September 2007

The Whores of War
Posted: Sunday, September 30, 2007

¤ Lost In Translation: Ahmadinejad And The Media
First I want to make some remarks about that now world-famous statement of President Ahmadinejad at Columbia: "We do not have homosexuals in Iran of the kind you have in your country." The American media conveniently ignored the second, and crucial, part of his sentence as something redundant.
Obviously he was not saying, We don’t have any homosexuals whatsoever in Iran-something nobody in the world would believe, not even in Iran. And by implication, he was not telling his audience, I am a plain liar! -something which his audience at Columbia and the American media construed him to be saying.
What he was saying is that homosexuality in the US and homosexuality in Iran are issues which are as far apart from one another as two cultural universes possibly can be. They are so dissimilar that any attempt to relate them and bring them under a common caption would be misleading. "Homosexuality is not an issue in Iran as it is in present-day American society." This was, apparently what was saying in polite terms.

¤ Hillary Clinton Votes for War - Again
¤ Ending War for Profit
¤ Two Different Accounts of Deadly Airstrike in Baghdad
¤ China and the US: Whose Kettle Is Really Black?

¤ Iran Labels CIA 'Terrorist Organization'
Iran's parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army "terrorist organizations," in apparent response to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The hard-line dominated parliament cited U.S. involvement in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, using depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supporting the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombing and killing Iraqi civilians, and torturing terror suspects in prisons.

¤ South America embraces Bush's arch enemy
¤ Europeans angry after Bush climate speech 'charade'
¤ How to Make Iraq Look Like Whipped Cream
¤ Clinton Time: Do We Set Our Clocks Forward or Back?

¤ Why Clinton is Culpable
A former senior UN diplomat has revealed to me details of how, just over 10 years ago, the Clinton administration deliberately sabotaged UN weapons inspections in Iraq.
American officials were fearful that Iraq would be officially certified as weapons-free, a development that was seen as a political liability for Bill Clinton. Thus the stage was set for the manufacture of the Iraqi WMD myth as the excuse for George Bush's catastrophic invasion of Iraq.

¤ A Ticking Bomb
¤ The US Economy Since 1980
¤ Wag the Tail, Frag the Dog
¤ Buyer's Remorse

¤ John Carlos Speaks Out on the Jena 6
When 50,000 people -- many young, many poor, overwhelmingly African- American -- marched in Jena, La., last Thursday, the political impact was felt around the country. Marching on behalf of six young men known as the Jena 6, who face prison time for a schoolyard fight, the case held an echo of past civil rights movements. At the center of it all is Dr. John Carlos.

¤ Spinning Suicide Statistics
¤ Burma by the Numbers

¤ Must Israeli repression be rewarded with folded arms?
"The UN has become a bystander. Much of mainstream Western media have become bystanders. Arab states are bystanders. The EU is a collective of bystanders. Even South Africa which under Nelson Mandela held the potential of being a critical proponent and agitator [all rolled into one] for Palestinian human rights has sadly become a pedestrian, looking on as yet another bystander."

¤ The Whores of War
¤ The futility of betting on US for Peace in Palestine

EU-Africa summit: Mozambique threatens boycott over Zimbabwe
Posted: Friday, September 28, 2007

The Herald
Herald Reporter

MOZAMBIQUE has vowed not to attend the forthcoming Europe-Africa Summit if President Mugabe is not invited, adding to the chorus of several other African states that have taken the same position.

Mr Eduardo Koloma, the Mozambican Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, told Radio Mozambique that his country's participation at the summit set for December in Portugal rests squarely on the unconditional attendance of Cde Mugabe.

Mr Koloma’s remarks come barely a week after former Mozambican president Mr Joaquim Chissano threw his weight behind President Mugabe’s attendance, saying he should be invited to the summit.

Earlier during the week, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, who is also chairman of Sadc, said the regional bloc would boycott the summit unless President Mugabe was invited.

Mr Mwanawasa met Cde Mugabe at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, where both leaders are attending the 62nd Session of the UN General Assembly, and officially communicated to him that Sadc would not take part in the scheduled summit if Zimbabwe was barred.

Yesterday, Mr Koloma was quoted as saying: "Mozambique subscribes to the principles and decisions of Sadc leaders and the position of the regional body was announced by the current chairperson."

"As current chairperson, he speaks for the region."

Mr Chissano, who was in the country for the commemoration of the life and work of former United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold at Africa University in Mutare, urged Africa not to be divided and manipulated by the West to the detriment of the continent.

Cde Mugabe, said Mr Chissano, should participate at the summit for the exchange of views in Lisbon because the summit was not a war zone but a forum for discussion.

The former Mozambican leader’s statement follows reports that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he would not attend the summit if Cde Mugabe was invited.

The British premier has threatened to boycott the Lisbon summit, claiming that President Mugabe’s presence in Portugal would divert attention from important issues such as poverty, climate change and health, a posture that has been questioned by analysts who wonder why he has not boycotted the UN General Assembly.

Portugal, the host nation, which has repeatedly defended Zimbabwe’s participation, has said the potential rewards of close ties between Africa and Europe outweigh the antagonism between Britain and Zimbabwe.

The EU, which is fast losing control on the continent against the backdrop of growing Sino-African ties which have seen China’s influence soaring in the recent years, is keen to regain its grip on Africa.

The Widening Gyre of Iraq's Death Spiral
Posted: Friday, September 28, 2007

¤ Why Did Israel Attack Syria?
¤ US Senate calls for Iraq's partition
¤ Iraq VP dismisses subdivision plans
¤ Arab League condemns the separation of Iraq
¤ An old Zionist dream: the partition of Iraq

¤ Joe's Borrowed Idea: Split Iraq into Three Pieces
It is, to say the least, a predictable outcome, one that dovetails nicely with the neocon master plan. "US lawmakers voted Wednesday to split Iraq into a loose federation of sectarian-based regions and urged President George W Bush to press Iraqi leaders to agree," reports Monsters and Critics. "More than 20 Republicans joined Democrats to pass the non-binding measure in the Senate, 75-23, showing frustration in both parties about Bush's war policy and lagging national reconciliation in Iraq." How anybody expects "national reconciliation" in a country—or the mere shadow of a country—bombed to kingdom come is not explained, not that it matters, as splintering Iraq into three distinct pieces harks back to the earliest Israeli planners, or maybe I should say criminal connivers.

¤ Little relief in sight for millions of displaced Iraqis
¤ IOF troops exploit world silence to violate immunity of Palestinian MPs

¤ Syria's Illusory Nukes: More Propaganda
As suspected, Israel's claim of a raid against a Syrian nuclear facility is a load of hooey. "Israel did not strike a nuclear weapons facility in Syria on Sept. 6, instead striking a cache of North Korean missiles, current and former intelligence officials say," writes Larisa Alexandrovna for Raw Story. "American intelligence sources familiar with key events leading up to the Israeli air raid tell Raw Story that what the Syrians actually had were North Korean No-Dong missiles, possibly located at a site in either the city of Musalmiya in the northern part of Syria or further south around the city of Hama." Of course, considering "American intelligence sources" are notorious liars, turning weather balloon trailers into chemical weapons labs, this admission is suspect as well. For all we know, Israel bombed a mule team, if that.

¤ Ninth Circle: The Widening Gyre of Iraq's Death Spiral

¤ Iraq Will Have to Wait
The long-awaited "progress report" of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the status of the occupation of Iraq has been made, providing Americans, via the compliant media, with the spectacle of loyal Bush yes men offering faith-based analysis in lieu of fact-based assessment. In the days and weeks that have since passed, two things have become clear: Neither Congress nor the American people (including the antiwar movement) have a plan or the gumption to confront President Bush in anything more than cosmetic fashion over the war in Iraq, and while those charged with oversight mill about looking to score cheap political points and/or save face, the administration continues its march toward conflict with Iran unimpeded.

¤ Housing Market Crashes and Burns
¤ Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy
¤ Dan Rather Stands by His Story

¤ Bush Administration & State Dept.: Corruption in Iraq is Classified
Corruption in the Iraqi government–it's classified information. So says the State Department.
In preparation for a September 27 hearing on corruption within the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Representative Henry Waxman, who chairs the House government oversight and reform committee, sent a request–and then a subpoeana–to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for documents and witnesses. He wanted the State Department to turn over various documents, including a copy of a secret report prepared by the Baghdad embassy that details rampant corruption within the Iraqi government. He also demanded that the State Department make available to his investigators three officials in the department's Office of Accountability and Transparency who have worked on the issue of Iraqi corruption.

¤ Let's Start By Admitting We Were Wrong In Iraq
¤ Couric Admits Feeling NBC Pressure On Iraq Coverage
¤ Iran condemns U.S. move to brand Guards "terrorist"
¤ Blackwater 'may be worse than Abu Ghraib'

¤ Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty in the World
There is a "mystery" we must explain: How is it that as corporate investments and foreign aid and international loans to poor countries have increased dramatically throughout the world over the last half century, so has poverty? The number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world's population. What do we make of this?
Over the last half century, U.S. industries and banks (and other western corporations) have invested heavily in those poorer regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America known as the "Third World." The transnationals are attracted by the rich natural resources, the high return that comes from low-paid labor, and the nearly complete absence of taxes, environmental regulations, worker benefits, and occupational safety costs.

Iraq Will Have to Wait
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2007

by Scott Ritter

The long-awaited "progress report" of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the status of the occupation of Iraq has been made, providing Americans, via the compliant media, with the spectacle of loyal Bush yes men offering faith-based analysis in lieu of fact-based assessment. In the days and weeks that have since passed, two things have become clear: Neither Congress nor the American people (including the antiwar movement) have a plan or the gumption to confront President Bush in anything more than cosmetic fashion over the war in Iraq, and while those charged with oversight mill about looking to score cheap political points and/or save face, the administration continues its march toward conflict with Iran unimpeded.
Full Article : commondreams.org

A Culture of Violence
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2007

¤ 'A Coup Has Occurred'
If there's another 9/11 under this regime ... it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.

Will there be anything left for NSA to increase its surveillance of us? ... They may be to the limit of their technical capability now, or they may not. But if they're not now they will be after another 9/11.

¤ Playing the fear card

¤ America's Police Brutality Pandemic
Bush's "war on terror" quickly became Bush's war on Iraqi civilians. So far over one million Iraqi civilians have lost their lives because of Bush's invasion, and four million have been displaced. Iraq's infrastructure is in ruins. Disease is rampart. Normal life has disappeared.

Self-righteous Americans justify these monstrous crimes as necessary to ensure their own safety from terrorist attack. Yet, Americans are in far greater danger from their own police forces than they are from foreign terrorists. Ironically, Bush's "war on terror" has made Americans less safe at home by diminishing US civil liberty and turning an epidemic of US police brutality into a pandemic.

¤ Bush Makes Mockery of UN Declaration of Human Rights in NY Speech

¤ Bush Threatened Nations That Did Not Back Iraq War
US President George W. Bush threatened nations with retaliation if they did not vote for a UN resolution backing the Iraq war, according to a transcript published Wednesday of a conversation he had with former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar.
In the transcript of a meeting on February 22, 2003 - a month before the US-led invasion of Iraq - published in the El Pais daily, Bush tells Aznar that nations like Mexico, Angola, Chile and Cameroon must know that the security of the United States is at stake.
He says during the meeting on his ranch in Texas that Angola stood to lose financial aid while Chile could see a free trade agreement held up in the US Senate if they did not back the resolution, the left-wing paper said.

¤ A Culture of Violence

¤ U.S. soldier pleads not guilty to killing Iraqis
A U.S. soldier pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of killing Iraqis and then trying to cover it up by planting weapons on their bodies.
Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval, of Laredo, Texas, has been charged with premeditated murder, wrongfully placing weapons with the remains of the Iraqis and obstructing justice. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.
Military prosecutors said the deaths occurred separately between April and June near Iskandariyah, a mostly Sunni Arab city 30 miles south of Baghdad.

¤ US caused more deaths in Iraq than Saddam, says anti-war tribunal
¤ The Spanish Downing Street memo?
¤ Seven people killed in separate Israeli attacks on Gaza
¤ Fifty-seven people killed in Iraq bombings

¤ A Culture of Violence
What do you call a country that glorifies wars and violence in the name of peace. One that's been at war every year in its history against one or more adversaries. It has the highest homicide rate of all western nations and a passion for owning guns, yet the two seem oddly unconnected. Violent films are some of its most popular, and similar video games crowd out the simpler, more innocent street play of generations earlier. Prescription and illicit drug use is out of control as well when tobacco, alcohol and other legal ones are included.

¤ Save the children - unless they are Iraqi
¤ Transcript of Private 2003 Bush Talk Promising Iraq Invasion
¤ 52 killed in Vietnam bridge collapse
¤ Burma: The world watches
¤ Weapons of US soldiers in Iraq 'plagued with problems'
¤ Is Jena America?
¤ Global Consensus, Not Global Conquest
¤ A Pandemic of Police Brutality
¤ Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran?
¤ A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas
¤ No More Mercenaries
¤ If it's critical of Israel, spike the story!

