It's just the same

OK, so weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaida ties were just cover stories (they amounted to nothing) for the invasion of Iraq after 9/11. But the real reason for the invasion -- regime change -- was still worth it, we were told.



Just think, if Saddam Hussein and his sons were still in power, Iraq's infrastructure would be a mess. The utilities and oil fields would be antiquated and operating way below need or capacity. The future for Iraqis would be terribly uncertain. Thousands would be randomly targeted for torture and murder every year. No one could feel safe on the streets, day or night. Iraq's neighbors would be afraid of invasions from powerful military forces in Iraq. The whole region would be less stable than it was five years ago.

What's that? All these things are happening anyway, right now, while we're there running things?

Oh, sorry. Never mind.

Copied from a letter sent to the Herald tribune: Source Here.

Its about time someone brought up ....(censored)

What with the illegal wire tap probes going on in the states. One word seems to be failing to enter the debate. One word that makes all these current allegations seem like small fish by comparison. This word brings forth a concept straight from the land of George Orwell and 1984.

Any guess ?

Yes, we're talking about our old friend Echelon, as Kurt Nimmo usefully reminds us. A 1999 report by the European Parliament llaid bare the lineaments of the program, which has been carried out on a global basis since the end of World War II by the English-speaking powers of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Decade after decade, every new communication technology has been gathered into the Echelon net. (The program, a closely guarded secret for decades, was confirmed by Australia's Defence Signals Directorate chief in 1999.)

"The stations collectively monitor millions of voice and data messages each day"

Read the full article here

So what happens when he gets to zero ? (new Bush poll)

President Bush’s job-approval rating has fallen to its lowest mark of his presidency, according to a new Harris Interactive poll. Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job as president, down from 35% in April and significantly lower than 43% in January.





Roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults say “things in the country are going in the right direction,” while 69% say “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track.” This trend has declined every month since January, when 33% said the nation was heading in the right direction. Iraq remains a key concern for the general public, as 28% of Americans said they consider Iraq to be one of the top two most important issues the government should address, up from 23% in April. The immigration debate also prompted 16% of Americans to consider it a top issue, down from 19% last month, but still sharply higher from 4% in March.

The Harris poll comes two days after a downbeat assessment of Bush in a New York Times/CBS News poll. The Times, in analyzing the results, said “Americans have a bleaker view of the country’s direction than at any time in more than two decades”

Norway announces 50 percent boost for UN Palestinian aid

OSLO, Norway - Norway on Friday announced a 50-percent hike in its funding for United Nations Palestinian relief efforts to help ease an economic crisis in the occupied territories after a Hamas-led government took office.






Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere announced the increase to 150 million kroner ($24.5 million) after a meeting with the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, Karen AbuZayd in Oslo.

Read more Here.

The Decider (animation)

Mark Fiore is back with another classic animation.

Watch it Here.

Dear Mr President - Bush War Rap

Sir ! No Sir

If you ever wanted to end a war. You need to know this story.

Must watch flash animation Here.

Could the World survive another Bush

President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he thought his younger brother Jeb would make "a great president" but the two-term governor of Florida had given no hint about his intentions.



"I have no idea what he's going to do. I've asked him that question myself. I truly don't think he knows," Bush said in an interview with Florida reporters posted on the St. Petersburg Times Website.

The president said he had pushed his "independent minded" brother fairly hard about his plans after leaving the governor's office next January. He predicted Jeb could have a "very bright" political future.

"I would like to see Jeb run at some point in time, but I have no idea if that's his intention or not," Bush said. Asked if Jeb should run for president, Bush said, "I think Jeb would be a great president. But it's up to Jeb to make a decision to run."

Jeb Bush, 53, has said repeatedly over the past year that he will not run for president in 2008. He has not said anything recently to indicate a change in his thinking.

He can't be serious can he ? Please tell me this is just a nightmare. Just as planet Earth is starting to realise that the reign of George (the Decider) Bush is coming to an end they have to go and throw this in our face.....

