ruling is yet another confirmation of the George W. Bush administration’s double standard on its alleged war on terror,” the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma said.

The ruling by a federal judge in Texas, does not necessarily mean former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles, 79, will leave jail immediately, since he could be arrested by US immigration officials who have a deportation order for him. On Friday he was ordered freed pending a hearing on immigration fraud charges.

The US judge ordered the Cuban-born Venezuelan national released on $350,000 on condition that he remain confined to his Miami home and submit to “electronic monitoring,” according to the text of the order by the federal court in El Paso, Texas.

Posada Carriles, a fierce opponent of communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro, was accused of masterminding the downing of a Cuban jet off Barbados in 1976 in which 73 people were killed. He was detained in Venezuela in 1976 and convicted in the case, but fled prison in 1985.

Continue reading at the Source.

Previous articles about Luis Posada carriles can be found Here.

Prosecutors to seek custody of CIA agents

2007-04-07T01:03:00.000+01:00

Munich (dpa) - German prosecutors said Thursday they will make a new attempt to bring 13 CIA workers to justice for the abduction of a German-Lebanese citizen mistakenly suspected of terrorism.

"We will submit an application for temporary custody in the United States," Chief Prosecutor August Stern said in Munich, two months after a court in the city issued arrest warrants for the 13.

The suspects are believed to be the crew and passengers of an aircraft that flew Lebanese-born Khaled el-Masri from Macedonia to Afghanistan in 2003. Masri alleges he was secretly detained for five months in Kabul then dumped by his captors in Albania.

His lawyers say he is an innocent victim of the CIA practice of the "extraordinary rendition" of terrorism suspects that has caused intense controversy in several European countries.

Munich prosecutors said the new application will be relayed to US authorities via the Justice Ministry in Berlin. Most of the suspects live in the US state of North Carolina, according to German reports.

Following a request by the Munich court, Interpol issued warrants for 10 of the 13 agents, accusing them of abduction and causing serious bodily harm. German officials say they expect little help from the US and the 13 are unlikely to be detained unless they return to a European Union country.

Last month a US appeals court refused to allow Masri's lawsuit against former CIA director George Tenet to go to court. The US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia upheld the decision of a lower court that said a trial could reveal state secrets and endanger national security.

The suit charges Tenet knew Masri had been held even after the agency had realized his capture was a mistake. Masri says his main goal is an apology from the US government. He is also seeking damages of at least 75,000 dollars.

Source.

Well that's 13 people who won't be coming to Europe for their vacation...unless...Interpol considers the CIA agents worthy of extraordinary rendition. Of course that will never happen, but that's no reason to ignore the obvious irony.

Helping Terrorists Yet Again

2007-04-05T13:31:00.000+01:00

It's too early in the morning for me to figure out the excuse for why this doesn't count, but here it is. From Democracy Now!:

ABC News is reporting the U.S. is engaged in a secret war with Iran. Since 2005, U.S. officials have been advising a Pakistani tribal militant group with ties to the Taliban on how to carry out deadly guerilla raids inside Iran. The Pakistani group – called Jundullah -- has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials. Most recently, Jundullah took credit for a bus bombing that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in February. Officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or "finding" as well as congressional oversight. Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.

Released

2007-04-04T23:38:00.000+01:00

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has released the 15 British naval personnel captured in the Gulf.

They will be handed to the British embassy in Tehran on Thursday morning, then flying home.

Details ,Video ,Video ,Further reading.

Certainly a victory for diplomacy over Sabre rattling and for smart suits over orange ones.

RAF pilots asked to consider suicide flight

2007-04-04T01:00:00.000+01:00

From the Guardian

A senior RAF officer asked fighter pilots whether they would consider suicide missions as a last resort to stop terrorists if their weapons had failed or they had run out of ammunition.

During a training exercise, Air Vice-Marshal David Walker put it to newly qualified pilots that they should think of flying suicide missions in a "worst case scenario" when a terrorist attack was imminent.

The head of the RAF's elite One Group who is in operational control of Typhoon, Tornado, Jaguar and Harrier fighters and bombers, is reported to have asked the pilots: "Would you think it unreasonable if I ordered you to fly your aircraft into the ground in order to destroy a vehicle carrying a Taliban or al-Qaida commander?"

According to reports in today's Sun, he told them they knew when they signed up that they would have to risk their lives.

The Ministry of Defence last night confirmed that the training exercise had taken place but stressed it was a hypothetical question to provoke thoughts as to what pilots would do if they were confronted with a situation in which they might die.

"Air Vice-Marshal Walker did not say he would order his crews on suicide missions," the MoD said in a statement. "As part of a training exercise he wanted them to think about how they, and their commanders, would react faced with a life and death decision of the most extreme sort - for example, terrorists trying to fly an aircraft into a British city, being followed by an RAF fighter which suffers weapons failure.

"These are decisions which, however unlikely and dreadful, service people may have to make and it is one of many reasons why the British people hold them in such high esteem."

An MoD spokesperson added that Air Vice-Marshal Walker, who saw action in Iraq, was trying to make clear that all service personnel can be asked to lay down their lives.

The comments distressed pilots who were present at the conference.

"The idea of officers ordering personnel to commit suicide is disgusting," an unnamed officer told the Sun.

Another said: "His idea of leadership is to suggest that it is within his power to authorise the first example of an ordered kamikaze attack in the RAF's 89-year history. He is subtly suggesting that if he wished he could order anyone in his command to die."

Source , The Sun article

So, the fine line of morality between 'us' and 'them' becomes increasingly blurred.

Baghdad is now safe! (according to John McCain)

2007-04-03T00:52:00.000+01:00

During an interview on "The Situation Room" this afternoon, John McCain told Wolf that he needs to "get up to speed" and stop reporting three-month-old news from Iraq. According to McCain, the surge is working! and the streets of Baghdad are safe for Americans to go strolling down. The only problem? Michael Ware, who is, ya know, in Baghdad, says McCain hasn't a clue

Resisting the Drums of War

2007-04-02T00:43:00.000+01:00

The Bush administration promoted the misguided and destructive war in Iraq by targeting our concerns about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. The continued occupation of Iraq—or an attack on Iran—will likely be sold to us in much the same way. This video examines these warmongering appeals and describes how to counter them.

Differing Perspectives

2007-03-31T01:41:00.000+01:00

A few thought provoking articles that express many of the different perspectives on the current Iranian/UK crisis.

A peculiar outrage
Iran — how to start a war
A fake British map
Blair furious

Gone Fishin'

2007-03-29T23:42:00.000+01:00

The latest animation from Mark Fiore.

Gone Fishin'

Rumsfeld torture suit dismissed

2007-03-28T21:50:00.000+01:00

(From the BBC) A US court has dismissed a lawsuit against former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld over claims prisoners were tortured in Iraq and Afghanistan. The court accepted that the nine men who sued had been tortured - and detailed the torture in its ruling.

But Judge Thomas Hogan ruled the five Iraqis and four Afghans did not have US constitutional rights, and also that Mr Rumsfeld was immune from such suits.

Two human rights groups brought the suit against him and three officers...

...In a ruling stretching to nearly 60 pages, the chief judge of the US district court for the District of Columbia said the allegations of torture were "horrifying".

The nine men suffered abuse including being:

hung upside-down and slapped until they lost consciousness
stabbed with knives
subjected to electric shocks
deprived of sleep by loud noises and bright lights
grabbed by aggressive dogs
They also were subjected to sexual humiliation.

None was ever charged with a crime.

All were released after detentions of one month to one year. Some were detained multiple times.

Read the full article at the Source

It seems that not having constitutional rights also prevents you from having human rights. You may expect this kind of abhorrent behaviour from a dictatorship but coming out of the 'land of liberty' makes this ruling especially disgusting.

Impeachment threat is real

2007-03-27T20:49:00.000+01:00

The impeachment threat is real, argues The Nation's John Nichols.

"Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough had me on his MSNBC show Monday night to talk about impeachment,", "It was smart, civil discussion that treated the prospect of impeaching the president as a serious matter."