¤ Ahmadinejad is no Hitler, and OJ Simpson is no Bush
They insist he wants to "wipe Israel off the map," even though a thoroughly documented analysis that appeared on the Information Clearing House website in 2006 shows that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's words were severely distorted in translation.
He was actually referring to replacing the Israeli regime, by the same historical process that eliminated South African apartheid.

¤ The Dream, Downscaled - The Jena 6: A Bad, Easy Cause

¤ Bush to World: Up Is Down
George W. Bush – who asserts his unlimited personal authority to kill, kidnap, torture and spy on anyone of his choosing anywhere in the world – opened his annual speech to the United Nations by hailing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The U.S. President pushed the envelope of the world's credulity even further by citing the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of 1948 as justification for his "war on terror" and his draconian policies for eliminating "terrorists" or other threats to world order with little or no due process.

¤ Cui Bono? -- and Bush's Monstrous, Deadly Dare
¤ Lawmaker says Rice interfered with Iraq inquiry
¤ Dinner with Ahmadinejad
¤ Couric weighs in on Iraq, Rather

Ahmadinejad v. Bollinger: Words Were Spoken, But ...
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2007

A guest comes in the guise of a speaker, a performer, a diner, or numerous other permutations that embody him or her with special status, but one thing is always true: a guest is invited. An invitation is a communication, expressed both formally and politely, to an individual, asking that they attend a festivity or event of ones own creation. In this case, Columbia University’s president, Lee C. Bollinger, chose to ask a visiting foreign dignitary to grace his campus with his presence. A guest who accepts such an invitation does not envision that they will be publicly humiliated and attacked by their host for the amusement of other attendees.

How embarrassing then that such a thing could occur, at so prestigious a venue as Columbia University, so publicly and at the center of such media attention. How much worse, however, is that not one newspaper in this country chose to point out that Lee C. Bollinger acted appallingly and disgracefully? It is admirable that he chose to invite President Ahmadinejad to speak at his campus, to give a man excoriated by the American government and its oddly un-free press, a chance to state his case. But it is unforgivable that he would choose to backtrack on his initial gesture at the sad expense of his guest, and to the everlasting shame of his country.

I, for one, looked on with disgust. I also took away from the fiasco one new and not surprising bit of information: the President of Iran possesses a grace that neither his host nor the hecklers at Columbia University nor the press in this country nor, I might as well state the obvious, the president of this country can claim. Chalk one up, once again, for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Full Article : commondreams.org

Couric weighs in on Iraq, Rather
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Speaking at the National Press Club Tuesday evening, CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric pulled back the curtain on her personal views of both the war in Iraq and former "Evening News" anchor Dan Rather.

"Everyone in this room would agree that people in this country were misled in terms of the rationale of this war," said Couric, adding that it is "pretty much accepted" that the war in Iraq was a mistake.

"I've never understood why [invading Iraq] was so high on the administration's agenda when terrorism was going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that [Iraq] had no true connection with al Qaeda."

Further, Couric said the Bush administration botched the war effort, calling it "accepted truths" that it erred by"disbanding the Iraq military, and leaving 100,000 Sunni men feeling marginalized and angry...[and] whether there were enough boots on the ground, the feeling that we'd be welcomed as liberators and didn't need to focus as much on security." She added "I'd feel totally comfortable saying any of that at some point, if required, on television."
Full Article : examiner.com

Dinner with Ahmadinejad
Posted: Wednesday, September 26, 2007

This is now an annual ritual for the President of Iran. Every year, during the U.N. General Assembly in New York, he plots out a media campaign that – in its shrewdness, relentlessness, and quest for attention – would rival Angelina Jolie on a movie junket. And like any international figure, Mr. Ahmadinejad hones his performance for multiple audiences: in this case, the journalists and academics who can filter his speech and ideas for a wider American audience.
Full Article : time.com

Why single out Iran? What about Israel?
Posted: Tuesday, September 25, 2007

¤ Jim Crow-Style Justice in the "New South"
¤ Speech? Arrest Him for God's Sake
¤ The Climate Change Hypocrite

¤ Pursue Diplomacy, Not War, with Iran
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the United States has prompted an outcry, including protests and tabloid headlines calling him "evil" and a "madman." As Juan Cole says, "The real reason his visit is controversial is that the American right has decided the United States needs to go to war against Iran. Ahmadinejad is therefore being configured as an enemy head of state." The Bush administration, which maintains that "all options" remain on the table with Iran, should vigorously pursue the diplomatic option, instead of moving inexorably toward the military option.

¤ Ahmadinejad v. Bollinger: Words Were Spoken, But What Was Said?

¤ Ahmedinejad: The New Boogeyman

¤ Dan Rather, Tased and Confused
Newly unearthed records reveal that, in 2004, when Americans were in the midst of a brutal electoral battle over whether to reelect a president posing as a war hero, a commanding US reporter, Dan Rather, went AWOL.
Just three months before the election, Rather had a story that might have changed the outcome of that razor-close race. We now know that Dan cut a back-room deal to shut his mouth, grab his ankles, and let his network retract a story he knew to be absolutely true.

¤ Petty and Cruel Dictator
¤ School Discipline Tougher on African Americans
¤ Is Iraq Arabic for Korea or for Vietnam?
¤ Feeding the Flames at Traitor's Gate
¤ Have Taser, will torture - and call it a 'safe alternative'
¤ US threats are the real danger to peace
¤ Orangutan rips off tourist's trousers
¤ Iraq car bombs kill nine after 28 die in mosque blast
¤ Why single out Iran? What about Israel?

¤ Weapons left by US troops 'used as bait to kill Iraqis'
US soldiers are luring Iraqis to their deaths by scattering military equipment on the ground as "bait", and then shooting those who pick them up, it has been alleged at a court martial. The highly controversial tactic, which has hitherto been kept secret, is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of a number of Iraqis who were subsequently classified as enemy combatants and used in statistics to show the "success" of the "surge" in US forces.

¤ The New Iraq Horror Show

Company Will Monitor Phone Calls to Tailor Ads
Posted: Monday, September 24, 2007

Companies like Google scan their e-mail users' in-boxes to deliver ads related to those messages. Will people be as willing to let a company listen in on their phone conversations to do the same?

Pudding Media, a start-up based in San Jose, Calif., is introducing an Internet phone service today that will be supported by advertising related to what people are talking about in their calls. The Web-based phone service is similar to Skype's online service – consumers plug a headset and a microphone into their computers, dial any phone number and chat away. But unlike Internet phone services that charge by the length of the calls, Pudding Media offers calling without any toll charges.
Full Article : nytimes.com

Blackwaters run deep
Posted: Monday, September 24, 2007

¤ U.S. murdering Iraqi civilians

¤ Blackwaters run deep
Mercenary armies are not new. Before conscription most wars were fought with hired hands, often consisting of soldiers from many countries serving under a single flag, so the use of mercenaries in Iraq, Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia (and let us not forget the hired killers who fought under the South African flag all across Southern Africa, see below) should not come as a surprise, nor should the BBC's constant use of the term "contractor" instead of mercenary come as a surprise to us either.

¤ How George Bush Became The New Saddam
¤ Racism and War: Overcoming Us and Them
¤ Video shows Blackwater guards fired 1st
¤ 'Cowboy' Aggression Works for Blackwater
¤ The Age of Irresponsibility
¤ Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland
¤ Iran's president: I don't deny Holocaust
¤ Ahmadinejad and Columbia
¤ Turning Ahmadinejad Into Public Enemy No. 1
¤ Full Interview With Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
¤ Cleaning Up After The Bushes... Literally
¤ Bush, the Bomb and Iran
¤ The Whole (Jena 6) Story?
¤ Corporate Media Turned Out For Jena, But Not For Anti-War.
¤ Wealth Creates Poverty?

Zimbabwe: Outrage Intensifies Over Brown's Threat
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2007

By Bulawayo Bureau
September 22, 2007
The Herald

'Arm-twisting not way to solve Zim's challenges' CONDEMNATION of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown over his threat to boycott the Euro-Africa Summit if President Mugabe attends intensified yesterday.

Amid growing international consensus that the conference must go ahead even without Britain, the Pan-African Parliament said Mr Brown should desist from behaving like an overlord.

In remarks that received worldwide coverage yesterday, Dr Gertrude Mongella, the Tanzanian president of the Pan-African Parliament, said "arm-twisting" was not the way to solve Zimbabwe's challenges.

Her comments reflect the determination of the African Union to go ahead as planned and invite President Mugabe to the Euro-Africa summit in Lisbon, Portugal, in December.

Dr Mongella, attending a conference with Socialist Members of the European Parliament in Brussels, has made it clear that African solidarity might undermine Mr Brown's "him-or-me" challenge to the summit.

"We do know there are some problems (in Zimbabwe), but if somebody wants to arm-twist Zimbabwe, that's not the best way to solve the problems," she said.

"I think this is again another way of manipulating Africa. Zimbabwe is a nation which got independence. I think in the developed countries there are so many countries doing things which not all of us subscribe to – we have seen the Iraq war, not everyone accepts what is being done in Iraq."

Dr Mongella urged all African and European leaders to go to the summit – including Mr Brown – to join the talks to "meet, develop a very committed dialogue to solve problems, rather than threatening each other by going or not going".

She said dialogue must be pursued to resolve any disputes.

"I think if we want to move in the right direction, with the African way of doing things, you discuss things under a tree till you agree. So if somebody does not come under a tree to discuss, that is not the African way of doing things."

Mr Brown was also condemned by Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the United Nations, Mr Boniface Chidyausiku, who said the prime minister had no right to dictate who should be at the summit or not.

Mr Chidyausiku said President Mugabe had a sovereign right, like all other African heads of state, to attend the Lisbon summit, adding that bigger issues affecting Africa should be prioritised.

Mr Chidyausiku's remarks follow almost similar sentiments by Portuguese EU legislator Mr Paolo Casaca and the Southern African Development Community chairman, President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia, on Thursday.

President Mwanawasa even countered Mr Brown with his own threat, saying if President Mugabe is barred from attending the summit, Zambia and probably other African leaders would not go to Lisbon.

Mr Louis Michel, the EU Commissioner for Aid and Development, signalled Mr Brown's growing isolation, saying that one person cannot scuttle a key summit between two continents.

"We think that a single individual case cannot take as hostage the relations between two continents," said Mr Michel.

He added that the European Commission would want the summit to go ahead regardless of Mr Brown's threat.

Writing in a British newspaper, The Independent, on Thursday, Mr Brown provoked sharp international criticism when he said he would boycott the Portugal summit – the first since 2000 – if President Mugabe attends.

Mr Brown, like his predecessor Mr Tony Blair, claimed that the Government had presided over the prevailing economic challenges, ignoring the impact of illegal EU and American sanctions.

He said the EU's five-year visa ban on President Mugabe must be enforced to ensure that he does not travel to Portugal.

But Mr Michel said the ban does not apply to international meetings.

"I expect it is possible to have a compromise, but if there is no compromise, what can you do? The only option I cannot accept is suppressing the summit," he said.

Mr Brown, who assumed office in June, is said to base his foreign policy on a series of anti-Zimbabwe reports aired by several British media outlets, including the BBC and ITV News.

Iran and Israel face off over nuclear weapons
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2007

Iran called for UN inspectors to be dispatched to verify whether Israel has nuclear weapons, in a heated showdown with the Jewish state at a meeting of the UN atomic agency Friday.

The face-off between the two nations came as Arab states condemned Israel for hiding an atomic arsenal, at a general conference of the 144-nation International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.

Iranian envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh told the conference that IAEA inspectors should be sent "to Israel to verify who is telling the truth."

Israel neither confirms nor denies it has nuclear weapons, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had hinted in a German television interview in December 2006 that Israel did in fact have the bomb.
Full Article : spacewar.com

Race and Coverage of the Jena 6
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2007

¤ Apart from the noose, this is an everyday story of modern America
The first Sean Hannity heard about it was last night when Reverend Al was trying to bring it up and Hannity assumed he was talking about Megan Williams, the young black woman who was tortured and sexually assaulted by those crazy hillbillies in West Virginia. Cryptkeeper Colmes tried to explain but as usual Hannity didn't hear a word he said.
The Jena 6 case began last fall when a new black student to the mostly white, rural Louisiana town of Jena sat under the "white tree," so called because it was the place where the white kids at school congregated. The next day three white boys on the rodeo team hung three nooses from the tree.