Source Reuters via Raw Story

Israel threatens to wipe Iran off the map

Vice Premier of Israel Shimon Peres said Monday that "the president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map."






Peres did not say who should act against Iran if it continues with its nuclear program, but implied military action should be led by the United States, pointing to the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Israeli officials have indicated that Israel would join any international operation against Iran.

Peres's vehement expressions came the same day that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote to US President George W. Bush proposing "new solutions" to their differences in the first letter from an Iranian leader to an American president in 27 years, Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said Monday.

Source Jpost

There, now they have both supposedly said the same thing. Can we now cut out the word play and deal with the realities on the ground instead of the crap that comes out of peoples mouths ? ... Somehow I doubt it

1,091 killed in Baghdad during just one month

At least 1,091 people were killed in Baghdad alone last month in ongoing sectarian violence, President Jalal Talabani said in a statement.

"We received a report from the morgue about the deaths in Baghdad that 1,091 people were killed between April 1 and 30," Mr Talabani was quoted as saying in a statement issued by his office.




He said "we are shocked and angry at the daily reports of unidentified bodies being discovered and of people killed on the basis of their identity".

Iraq has been engulfed in a tit-for-tat sectarian violence since the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in the northern town of Samarra on February 22. Thousands of bodies have been discovered across Iraq, mostly of Sunni Arabs, killed in Shiite reprisals after the Samarra bombing.

The President's statement came as gunmen killed 12 people on Wednesday across Iraq, including 11 in an ambush near the restive city of Baquba amid a crucial parliamentary session expected to reveal a new cabinet.

At least 11 people were killed as gunmen ambushed a minibus travelling near Baquba, just north of Baghdad, a local police officer said. He said the gunmen ambushed the bus carrying employees of the local electricity company 10 kilometres north of Baquba and "sprayed it with bullets, killing 11 people wounding four others".

"After the attack the police came to investigate, and at that time the bus exploded, wounding a policeman." The attack came shortly after Tuesday night's deadly suicide truck bombing in the northern town of Tal Afar which left 24 people dead.

The US military said 134 others were wounded in the attack when the bomber exploded a truck carrying flour in the marketplace in Tal Afar, a town hailed by the Bush administration a few months as an example of successful attempts to pacify the restive north.

But we still don't call this a civil war ?

Alarmed by Raids, Neighbors Stand Guard in Iraq

As evidence mounts that Shiite police commandos are carrying out secret killings, Sunni Arab neighborhoods across Baghdad have begun forming citizen groups to keep the paramilitary forces out of their areas entirely.



In large swaths of western Baghdad, and in at least six majority Sunni areas in its center, young men take turns standing in streets after the 11 p.m. curfew, to send out signals by flashlights and cellphones if strangers approach.

Read the full article Here.

Britain's top lawyer demands closure of Guantanamo Bay

The Attorney-General this evening launched Britain's most outspoken attack yet of the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, demanding the closure of what he described as an international symbol of injustice.




At a keynote speech in Whitehall, London, Lord Goldsmith QC said that the US policy of detaining terrorism suspects without trial at the prison camp in Cuba was 'unacceptable'.

"It is time, in my view, that is should close. Not only would it, in my personal opinion, be right to close Guantanamo as a matter of principle, I believe it would also help to remove what has become a symbol to many - right or wrong - of injustice," he said.

"The historic tradition of the United States as a beacon of freedom, liberty and of justice deserves the removal of this symbol," he told a terrorism conference organised by the Royal United Services Institute.

The camp, which opened in January 2002 to hold prisoners taken in the US invasion of Afghanistan, has been branded "the gulag of our times" by Amnesty International. Many of the 490 men held at the facility have been there for three years without trial.

Lord Goldsmith, who is responsible for advising the Government on the law, has previously voiced concerns over whether the indefinite detention of so-called enemy combatants is legal or fair. He is now the most senior Government minister to publicly call for its closure.