According to Nichols : " Scarborough is not jumping on the impeachment bandwagon", "He is simply treating the prospect seriously, as did CNN's Wolf Blitzer earlier in the day" , "We are nearing an impeachment moment."

"The Alberto Gonzales scandal, the under-covered but very real controversy involving abuses of the Patriot Act and the President's increasingly belligerent refusals to treat Congress as a co-equal branch of government are putting the discussion of presidential accountability onto the table from which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tried to remove it."

Read the full article here.

Lancet survey 'was robust' claims chief MOD adviser

2007-03-26T21:18:00.000+01:00

From the BBC

The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt.

Iraqi Health Ministry figures put the toll at less than 10% of the total in the survey, published in the Lancet. But the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust"...

...The researchers spoke to nearly 1,850 families, comprising more than 12,800 people. In nearly 92% of cases family members produced death certificates to support their answers. The survey estimated that 601,000 deaths were the result of violence, mostly gunfire...

Shortly after the publication of the survey in October last year Tony Blair's official spokesperson said the Lancet's figure was not anywhere near accurate.

He said the survey had used an extrapolation technique, from a relatively small sample from an area of Iraq that was not representative of the country as a whole.

President Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible report."

But a memo by the MoD's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, on 13 October, states: "The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to "best practice" in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq."...

...If the Lancet survey is right, then 2.5% of the Iraqi population - an average of more than 500 people a day - have been killed since the start of the war...

Read the full article here.

Tony Benn Beats Bolton To A Pulp

2007-03-25T23:09:00.000+01:00

A five minute video of John Bolton coming up against Tony Benn in the most recent edition of the BBC political debate programme Question Time.

Here

You can watch the entire programme here.

Gates Argued for Closing Guantánamo

2007-03-23T21:48:00.000Z

In his first weeks as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates repeatedly argued that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantánamo would be viewed as illegitimate, according to senior administration officials. He told President Bush and others that it should be shut down as quickly as possible.

Mr. Gates’s appeal was an effort to turn Mr. Bush’s publicly stated desire to close Guantánamo into a specific plan for action, the officials said. In particular, Mr. Gates urged that trials of terrorism suspects be moved to the United States, both to make them more credible and because Guantánamo’s continued existence hampered the broader war effort, administration officials said.

Mr. Gates’s arguments were rejected after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the United States, a stance that was backed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, administration officials said.

As Mr. Gates was making his case, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined him in urging that the detention facility be shut down, administration officials said. But the high-level discussions about closing Guantánamo came to a halt after Mr. Bush rejected the approach, although officials at the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the State Department continue to analyze options for the detention of terrorism suspects.

Read the full article at the source.

Iraq: Four years later

2007-03-21T21:48:00.000Z

From Truthdig: By Robert Scheer

Yep, you did it, George--mission impossible accomplished. Unbelievably, four years of a bungled occupation have managed to make Saddam Hussein's tyranny look good in comparison with "liberated Iraq."

At least, that is the view of the Iraqi weightlifter made famous through a video of him taking a sledgehammer to Saddam Hussein's statue.

"I really regret bringing down the statue," Kadhim al-Jubouri said on British television this week. "The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day."

That's the judgment of a man who spent nine years in Hussein's jails, and, unfortunately, it is one shared by a majority of his countrymen, according to an authoritative poll sponsored jointly by ABC, BBC and USA Today: Only 38 percent of Iraqis believe that the country is better off today than under Hussein, while nearly four out of five oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq.

Even more disturbing is that 51 percent of Iraqis think it is OK to attack coalition troops--triple the number that thought that way in a 2004 survey. Square that with our president's assurances, offered since the first month of this unnecessary adventure, that the insurgency represents a small handful of terrorists. While most of the antipathy is registered among Sunnis, 94 percent of whom favor attacks on coalition forces, and by only 7 percent of Kurds, a surprising 35 percent of Shiites endorse that sort of violence.

Given the number of Kurds and Shiites who originally welcomed the invasion, it is also startling that 53 percent of all Iraqis polled agreed that "from today's perspective, and all things considered," it was "wrong that U.S.-led coalition forces invaded Iraq in spring 2003."

The poll, part of a series conducted each of the past three years at great risk to 150 pollsters, reveals a sharp rise in anti-American feeling and disapproval of the 2003 invasion.

Read the full article at the source.

Click here (pdf file) for the complete poll data.

Left Behind

2007-03-20T17:34:00.000Z

( CBS ) When U.S. troops invaded Iraq, they had a major handicap – they didn’t speak the language. There would have been no progress, and likely more American dead, had it not been for Iraqi citizens who volunteered to serve our armed forces as translators.

Many thousands of Iraqis believed in the cause. They signed on as drivers, construction workers and office workers. But now they and their families are being hunted down by insurgents bent on killing them for collaborating. No wonder many are fleeing Iraq, desperate for asylum. But as they appeal to the U.S., many feel they’re being left behind.

As correspondent Scott Pelley reports, they’re finding that America, which was so eager for their help in the beginning, is not so eager to save them now.

Read the full 3 page article here.

True Confessions? The Amazing Tale of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

2007-03-17T22:35:00.000Z

Fun galore!

Liar!

2007-03-15T18:44:00.001Z

Fun galore!

Confessions of a Torturer

2007-03-13T21:26:00.000Z

TONY LAGOURANIS DOESN’T fit the profile of a person likely to go wrong by following orders.

He’s lived a footloose life unconstrained by a desire for professional advancement, for the approval of superiors, even for a comfortable home. A freethinker, he read the great works of Western civilization in college and mastered classical languages. It was his desire to learn Arabic as well that took him to Iraq.

And there, as an army interrogator, he tortured detainees for information he admits they rarely had. Since leaving Iraq he’s taken this story public, doing battle on national television against the war’s architects for giving him the orders he regrets he obeyed.

Read the full article here.

Why Does The Times Recognize Israel's 'Right to Exist'?

2007-03-12T14:48:00.000Z

From the Los Angeles Times via Common Dreams:

by Saree Makdisi

'AS SOON AS certain topics are raised," George Orwell once wrote, "the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse." Such a combination of vagueness and sheer incompetence in language, Orwell warned, leads to political conformity.

No issue better illustrates Orwell's point than coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. Consider, for example, the editorial in The Times on Feb. 9 demanding that the Palestinians "recognize Israel" and its "right to exist." This is a common enough sentiment — even a cliche. Yet many observers (most recently the international lawyer John Whitbeck) have pointed out that this proposition, assiduously propagated by Israel's advocates and uncritically reiterated by American politicians and journalists, is — at best — utterly nonsensical.

First, the formal diplomatic language of "recognition" is traditionally used by one state with respect to another state. It is literally meaningless for a non-state to "recognize" a state. Moreover, in diplomacy, such recognition is supposed to be mutual. In order to earn its own recognition, Israel would have to simultaneously recognize the state of Palestine. This it steadfastly refuses to do (and for some reason, there are no high-minded newspaper editorials demanding that it do so).

Second, which Israel, precisely, are the Palestinians being asked to "recognize?" Israel has stubbornly refused to declare its own borders. So, territorially speaking, "Israel" is an open-ended concept. Are the Palestinians to recognize the Israel that ends at the lines proposed by the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan? Or the one that extends to the 1949 Armistice Line (the de facto border that resulted from the 1948 war)? Or does Israel include the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which it has occupied in violation of international law for 40 years — and which maps in its school textbooks show as part of "Israel"?

For that matter, why should the Palestinians recognize an Israel that refuses to accept international law, submit to U.N. resolutions or readmit the Palestinians wrongfully expelled from their homes in 1948 and barred from returning ever since?

If none of these questions are easy to answer, why are such demands being made of the Palestinians? And why is nothing demanded of Israel in turn?

Orwell was right. It is much easier to recycle meaningless phrases than to ask — let alone to answer — difficult questions. But recycling these empty phrases serves a purpose. Endlessly repeating the mantra that the Palestinians don't recognize Israel helps paint Israel as an innocent victim, politely asking to be recognized but being rebuffed by its cruel enemies.