¤ Judge denies request to free Jena teen
¤ 'Jena Is America'
¤ Race and Coverage of the Jena 6
¤ Marni Soupcoff on the Jena 6 and O.J.'s girlfriend, Christine Prody
¤ Jena 6 teen is denied release

¤ Senate Clown Show
¤ Blackwater: Hired Guns, Above the Law

¤ Blackwater, Oil and the Colonial Enterprise
Blackwater USA's mercenary mission in Iraq is very much in the news this week, and rightly so. The private military contractor's war-for-profit program, which has been so brilliantly exposed by Jeremy Scahill, may finally get a measure of the official scrutiny it merits as the corporation scrambles to undo the revocation by the Iraqi government of its license to operate in that country. There will be official inquiries in Baghdad, and in Washington. The U.S. Congress might actually provide some of the oversight that is its responsibility. Perhaps, and this is a big "perhaps," Blackwater's "troops" could come home before the U.S. soldiers who have been forced to fight, and die, in defense of these international rent-a-cops.

¤ Why Bush won't attack Iran

¤ Case Dismissed?
The nation's biggest telecommunications companies, working closely with the White House, have mounted a secretive lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a measure wiping out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S. intelligence community's warrantless surveillance programs.

¤ Britain has plutonium for 17,000 Nagasaki bombs
¤ The Police State Is Right Here, Right Now

¤ Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright
Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.
"This is a very dangerous situation for the dollar," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.

¤ Surviving Democracy

¤ Ignorance of Iraqi death toll no longer an option
News report tallies suggest some 75,000 Iraqis have died since the US-led invasion. A study of 13 war affected countries presented at a recent Harvard conference found over 80% of violent deaths in conflicts go unreported by the press and governments. City officials in the Iraqi city of Najaf were recently quoted on Middle East Online stating that 40,000 unidentified bodies have been buried in that city since the start of the conflict. When speaking to the Rotarians in a speech covered on C-SPAN on September 5th, H.E. Samir Sumaida'ie, the Iraqi Ambassador to the US , stated that there were 500,000 new widows in Iraq . The Baker-Hamilton Commission similarly found that the Pentagon under-counted violent incidents by a factor of 10. Finally, a week ago the respected British polling firm ORB released the results of a poll estimating that 22% of households had lost a member to violence during the occupation of Iraq, equating to 1.2 million deaths. This finding roughly verifies a less precisely worded BBC poll last February that reported 17% of Iraqis had a household member who was a victim of violence.

¤ The UN and Iraq, AGAIN

¤ Mandela Still Alive After Embarrassing Bush Remark

¤ Bush inartfully suggests Saddam killed Mandela
In a press conference this morning, President Bush tried to assert that Saddam's brutal rule over Iraq wiped the country clean of potential democratic reformers — individuals who may have possessed leadership skills like former South African President Nelson Mandela. In doing so, Bush inartfully suggested Saddam killed Mandela

¤ George W. Bush's Thug Nation
It's said that over time Presidents – especially two-termers – imbue the nation with their personalities and priorities, for good or ill. If that's true, it could help explain the small-minded mean-spiritedness that seems to be pervading the behavior of the United States these days, both at home and abroad.
On a global level, the world reads about trigger-happy Blackwater "security contractors" mowing down civilians in Baghdad, the U.S. military killing unarmed people under loose "rules of engagement" in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and the CIA "rendering" suspected Islamists to secret prisons or to third-country dungeons where torture is practiced.

¤ Iran President Ahmadinejad rips U.S.
¤ The Invincible "Wall of Spin"
¤ Enough is enough: racial protest brings thousands to Southern town
¤ African leaders accuse Brown of 'arm-twisting'
¤ Blackwater gets OK to resume Iraq duty
¤ This oily business of dealing with evil foreign leaders.
¤ The real story of Baghdad's Bloody Sunday
¤ Feds Probe Blackwater Weapons Smuggling
¤ Blackwater back on the streets of Baghdad
¤ A History of Violence
¤ Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico
¤ Olbermann to Bush: 'Your Hypocrisy is so Vast'
¤ The Age of Irresponsibility
¤ Beneath the Hideous Veneer of "Security"

Bush inartfully suggests Saddam killed Mandela
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2007

In a press conference this morning, President Bush tried to assert that Saddam’s brutal rule over Iraq wiped the country clean of potential democratic reformers -- individuals who may have possessed leadership skills like former South African President Nelson Mandela. In doing so, Bush inartfully suggested Saddam killed Mandela:
Full Article : thinkprogress.org

US Gov't Keeping Records On Travelers' Personal Items
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2007

U.S. Effort More Extensive Than Previously Known

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 22, 2007; Page A01

The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.

The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security's effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department's Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people entering the country.
Full Article : msnbc.msn.com

Race and Coverage of the Jena 6
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2007

The Elephant That is Never Leaving the Room

The Jena 6 are six African-American high school students from Jena, Louisiana who were arrested and charged with attempted second degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder after their alleged involvement in an assault on a white student. That the students were charged for what amounts to a schoolyard fight is news in itself, but what is more troubling is that the District Attorney, Reed Walters, chose to charge the students as adults.

Jena 6 is a story of tenuous race relations in a town that the Civil Rights Act forgot. At the beginning of the first semester last year, a black student at Jena High School asked for permission to sit under the a tree that had traditionally been a meeting place for white students. He was told that he could sit wherever he wanted. The following day, students arrived to see the tree adorned with three hangman's nooses, each painted in the school colors.

The story then follows an all too familiar path. Black students protest nooses at school. White students attend a nearby school as punishment while their actions are dismissed as a silly prank. Black student tries to enter largely white party. When white students attack and beat him, the student who breaks bottle over his head is charged with a misdemeanor and given probation.

White student threatens black students with a gun in a grocery store. Black students wrestle gun away from him and are charged with second-degree robbery. White student taunts black student about his beating with racial epithets. Black students beat him and he suffers bruising and concussion. Black students are charged as adults for attempted second-degree murder.
Full Article : news.yahoo.com

Local students, adults rally in support of Jena 6
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2007

As busloads of marchers from around the country descended on the tiny hamlet of Jena, La., Thursday, thousands more in Atlanta showed their support for the six high school students charged with beating a white classmate.

Hundreds of local middle and high school students wore black to school after the idea raced around social networking Web sites and school hallways. Supporters rallied at Atlanta City Hall and the Atlanta University Center to protest the handling of the case.
Full Article : ajc.com

Jena 6 teen is denied release
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2007

HOUSTON - The judge overseeing the racially charged case of the Jena 6 declined Friday to release the only one of the six black teenagers still held in jail, despite the fact that the youth's conviction for aggravated second-degree battery was vacated a week ago by an appeals court, family members and court sources confirmed.

Ruling just a day after tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets of the small central Louisiana town of Jena to protest the prosecution of the six black high school students for beating a white classmate, LaSalle Parish District Judge J.P. Mauffray declined a defense motion for a writ of habeas corpus that sought to have Mychal Bell, 17, released. A second judge also turned down a defense motion seeking to have Mauffray recused from the case.
Full Article : chicagotribune.com

Fidel Castro Makes First Appearance in Three Months
Posted: Saturday, September 22, 2007

Fidel Castro looked alert and healthier in a video taped Friday, the first images released of the ailing 81-year-old leader in more than three months.
Video : breitbart.tv

Canadians celebrate loonie's parity with US dollar
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2007

Canadians cheered Friday for their beloved loonie, reaching parity this week with the US greenback for the first time in 31 years, but consumers are not yet benefiting, and manufacturers are reeling.
Full Article : breitbart.com

Zimbabwe: Latest media hype well timed, calculated
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2007

By Simon Khaya Moyo
September 21, 2007

AS we draw closer to the opening of the 62nd Regular Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week, we are again observing intense media focus to draw international attention on Zimbabwe.

Coincidentally, anti-Government elements and their allies in the non-governmental and trade union movement with ties to certain opposition political formations are lining up activities at home and abroad to play their respectively assigned roles in a circus that repeats itself before and during international conferences.

In the run-up to a number of recent international conferences, desperate and misguided anti-Zimbabwean activists have predictably descended on the venues of these conferences in order to stir discord. These include the Sadc Heads of State and Government Summit held in Maseru in August 2006, the Sadc Extraordinary Summit held in March 2007 in Dar-es-Salaam, the Pan African Parliament Session held in Johannesburg in May 2007, the African Union Summit held in July 2007 in Accra, Ghana, and the 27th Sadc Summit held in Lusaka last month.

The same faces that showed up in Maseru showed up in Dar-es-Salaam, Accra and recently in Lusaka. This is done at the behest of governments in well-known capitals outside Africa. And soon after making the now familiar noises, the hype fizzles out only to re-emerge at a future conference: it is patently a pattern designed and deliberately contrived to cause maximum damage to the image of Zimbabwe and its leaders.

At the international conferences so far held this year, the heavy presence of officials from opposition political factions and a host of like-minded NGOs was an embarrassing and unwelcome detraction. The fact is that Sadc and the AU are one in their total rejection of unpatriotic sell-outs.

This is not to suggest that there is anything wrong with political opposition in Zimbabwe as elsewhere. What we find abhorrent and objectionable is when such opposition is firmly rooted in, directed by and funded from Western capitals to peddle external agendas. Indeed, it is not only normal, but welcome to have healthy contradictions and well-meaning opposition in society: a homogenous and monolithic society is neither feasible nor desirable.

This well-orchestrated campaign to demonise Zimbabwe and its leadership is inspired by the Western agenda of regime change; it is directly from the very top political echelons in London, Washington, Canberra etc, and it is funded by taxpayers in those countries.

This discernible pattern in which sections of the political opposition and the media seek to contrive non-existent scenarios is deplorable as it is utterly distasteful, and must be condemned by all pan-Africanists and those beyond our borders who share with us the common vision of a progressive and peaceful co-existence of sovereign nations, big and small.

While our detractors are busy plotting our long-predicted but ever-receding demise, the Government and people of Zimbabwe remain focused and are romping in the home stretch of our victorious march against Western imperialist machinations. As a responsible nation, our people, and not outsiders, will remain the active agents of change within their own political frontiers.

We are the authors and masters of our own destiny, and, therefore, need to secure our common future through a purposive alliance of patriots from all walks of life across the broad spectrum of our society. In this regard, we applaud and support the mediation efforts of His Excellency, President Thabo Mbeki. There is no turning back whatsoever.

What is abundantly clear is that a lasting solution to Zimbabwe's challenges does not lie in Canberra, or in the media for that matter, but is domiciled within our political frontiers and among our people. There has been remarkable progress in the talks being mediated by President Mbeki.

On September 18, 2007, the Parliament of Zimbabwe reached agreement by consensus on Constitutional Amendment Number 18 Bill which seeks, inter alia, to harmonise presidential and parliamentary elections with effect from next year.

Even in the face of this bipartisanship and consensus among the Zimbabwean people, mainstream South African and Western media (both print and electronic) are awash with misleading news bulletins that suggest that the Amendment seeks to give His Excellency President Robert Mugabe powers to appoint his successor.

The Amendment provides that in the event of the President being unable to continue in office for whatever reason and before his/her elective term comes to an end, Parliament will sit as an Electoral College and elect the successor.

The patronising and paternalistic stance of the Western media smacks of second guessing the people of Zimbabwe and casting aspersions on the dignity and integrity of our institutions and elected leadership.

Surely if the people of Zimbabwe, through their elected representatives, make a sovereign decision to amend their Constitution as they see fit, who can question their action? This is totally disgraceful.

The latest media hype is well timed and calculated to coincide with the opening of the 62nd regular session of the United Nations General Assembly next week. Some unsubstantiated reports now allege an "alarming" exodus of Zimbabweans to neighbouring countries.

Over recent months the media have elevated fiction, rumour and cheap gossip to the level of fact regarding the number of Zimbabwean citizens in neighbouring countries.

Earlier this month, a study conducted by the Forced Migration Studies Programme and Musina Legal Aid concluded that the media have grossly exaggerated the number of people migrating from Zimbabwe to South Africa.

Recent reports of another so-called "human tsunami" overwhelming Mozambique are calculated to raise tension with our neighbour, and draw unwarranted international attention and focus towards Zimbabwe just before the opening of the General Assembly.

Similar false reports about an influx of Zimbabweans into Zambia were orchestrated just before the Sadc Summit held in Lusaka last August, only to evaporate soon after the summit.

These have become familiar noises that we expect before every international conference. We expect these noises to get louder in the week ahead as the army of paid anti-Zimbabwe activists troop into New York at the bidding of their masters, comfortably ensconced in London. The mischievous report on Zimbabwe released this week in Brussels by the so-called International Crisis Group (ICG) is another case in point. We must remain vigilant.

Finally, I wish to appeal to our misguided sisters and brothers, and to their Western handlers, to rise from their deep slumber, and realise that Zimbabwe is not for sale. While we will never apologise to these Western handlers for the historic land reform we embarked on in the year 2000, we will not disown those of our people who have been hoodwinked to sell their birthright.

We have a responsibility to all our people irrespective of race, creed or political affiliation.