Source

US gives early birthday present to Zarqawi

SOME 200,000 guns the US sent to Iraqi security forces may have been smuggled to terrorists, it was feared yesterday. The 99-tonne cache of AK47s was to have been secretly flown out from a US base in Bosnia. But the four planeloads of arms have vanished.



ÚOrders for the deal to go ahead were given by the US Department of Defense. But the work was contracted out via a complex web of private arms traders. And the Moldovan airline used to transport the shipment was blasted by the UN in 2003 for smuggling arms to Liberia, human rights group Amnesty has discovered.

It follows a separate probe claiming that thousands of guns meant for Iraq's police and army instead went to al-Qaeda

Amnesty chief spokesman Mike Blakemore said: "It's unbelievable that no one can account for 200,000 assault rifles. If these weapons have gone missing it's a terrifying prospect." American defence chiefs hired a US firm to take the guns, from the 90s Bosnian war, to Iraq.

But air traffic controllers in Baghdad have no record of the flights, which supposedly took off between July 2004 and July 2005. A coalition forces spokesman confirmed they had not received "any weapons from Bosnia" and added they were "not aware of any purchases for Iraq from Bosnia". Nato and US officials have already voiced fears that Bosnian arms - sold by US, British and Swiss firms - are being passed to insurgents.

A Nato spokesman said: "There's no tracking mechanism to ensure they don't fall into the wrong hands. There are concerns that some may have been siphoned off." This year a newspaper claimed two UK firms were involved in a deal in which thousands of guns for Iraqi forces were re-routed to al-Qaeda.

One arms broker's lawyer is said to have admitted that nearly all of a shipment of 1,500 AK-47s went missing. And a US official said £270million of equipment could not be traced.

Meanwhile, Aerocom, the Moldovan air firm at the centre of the 200,000 missing AK47s, was stripped of its licence by its national authorities a day before the first shipment.

Two other companies in the complicated sale claim to have papers proving the guns were delivered in Iraq but refuse to show them.

Source : Here

Well what's this about, Zarqawi shows he can't shoot a gun so the US send him a few (thousand) to help him practice. Why are they using private contract firms to deliver weapons to a war zone in the first place ?

Attempts to destabilise put progress in peril

File this one under "no shit." From IPS via Common Dreams:

...Washington has allocated 75 million dollars to inspire "regime change".

The money is to be spent on empowering civil society, providing supplemental requests, broadcasting into Iran, promoting democracy, offering scholarships and fellowships, and enhancing communication.

But Iranian civil society activists who asked to remain unidentified told IPS they believe this policy will just intensify the Islamic republic's repressive approach toward non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and will be used as an excuse to crack down on their activities.

Just last week, agents from Iran's intelligence agency arrested Ramin Jahanbegloo, a prominent scholar, at Tehran's airport. "He had relations with foreigners," said Intelligence Minister Moseni Ejeyee.

Fars news agency, which is closely connected to the country's security forces, asserted later that Jahanbegloo was recruited by the U.S. government in 2001, while he was a researcher for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Under the new U.S. State Department funding, the NED would be in charge of working with Iranian NGOs. Jahanbegloo's arrest serves as a worrisome harbinger of a new wave of intimidation against Iranian civil society, professionals, and intellectuals who simply have connections outside Iran.

Iran's new government perceives civil society groups as a tool for Washington to bring about a non-violent "colour revolution", similar to those which occurred in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004. Consequently, the government has used many different strategies to control NGOs, by increasing the risks of accepting any foreign funding, and inspiring fear among civil society activists to derail any serious changes inside the country.

...

Given the conservatives' paranoia about a Western cultural invasion, Washington's statement of support for NGOs and civil society activities has made it very hard for local NGOs to maintain their relationships with foreign entities. Some of them have canceled their projects in order to avoid being negatively affected by officials' conspiracy-oriented mindset.

It is not entirely without reason that the "conspiracy-oriented mindset" is there.

US backs down and accepts UN decision to provide aid to the Palestinians

+The Quartet of Middle East peace brokers has agreed on a way to channel aid to the Palestinians for a trial period to ease a financial squeeze on the new government following the election of Hamas.