Actually, it asks even more. Israel wants the Palestinians, half of whom were driven from their homeland so that a Jewish state could be created in 1948, to recognize not merely that it exists (which is undeniable) but that it is "right" that it exists — that it was right for them to have been dispossessed of their homes, their property and their livelihoods so that a Jewish state could be created on their land. The Palestinians are not the world's first dispossessed people, but they are the first to be asked to legitimize what happened to them.

A just peace will require Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile and recognize each other's rights. It will not require that Palestinians give their moral seal of approval to the catastrophe that befell them. Meaningless at best, cynical and manipulative at worst, such a demand may suit Israel's purposes, but it does not serve The Times or its readers.

And yet The Times consistently adopts Israel's language and, hence, its point of view. For example, a recent article on Israel's Palestinian minority referred to that minority not as "Palestinian" but as generically "Arab," Israel's official term for a population whose full political and human rights it refuses to recognize. To fail to acknowledge the living Palestinian presence inside Israel (and its enduring continuity with the rest of the Palestinian people) is to elide the history at the heart of the conflict — and to deny the legitimacy of Palestinian claims and rights.

This is exactly what Israel wants. Indeed, its demand that its "right to exist" be recognized reflects its own anxiety, not about its existence but about its failure to successfully eliminate the Palestinians' presence inside their homeland — a failure for which verbal recognition would serve merely a palliative and therapeutic function.

In uncritically adopting Israel's own fraught terminology — a form of verbal erasure designed to extend the physical destruction of Palestine — The Times is taking sides.

If the paper wants its readers to understand the nature of this conflict, however, it should not go on acting as though only one side has a story to tell.

Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, writes frequently about the Middle East.

Israeli soldiers use Palestinian children as human shields

2007-03-09T18:31:00.000Z

B'Tselem has accused the Israeli army of using Palestinian children as human shields during a recent raid in the West Bank.

The allegations are based on testimony from a 15-year-old boy, his 24-year-old cousin and also an 11-year-old girl. They said that soldiers had forced them to enter houses ahead of the troops during the raid in Nablus.

The use of human shields is illegal under Israeli and international law.

Read the full report here.

Click here to watch a video testimony from the eleven year old girl. (Windows media player required.)

Note: The Image used in this article is from the archive of images that show the use of human shields by the Israeli army. It is not directly related the current accusations.

A Conservative's Strategy.

2007-03-04T00:33:00.000Z

Apologies to those who have already seen this.

Enter the former Reagan Administration official and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and contributing editor to the National Review:

How the World Can Stop Bush

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

What would be the consequences of a US or Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear energy sites?

At the 2006 Perdana Global Peace Forum, Australian medical scientist Dr. Helen Caldicott provided an authoritative analysis of the devastating impact on human life that would result from the radiation release from such an attack.

Dr. Caldicott described the catastrophic deaths that would result from a conventional attack on nuclear facilities and the long-term increase in cancer deaths from the radiation release.

Should the attack be made with nuclear weapons--as some of Bush's criminally insane neoconservative advisers advocate--the populations of many countries would suffer for generations from radioactive particles in air, water, and food chains. Deaths would number in the many millions.

Such an attack justified in the name of "American security" and "American hegemony" would constitute the rawest form of evil the world has ever seen, far surpassing in evil the atrocities of the Nazi and Communist regimes.

Dr. Caldicott detailed the horrible long-term consequences for the Iraqi population from the US military's current use of depleted uranium in explosive ammunition used in Iraq. Caldicott explained that "depleted" does not mean depleted of radiation. She explained that each time such ammunition is used, radioactive particles are released in the air and are absorbed into people's lungs. We are yet to see the horrific civilian casualty rate of the American invasion--or the true casualty rate among US troops.

Dr. Caldicott expressed bewilderment why the rest of the world does not stand up to the US and force a halt to its crimes against humanity.

One man heard her--Vladimir Putin, President of Russia.

On February 10 at the 43rd Munich Security Conference, President Putin told the world's assembled political leaders that the US was trying to establish a "uni-polar world," which he defined as "one single center of power, one single center of force and one single master."

This goal, Putin said, was a "formula for disaster."

"The United States," Putin said, truthfully, "has overstepped its borders in all spheres" and "has imposed itself on other states."

The Russian leader declared: "We see no kind of restraint--a hyper-inflated use of force."

To avoid catastrophe, Putin said a reconsideration of the entire existing architecture of global security was necessary.

Putin's words of truth fell on many deaf ears. US Senator John McCain, America's most idiotic and dangerous "leader" after Bush and Cheney, equated Putin's legitimate criticism of the US with "confrontation."

America's new puppets--the states of central and Eastern Europe and the secretary general of NATO, no longer a treaty for the defense of Europe but a military force enlisted in America's quest for empire--lined up with McCain's argument that Russia was in fundamental conflict "with the core values of Euro-Atlantic democracies."

Even the BBC's defense and security correspondent, Rob Watson, jumped on the American propaganda bandwagon, tagging Putin's speech a revival of the cold war.

No delegate at the security conference stood up to state the obvious fact that it is not Russia that is invading countries under pretexts as false as Hitler's and setting up weapons systems on foreign soil in order to achieve military hegemony.

The reception given to Putin's words made it clear to Russia, China, and every country not bribed, threatened or purchased into participation in America's drive for world hegemony that the US has no interest whatsoever in peace. Intelligent people realize that American claims to be a moral and democratic force are mere pretense behind which hides a policy of military aggression.

The US, Putin said, has gone "from one conflict to another without achieving a fully-fledged solution to any of them."

Putin has repeatedly stressed Russia's peaceful intentions and desire to focus on its economy and to avoid a new arms race. In his speech on the 60th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, Putin said: "I am convinced that there is no alternative to our friendship and our fraternity. With our closest neighbors and all countries of the world, Russia is prepared to build a kind of relationship which is not only based on lessons of the past but is also directed into a shared future."

In his 2006 state of the nation speech, Putin noted that America's military budget is 25 times larger than Russia's. He compared the Bush Regime to a wolf who eats whom he wants without listening. Putin is being demonized by US propagandists, because he insists upon Russia being a politically and economically independent state.

The Bush Regime has taken the US outside the boundaries of international law and is acting unilaterally, falsely declaring American military aggression to be "defensive" and in the interests of peace. Much of the world realizes the hypocrisy and danger in the Bush Regime's justification of the unbridled use of US military power, but no countries except other nuclear powers can challenge American aggression, and then only at the risk of all life on earth.

The solution is nonmilitary challenge.

The Bush Regime's ability to wage war is dependent upon foreign financing. The Regime's wars are financed with red ink, which means the hundreds of billions of dollars must be borrowed. As American consumers are spending more than they earn on consumption, the money cannot be borrowed from Americans.

The US is totally dependent upon foreigners to finance its budget and trade deficits. By financing these deficits, foreign governments are complicit in the Bush Regime's military aggressions and war crimes. The Bush Regime's two largest lenders are China and Japan. It is ironic that Japan, the only nation to experience nuclear attack by the US, is banker to the Bush Regime as it prepares a possible nuclear attack on Iran.

If the rest of the world would simply stop purchasing US Treasuries, and instead dump their surplus dollars into the foreign exchange market, the Bush Regime would be overwhelmed with economic crisis and unable to wage war. The arrogant hubris associated with the "sole superpower" myth would burst like the bubble it is.

The collapse of the dollar would also end the US government's ability to subvert other countries by purchasing their leaders to do America's will.

The demise of the US dollar is only a question of time. It would save the world from war and devastation if the dollar is brought to its demise before the Bush Regime launches its planned attack on Iran.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.

This editorian was originally published on Counterpunch

Special Message from a Wombat

2007-03-03T03:08:00.000Z

Click HERE for an important message from a wombat.

(Sorry, I couldn't get the video upload to take on Blogger.)

Secretary of State Cowardly Rice

2007-03-02T16:16:00.000Z

What would happen if you called Secretary Rice on her contrasting comments on Iraq both pre-9/11 and post-9/11?