In unity we shall triumph.

Simon Khaya Moyo is Zimbabwe's High Commissioner to South Africa.

Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2007

Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.
Full Article : telegraph.co.uk

Canadian Dollar Trades Equal to U.S. for First Time
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2007

Canada's dollar traded equal to the U.S. currency for the first time in three decades, capping a five-year run on the back of booming demand for the nation's commodities.
Full Article :bloomberg.com

Apart from the noose, this is an everyday story of modern USA
Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2007

The racial tensions which flared in a small southern town have laid bare the bias infecting the nation's justice system

By Gary Younge
September 17, 2007
The Guardian UK

The four-hour drive from New Orleans to Jena takes you over long bridges, across still bayoux and deep into the remote backwoods of Louisiana. It's a journey that starts in the city that has become a byword for racial division and infrastructural neglect, following Hurricane Katrina. It then heads north-west through Opelousas where, as in so much of the south, people are literally segregated to death. There are two Catholic churches in the centre of town - Holy Ghost, for African Americans, and St Landry, for whites. In between is the cemetery where, by law and then by custom, blacks and whites have been buried according to their race - separate and finally equal, if only in the afterlife. And finally, it lands in the small town of Jena, surrounded by forests of pine where, it seems, even the flora can be racialised.
Full Article : guardian.co.uk

Land Reform - Whites Biased
Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2007

White people hardly ever realise our offence when discounting information being presented to us from a black point of view.

There are informed alternatives to the white-owned mainstream media, outlets that provide alternative views for important consideration. There is excessive attention from the Western media on the Zimbabwe land reclamation programme.

Many whites, white journalists, politicians, white landowners and former white landowners are voicing opposition to this exercise. Unfortunately, whites have the loudest voice with the least to say. That voice comes from a biased, emotionally charged and uninformed point of view based on white mainstream media propaganda. Whites just don't want to see the land reclamation issue differently than how the West is presenting it.
Full Article : allafrica.com

Thousands of CCTV cameras, yet 80% of crime unsolved
Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2007

London has 10,000 crime-fighting CCTV cameras which cost £200 million, figures show today.

But an analysis of the publicly funded spy network, which is owned and controlled by local authorities and Transport for London, has cast doubt on its ability to help solve crime.

A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the proportion of crimes solved there found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.
Full Article : thisislondon.co.uk

Estimating O.J. Simpson's economic impact
Posted: Thursday, September 20, 2007

O.J. Simpson's latest troubles may bring back terrible memories, a sense of outrage, bemusement or just a big yawn.

But for the media and the Las Vegas tourism industry, the arrest and pending case against "The Juice" could be the biggest thing since Siegfried and Roy.

Simpson has been charged with 10 felonies in connection with the alleged theft at gunpoint of sports memorabilia from men in a Las Vegas hotel.

Whether the "bump" in additional hotel room bookings, expense account meals, car rentals, and miscellaneous expenditures tied to the new O.J. Simpson story will be sufficient to cause casino and hotel operators to raise their guidance remains to be seen.

But things pertaining to Simpson remain among the most bankable "news" stories in America and around the world.
Full Article : marketwatch.com

The Presidential Propaganda Catapult
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2007

¤ Petraeus lets slip the ugly truth of this war
When historians look back on the past week in Washington, I suspect they will see it as a seminal moment. It was the moment when the president and his party recommitted themselves to an indefinite, decades-long Iraq occupation, and when the Iraq war was formally handed over to the next president, with forces near the maxed-out 2006 level.
The realist and moderate Republicans were essentially defused by the calm, factual demeanour of General David Petraeus, with the key senators John Warner, Richard Lugar and Pete Domenici deferring to the president in the face of the first trickle of good news from Anbar.

¤ The Blackwater Fiasco
Please, please, I tell myself, leave Orwell out of it. Find some other, fresher way to explain why "Operation Iraqi Freedom" is dependent upon killer mercenaries. Or why the "democratically elected government" of "liberated" Iraq does not explicitly have the legal power to expel Blackwater USA from its land or hold any of the 50,000 private contractor troops that the U.S. government has brought to Iraq accountable for their deadly actions.
Were there even the faintest trace of Iraqi independence rising from the ashes of this failed American imperialist venture, Blackwater would have to fold its tents and go, if only in the interest of keeping up appearances. After all, the Iraqi Interior Ministry claimed that the Blackwater thugs guarding a U.S. State Department convoy through the streets of Baghdad fired "randomly at citizens" in a crowded square on Sunday, killing 11 people and wounding 13 others. So the Iraqi government has ordered Blackwater to leave the country after what a government spokesman called a "flagrant assault ... on Iraqi citizens."

¤ Iraqi prime minister disputes Blackwater USA's version of deadly weekend shooting
¤ Cutting off fuel to Gaza is violation of international law
¤ Rice backs Israel decision on Gaza
¤ US rate cuts: Like a blow to the head
¤ Israel's Agenda For Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer

¤ Oil Warriors
Alan Greenspan had acknowledged what is blindingly obvious to those who live in the reality-based world: The Iraq War was largely about oil.
Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger says in an op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post that control over oil is the key issue that should determine whether the U.S. undertakes military action against Iran.

¤ The New Military Frontier: Africa
A U.S. Army captain in Africa waxes philosophical. It's like the old saying, he opines; "give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he'll eat forever."
Is he talking about skills-building, or community empowerment? No: Captain Joseph Cruz goes from channeling the musician Speech from the American hip-hop group Arrested Development back to his military-approved talking points: "the same can be said about military to military training and that's why we do it."
The Delta company soldier is one of 1,800 based in Djibouti at an old French Foreign Legion base, and he is comparing lessons in small naval patrol boat tactics, approaches to counter terrorism operations, and how to use an M-16 rifle, to teaching a man to fish.

¤ The Iranian Conundrum
¤ Tasering at University of Florida
¤ Shock Therapy On Wall Street: What's Next?
¤ What Terrorists?

¤ Our "Vital" National Interest in Iraq? Oil, Oil, Oil
In his new book, "The Age of Turbulence," former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan departed from the Bush administration's script and wrote that "the Iraq war is largely about oil."
Of course, Greenspan immediately had to backpedal from that statement. Despite the fact that nearly everyone in the world knows that control of Iraq's oil reserves was one of the main reasons for the U.S. invasion, public officials still have to feign shock and outrage when someone says it.

¤ The Presidential Propaganda Catapult

¤ Pope Refuses to Meet with Condi Rice

¤ Drift into War with Iran Out of Control, Says UN
The UN's chief nuclear weapons inspector yesterday warned against the use of force against Iran, in what UN officials said was an attempt to halt an "out of control" drift to war.

His outspoken remarks, which drew a parallel between Iran and Iraq, appeared to take aim at the US and Britain. They followed comments on Sunday night by the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who said: "We have to prepare for the worst," adding "the worst is war".

Pope Refuses to Meet with Condi Rice
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Pope Benedict XVI refused to meet US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in August, saying he was on holiday, an Italian newspaper reported Wednesday.

Rice "made it known to the Vatican that she absolutely had to meet the pope" to boost her diplomatic "credit" ahead of a trip to the Middle East, the Corriere della Sera daily reported without citing its sources.
Full Article : breitbart.com

The Lies of Alan Greenspan
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2007

by William Greider

Alan Greenspan has come back from the tomb of history to correct the record. He did not make any mistakes in his 18-year tenure as Federal Reserve chairman. He did not endorse the regressive Bush tax cuts of 2001 that pumped up the federal deficits and aggravated inequalities. He did not cause the housing bubble that is now in collapse. He did not ignore the stock market bubble that subsequently melted away and cost investors $6 trillion. He did not say the Iraq war is "largely about oil."Check the record. These are all lies.

Greenspan's testimony endorsing the Bush tax cuts was extremely influential but now he wants to run away from it. In the instance of Iraq, Greenspan is actually correcting his own memoir, "The Age of Turbulence," which just came out. Last weekend, newspapers reported provocative snippets from the book, including this: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

Wow, talk about your "inconvenient truth." Greenspan was blithely acknowledging what official Washington has always denied and the news media faithfully ignored. "Blood for oil." No, no, no, that's not what he meant, Greenspan corrected in a follow-up interview (with Bob Woodward in the Sept. 17 Washington Post). He was only saying that "taking out Saddam was essential" for "oil security" and the global economy.

Are you confused? Welcome to the world of slippery truth that Greenspan has always lived in. He was the Maestro, as Woodward's loving portrait dubbed him. Wall Street loved the chairman best because the traders and bankers knew he was always on their side and would come to their rescue. The major news media treated him like an Old Testament prophet. Whatever the chairman said was carved on stone tablets, even when it didn't make any sense, as it often didn't.
Full Article : commondreams.org

Drift into War with Iran Out of Control, Says UN
Posted: Wednesday, September 19, 2007

The UN's chief nuclear weapons inspector yesterday warned against the use of force against Iran, in what UN officials said was an attempt to halt an "out of control" drift to war.

His outspoken remarks, which drew a parallel between Iran and Iraq, appeared to take aim at the US and Britain. They followed comments on Sunday night by the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who said: "We have to prepare for the worst," adding "the worst is war".

"I would not talk about any use of force," Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters at the International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna. "There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons."
Full Article : commondreams.org

The Blood on George Bush's Hands
Posted: Tuesday, September 18, 2007

¤ The Surge and the Al Qaeda Bunny
¤ Failing banks, toxic bonds and mortgage laundering

¤ Russia warns against military action in Iran
Russia today joined the chorus of concern at the possibility of war in Iran while conflicts continued in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At a news briefing in Moscow, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said: "We are worried by reports that there is serious consideration being given to military action in Iran. That is a threat to a region where there are already grave problems in Iraq and Afghanistan."

¤ U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel
By now, you've probably seen the photos of the angry customers queued up outside of Northern Rock Bank waiting to withdraw their money. This is the first big run on a British bank in over a century. It's lost an eighth of its deposits in three days. The pictures are headline news in the U.K. but have been stuck on the back pages of U.S. newspapers. The reason for this is obvious. The same Force 5 economic-hurricane that just touched ground in Great Britain is headed for America and gaining strength on the way.

¤ Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It
It is really a sad commentary on the TV medium that given the chance to ask some hard questions of Alan Greenspan, it has no idea what to ask. In last night's 60 Minutes interview with Alan Greenspan, Lesley Stahl looked like a deer caught in the headlights. This was a big interview and she biffed it.We were supposed to be impressed by Mr. Greenspan's fascination with numbers and statistics, like the protein content of wheat. Hooey. He's an economist.
If there was any revelation, it was in Mr. Greenspan's vanity. (The view that Stahl elicited from Greenspan, that "everyone is a social climber", was bizarre.)But the worst was Stahl's inability to counter Greenspan's assertion that he failed to anticipate problems from the subprime mortgage fiasco, that is sending shock waves through world credit markets.As she fumbled in her notes, Stahl was missing the hard questions.

¤ America's Great Wall

¤ The Lies of Alan Greenspan

¤ Dept. of Misdirection
Does anybody really believe the problem with the war in Iraq is too much questioning of those in authority, too much bluntness, and not enough deference to those who have been in charge of the war for the last four years?
That's apparently the feeling of all the conservative talk-show hosts and GOP presidential candidates who came down with the vapors over the MoveOn ad that had the temerity to question Gen. David Petraeus. Tens of thousands of dead civilians, nearly 4,000 dead American soldiers, half a trillion dollars spent, and the squandering of America's moral authority — none of that seems to have ruffled their feathers very much. But the ad? Now that has got them royally steamed.

¤ What Happens To Private Contractors Who Kill Iraqis? Maybe Nothing
¤ Repugnant Black Water ...
¤ Silence is complicity
¤ Baghdad residents protest US-erected dividing wall

¤ US mercenary firm denounced after civilian killings in Baghdad
The Iraqi government on Monday said it had revoked the operating license of Blackwater USA, following a shootout involving the private security company in downtown Baghdad Sunday that left at least nine people dead and 14 wounded, the majority civilians.
Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf said that the decision meant that Blackwater "cannot work in Iraq any longer, it will be illegal for them to work here." Khalaf added, "Security contracts do not allow them to shoot people randomly."

¤ French-kissing the war on Iran
¤ Banking crisis: The fear spreads

¤ The Blood on George Bush's Hands
It was certainly one of President George W. Bush's worst performances, and that's saying a lot. Well past his bedtime, he spoke to the nation last Thursday, looking and sounding like a sedated automaton, reading the lines for his latest justification for staying the course in Iraq and telling the American people to consider the preposterous request to have patience and trust his judgment.
Using Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker for convenient cover, Bush assured us that "conditions in Iraq are improving," that "we are seizing the initiative from the enemy" and that "the troop surge is working."

¤ An 'Enduring Relationship' – Or A Perpetual Burden?