The group of international mediators - the United Nations, the United States, Russia and the European Union, reached the agreement at the UN headquarters on Tuesday.

"The Quartet expressed its willingness to endorse a temporary international mechanism that is limited in scope and duration, operates with full transparency and accountability," it said.

The United States, which initially opposed a European proposal to channel aid to the Palestinians via an international mechanism such as the World Bank, said any such move would have to be limited in scope and mechanism so aid would not reach the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, told a news conference at the United Nations that "the thrust of the statement is that the international community is still trying to respond to the needs of the Palestinian people".

"It is to provide assistance to the Palestinian people so they do not suffer deprivation," she said.

Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, said the international mechanism to be used should begin as soon as possible and be reviewed after three months.

But the agreement seemed to underscore a concern that months of withholding aid from the Palestinians, part of an effort to press the new Hamas-led government towards a more accommodating stance with Israel, was harming the Palestinian people.

The European Union will take the lead in working out the details but has suggested in the past that the World Bank could be a suitable vehicle for getting aid to the Palestinians.

I can only assume John Bolton had a migraine and didn't turn up for the meeting. Whatever the reason, what matters most is that common sense 'appears' to have shone through. All we can do is wait and see.

Iran's letter to President Bush (full transcript here)

(Note: This letter is very long, but well worth the read if you have time. I have decided to show the letter in its entirety for those who wish to read the actual words of the letter sent to George W Bush without the usual selective editing of our western media).


Read it for yourself Here.

Punishing prospects : A humanitarian catastrophe

International law bans collective punishment - a tenet the representatives of the Middle East peace "quartet" should bear in mind when they meet in New York today to consider the grave situation in the Palestinian territories.


The US and the EU suspended their direct funding of the Palestinian Authority when the government of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, entered office last month.

Their purpose was to pressure Hamas to formally recognise Israel, abandon violence, and accept agreements concluded between Israel and the PA when it was being run by Yasser Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas. The boycott has not achieved these goals. By not paying the salaries of 165,000 public employees it has aggravated the rapidly deteriorating economic crisis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It may thus achieve an undeclared and highly risky aim: the collapse of the Hamas government.

The quartet - Russia and the UN form the other half - are to discuss creating a special international "mechanism" to bypass Hamas and funnel aid through the World Bank, the IMF or the UN. Optimists hope Israel might agree to use this channel to resume its suspended tax transfers to the PA. It is unclear whether the US will back this. If it does not, the Europeans should for once be prepared to go it alone in resuming aid to the Palestinians, as Russia has done.

That means cash will flow again to health and education, helping alleviate the misery and despair being reflected in new fighting between Hamas and Fatah gunmen. That in turn risks pushing Gaza, already a byword for deprivation and violence, over the edge of the abyss. The normally cautious World Bank is now warning of a "humanitarian catastrophe".

It does not take a genius to work out how to avoid this. Overall, greater imagination and flexibility is needed to handle Hamas. Having carried out 60 suicide bombings against Israeli targets, mostly civilians, it has maintained a ceasefire for 16 months. That is more important than the totemic issue of recognising Israel. Palestinians voted for it because they had despaired of progress towards a just peace under the discredited old PA regime, not because they had converted en masse to jihad.

Hamas won the sort of democratic election which the US claims to be encouraging. James Wolfensohn resigned recently as the quartet's envoy because he thought the aid cutoff was plain wrong. Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has put it well:"Depriving the people of Palestine of their basic human rights just to punish their elected leaders is not a path to peace."

Article Source Here

Known Truths , Closed Minds

My meeting with Rumsfeld : By Ray McGovern

A graphic reminder for those wishing to spread some truth around that we have our work cut out for us. We have to find imaginative ways to use truth as a lever to pry open closed minds.


Read the article Here.

Paradise Now (video)

This is a powerful film that has become controversial because it forces you look at things you might not want to think about. Hany Abu-Assad's gripping and insightful drama about two Palestinian terrorists preparing for a suicide mission may be shocking but it certainly opens a window into the culture and life of the people in Palestine.