Just as a refresher, on July 29, 2001, Rice said on CNN that, "We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt. This [the sanctions regime] has been a successful period..." And here is what she said on CNN on September 8th, 2002 during the gear up to war:

...We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. [lie] We do know that there have been shipments going into Iran, for instance -- into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to -- high-quality aluminum tools that are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs. [lie]

We know that he has the infrastructure [lie], nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon. And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought, maybe six months from a crude nuclear device.

The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't what the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

Without further ado, here is what would happen if a reporter confronted Rice regarding these statements:

We Face a Vietnam-Style Collapse

2007-03-01T16:15:00.000Z

From the Guardian via Common Dreams:

An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.
The officers - combat veterans who are experts in counter-insurgency - are charged with implementing the "new way forward" strategy announced by George Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial "surge" of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in the Iraqi capital and Anbar province.
But the team, known as the "Baghdad brains trust" and ensconced in the heavily fortified Green Zone, is struggling to overcome a range of entrenched problems in what has become a race against time, according to a former senior administration official familiar with their deliberations.
"They know they are operating under a clock. They know they are going to hear a lot more talk in Washington about 'Plan B' by the autumn - meaning withdrawal. They know the next six-month period is their opportunity. And they say it's getting harder every day," he said.

Assessment

2007-03-01T12:51:00.000Z

Some interesting liguistic revelations have come to light in a recent column by Ray McGovern. The Director of National Intelligence, Michael McConnell addressed the Senate Armed Forces Committee this week. At the hearing, he said,

We assess that Iran seeks to develop a nuclear weapon. The information is incomplete, but we assess that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon early-to-mid-next decade.

Hence the rush to bomb now, considering that Iran offered to fully comply on its nuclear program, recognise Israel, and cease all support for militant groups targeting Israel. But then again, that offer doesn't count because it is embarrassing to the U.S. and because the U.S. brushed the offer aside (then attacked the messenger conveying the offer).

But back to the Director's words. Because it is the government, it is important to know, not so much what they said, but what they think the words they used mean. Take "assess," for example. What does that mean. Here is how it has been defined by the government at the time of their last brilliant "assess"ment:

When we use words such as 'we assess,' we are trying to convey an analytical assessment or judgment. These assessments, which are based on incomplete or at times fragmentary information are not a fact, proof, or knowledge. Some analytical judgments are based directly on collected information; others rest on previous judgments, which serve as building blocks. In either type of judgment, we do not have ‘evidence’ that shows something to be a fact.

So, Iran has a nuclear weapons program, but that there is no "'evidence' that shows [that] to be a fact," and there is no "fact, proof, or knowledge" to show that there is. The total lack of a nuclear weapons program found after 1400 days of IAEA go anywhere, anytime inspections remains the only reliable source of information.

One should really take any U.S. "assessments" with a truckload of salt. Here's a blast from the past: in 1995, the "assessment" was that Iran would have a bomb "within five years."

When the word "lie" just won't do.

2007-02-28T01:51:00.000Z

On the right you will see a picture. It is a dog. I am the King of Spain. I wrote War & Peace. Ridiculous lies, right? How about this one:

“The president said this isn’t the fight we entered in Iraq, but it’s the fight we’re in,” [White House press spokesman Tony] Fratto told reporters Friday. “We went in as a multinational force under U.N. authorization to take military action in Iraq. We were there as an occupying force, and now we’re there at the invitation of the sovereign, elected government of Iraq.”

Those of you with a memory stretching back farther than the last episode of Idol will recall that the U.S. did not go to Iraq with UN approval. In fact, as the Secretary General of the UN pointed out, the invasion of Iraq violated the international law, in part by violating the UN Charter.

Ok, the Niger thing was pretty weak, but still. They gave up the terrorist argument after it was debunked. They relied on people dutifully not bothering to read public records to get them to believe Iraq had a dangerous arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Lame stuff, but still, not literally high school level.

Now we get things like a press conference given by anonymous officials, in which no electronic recording devices were allowed, where they displayed a shell with English printing and a Christian calendar date and we are supposed to believe that this is evidence of a need to strike Iran. But this bold rewriting of history has to be the ultimate. I am left stunned. This gives a new standard to the phrase 'insulting one's intelligence.'

Mean old Mr. Potter assassination attempt

2007-02-27T12:33:00.000Z

If you haven't heard yet, the Taliban tried to blow up Cheney. They killed up to 14 people in a bomb blast aimed at the VP.

Democrats proving useless yet again

2007-02-27T00:47:00.000Z

From TomPaine.com via Common Dreams:

As the Bush administration ratchets up its military threat to Iran, the leadership of the Democratic party is providing a free pass to continue on that potentially disastrous course. Congressional leaders have tacitly or explicitly accepted the necessity of keeping the “military option”—meaning a massive, unprovoked air attack on Iran—“on the table,” as have all three of the leading candidates for the party’s presidential nomination.
The Democratic leadership in Congress has defined the Iran issue only in terms of congressional prerogatives to declare war; none have seen fit to say that threatening Iran with an unprovoked attack is an unacceptable option. Leading Democrats refuse to reject the option of aggressive war against Iran because they have bought into one of the central myths of the U.S. national security elite: that the U.S. must use its unchallenged military dominance to coerce Iran on uranium enrichment.
The three leading candidates in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination have all stated their support for continuing to consider the option of military attack. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., told the AIPAC annual convention at the end of January, “In dealing with this threat ... no option can be taken off the table.” Former senator John Edwards was even more vehement in a speech on Iran last month at the Herzliya Conference in Israel. “To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table,” he said, and then repeated the point for emphasis. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., appearing on “60 Minutes” recently, declared, “I think we should keep all options on the table.”

An attack on Iran would be illegal under the UN Charter and the Kellogg-Briand Pact and would violate Article VI of the Constitution of the United States of America. Apparently it is risker to be viewed as weak (though you'd have to be bloodthirsty to see obeying the law as weak, in this case) than to chance being a thug by keeping war crimes "on the table."

US funds terror groups to sow chaos in Iran

2007-02-26T20:22:00.000Z

From the Sunday Telegraph

America is secretly funding militant ethnic separatist groups in Iran in an attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear programme.

In a move that reflects Washington's growing concern with the failure of diplomatic initiatives, CIA officials are understood to be helping opposition militias among the numerous ethnic minority groups clustered in Iran's border regions.

The operations are controversial because they involve dealing with movements that resort to terrorist methods in pursuit of their grievances against the Iranian regime...

...Funding for their separatist causes comes directly from the CIA's classified budget but is now "no great secret", according to one former high-ranking CIA official in Washington who spoke anonymously to The Sunday Telegraph.

His claims were backed by Fred Burton, a former US state department counter-terrorism agent, who said: "The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran's ethnic minorities to destabilise the Iranian regime."

Although Washington officially denies involvement in such activity, Teheran has long claimed to detect the hand of both America and Britain in attacks by guerrilla groups on its internal security forces. Last Monday, Iran publicly hanged a man, Nasrollah Shanbe Zehi, for his involvement in a bomb attack that killed 11 Revolutionary Guards in the city of Zahedan in Sistan-Baluchistan. An unnamed local official told the semi-official Fars news agency that weapons used in the attack were British and US-made...

...John Pike, the head of the influential Global Security think tank in Washington, said: "The activities of the ethnic groups have hotted up over the last two years and it would be a scandal if that was not at least in part the result of CIA activity."

Such a policy is fraught with risk, however. Many of the groups share little common cause with Washington other than their opposition to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose regime they accuse of stepping up repression of minority rights and culture.

The Baluchistan-based Brigade of God group, which last year kidnapped and killed eight Iranian soldiers, is a volatile Sunni organisation that many fear could easily turn against Washington after taking its money...

A row has also broken out in Washington over whether to "unleash" the military wing of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), an Iraq-based Iranian opposition group with a long and bloody history of armed opposition to the Iranian regime.

The group is currently listed by the US state department as terrorist organisation, but Mr Pike said: "A faction in the Defence Department wants to unleash them. They could never overthrow the current Iranian regime but they might cause a lot of damage." ...

Read the full article at the Source.

Hersh: U.S. policy benefitting our enemies?