¤ None Dare Call It Genocide
How comfy we are all in the United States, as we engage in living-room debates about the US occupation of Iraq, whether "we" are bringing them freedom and whether their freedom is really worth the sacrifice of so many of our men and women. We talk about whether war aims have really been achieved, how to exit gracefully, or whether we need a hyper-surge to finish this whole business once and for all.
But there's one thing Americans don't talk about: the lives of Iraqis, or, rather, the deaths of Iraqis. It's interesting because we live in an age of extreme multiculturalism and global concern. We adore international aid workers, go on mission trips abroad, weep for the plight of those suffering from hunger and disease, volunteer in efforts to bring plumbing to Ecuador, mosquito nets to Rwanda, clean water to Malawi, human rights to Togo, and medicine to Bangladesh.

Student Zapped With Taser Caught On Tape
Posted: Tuesday, September 18, 2007

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- A University of Florida student was Tasered and arrested after trying to ask U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., about the 2004 election and other subjects during a campus forum.

Videos of the incident posted on several Web sites show officers pulling Andrew Meyer, 21, away from the microphone after he asks Kerry about impeaching President George W. Bush and whether he and Bush were both members of the secret society Skull and Bones at Yale University.

"He apparently asked several questions -- he went on for quite awhile -- then he was asked to stop," university spokesman Steve Orlando said. "He had used his allotted time. His microphone was cut off, then he became upset."
Full Article : local10.com

Video

When George Bush Smiles People Die
Posted: Monday, September 17, 2007

¤ Invasion of Iraq was driven by oil, says Greenspan
¤ It is the death of history
¤ Bin Laden's offer at least makes business sense

¤ Is "Terrorist Threat" to America Another Bush-Cheney Fabrication?
In the most massive racial profiling since Japanese-Americans were herded into detention camps in World War II, the Bush administration after 9/11 required 80,000 Arab and Muslim foreign nationals living here to be photographed, fingerprinted and subjected to "special registration," The Nation magazine said. The publication reports an additional 8,000 foreign nationals were sought out by the FBI for interviews and more than 5,000 foreign nationals were put in "preventive detention" --- a total of 93,000 people made to register, subjected to interview, or jailed.

¤ When George Bush Smiles People Die
"[Bush's] face seems to be involved in a somewhat painful, quasi-involuntary struggle to prevent itself from erupting into a broad, self-satisfied smile . . . a what-me-worry?"
- The New Yorker's Joe Klein
In a recent Associated Press photograph, President Bush flashes his "what-me-worry?" smile at the camera while shaking the hand of Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha. Abu Risha is not smiling, by the way. He is deadly earnest . . . or worried . . . or scared.

¤ Suicide attack in Afghanistan kills 8

¤ Failures
If the invasion of Afghanistan had been a success, we would not still be fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. If the invasion of Iraq had been a success, we would not be fighting there.
Two invasions of practically defenseless countries with obsolete weapons and decaying infrastructures have to be termed failures. Both the civilian leadership in Washington and the military's officer corps share the blame.
The people in Washington, infected with fatal arrogance, thought of a clever scheme: We will bribe the criminal gangs known as the Northern Alliance to do the actual fighting, and we'll use our special forces to laser-paint Taliban targets for our aircraft. It worked, as far as it went. The Taliban had no air defense at all.

¤ Kissinger no friend of soldiers
¤ Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom
¤ US Iran report branded dishonest

¤ Russia says "disaster" a military strike on Iran
¤ Jena's Rascism: Not An Anomoly, Just Less Subtle

¤ A deafening silence on report of one million Iraqis killed under US occupation
When those responsible for the American war in Iraq face a public reckoning for their colossal crimes, the weekend of September 15-16, 2007 will be an important piece of evidence against them. On Friday, September 14 there were brief press reports of a scientific survey by the British polling organization ORB, which resulted in an estimate of 1.2 million violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion.
This staggering figure demonstrates two political facts: 1) the American war in Iraq has produced a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions, with a death total already higher than that in Rwanda in 1994; 2) those arguing against a US withdrawal on the grounds that this would lead to civil war, even genocide, are deliberately concealing the fact that such a bloodbath is already taking place, with the US military in control.

IAEA Chief Warns Against Striking Iran
Posted: Monday, September 17, 2007

VIENNA - Invoking the war in Iraq, the chief U.N. nuclear inspector criticized talk of attacking Iran as "hype" on Monday, saying the use of force should only be considered as a last resort and only if authorized by the U.N. Security Council.

"I would not talk about any use of force," said Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in an indirect response to French warnings that the world had to be prepared for the possibility of war in the event that Iran obtains atomic weapons.

Saying only the U.N. Security Council could authorize the use of force, ElBaradei urged the world to remember Iraq before considering any similar action against Iran.
Full Article : commondreams.org

US Iran report branded dishonest
Posted: Monday, September 17, 2007

The UN nuclear watchdog has protested to the US government over a report on Iran's nuclear programme, calling it "erroneous" and "misleading".

In a leaked letter, the IAEA said a congressional report contained serious distortions of the agency's own findings on Iran's nuclear activity.

The IAEA also took "strong exception" to claims made over the removal of a senior safeguards inspector.

There was no immediate comment from Washington over the letter.
Full Article : news.bbc.co.uk

Invasion of Iraq was driven by oil, says Greenspan
Posted: Monday, September 17, 2007

Alan Greenspan, the consummate Washington insider and long-time head of the US central bank, has backed the position taken by many anti-war critics - that the invasion of Iraq was motivated by oil.

His claim comes in his newly published autobiography, The Age of Turbulence, in which he also castigates George Bush's administration for making "grave mistakes" in economic policy.
Full Article : guardian.co.uk

Greenspan: Euro May Replace Dollar As Favored Reserve Currency...

Greenspan: Ouster Of Hussein Crucial For Oil Security

By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 17, 2007; A03

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been "essential" to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Greenspan, who was the country's top voice on monetary policy at the time Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, has refrained from extensive public comment on it until now, but he made the striking comment in a new memoir out today that "the Iraq War is largely about oil." In the interview, he clarified that sentence in his 531-page book, saying that while securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House with the case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy.

"I was not saying that that's the administration's motive," Greenspan said in an interview Saturday, "I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?' I would say it was essential."
Full Article : washingtonpost.com

The Illusion of Progress in Iraq
Posted: Saturday, September 15, 2007

¤ Modern Day Political Advertising
How many times can a listener hear the repeated terms - extremists, al-Qaeda, and terrorists - before the words begin to alter the emotions of the listeners? Well, for me, I was done with his speech within minutes; gone from listening to content and reduced to counting references to the Bushian mantra three. He both raised my blood pressure and altered my chemical balance; I was enraged. Not to worry, I was not enraged in a manner as expected by the Bush White House; enraged into joining or supporting the Emperor's modern Crusade. However, I am enraged nonetheless.

Nevertheless, there will be many who will sleep, toss, and turn, while those three words play over and over. The boys and girls in DC are smart; they do not let Bush speak off the cuff. No, they planned the whole speech - it's content, cadence, and choice of words - for an effect. Knowledge of psychology is essential to any propaganda campaign.

¤ Patrick Daniel Tillman
¤ Bush's War of False Pretenses
¤ The Illusion of Progress in Iraq

¤ The General Came to Washington
Take the war first. Into the witness chair in the Senate chamber marched General Petraeus, the blaze of ribbons on his chest suggesting actual combat experience somewhat longer than the modest four years his record discloses. He was once shot in he chest, it's true, but that was in a military exercise in the U.S. when a soldier's gun went off by accident. Many senior army and navy officers loathe the toadying Petraeus. According to an amusing column by Gareth Porter of IPS, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), "derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting. Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be 'an ass-kissing little chickenshit' and added, 'I hate people like that', the sources say."

¤ Brit Hume and the Bush administration take propaganda to a new level
Just as George Bush and Dick Cheney have done on politically important occasions, Gen. David Petraeus (along with Ambassador Ryan Crocker) last night selected Fox News' Brit Hume as the "journalist" rewarded with an exclusive "interview." Whereas Hume, in the past, at least has pretended to play the role of journalist when interviewing high Bush officials -- doing things like asking (extremely respectful) questions about sensitive areas (with no follow up) -- he dispensed entirely with the pretense here.

¤ The Ambitious Delusions of George Bush and David Petraeus
¤ A True Parallel between Vietnam, Iraq
¤ Civilian death toll in Iraq may top 1 million
¤ 'Expert' who made up interviews is exposed
¤ Cholera infects 16,000 people in northern Iraq
¤ U.S. Secret Air War Pulverizes Afghanistan and Iraq
¤ 70% of the Palestinian population are either refugees or displaced persons
¤ George W. Bush, a Judiciary of One

¤ How Stupid Does Bush Think We Are? Answer: Very
How stupid does little Bush think we are?
The answer is: pretty damned stupid.
That's the only conclusion possible after hearing him try to claim that the winding down of his "surge" escalation of 30,000 additional troops represents a "new" strategy of reducing American troops in Iraq.
I mean, WTF? It was called a "surge" because it was supposed to only last a few months. And it's ending because when the deployment period of those soldiers and marines is up, not because it was a success, but because there are no more troops to replace them!

¤ 'Family Guy' on Bin Laden Videos

The General Lies
Posted: Friday, September 14, 2007

¤ Bush calls for permanent US military occupation of Iraq

¤ Civilian Death Toll in Iraq May Top 1 Million
A car bomb blew up in the capital's Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Sadr City on Thursday, killing at least four people, as a new survey suggested that the civilian death toll from the war could be more than 1 million.
The figure from ORB, a British polling agency that has conducted several surveys in Iraq, followed statements this week from the U.S. military defending itself against accusations it was trying to play down Iraqi deaths to make its strategy appear successful.
The military has said civilian deaths from sectarian violence have fallen more than 55% since President Bush sent an additional 28,500 troops to Iraq this year, but it does not provide specific numbers.

¤ The General Lies
¤ Just Ask The Iraqis
¤ Michael Klare on the Internal War For Control of Iraq's Oil

¤ September 11: The Epitome of American Arrogance
Another September 11th has been and gone. Flags were waved, tears were shed and silence observed. Generals offered their assessments and politicians blustered. Across the political spectrum, we Americans continue to insist upon our unwavering support for the troops, from the right-wing call for continued funding of their work to the left-wing call to bring them home.
In what can only be called the epitome of American arrogance, concern for the plight of the Iraqi people, particularly the 4 million of whom are now refugees is absent from the rhetoric, the clear implication being that that our suffering, which is the result of our own failed policies, is far more important than the suffering we have inflicted upon others. Missing from the national dialog is any sense of pressing horror at the lack of electricity and potable water in Iraq, or the trauma and malnutrition, especially among children.

¤ Americans Are as Inattentive as Ever
¤ Panic on the streets of Britain: Northern rocked, City shocked
¤ How Petraeus lies

¤ Tail between legs
The British government promoted its occupation of Basra as an exercise more sophisticated and intelligent than that conducted by its ally the US in Iraq. From the moment the British hunkered down in Basra after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq it seemed the British government and much of the mainstream media never missed a chance to boast of the softly-softly, hearts and minds approach of its occupation. We were assured that this had everything to do with the experience it had gained in previous British military exploits, particularly in Northern Ireland, while the US was still learning lessons from their historic defeat in Vietnam. This projection of the fair-playing Brits was repeated ad naseum until a string of dramatic events were reported in the world media which put an end to this mythmaking. Events such as prisoner and detainee abuse by British soldiers and SAS special forces undercover operations apparently designed to foment civil strife exposed the British army as no different from any other hostile military occupier. Everyone outside the Ministry of Defence and Cabinet agrees that the British "deployment" from Basra Palace to the airport eleven kilometres out of the city is an outright sign of defeat.

¤ An assassination that blows apart Bush's hopes of pacifying Iraq
¤ Mr Bush, your sheikh is dead
¤ Afghanistan sliding further into war, says Red Cross
¤ The Killing of Abu Risha
¤ The Unwarranted Influence of America's Global "Defense" Industry
¤ George W. Bush proves to be absolutely ignorant about Iraq
¤ USAID in Bolivia and Venezuela: The Silent Subversion

Six Held for Week-Long Torture of African Female
Posted: Friday, September 14, 2007

Hate crimes prove tricky to prosecute

Although it's uncertain whether Logan County officials will pursue state hate crime charges against the six white suspects arrested for the weeklong rape and torture of a black woman, the charges they already face carry stiffer penalties.

The state's hate crime statute carries a penalty of 10 years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

In the Logan County case, Frankie Brewster and her son Bobby Brewster, both of Big Creek, are each charged with kidnapping, sexual assault and malicious wounding. The mother is also charged with giving false information during a felony investigation while her son is also charged with assault during the commission of a felony.
Full Article : dailymail.com

Details Emerge In West Virginia Torture Case

Six people have been arrested in West Virginia coal country for the week-long torture of a young woman. Six people, all white, were arrested in connection with the alleged abduction of the black woman. Authorities are investigating the case as a possible hate crime.