Western thinking may never enable us to understand why someone would decide to become a human bomb. Watching this film will not change your opinion. Such things I believe depend on the culture and society that you belong to. However it is impossible not to recognise the anger, humiliation and shame that drives people to such extreme desperation.

I do not think that there is anything in this film that would come as any surprise to the average Israeli, merely that they would disagree with its conclusions. You may disagree too but in my opinion, such films are all the more important to watch if you feel your are able to judge the conclusion without watching the film.

_H_

Watch the film Here (windows media player required)

Source : Again the excellent ICH

(Note: Please watch this film at the source if you are able. It is presented here for convenience but it is not held on this server and I am sure the bandwidth owner would prefer you to watch the film directly)

Manufacturing Consent (video)

'Required Viewing for every citizen in the Free World'.

Judge for yourself Here (windows media player required: 2 hours 47 minutes)

Source : The excellent ICH




(Note: Please watch this film at the source if you are able. It is presented here for convenience but it is not held on this server and I am sure the bandwidth owner would prefer you to watch the film directly)

Ahmadinejad writes to George in shrewd move towards peace

Iran's president threw a deft trump card into his standoff with the West on Monday when he dispatched a letter to President Bush proposing "new solutions" to the crisis _ a diplomatic overture that vastly complicates U.S. hopes for U.N. Security Council sanctions to punish the Islamic regime.





While Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not disclose what he wrote to the American leader, the letter's very existence appeared to offer Russia and China handy additional justification to block the U.S. sanctions drive while diplomatic channels remained open. Both countries hold Security Council vetos and already were hotly opposed to sanctions.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton dismissed the letter as an attempt to break international pressure.

"It doesn't surprise me that it comes on a day like today in a week when they expect a vote on a resolution. The Iranians are always interested in talking right before somebody puts the squeeze on them," he said. "Then once the squeeze lets up a little bit ... back they go to the pursuit of nuclear weapons."

Mark Fitzpatrick, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, called Ahmadinejad's move "an astute negotiating ploy."

"It's harder for the Americans to get 15 votes (a unanimous result) in the Security Council if they are seen as not willing to talk to the Iranians," the former State Department official said.

Source Here. (via AP)

I see John Bolton is up to his usual tricks, blaming the Iranians when it has always been the US that has refused to have direct talks with Iran. A chance of peace ? Well unlikely unless someone is willing to teach George how to read.

Fill 'er Up

The latest Mark Fiore animation is now available.

Watch it here.

Iran: will only sell oil in Euros

In July Iran will ditch the dollar in favour of the euro as the currency in which it will accept payments for its oil and natural gas exports.




Iranian president Mahmoud Iran's Oil Ministry took the next step toward establishing an oil trading market denominated in euros, rather than the US dollar, by granting a license for the bourse, Iranian state-run television reported.

Just who would trade on the market wasn't immediately apparent. Iranian television did not mention traders or governments willing to market or purchase products on the exchange, nor did it say when it would open for business, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

"Iran has registered an oil bourse on the Persian Gulf island of Kish in which oil would be sold in euros," the broadcast said. Kish, located off the coast of southern Iran, houses the offices of some 100 Iranian and foreign oil companies.

Oil trading is currently only conducted in dollars on markets in New York and London.

According to AP, Iranian legislators earlier this year urged the government to set up the market to reduce the United States' influence over the Islamic republic's economy. They also criticized Oil Minister Sayed Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh, saying he had delayed setting up the bourse.

If the market succeeds, observers say euro-denominated oil sales could eventually convince central bankers to convert some US dollar reserves into euros, possibly causing a decline in the dollar's value.

First floated in 2004 when reformist president Mohammad Khatami was in power, the idea of a euros-traded oil bourse gained new life after the stridently nationalist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president last summer, AP pointed out.