2007-02-26T13:17:00.000Z

From The New Yorker:

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region.”
...
...The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.
A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not been adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,” he said. “We ask for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s so frustrating.”
...
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.
The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea change,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni states “were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq,” he said. “We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it.”
...
Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic” about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”
...
Last November, Cheney flew to Saudi Arabia for a surprise meeting with King Abdullah and Bandar. The Times reported that the King warned Cheney that Saudi Arabia would back its fellow-Sunnis in Iraq if the United States were to withdraw. A European intelligence official told me that the meeting also focussed on more general Saudi fears about “the rise of the Shiites.” In response, “The Saudis are starting to use their leverage—money.”

...

The Saudis are driven by their fear that Iran could tilt the balance of power not only in the region but within their own country. Saudi Arabia has a significant Shiite minority in its Eastern Province, a region of major oil fields; sectarian tensions are high in the province. The royal family believes that Iranian operatives, working with local Shiites, have been behind many terrorist attacks inside the kingdom, according to Vali Nasr. “Today, the only army capable of containing Iran”—the Iraqi Army—“has been destroyed by the United States. You’re now dealing with an Iran that could be nuclear-capable and has a standing army of four hundred and fifty thousand soldiers.” (Saudi Arabia has seventy-five thousand troops in its standing army.)

Nasr went on, “The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis”—Sunni extremists who view Shiites as apostates. “The last time Iran was a threat, the Saudis were able to mobilize the worst kinds of Islamic radicals. Once you get them out of the box, you can’t put them back.”

The Saudi royal family has been, by turns, both a sponsor and a target of Sunni extremists, who object to the corruption and decadence among the family’s myriad princes. The princes are gambling that they will not be overthrown as long as they continue to support religious schools and charities linked to the extremists. The Administration’s new strategy is heavily dependent on this bargain.

Nasr compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988.

This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”

...

The Bush Administration has publicly pledged the Siniora [in Lebanon] government a billion dollars in aid since last summer. A donors’ conference in Paris, in January, which the U.S. helped organize, yielded pledges of almost eight billion more, including a promise of more than a billion from the Saudis. The American pledge includes more than two hundred million dollars in military aid, and forty million dollars for internal security.

The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” he said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.”

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.

...

Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut, told me, “The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in. It could be very dangerous.” Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests—presumably to take on Hezbollah,” Crooke said.

...

Leslie H. Gelb, a past president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the Administration’s policy was less pro democracy than “pro American national security. The fact is that it would be terribly dangerous if Hezbollah ran Lebanon.” The fall of the Siniora government would be seen, Gelb said, “as a signal in the Middle East of the decline of the United States and the ascendancy of the terrorism threat. And so any change in the distribution of political power in Lebanon has to be opposed by the United States—and we’re justified in helping any non-Shiite parties resist that change. We should say this publicly, instead of talking about democracy.”

...

The Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine operations that have not been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries with questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, an earlier chapter in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then—notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams—are involved in today’s dealings.

Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.

I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.)

The former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte did not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when he served as Ambassador to Honduras. “Negroponte said, ‘No way. I’m not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off the books, with no finding.’ ” (In the case of covert C.I.A. operations, the President must issue a written finding and inform Congress.) Negroponte stayed on as Deputy Secretary of State, he added, because “he believes he can influence the government in a positive way.”

The government consultant said that Negroponte shared the White House’s policy goals but “wanted to do it by the book.” The Pentagon consultant also told me that “there was a sense at the senior-ranks level that he wasn’t fully on board with the more adventurous clandestine initiatives.” It was also true, he said, that Negroponte “had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the Middle East.”

The Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight, was accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.

“This goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council aide told me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it.” He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.”

The issue of oversight is beginning to get more attention from Congress. Last November, the Congressional Research Service issued a report for Congress on what it depicted as the Administration’s blurring of the line between C.I.A. activities and strictly military ones, which do not have the same reporting requirements. And the Senate Intelligence Committee, headed by Senator Jay Rockefeller, has scheduled a hearing for March 8th on Defense Department intelligence activities.

Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, a Democrat who is a member of the Intelligence Committee, told me, “The Bush Administration has frequently failed to meet its legal obligation to keep the Intelligence Committee fully and currently informed. Time and again, the answer has been ‘Trust us.’ ” Wyden said, “It is hard for me to trust the Administration.”

US Generals ‘Will Quit’ If Attack On Iran Ordered

2007-02-25T21:42:00.000Z

Those anti-American generals! <snicker> From the Sunday Times via Common Dreams:

SOME of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.
Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.
“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”
A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them.
“There are enough people who feel this would be an error of judgment too far for there to be resignations.”
A generals’ revolt on such a scale would be unprecedented. “American generals usually stay and fight until they get fired,” said a Pentagon source. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, has repeatedly warned against striking Iran and is believed to represent the view of his senior commanders.

US Intelligence on Iran Does Not Stand up

2007-02-25T00:18:00.000Z

From the Guardian via Common Dreams:

Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by American spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, according to diplomatic sources in Vienna.
The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme.
That report, delivered to the security council by the IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, sets the stage for a fierce international debate on the imposition of stricter sanctions on Iran, and raises the possibility that the US might resort to military action against Iranian nuclear sites.
At the heart of the debate are accusations, spearheaded by the US, that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons. However, most of the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors, according to informed sources in Vienna.
"Most of it has turned out to be incorrect," said a diplomat at the IAEA with detailed knowledge of the agency's investigations. "They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities."
"Now [the inspectors] don't go in blindly. Only if it passes a credibility test."
One particularly contentious issue concerned records of plans to build a nuclear warhead, which the CIA said it found on a stolen laptop computer supplied by an informant inside Iran. In July 2005, US intelligence officials showed printed versions of the material to IAEA officials, who judged it to be sufficiently specific to confront Iran.
Tehran rejected the material as forgeries and there are still reservations about its authenticity in the IAEA, according to officials with knowledge of the internal debate inside the agency.
"First of all, if you have a clandestine programme, you don't put it on laptops which can walk away," one official said. "The data is all in English which may be reasonable for some of the technical matters, but at some point you'd have thought there would be at least some notes in Farsi. So there is some doubt over the provenance of the computer."
...

Pick Your City

2007-02-24T18:37:00.000Z

Foul Canadians

2007-02-23T19:45:00.000Z

No prison is foul enough for those dastardly Canucks! If Maher Arar's fiendishly devious plan to embarrass the U.S. by forcing the U.S. to use extraordinary rendition to send him to a torture chamber in Syria for talking to a guy who didn't actually have any know connection to al Qaeda was not bad enough, now we have the sinister family of "Majid" trying the make the U.S. government look bad.

From Democracy Now!:

Majid [not his real name] and his nine-year old son Kevin are Iranian immigrants currently being held at the Hutto detention center. They’ve been forcibly detained since their plane was forced made an emergency landing in Puerto Rico as they made their way to Canada. Kevin says: “I want to be free. I want go to outside.I want to go home to Canada.”