Authorities said Megan Williams, 20, was forced to eat rat and dog feces and drink from a toilet. She was sexually assaulted, doused with hot water, choked with a cable cord and stabbed in the leg, according to criminal complaints.

"I've been in law enforcement for over 30 years. This is far and away the most horrendous thing I have ever seen," said Logan County Sheriff Eddie Hunter.
Full Article : cbs2.com

When a Hate Crime Can't Be Called a Hate Crime

Earlier this week, I learned about the case of a young black woman in West Virginia who had been kidnapped and tortured for several days. According to CBS News, "Megan William, 20, was forced to eat rat and dog feces and drink from a toilet. She was sexually assaulted, doused with hot water, choked with a cable cord and stabbed in the leg, according to criminal complaints."
Full Article : opednews.com

USAID in Bolivia and Venezuela: The Silent Subversion
Posted: Friday, September 14, 2007

By: Eva Golinger

The United States government has almost perfected a method of intervention that is able to penetrate and infiltrate all sectors of civil society in a country which it deems to be of economic and strategic interest. In the case of Venezuela, this strategy began to take form in 2002, with the increase in financing of sectors of the opposition via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the opening of an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) of USAID in Caracas.
Full Article : venezuelanalysis.com

Cheney Orders Corporate Media to Sell Iran Attack
Posted: Thursday, September 13, 2007

¤ War Against Iran and the Logic of Dominance
If the Bush administration launches an attack on Iran, the reason won't be that Iran was about to obtain a nuclear weapon. The real reason will be that United States, as the world's only superpower, wants to establish clearly that it -- not Iran -- is the dominant power in the Middle East. That would make us all less secure, but the insistence on asserting dominance in the Middle East is the essence of the Bush administration's policy.

¤ Cheney Orders Corporate Media to Sell Iran Attack
¤ The disgraced ABC consultant and the push for war in Iran

¤ Abu Risha murdered
I was in the middle of putting the finishing touches on an short piece about Iraqi Sunni politics due out later today when I got an urgent flash that Abd al-Sattar Abu Risha had been murdered in Anbar. Nothing could have been more predictable than the murder of Abu Risha, the man most closely identified with America's Anbar strategy. He was the public face of the turn against al-Qaeda, and Petraeus immediately said that "it shows Al Qaeda in Iraq remains a very dangerous and barbaric enemy." But there's no reason to assume that al-Qaeda killed him - I'd guess that one of the nationalist insurgency groups, the ones which current American rhetoric pretends don't exist - is a more likely suspect. Other tribes deeply resented him. The major nationalist insurgency groups had recently issued a series of statements denouncing people who would illegitimately seize the fruits of their victorious jihad - of whom he was the prime example. All those photographs which swamped the Arab media showing him shaking hands with President Bush made him even more a marked man than before.

¤ Iraq bomb attack kills key US ally
¤ The World's Ingredients: Injustice, Hypocrisy, and Hope
¤ Venezuela, China boost oil ties
¤ Testimony of The Tortured

¤ From Fear to Farce
After 9/11, my husband started each morning reaching for the remote and saying, "Let's see if they caught Osama." This greeting began as an expectation, evolved into a lingering hope, and finally deteriorated into irony.
Six years later, our ritual preceded an early morning appearance by the newly trimmed and black-bearded terrorist. Thus fear descends into farce.
It was no accident that bin Laden timed his videos for Sept. 11. But then again, how fitting it was that the hearings on the Iraq War coincided with the anniversary of his attack.

¤ Democrats Lie to Prolong Iraq; Reporters Go Along
¤ Soldiers Who Challenged War Spin Die in Iraq

¤ Here's the Smell of the Blood Still
"The incredulity and numbing, the frequent bobbing-and-weaving of our own consciousness, the hollow comforts of passivity, insulate us from hard truths and harsher realities than we might ever have expected to need to confront -- about our country and about ourselves."

¤ Blast kills 20 in Tarbela Ghazi

¤ Loaded Words: "Surge", "Reconstruction" and "Withdrawal"
¤ More than 100,000 Iraqis in jail
¤ Petraeus & the 'Central Front' Myth
¤ When a hate crime can't be called a hate crime
¤ Chanel 4 News Interviews President Ahmadinejad

A War Casualty: The Truth
Posted: Wednesday, September 12, 2007

¤ Here's the Smell of the Blood Still
When Martin Luther King Jr. publicly referred to "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government," he had no way of knowing that his description would ring so true 40 years later. As the autumn of 2007 begins, the reality of Uncle Sam as an unhinged mega-killer haunts a large minority of Americans. Many who can remember the horrific era of the Vietnam War are nearly incredulous that we could now be living in a time of similarly deranged official policy.
Despite all the differences, the deep parallels between the two war efforts inform us that the basic madness of entrenched power in our midst is not about miscalculations or bad management or quagmires. The continuity tells us much more than we would probably like to know about the obstacles to decency that confront us every day.

¤ Bush plots a coup
¤ Don't Let The Dogs Out! Don't Bomb Iran!

¤ Iran moves to ditch U.S. dollar
Faced with U.S. economic sanctions and a weak dollar, Tehran is demanding foreign energy companies do business in yen and euros, despite increasingly desperate need for investment.

In a deal announced last week, Japan's Nippon Oil agreed to buy oil from Iran using yen instead of the traditional U.S. dollars. The agreement comes after years of Iranian efforts to shift its petroleum exports away from dollars and toward yen and euros.

¤ Dollar Hits a New Low vs. Euro
¤ American Economy: R.I.P.

¤ Forgetting 9/11
Because I have written about the physics of the World Trade Center fires and collapses of September 11, 2001, I have recently been asked by several people to comment on "9-11" during this sixth anniversary of the events. Because 9/11 happened a long time ago, as time is now experienced by the now-now no-history-cache wireless-wired over-caffeinated infotainment public mind, people have solidified their views on the subject, and new commentary is unnecessary. Those who have moved beyond 9/11 see it as blowback from decades of inhuman US foreign policy. Those who cannot accept the realization that "the natives" successfully struck back will instead find comfort in the hypothesis that 9/11 was an engineered catastrophe, and the ultimate puppeteers were those who pull the strings of the US government.

¤ Manufacturing Consent for Attacking Syria
¤ Baghdad '100 times worse' than a year ago
¤ Crude Oil Price to Crash As Opec Raises Output
¤ Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make The Big Time
¤ The General Lies
¤ A War Casualty: The Truth
¤ Powerful earthquake kills 5 in Indonesia
¤ Oil hits $80 a barrel for first time
¤ Deaths as quake strikes Indonesia

Tired and Disgusted, Stop the Lies!
Posted: Tuesday, September 11, 2007

¤ Bin Laden and 'Azzam the American'
Released in time for the 6th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and Camp David, Al-Qaeda's 'al-Sahab' media organisation has released Osama Bin Laden's first video statement from for nearly three years, followed by another today in which Bin Laden praises Abu Musab Walid, one of the 911 hijackers. These statements generally accepted authenticity has put to rest speculation that Bin Laden might have died, and has put the West's most wanted man back into the forefront of the politics of the 'war on terror'. The coverage that the first video statement has been given throughout the international media has proven again that Bin Laden is the most important spokesperson on behalf of militant Islamism even though his direct organisational involvement in Al-Qaeda affairs may have possibly been curtailed. What is most noticeable about this latest statement is the stridently radical anti-capitalist rhetoric which many have attributed to the influence of former white US citizen Azzam Al-Amriki – 'Azzam the American' - previously known as Adam Gadahn, the son of a Jew and a Catholic, who has family members who live in Israel, who now runs al-Sahab, Al-Qaeda's media wing. The British Telegraph on September 9th quoted former CIA covert operations officer Mike Baker who stated that the Bin Laden statement 'has Adam Gadahn all over it'. Amriki's own speeches and possible influence on the statements of Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda's second leader Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, has raised an interesting development in Al-Qaeda propaganda strategy in adapting its message to the politics, history and even culture of US society.

¤ Remembering the Atrocities of 9/11 - 34 Years Ago
¤ Dizzy from U.S. commander's spin on 'down the field' surge

¤ Tired and Disgusted, Stop the Lies!
Today is September 11th, 2007, and we have finally heard from "The General" on the situation in Iraq. Let me be the first to thank him, before yesterday I thought we were just treading water, now thankfully, I know that the forces of "good" and the soldiers of "Christ" are actually winning this confrontation with the forces of evil. I am so glad that I took time from my busy day to hear his report. I can now hold my head high, for now I understand, thanks to General Petraeus, where we are headed in our "Global War on Terrorism"; we are "turning the corner" and with that statement, I would just like to comment on this fact. The truth is, we have turned the corner so many times, we are precisely at the point at which we took up this journey, the corner is familiar and I realize that beyond this corner is another, and beyond that another…

¤ Internal Pentagon report contradicts Petraeus' testimony to Congress

¤ Shadow and Swamp: A Brief Discursion on 9/11
A commenter asked recently about my take on 9/11. In light of the anniversary (which I noted here; see also Jon Schwarz's piece here), I thought this might be a good time to set out, very briefly, what I think on the subject.
It's really quite simple and, to my mind, self-evident: the "official" story of what happened on September 11, 2001, is not a complete or accurate account. (We should of course speak of official stories, because there have been several shifting, contradictory scenarios offered by the great and the good in the six years since the attack. However, for clarity's sake, we'll stick with the singular for now, and will assume -- as the entire media and political establishment does -- that the report by the Hamilton-Kean 9/11 Commission is the final "official" version.)

¤ This Is the Month
¤ 'The US Will Lose War Regardless What it Does'
¤ Katie Couric vs. Age Spots
¤ The Power of Fear Too Often Exploited For Political Gain
¤ Petraeus, Iraq, and Our Pontius Pilate Press
¤ Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken
¤ Osama on 9/11
¤ What Iraqis Think About the Surge
¤ Pope lets critic of Mugabe quit after sex video
¤ Why Iraq is Getting Worse
¤ Suicide bomber kills at least 18 in Pakistan
¤ Syria complains to U.N. about Israeli airstrike

¤ Iraqi Civilian Casualties: 2007 More Deadly Than 2006
It took some time and effort, but, with the aid of TPM readers, we've obtained two complete lists of monthly Iraqi civilian casualties from January 2006 forward. Taking these numbers on their own terms, they do not bear out the claims made by the Bush administration and U.S. military that the surge has reduced Iraqi civilian casualties. Comparing each month's death toll in 2007 to the death toll from that same month in 2006, the numbers show that surge has not made Iraq safer for the civilian population. By some measurements, Iraqis are in greater danger than a year ago.

¤ Is the U.S. Responsible for a Million Iraqi Deaths?
In October 2006 researchers from Johns Hopkins University published a peer-reviewed article in The Lancet, one of Europe's most important and respected medical journals, estimating that 650,000 Iraqis had been killed due to the U.S.-led invasion of their country, 601,000 violently. [1] The report was quickly marginalized in public debate in the United States.
The researchers' methods were not to blame. They used the method accepted around the world to measure demographics such as birth and death rates in the wake of natural and man-made disasters: a cluster survey. No one found substantive flaws in the way they conducted their research. Instead, their findings were dismissed because they asked the politically charged question of how many Iraqis have died, and the answer they found was unacceptably high.

¤ The 'proxy war': UK troops are sent to Iranian border

¤ 'The US Will Lose War Regardless What it Does'

¤ Trick accomplished!
Most of us, who are interested in what is going on in Iraq, watched live General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testifying on the situation in Iraq in the Cannon Caucus Room this morning and recommending steps in the path ahead. But I wonder how many people emphasized on the details of the session.
The testimony was not surprising. In fact they did not come up with anything that I haven't talked about and predicted at least eight months ago, and for that matter many people did, too.

¤ Zimbabwean Archbishop Pius Ncube Forced to Resigns
DISGRACED Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo Diocese, Pius Ncube (60), has been forced to resign by the Vatican, nearly two months after a Bulawayo man filed a $20 billion lawsuit against him for adultery.
Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Father Martin Schupp to act until the Holy See makes a substantive appointment.
Roman Catholic Church priests are sworn to a vow of celibacy, meaning that they must never marry and must never engage in sexual intercourse.

Zimbabwean Archbishop Pius Ncube Forced to Resign
Posted: Tuesday, September 11, 2007

By Isdore Guvamombe
The Herald
September 11, 2007

DISGRACED Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo Diocese, Pius Ncube (60), has been forced to resign by the Vatican, nearly two months after a Bulawayo man filed a $20 billion lawsuit against him for adultery.

Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Father Martin Schupp to act until the Holy See makes a substantive appointment.

Roman Catholic Church priests are sworn to a vow of celibacy, meaning that they must never marry and must never engage in sexual intercourse.