As the fourth-largest oil producing country in the world, the second in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting countries and controlling about 5 percent of the global oil supply, Iran has a measure of influence over international oil markets. Tehran also partially controls the Persian Gulf's Strait of Hormuz through which much of the world's oil supply must pass, AP added.

Iran has sought to wield its oil resources as a bargaining tool in Tehran's ongoing standoff with the West over its nuclear program.

Iran's deputy oil minister, M.H. Nejad Hosseinian, said Thursday he doubted the UN Security Council would impose sanctions on Iran's oil sector because such a move would drive oil prices higher, AP stated.

Council members are considering imposing sanctions on Iran for defying their request to halt all uranium enrichment-related activities by late last month

Source Here.

Part of me died when I saw this cruel killing

By HALA JABER





EVEN by the stupefying standards of Iraq’s unspeakable violence, the murder of Atwar Bahjat, one of the country’s top television journalists, was an act of exceptional cruelty.

Nobody but her killers knew just how much she had suffered until a film showing her death on February 22 at the hands of two musclebound men in military uniforms emerged last week. Her family’s worst fears of what might have happened have been far exceeded by the reality.

Bahjat was abducted after making three live broadcasts from the edge of her native city of Samarra on the day its golden-domed Shi’ite mosque was blown up, allegedly by Sunni terrorists.

Roadblocks prevented her from entering the city and her anxiety was obvious to everyone who saw her final report. Night was falling and tensions were high.

Two men drove up in a pick-up truck, asking for her. She appealed to a small crowd that had gathered around her crew but nobody was willing to help her. It was reported at the time that she had been shot dead with her cameraman and sound man.

We now know that it was not that swift for Bahjat. First she was stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but particularly so for a pious Muslim who concealed her hair, arms and legs from men other than her father and brother.

Then her arms were bound behind her back. A golden locket in the shape of Iraq that became her glittering trademark in front of the television cameras must have been removed at some point — it is nowhere to be seen in the grainy film, which was made by someone who pointed a mobile phone at her as she lay on a patch of earth in mortal terror.

Article continues Here.

Most Americans oppose military action against Iran

Many adults in the United States have a clear idea of how their government should approach the situation regarding Iran’s nuclear program, according to a poll by Opinion Research Corporation released by CNN. 63 per cent of respondents think the U.S. should resort to economic and diplomatic efforts, but not take military action.




After being branded as part of an "axis of evil" by U.S. president George W. Bush in January 2002, Iran has contended that its nuclear program aims to produce energy, not weapons. Support for military action against Iran stands at 13 per cent.

Polling Data

What do you think the United States should do to get Iran to shut down its nuclear program?

Take military action against Iran now
13%

Use economic and diplomatic efforts,
but not take military action right now
63%

Take no action against Iran at this time
21%

No opinion
3%

Source Here.

Isn't it amazing that the tiny minority of trigger happy warmongers continue to create the amount of noise that they do ...

Sudan to Accept U.N. Peacekeepers (at last)

Sudan's government said Saturday that its peace accord with Darfur's main insurgent group allows it to welcome U.N. peacekeepers to the troubled region, as mediators worked to persuade the rest of the fractured rebel movement to join the process.





The peace agreement, reached Friday in Abuja with one branch of the Sudan Liberation Army after two years of sporadic negotiations, aims to end ethnic bloodshed that has killed at least 180,000 people in three years and left some 2 million displaced.

The suggestion that it could pave the way for a deployment of U.N. peacekeepers overturns previous rejections by Khartoum, which so far has allowed only African Union peacekeepers on the ground.

The underfunded African forces have largely been ineffective in stopping atrocities and re-establishing security, leaving tens of thousands of refugees in camps with little food or water.

Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in Darfur, a vast region about the size of France, erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003 with rebels demanding regional autonomy. The government is accused of responding by unleashing Janjaweed militias upon civilians, a charge Sudan denies.

The peace deal calls for a cease-fire, disarmament of goverment-linked militias, the integration of thousands of rebel fighters into Sudan's armed forces and a protection force for civilians in the immediate aftermath of the war.

Article source (and continues) Here.