AMY GOODMAN: I’m going to break in for one minute, because we have just gotten a call from the Hutto detention facility. We're joined on the phone by an Iranian immigrant named Majid, from inside the Hutto Detention Center in Taylor, Texas. He, his wife, his nine-year-old son Kevin have been held at the center for the past nineteen days. Majid, your story is quite a remarkable one. Can you tell us how you ended up at this Texas jail?
MAJID: Hello. Thanks for taking my call. I was on my way to go to Toronto, Canada, and my plane was -- after three hours in the flight, somebody died on the plane and had an emergency landing to Costa Rica. After that, they said everybody should come out. After that, we went out. Immigration, they said you need to have American visa. We had no American visa. And they hold us over there --
AMY GOODMAN: Now, just to be clear, you were never planning to end up in the United States, is that right? You were flying to Canada, but another passenger on the plane had a heart attack, and so you guys had a forced landing in Puerto Rico, and when you had to come out of the plane, while he was taken off the plane, that's when they took you?
MAJID: Yes. This happened, yes -- was a Canadian Zoom Airline, and our ticket was direct from Guyana to Toronto. And this happened. They hold us -- my son is Canadian -- hold child is nine-and-a-half years old, and they put us in detention in Puerto Rico. And from Monday to Friday, I was in the jail in Puerto Rico between criminal people, and my wife and son was other place. We had no news from each other from Monday morning until Friday at noon, until we see each other in a Puerto Rico airport. After that, they brought us here to Hutto Detention Center, and here we are in same part, but different room. My wife and my son is room, but it’s totally inside the room, uncovered toilet. My son has asthma, and he’s very bad and still comes here. It’s very horrible here. And we are in very bad situation. We need help. We need the people help me --
JUAN GONZALEZ: Majid, in other words, basically, what reason did they give you for holding you if you never intended to enter the United States at all? What reason did they give for locking you up?
MAJID: Because they said, “You have an American visa?” That's why you have to stay here. Just plane was waiting one hour for us, but they didn't let us pass. A few officers came. They said Immigration officers -- six, seven -- they said, “We’re going to send you, but let us make decision.” After that, they called the police chief. He came there. He said, “Let me think five minutes.” After five minutes, he came, he said, “I’m going to send you to Canada, but I’m afraid to lose my job. But usually we have to send with your plane, but we keep you here. America is much better than Canada. Here you have safer place. We send you to hotel, and after a few days, you're going to be free.” But they broke their promise. That's why they keep us here, and we have very bad situation here.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Do you know whether any other passengers on your plane were also detained in the same way, or was your family the only one, as far as you can tell?
MAJID: Only my family. No other passenger.
AMY GOODMAN: I just want to say to our listeners and viewers, we are not giving your full name, we’re not showing your face at your request. You did apply for political asylum in Canada in the past when you lived there for ten years. You were ultimately denied, sent back to Iran. And what happened when you were sent back to Iran, you and your wife?
MAJID: Yes. In December 2005, we sent to Iran, whole family, when my Canadian son born. And all documents -- the immigration officer gave all our documents to the captain of plane. After that, in Italy, we went with the Alitalia Airline. In Italy, police came to plane. They took us to [inaudible] room in the transit of Italy, and after that, again, they put us in the plane and give all documents to the captain of Alitalia again. We went to Iran, and in Iran, the plane’s captain said, “You have to sit until the police come to take you.” All passengers went out, and four Iranian secret police came in the plane, and he got all documents from the captain, and they took us in the airport in the secret police office. We were there for a few hours, four or five hours, in the same room.
After that, they separate us. They took me to other place, unknown place. I was in Iran a small cell for six months, and lots of torture and hitting. Now I have physical problem and knee problem and lots of things. And they took my wife to other prison, where we have no news from each other. And for six months, my wife was one year and one month in the prison, and she [inaudible] -- after she was free she [inaudible] the child, and because they [inaudible] him, and she was [inaudible] two, three time in the jail. And it's a very bad situation. But we had no news from each other. They told my wife, because your husband, you have to cooperate with us.
AMY GOODMAN: They said they killed you?
MAJID: Yeah, they a few times told. One time they told her, “He's in coma.” The other time, they said, “Already he was killed.” And, you know, many times they play with her. After one month, they free her in the street at nighttime. They did with me, too, after six months, a lot of torture. And this one, they free me in the street out of the town with closed eyes. And I didn't see anybody, but they took me in daytime some day in winter -- you know, they take my pants off to put in very cold water. They already broke the ice, they put in the water, and they hit me every day, hitting me.
And when I came out, I was less than thirty kilograms, my weight. And my wife was different, six months was under psychologist’s medication over that. And after free, I should register two times a week, every Sunday and Thursday. And when I took -- they took us over there, they took me over there again. One week, they put me in detention, and the other time, again three days. And after that, one guard told me, “I’m going to help you.” After that, he called me, said, “OK, your future is very dangerous. You have to leave. Otherwise, you are in big trouble. I don't know what will happen to you and your family.” That's why we decided and we escaped from there.

You can read the rest here, or listen to it on Real Player here.

Study Findings Shocking (to no one).

2007-02-22T22:45:00.000Z

Remember the 2004 State Department report on terrorism that tried to claim terrorism was way down? Remember how after it was released and universally criticised by all serious voices, Colin Powell said it was "a big mistake" and the report was re-released? The actual stats were that the War against Iraq correlated perfectly with a huge increase in terrorism.

Another study is now out published in Mother Jones. But first, let's loot at what the President of the United States has to say of his efforts:

From the start, America and our allies have protected our people by staying on the offense. The enemy knows that the days of comfortable sanctuary, easy movement, steady financing and free-flowing communications are long over. The terrorist’s life since 9/11 has never been the same.

And now the Mother Jones report:

"If we were not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people." So said President Bush on November 30, 2005, refining his earlier call to "bring them on." Jihadist terrorists, the administration’s argument went, would be drawn to Iraq like moths to a flame, and would perish there rather than wreak havoc elsewhere in the world.

The president’s argument conveyed two important assumptions: first, that the threat of jihadist terrorism to U.S. interests would have been greater without the war in Iraq, and second, that the war is reducing the overall global pool of terrorists. However, the White House has never cited any evidence for either of these assumptions, and none appears to be publicly available.

The administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate on "Trends in Global Terrorism: implications for the United States," circulated within the government in April 2006 and partially declassified in October, states that "the Iraq War has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists...and is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."

Yet administration officials have continued to suggest that there is no evidence any greater jihadist threat exists as a result of the Iraq War. "Are more terrorists being created in the world?" then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rhetorically asked during a press conference in September. "We don’t know. The world doesn’t know. There are not good metrics to determine how many people are being trained in a radical madrasa school in some country." In January 2007 Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte in congressional testimony stated that he was "not certain" that the Iraq War had been a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda and played down the likely impact of the war on jihadists worldwide: "I wouldn’t say there has been a widespread growth in Islamic extremism beyond Iraq. I really wouldn’t."

Indeed, though what we will call "The Iraq Effect" is a crucial matter for U.S. national security, we have found no statistical documentation of its existence and gravity, at least in the public domain. In this report, we have undertaken what we believe to be the first such study, using information from the world’s premier database on global terrorism. The results are being published for the first time by Mother Jones, the news and investigative magazine, as part of a broader "Iraq 101" package in the magazine’s March/April 2007 issue.

Our study shows that the Iraq War has generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost; even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third.

We are not making the argument that without the Iraq War, jihadist terrorism would not exist, but our study shows that the Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of the Al Qaeda ideological virus, as shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks in the past three years from London to Kabul, and from Madrid to the Red Sea.

Travel firm offers trips to CIA prison

2007-02-22T22:13:00.000Z

From Raw Story via AFP

A Polish travel firm said Thursday it was giving tourists a chance to follow in the footsteps of CIA agents and terror suspects near an alleged US detention centre in Poland's lakeland -- which the authorities deny exists.

Visitors will be able to cycle and canoe near the Polish intelligence service's training centre at Stare Kiejkuty in the northern Mazuria region, and the nearby Szymany airport, Joanna Sobieska of Szarpie Travel was quoted as saying by the PAP news agency.

Stare Kiejjuty and Szymany have been in the spotlight since allegations surfaced that the United States had flown terror suspects to Poland for interrogation. Washington acknowledged last September that it had held suspects in secret outside US territory, but refused to say where.

A report approved last week by the European Parliament alleged that a host of European Union member states and several other countries had turned a blind eye to or even facilitated covert US flights.

The investigating lawmakers had suggested that Poland and Romania may have hosted CIA detention centres -- something both countries have fiercely denied -- but an amendment to the study said there was insufficient proof.

Poland was singled out for its "flagrant" lack of cooperation with the parliamentary investigation, which began in 2005.

The War On Bullsh*t

2007-02-21T19:30:00.000Z

From McClatchy Newspapers via Common Dreams:

The Justice Department has routinely misrepresented the number of terrorism prosecutions, possibly undermining decision-making in the war on terrorism, an independent government audit has found.
The report, released Tuesday by the Justice Department's inspector general, concluded that the department in most cases "could not provide support for the numbers reported or could not identify the terrorism link used to classify statistics as terrorism-related."