Ncube is embroiled in a $20 billion lawsuit brought against him by Mr Onesimus Sibanda, who alleges in papers filed at the High Court in Bulawayo in July that the cleric had an adulterous relationship with his wife, Mrs Rosemary Sibanda, who is also a member of his parish.

Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops' Conference secretary general Father Fradreck Chiromba said Archbishop Ncube's resignation was accepted in terms of the church's Code of Canon Law.

"Pope Benedict XVI, on Tuesday, 11 September 2007, accepted the resignation of Archbishop Pius A. Ncube as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Bulawayo.

"The resignation was tendered to the Holy Father by Archbishop Ncube in accordance with canon 401 & 2 of the Code of Canon Law.

"Canon 401 & 2 encourages a bishop to offer his resignation when, because of health or some other serious reason, he has become less able to fulfil his office,'' said Fr Chiromba.

Fr Chiromba said Fr Schupp, who is also the apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Bulawayo, would act "until the Holy See decides otherwise in terms of the Archdiocese that is now vacant".

Although no comment could be obtained from Ncube yesterday, the BBC quoted him as saying he had resigned as the Archbishop but remained a bishop in the church.

"I remain a Catholic bishop in Zimbabwe and will continue to speak out on the issues that sadly become more acute by the day.

"I am committed to promoting the social teachings of the church and working among the poorest and most needy in Zimbabwe," said the disgraced bishop in his face-saving statement to the BBC yesterday.

His forced resignation is a slap in the face of the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops' Conference, which last week made an impish attempt to defend him in his alleged adulterous affair with Mrs Sibanda.

The media in July published photographs of Ncube in bed with Mrs Sibanda. It also showed him being intimate with another woman.

In March, Ncube – who had developed a tendency to stray from holy preachings to devilish and heinous political statements attacking President Mugabe and the Government – said he was prepared to stand in front of "blazing guns" in street protests to bring down the Government. He urged other Zimbabweans to do the same.

Four months later, he was at it again, saying Britain should invade Zimbabwe to remove Cde Mugabe, claiming this would be "the lesser of two evils".

He is also on record for declaring he was praying for President Mugabe's death.

Runway drama as returning Sharif is deported
Posted: Tuesday, September 11, 2007

The former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif was back in exile in Saudi Arabia last night after a dramatic airport showdown in Pakistan that bruised his hopes of ousting President Pervez Musharraf.

Mr Sharif was arrested, charged with corruption and put on a flight to Jeddah just four hours after landing in Islamabad on a scheduled flight from London.

The runway drama was a blow to Mr Sharif, who has been in exile since 2000. But it also damaged the credibility of his nemesis, Gen Musharraf, who is battling to stay in power beyond November 15, the date when his term of office ends.
Full Article : guardian.co.uk

Pigs of War
Posted: Monday, September 10, 2007

¤ 'With all respect, I don't buy it'

¤ As the Iraqis Stand Down,...We'll Stand Up
IT will be all 9/11 all the time this week, as the White House yet again synchronizes its drumbeating for the Iraq war with the anniversary of an attack that had nothing to do with Iraq. Ignore that fog and focus instead on another date whose anniversary passed yesterday without notice: Sept. 8,
2002. What happened on that Sunday five years ago is the Rosetta Stone for the administration's latest scam.
That was the morning when the Bush White House officially rolled out its fraudulent case for the war. The four horsemen of the apocalypse - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice - were dispatched en masse to the Washington talk shows, where they eagerly pointed to a front-page New York Times article amplifying subsequently debunked administration claims that Saddam had sought to buy aluminum tubes meant for nuclear weapons. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Condoleezza Rice on CNN, introducing a sales pitch concocted by a White House speechwriter.

¤ Americans are now in a familar tight spot
¤ American Economy: R.I.P.
¤ Massive U.S. 'Footprint' In Iraq

¤ Repeating history?
While critics have likened America's current quagmire in Iraq to the difficulties they faced in Vietnam, the comparisons are now even sharper with General David Petraeus' appearance to give testimony before congress.
Just as President Bush has recalled his top general to defend the war in Iraq from growing political criticism, so, 40 years earlier, President Johnson brought General William Westmoreland back to Washington to give his assessment of the conflict in South East Asia.

¤ U.S. threatens Turkey over energy support to Iran

¤ The Myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq
In March 2007, a pair of truck bombs tore through the Shiite marketplace in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, killing more than 150 people. The blast reduced the ancient city center to rubble, leaving body parts and charred vegetables scattered amid pools of blood. It was among the most lethal attacks to date in the five-year-old Iraq War. Within hours, Iraqi officials in Baghdad had pinned the bombing on al-Qaeda, and news reports from Reuters, the BBC, MSNBC, and others carried those remarks around the world. An Internet posting by the terrorist group known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) took credit for the destruction. Within a few days, U.S. Army General David Petraeus publicly blamed AQI for the carnage, accusing the group of trying to foment sectarian violence and ignite a civil war. Back in Washington, pundits latched on to the attack with special interest, as President Bush had previously touted a period of calm in Tal Afar as evidence that the military's retooled counterinsurgency doctrine was working. For days, reporters and bloggers debated whether the attacks signaled a "resurgence" of al-Qaeda in the city.

¤ Iran is nothing like the image presented in US narratives
American pundits and policymakers tend to betray a stunning level of ignorance about Iran. Scores of them have made doomsday predictions about what is likely happen if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "gets his hands on a nuclear weapon." Statements such as these reveal an obliviousness about the power structure in Iran, including the fact that the armed forces fall under the command of the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has issued a fatwa banning the production of nuclear arms and who reiterated on Sunday that his country "has no plans to create this deadly weapon."

¤ Shameless
¤ War Cometh Before a Fall
¤ Will the US Really Bomb Iran?

¤ Taking 'War and Terror' to Africa
The United States is planning a new strategic command to take the global War on Terror to the Horn of Africa.
America is quietly expanding its fight against terror on the African front. Two years ago the United States set up the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership with nine countries in central and western Africa. There is no permanent presence, but the hope is to generate support and suppress radicalism by both sharing U.S. weapons and tactics with friendly regimes and winning friends through a vast humanitarian program assembled by USAID, including well building and vocational training. In places like Chad, American Special Forces train and arm police or border guards using what it calls a "holistic approach to counterterrorism." Sgt. Chris Rourke, a U.S. Army reservist in a 12-man American Civil Affairs unit living in Dire Dawa, in eastern Ethiopia, says it comes down to this: "It's the Peace Corps with a weapon."

¤ Six Years of 9/11 as a License to Kill
¤ Funding illegal regime change in Zimbabwe at expense of Aborigines
¤ A Big Victory Against the Wall
¤ "Bad Management" or Doomed from the Start?
¤ The Missing Measure of Our Outrage
¤ Forever The Victims
¤ Laughing To Keep From Crying
¤ Pigs of War
¤ The Very Model of a Modern Major Asshole
¤ Questions for General Petraeus
¤ ' Band of Brothers' or ' Heart of Darkness'?
¤ Latest Bin Laden Video Is a Forgery

Will the US Really Bomb Iran?
Posted: Monday, September 10, 2007

So, whether in 24 hours or 24 days or at some point before the end of his term, we should predict Bush will send the bombers on their way to Teheran to destroy the usual targets--power stations and kindred civilian infrastructure, hospitals, maybe a few bomb shelters crammed with women and children.

But will it really come to pass?
Full Article : counterpunch.org

Six Years of 9/11 as a License to Kill
Posted: Monday, September 10, 2007

by Norman Solomon

It evokes a tragedy that marks an epoch. From the outset, the warfare state has exploited "9/11," a label at once too facile and too laden with historic weight – giving further power to the tacit political axiom that perception is reality.

Often it seems that media coverage is all about perception, especially when the underlying agendas are wired into huge profits and geopolitical leverage. If you associate a Big Mac or a Whopper with a happy meal or some other kind of great time, you're more likely to buy it. If you connect 9/11 with a need for taking military action and curtailing civil liberties, you're more likely to buy what the purveyors of war and authoritarian government have been selling for the past half-dozen years.
Full Article : commondreams.org

The Missing Measure of Our Outrage
Posted: Monday, September 10, 2007

If most of us can agree the Iraq War is a colossal failure, why aren't we doing much about it?

by Courtney E. Martin

How do you measure war?

It is a question that many of our greatest political philosophers have wrestled with for thousands of years. What number, what unit, what fields of inquiry could possibly describe the progress (or in our present conflict, the lack thereof) when it comes to the mess of war? Is it the number of dead soldiers? The dead plus the injured? The new alliances and government infrastructure? The "collateral damage"? Can it be measured by an absence – of terrorist attacks, of tyrants, of dreams?

As our Democratic-led Congress looks towards answering this question, or at least attempting to, I have been mulling it over myself. And of course rather than leading to an answer, it seems to have left me staring down another, perhaps even more difficult question: how do you measure a public's responsibility to end war?
Full Article : commondreams.org

Taking 'War and Terror' to Africa
Posted: Monday, September 10, 2007

The United States is planning a new strategic command to take the global War on Terror to the Horn of Africa.

America is quietly expanding its fight against terror on the African front. Two years ago the United States set up the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership with nine countries in central and western Africa. There is no permanent presence, but the hope is to generate support and suppress radicalism by both sharing U.S. weapons and tactics with friendly regimes and winning friends through a vast humanitarian program assembled by USAID, including well building and vocational training. In places like Chad, American Special Forces train and arm police or border guards using what it calls a "holistic approach to counterterrorism." Sgt. Chris Rourke, a U.S. Army reservist in a 12-man American Civil Affairs unit living in Dire Dawa, in eastern Ethiopia, says it comes down to this: "It's the Peace Corps with a weapon."
Full Article : msnbc.msn.com

Iraq and the lack of attention
Posted: Saturday, September 8, 2007

¤ Bombing in Baghdad's Sadr City kills 12

¤ The "Surge" Without the Bush/Petraeus Smoke and Mirrors
According to the latest evaluation by the highly respected defense analyst, Anthony Cordesman, "America has no good options in Iraq." That observation alone should expose the fraud behind the recent blustering in Anbar province -- and the subsequent lie,"We're kicking ass." -- by our phony Panglossian swaggerer and grossly incompetent fool, President George W. Bush. But Cordesman's message is even more worrisome, because he conditions America's last-chance options upon the ability of Iraq's leaders "to move forward to achieve a significant degree of political conciliation and compromise."

¤ The Betrayal of the American Right
¤ The Myth of AQI
¤ The War in Iraq Is "Soft and Mushy"
¤ 50 Reasons to Oppose Fluoridation
¤ Bombs kill 20 in Iraq
¤ Why Aren't The Poor on The Media Agenda?

¤ Will the US Really Bomb Iran?
"They're about taking out the entire Iranian military."
This particular spine-chiller comes from Alexis Debat, excitingly identified as "director of terrorism and national security" at the Nixon Center. According to Debat, the big takeout is what the U.S. Air Force has in store, as opposed to mere "pinprick strikes" against the infamous nuclear facilities.
Predicting imminent war on Iran has been one of the top two items in Cassandra's repertoire for a couple of years now, rivaled only by global warming as a sure-fire way to sell newspapers and boost website hits.

¤ Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars
On the face of it, there is no connection between Katrina's tragic devastation of New Orleans and the recent U.S. wars of choice. It can be shown, however, that the death and destruction wrought by Katrina have been (at least in part) a submerged or invisible part of the enormous costs of the escalating war and military spending.
The huge costs of Katrina, in terms of both blood and treasure, can be called opportunity costs of war and military spending: When a disproportionately large share of public or national resources are diverted to war and militarism, the opportunity of maintaining or upgrading public infrastructure is lost and the citizens, especially the poor and working people, are made more vulnerable in the face of natural disasters.

¤ Deadly bomb rocks Algerian base
¤ When APEC Came to Sydney: Photos
¤ When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing
¤ Dazed Bush forgets what country he's in, what summit he's at
¤ Iraq and the lack of attention
¤ Accidents Happen: Israelis Kill 892 Palestinian Kids
¤ The Baath party denied any meeting with Allawi and the US took place

Bush vs. Reality
Posted: Friday, September 7, 2007

¤ Bush has bad day at Sydney Opera House
President Bush had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day at the Sydney Opera House.
He'd only reached the third sentence of Friday's speech to business leaders, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, when he committed his first gaffe.
"Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit," Bush said to Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
Oops. That would be APEC, the annual meeting of leaders from 21 Pacific Rim nations, not OPEC, the cartel of 12 major oil producers.
Bush quickly corrected himself. "APEC summit," he said forcefully, joking that Howard had invited him to the OPEC summit next year (for the record, an impossibility, since neither Australia nor the U.S. are OPEC members).

¤ 'We Are Moving Rapidly Towards an Abyss'
United Nations chief weapons inspector Mohamed ElBaradei spoke to SPIEGEL about Iran's last chance to convince the world of the peaceful nature of its nuclear program, his problems with the US government and his fear of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists.