All but two of the 26 statistics reviewed from October 2000 through September 2005 were wrong. "These inaccuracies are important because department management and Congress need accurate terrorism-related statistics to make informed . . . decisions," Inspector General Glenn Fine said in the report.

Part of the problem, according to Fine, was that the Justice Department routinely counted criminal cases as terrorism-related even when prosecutors had found no links to terrorism. Fine also blamed a "decentralized and haphazard" system.

The Justice Department defended its tracking system and the inclusion of cases that aren't directly linked to terrorism.

From Democracy Now!:

[A] new audit has found widespread inaccuracy in how the government collects statistics on terrorism. The Justice Department Inspector General says hundreds of completely unrelated cases have helped inflate numbers on offenses and prosecutions. Offenses including drug trafficking, marriage fraud and immigration violations were among those wrongly included. Just two of twenty-six collections of statistics were found to be accurate. The Bush administration has previously cited the statistics in efforts to provide evidence of successes in prosecuting terrorism cases.

Wide-Eyed

2007-02-21T12:50:00.000Z

The more I read George Monbiot, the more I like him. From the Guardian via Common Dreams:

'You did this hit piece because your corporate masters instructed you to. You are a controlled asset of the new world order ... bought and paid for." "Everyone has some skeleton in the cupboard. How else would MI5 and special branch recruit agents?" "Shill, traitor, sleeper", "leftwing gatekeeper", "accessory after the fact", "political whore of the biggest conspiracy of them all".
These are a few of the measured responses to my article, a fortnight ago, about the film Loose Change, which maintains that the United States government destroyed the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Having spent years building up my leftwing credibility on behalf of my paymasters in MI5, I've blown it. I overplayed my hand, and have been exposed, like Bush and Cheney, by a bunch of kids with laptops. My handlers are furious.
I believe that George Bush is surrounded by some of the most scheming, devious, ruthless men to have found their way into government since the days of the Borgias. I believe that they were criminally negligent in failing to respond to intelligence about a potential attack by al-Qaida, and that they have sought to disguise their incompetence by classifying crucial documents.
I believe, too, that the Bush government seized the opportunity provided by the attacks to pursue a longstanding plan to invade Iraq and reshape the Middle East, knowing full well that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Bush deliberately misled the American people about the links between 9/11 and Iraq and about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. He is responsible for the murder of many tens of thousands of Iraqis.
But none of this is sufficient. To qualify as a true opponent of the Bush regime, you must also now believe that it is capable of magic. It could blast the Pentagon with a cruise missile while persuading hundreds of onlookers that they saw a plane. It could wire every floor of the twin towers with explosives without attracting attention and prime the charges (though planes had ploughed through the middle of the sequence) to drop each tower in a perfectly timed collapse. It could make Flight 93 disappear into thin air, and somehow ensure that the relatives of the passengers collaborated with the deception. It could recruit tens of thousands of conspirators to participate in these great crimes and induce them all to have kept their mouths shut, for ever.
In other words, you must believe that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their pals are all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful, despite the fact that they were incapable of faking either weapons of mass destruction or any evidence at Ground Zero that Saddam Hussein was responsible. You must believe that the impression of cackhandedness and incompetence they have managed to project since taking office is a front. Otherwise you are a traitor and a spy.
Why do I bother with these morons? Because they are destroying the movements some of us have spent a long time trying to build. Those of us who believe that the crucial global issues - climate change, the Iraq war, nuclear proliferation, inequality - are insufficiently debated in parliament or congress, that corporate power stands too heavily on democracy, that war criminals, cheats and liars are not being held to account, have invested our efforts in movements outside the mainstream political process. These, we are now discovering, are peculiarly susceptible to this epidemic of gibberish.
The obvious corollorary to the belief that the Bush administration is all-powerful is that the rest of us are completely powerless. In fact it seems to me that the purpose of the "9/11 truth movement" is to be powerless. The omnipotence of the Bush regime is the coward's fantasy, an excuse for inaction used by those who don't have the stomach to engage in real political fights.
Let me give you an example. The column I wrote about Loose Change two weeks ago generated 777 posts on the Guardian Comment is Free website, which is almost a record. Most of them were furious. The response from a producer of the film, published last week, attracted 467. On the same day the Guardian published my article about a genuine, demonstrable conspiracy: a spy network feeding confidential information from an arms control campaign to Britain's biggest weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems. It drew 60 responses. The members of the 9/11 cult weren't interested. If they had been, they might have had to do something. The great virtue of a fake conspiracy is that it calls on you to do nothing.
The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a displacement activity. A displacement activity is something you do because you feel incapable of doing what you ought to do. A squirrel sees a larger squirrel stealing its horde of nuts. Instead of attacking its rival, it sinks its teeth into a tree and starts ripping it to pieces. Faced with the mountainous challenge of the real issues we must confront, the chickens in the "truth" movement focus instead on a fairytale, knowing that nothing they do or say will count, knowing that because the perpetrators don't exist, they can't fight back. They demonstrate their courage by repeatedly bayoneting a scarecrow.
Many of those who posted responses on Comment is Free contend that Loose Change (which was neatly demolished in the BBC's film The Conspiracy Files on Sunday night) is a poor representation of the conspiracists' case. They urge us instead to visit websites like 911truth.org, physics911.net and 911scholars.org, and to read articles by the theology professor David Ray Griffin and the physicist Steven E Jones.
Concerned that I might have missed something, I have now done all those things, and have come across exactly the same concatenation of ill-attested nonsense as I saw in Loose Change. In all these cases you will find wild supposition raised to the status of incontrovertible fact, rumour and confusion transformed into evidence, selective editing, the citation of fake experts, the dismissal of real ones. Doubtless I will now be told that these are not the true believers: I will need to dive into another vat of tripe to get to the heart of the conspiracy.
The 9/11 truthers remind me of nothing so much as the climate change deniers, cherry-picking their evidence, seizing any excuse for ignoring the arguments of their opponents. Witness the respondents to my Loose Change column who maintain that the magazine Popular Mechanics, which has ripped the demolition theories apart, is a government front. They know this because one of its editors, Benjamin Chertoff, is the brother/nephew/first cousin of the US homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff. (They are, as far as Benjamin can discover, unrelated, but what does he know?)
Like the millenarian fantasies which helped to destroy the Levellers as a political force in the mid-17th century, this crazy distraction presents a mortal danger to popular oppositional movements. If I were Bush or Blair, nothing would please me more than to see my opponents making idiots of themselves, while devoting their lives to chasing a phantom. But as a controlled asset of the new world order, I would say that, wouldn't I? It's all part of the plot.

Iran: The attack plan

2007-02-20T18:35:00.000Z

Now that we've established that there is no cause to strike Iran (see earlier posts on this blog), we now have the plan to attack that nation for the dastardly deeds that it (didn't) commit. From the BBC via Common Dreams:

US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned.
It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres.
The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment.
The UN has urged Iran to stop the programme or face economic sanctions.
But diplomatic sources have told the BBC that as a fallback plan, senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran.
That list includes Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list, the sources say.
Two triggers
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.
Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.
Long range B2 stealth bombers would drop so-called "bunker-busting" bombs in an effort to penetrate the Natanz site, which is buried some 25m (27 yards) underground.
The BBC's Tehran correspondent Frances Harrison says the news that there are now two possible triggers for an attack is a concern to Iranians.
Authorities insist there is no cause for alarm but ordinary people are now becoming a little worried, she says.

New Cold War ?

2007-02-20T01:34:00.000Z

In a statement reflecting the growing distrust between Moscow and the West, a top Russian general on Monday warned that Poland and the Czech Republic risk being targeted by Russian missiles if they agree to host U.S. missile defense bases.

The stark threat, by missile forces chief Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, was one of the most bellicose comments yet by Russian officials on the issue, which 10 days ago led President Vladimir Putin to warn of a "new Cold War" in a speech in Munich that shocked Western governments.
Source

This statement when taken in context with the comments recently made by Putin could easily draw us towards unsettling conclusions. After accusing the US of establishing, or trying to establish, a "uni-polar world". He went on to state...

"What is a uni-polar world? No matter how we beautify this term, it means one single centre of power, one single centre of force and one single master,"

"The United States has overstepped its borders in all spheres - economic, political and humanitarian, and has imposed itself on other states,"
Source

Has a lack of world stability and incompetent leadership brought us back to the threshold of a new cold war ? There is no doubt that the Russians have turned up the volume with their rhetoric. There is also no doubt that the US has illegally overstepped the boundaries of the sanctuary of sovereign states.

A new cold war? Well maybe not yet, but it is a warning sign to be taken seriously. My question is, are those in power actually listening?

Big Brother is watching you!!

2007-02-20T01:23:00.000Z

A must watch video for those concerned about the sudden erosion of liberties in the United states and beyond.

Source

And of course, whenever the interception of emails is discussed we should never fail to mention the word Echelon

Inside Iran

2007-02-20T00:29:00.000Z

Rageh Omaar embarks on a unique journey inside what he describes as one of the most misunderstood countries in the world, looking at the country through the eyes of people rarely heard - ordinary Iranians.

It took a year of wrangling to get permission to film inside Iran but the result is an amazing portrayal of an energetic and vibrant country that is completely different to the usual images seen in the media. A country of contrasts

1 hr 29 min 30 sec

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Despirately Seeking War, Part 2

2007-02-19T12:28:00.000Z

More on Iran's offer to do everything the U.S. wanted which the U.S. snubbed:

WASHINGTON - Karl Rove, then White House deputy chief of staff for President George W. Bush, received a copy of the secret Iranian proposal for negotiations with the United States from former Republican Congressman Bob Ney in early May 2003, according to an Iranian-American scholar who was then on his Congressional staff.Karl Rove, then White House deputy chief of staff for President George W. Bush, received a copy of the secret Iranian proposal for negotiations with the United States from former Republican Congressman Bob Ney in early May 2003, according to an Iranian-American scholar who was then on his Congressional staff.

...

Ney was chosen by Swiss Ambassador in Tehran Tim Guldimann to carry the Iranian proposal to the White House, according to Parsi, because he knew the Ohio Congressman to be the only Farsi-speaking member of Congress and particularly interested in Iran.

Guldimann helped the Iranians draft the proposal and passed it on the United States.

The White House press office had not responded to a request for a comment on the account naming Rove as the recipient of the Iranian proposal by midday Friday.

The Iranian proposal for negotiations, which suggested that Iran was willing to consider far-reaching compromises on its nuclear programme, relations with Hezbollah and Hamas and support for a Palestinian peace agreement with Israel as part of a larger peace agreement with the United States, has become a contentious issue between the Bush administration and its critics in and out of Congress.

The identification of Rove as a recipient of the secret Iranian proposal throws new light on the question of who in the Bush administration was aware of the Iranian proposal at the time. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied in Congressional testimony last week that she had seen the Iranian offer in 2003 and even chastised former State Department, National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency official Flynt Leverett for having failed to bring it to her attention at the time.

At a Capital Hill conference on U.S.-Iran relations Wednesday, sponsored by the New America Foundation and NIAC, Leverett responded to Rice's criticism by saying it was "unthinkable that it would not have been brought to her attention" and demanding an apology from her.

The revelation that Rove received a copy of the Iranian negotiating proposal within days of the receipt of the State Department makes it appear very unlikely that Rice was not immediately made aware of the document.

The new account of the transmission of a second copy of the Iranian proposal to the White House coincided with the release Wednesday of both the actual text of the proposal as received in Washington and of the cover memo by Ambassador Guldimann which accompanied it. The two documents contradict the suggestion by Rice and by other State Department officials that Guldimann was acting on his own in forwarding the proposal, and that it did not reflect the intentions of the Iranian government.

The two documents were made available on the website of the Washington Post online edition in connection with a story by Post reporter Glenn Kessler. Kessler wrote that they had been provided by "a source who felt its contents were mischaracterised by State Department officials."

The memo from Guldimann, dated May 4, confirms previous reports that the Iranian proposal was drafted by the Iranian Ambassador in Paris Sadeq Kharrazi, in consultation with Guldimann but only after extensive discussions between Kharrazi and the three top figures in Iranian foreign policy: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, then President Mohammad Khatami and his Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi.

As the memo notes, Ambassador Kharrazi, a former deputy foreign minister, was extremely well connected to the very top level of Iranian leadership. Khamenei's son is married to his sister, and the foreign minister is his uncle.

The memo recounts that a first draft of what was to be called a "roadmap" was done by Ambassador Kharazzi with Guldimann's help during a long discussion on Apr. 21, 2003. It was that document that Parsi later obtained from Iranian sources and has been reported in previous accounts of the proposal. After that initial meeting Kharrazi had two long meetings with Khamenei, President Khatami and the foreign minister which he reported as lasting a total of four hours.

According to Kharrazi's account, the three leaders agreed on "85%-90%" of the draft roadmap, with the president and foreign minister voicing no objection and Khamenei raising "some reservations as for some points". Guldimann reported in his memo that Kharrazi asked him at a meeting on May 2 to make "some minor changes in the previous draft," especially on the Middle East peace process.

In the final draft, which has now been made public, the bullet point on "U.S. aims" on the Middle East regarding the Palestinian-Israeli peace issue was changed from "acceptance of the Arab League Beirut declaration (Saudi initiative, two states-approach)" to simply "acceptance of the two-states-approach".

The intention behind that shift is made clearer by the only other substantive change in the newly released final draft. In the discussion of a possible "decision on the first mutual steps" the document suggests that the Iranians would issue a "statement that it supports a peaceful solution in the Middle East, that it accepts a solution which is accepted by the Palestinians and that it follows with interest the discussion on the Roadmap, presented by the Quartet." That formula would allow the Iranian side to maintain a position of support for "the Palestinians" in negotiations with Washington.

Guldimann's memo reports that Kharrazi told him all three leaders supported the initiative. But the Iranian diplomat asked him if he could pass the proposal "very confidentially to someone very high in the DoS [Department of State] in order to get to know the U.S. reaction on it." He also warned that, "if the initiative failed, and if anything about the new Iranian flexibility outline in it became known, they would -- also for internal reasons -- not be bound by it."

That was a clear indication that the Iranian leaders were afraid that their conservative critics would attack them if such a proposal did not bring desired results, charging that it showed weakness.
[Source.]

Right To Exist ?

2007-02-18T22:50:00.000Z

By Uri Avnery

I am an Israeli patriot, and I do not feel that I need anybody's recognition of the right of my state to exist. If somebody is ready to make peace with me, within borders and on conditions agreed upon in negotiations, that is quite enough for me. I am prepared to leave the history, ideology and theology of the matter to the theologians, ideologues and historians...

...The US and their European satellites are boycotting the Palestinian government and starving the Palestinian population. They have set three conditions for lifting the blockade:

(a) That the Palestinian government and Hamas must recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist,

(b) They must stop "terrorism", and

(c) They must undertake to fulfill the agreements signed by the PLO.

On the face of it, that makes sense. In reality, none at all. Because all these conditions are completely one-sided:

(1) The Palestinians must recognize the right of Israel to exist (without defining its borders, of course), but the Israeli government is not required to recognize the right of a Palestinian state to exist at all.

(2) The Palestinians must put an end to "terrorism", but the Israeli government is not required to stop its military operations in the Palestinian territories and stop the building of settlements. The "roadmap" does indeed say so, but that has been completely ignored by everybody, including the Americans.

(3) The Palestinians must undertake to fulfill the agreements, but no such undertaking is required from the Israeli government, which has broken almost all provision of the Oslo agreement. Among others: the opening of the "safe passages" between Gaza and the West Bank, the carrying out of the third "redeployment" (withdrawal from Palestinian territories), the treatment of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as one single territory, etc. etc.

Read the full article Here

I often hear the argument that Hamas refuses to accept the right of Israel to exist, but rarely do I hear people defend the rights of Palestine itself to exist. Surely any two nations 'rights to exist' should never be mutually exclusive ?