¤ We're Dealing with a Christian Taliban
Last month, the Pentagon pulled the plug on a plan to dispatch so-called "freedom packages" to U.S. troops in Iraq that included Bibles, proselytising materials in English and Arabic, and an apocalyptic computer game in which "soldiers for Christ" battle satanic "Global Community Peacekeepers".

The scheme was derailed in part because of the efforts of Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which seeks to protect the wall separating church and state in the United States armed forces.

¤ Iran accuses US of supporting rebel groups

¤ Doctors accuse US of 'unethical practices' at Guantanamo Bay
More than 260 doctors from around the world have launched an unprecedented attack on the American medical establishment for its failure to condemn unethical practices by medical practitioners at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.

In a letter to The Lancet, the doctors from 16 countries, including Britain and America, say the failure of the US regulatory authorities to act is "damaging the reputation of US military medicine".

¤ Reporting From Baghdad
It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration's newest military-man-of-substance-turned- political lapdog, General Petraeus, maintains that the situation in Iraq is not only salvageable, but actually improving, due to the "surge" of U.S. combat troops into Iraq over the past year. All the president and his collection of GI Joe hand-puppets ask for is more time, more money and more troops.

¤ Bin Laden: Still Dead After all these Years
It hardly comes as a surprise... Osama plans to release "a new video recording ... on or before next week's sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States," reports the Voice of America, the propaganda unit established by the Office of War Information. "No photos or video of Bin Laden have been seen since late 2004, and the last audio message attributed to the fugitive terrorist leader was heard more than a year ago." Of course, this makes perfect sense, as Osama died in late 2001, and as for the audio messages, these are routinely dismissed as fakes, although this is rarely mentioned by the corporate media.

¤ Bush's Nearly Inexplicable Words of 'Congratulation' ...
¤ Bush Should Stand Trial for Capital Crimes, War Crimes
¤ Hundreds still missing as Felix toll reaches 98
¤ Algeria suicide bomber kills 16
¤ On Iraq, What's More Disgusting: Being Lied To, Or Hearing the Truth?
¤ The Shrinking Bush Bubble
¤ The Occupation Within
¤ Bush vs. Reality

Somali Islamist leader emerges from hiding
Posted: Friday, September 7, 2007

The leader of Somalia's Islamist movement emerged from eight months of hiding yesterday to appear at an opposition meeting in Eritrea that called for an immediate withdrawal of Ethiopian troops.

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is accused by the US of links to al-Qaida, headed the Somali Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC) until it was driven from power in Mogadishu by Ethiopian forces last December. Having fled the capital he was thought to have been living in southern Somalia. Many people saw his hand in an ongoing insurgency against the occupying Ethiopian army and troops loyal to Somalia's interim government.
Full Article : guardian.co.uk

Syria 'fires on Israel warplanes'
Posted: Friday, September 7, 2007

Syria 'fires on Israel warplanes'
Syria has said its air defences opened fire on Israeli warplanes after they violated its airspace in the north of the country.

Iran offers to aid Syria following tensions with Israel

Washington declines comment after Syria fires on Israeli planes
The United States on Thursday declined comment on reports that Syria opened fired on Israeli warplanes, which Damascus believes violated its airspace.
"I have seen those press reports. I don't have anything for you that could substantiate them one way or the other," State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters Thursday.

Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction
Posted: Thursday, September 6, 2007

¤ U.S. Staging Nukes for Iran?
Why the hubbub over a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base in Minot, North Dakota and subsequently landing at a B-52 base in Barksdale, Louisiana? That's like getting excited if you see postal worker in uniform walking out of a post office. And how does someone watching a B-52 land identify the cruise missiles as nukes? It just does not make sense.
So I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let's call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.
Then he told me something I had not heard before.

¤ Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction
On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.
Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

¤ Billions over Baghdad
¤ Class Is Still The Issue
¤ Bush Should Stand Trial for Capital Crimes, War Crimes
¤ Palestinian Children And The Facts
¤ Wack-a-Mole
¤ Saddam Did It Again

¤ IRAQ: With Donkeys for Transport, All Is Well
A brave new attempt is under way to project that all is well now with Fallujah. Residents know better -- or worse.
Former Iraqi minister of state for foreign affairs Rafi al-Issawi visited Fallujah, 60 km west of Baghdad, Aug. 22. Issawi, who resigned Aug. 1 when the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front withdrew from the government, visited the city with other members of the Sunni Accordance Bloc, al-Tawafuq.
The group toured the city and met with senior officials and community leaders in a show of conversion of the city from the most violent to the most peaceful in Iraq.

¤ Thomas Friedman: Hooked on War
Reading his "Letter From Baghdad" column in the New York Times on Sept. 5, you'd never know that Thomas Friedman has a history of enthusiasm for war. Now he laments that Iraq is bad for the United States -- "everyone loves seeing us tied down here" -- stuck in the "madness that is Iraq." And he concludes that the good Americans who have been sent to Iraq will not be deserved by Iraqis "if they continue to hate each other more than they love their own kids."

¤ Italy mourns tenor with voice of platinum
¤ Algeria suicide bomber kills 16

¤ From Tea-Drinkers To Terrorists
Condoleezza Rice once scoffed at the idea that the U.S. attack on Iraq was creating terrorists.
Does anybody think these people were just sitting around drinking tea? Rice demanded rhetorically at a Plain Dealer editorial board meeting in October 2004.
America, she argued, had drawn the terrorist malignancy to the surface in Iraq - and was in the process of irradiating it.
Just Saturday, President Bush congratulated the troops: "Every day, you're doing work on the sands of Anbar that is making it safer in the streets of America."

¤ Kill the Poor: Phony Poverty Study Fools Lazy Journalists
¤ New mortgage foreclosures set record

Italian Tenor Pavarotti Dies at 71
Posted: Thursday, September 6, 2007

Luciano Pavarotti, opera's biggest superstar of the late 20th century, died Thursday. He was 71. He was the son of a singing baker and became the king of the high C's.
Full Article : apnews.myway.com

Phase III of Bush's War
Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2007

¤ Seven Years In Hell: On Body Counts, Dead Zones, and an Empire of Stupidity

¤ Iraqis' Lackeys
Great news from Iraq! Tribal leaders who used to be fighting against US forces have turned their forces against Al Qaida instead. These tribal forces are working with US forces and the stars are now properly aligned in this epic battle of good against evil.
Desperate for any good news out of Iraq, the Administration has selected the tribes of Anbar as its latest poster child for Mission Accomplished and no Mission Accomplished commercial would be complete without the staged appearance of The Decider himself. Heeeeeeere's Dubya!

¤ "We're one bomb away" from our goal
¤ True or False: Can Bush Tell Difference?

¤ Beware the Wounded Beast
The Iraq War has been lost.
The British are acknowledging this fact by pulling out their troops from Basra, Iraq's second largest city, handing over the city to the control of Shia militias. For all intents and purposes, the "Coalition of the Willing" is now dead. America is now going it alone.
Bush is not acknowledging defeat, but has indirectly admitted it by saying that some troops can start being brought home soon, even though clearly nothing has been accomplished with the addition of 30,000 troops for the last six months.

¤ Who Are the Fanatics?
¤ Iraq, Israel, Iran
¤ What History Tells Us about "The Verdict of History
¤ Musharraf Faces Limited Options
¤ Network: "Television is not the truth!" Video

¤ Phase III of Bush's War
Those who hoped that - with the victory of the antiwar party in 2006, the departure of Rumsfeld and the neocons from the Pentagon, the rise of Condi and the eclipse of Cheney - America was headed out of Iraq got a rude awakening. They are about to get another.
Today, the United States has 30,000 more troops in Iraq than on the day America repudiated the Bush war policy and voted the GOP out of power. And President Bush, self-confidence surging, is now employing against Iran a bellicosity redolent of the days just prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
What gives Bush his new cockiness? The total collapse of the antiwar coalition on Capitol Hill and the breaking of the Congress.

¤ The Iraq News Black-Out: How the Press Spent its Summer Vacation
News that Katie Couric would anchor the CBS Evening News from Baghdad this week created a major media splash. After earlier suggesting that type of assignment would be too treacherous for a single mother of two, Couric did an about-face. She stressed that as a journalist she wanted to get a better sense, a firsthand account, of how events were unfolding inside Iraq; to give the story more context.

It's ironic because if CBS had simply aired more reporting from Iraq this summer instead of joining so many other news outlets in walking away from the story, then perhaps Couric wouldn't have had to travel 8,000 miles to find out the facts on the ground.

¤ Iraq and Vietnam
Since the invasion of Iraq, in March of 2003, George W. Bush's rationale for the occupation has continually shifted. On August 22nd, the White House once again changed its criterion for success. As disturbing as this is, what's more disturbing is the new justification: keep Iraq from becoming another Vietnam.

¤ Why Is This Man Smiling?
¤ P.R. And Spin Can't Hide Failures In Iraq
¤ Felix's toll rises, Henriette in Mexico

Pavarotti unconscious, family gathers: report
Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Luciano Pavarotti's health has deteriorated sharply and the 71-year-old tenor is at home, unconscious and suffering from kidney failure, a television station reported on Wednesday.
Full Article : yahoo.com

Germany arrests three over 'US airbase bomb plot'
Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Three suspected terrorists have been arrested for allegedly plotting to bomb Frankfurt airport and the US air force base at Ramstein, German officials said today.

Monika Harms, the German federal prosecutor, said the three had trained at camps in Pakistan and obtained some 680kg (1,500lb) of hydrogen peroxide for making explosives.

"This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings," Joerg Ziercke, the head of Germany's federal crime office, said at a joint news conference with Ms Harms.
Full Article : guardian.co.uk

Thousands take shelter from Hurricane Felix
Posted: Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Hurricane Felix was restored to the most powerful category 5 status as it closed in on the coast of Central America today.

Felix, which had previously been downgraded to category 4, had peak winds of 155mph, with the potential to cause catastrophic damage, the US national hurricane centre said.
Full Article : guardian.co.uk

Stranded Miskito Indians brace for hurricane

Iraq Oil: The Vultures are Waiting
Posted: Tuesday, September 4, 2007

¤ Cheney Orders Corporate Media to Sell Iran Attack
Buried in the New Yorker and yet uncovered by Paul Joseph Watson is an item by George Packer about "instructions" handed-down from on-high by Cheney's office–call it Neocon Central–to sell the attack of Iran to the American people. Packer quotes Barnett Rubin, described as having "connections to someone at a neoconservative institution in Washington," and this institution, likely the American Enterprise Institute, where Bush gets his criminal "minds," has instructed the complaisant corporate media to sell the attack.
"They [the source's institution] have 'instructions' (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day," Packer quotes Rubin, "it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this–they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is 'plenty.'"

¤ Bush PR Machine Works Myth and Magic on Iraq

¤ Twenty-Two Things We Now Know Six Years After 9/11
Each year around the anniversary of 9/11, I summarize what we ordinary citizens have learned since that awful day in 2001. This is the sixth annual look backwards, an update based on new information about those horrific events and what followed.
What we now more fully understand is how the CheneyBush Administration utilized the murderous terrorism of 9/11 as the one-size-fits-all justification for their unfolding domestic and foreign agenda.
By and large, one can sum up that overall agenda as: Amass and control power in the U.S. and much of the world, and, in cahoots with their corporate supporters, loot the treasury. All this was to be carried out secretly, with no accountability.

¤ Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran
Many people in the antiwar movement try to reassure themselves: Bush cannot possibly attack Iran. He does not have the means to do so, or, perhaps, even he is not foolish enough to engage in such an enterprise. Various particular reasons are put forward, such as: If he attacks, the Shiites in Iraq will cut the US supply lines. If he attacks, the Iranians will block the Straits of Ormuz or will unleash dormant terrorist networks worldwide. Russia won't allow such an attack. China won't allow it -- they will dump the dollar. The Arab world will explode.

¤ The Haditha Massacre
The sheer criminality of the entire project was plain for all to see. Sunday night the CBS television show 60 Minutes re-broadcast an interview with Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, the patrol leader in the massacre of twenty-four civilians in Haditha, Iraq on November 19, 2005. The overall tone of the 60 Minutes segment was relatively objective, refusing to either exonerate the Marine patrol or condemn the men and their leader. At the same time, it was a fair representation of the thinking involved in the murder of civilians in modern warfare--a phenomenon that not only occurs more often than those of us in the homeland are led to believe, but is also part and parcel of modern warfare. Why else would the term "collateral damage" have been coined?

¤ U.S. holding 22,000 Iraqi prisoners
¤ Book details Rice's struggle with diplomatic setbacks
¤ Haitians request support from Venezuela to eradicate illiteracy
¤ Why Africa finds it hard to support MDC
¤ International slavery museum: a refreshing approach to history

¤ 24 die in Rawalpindi twin blasts
¤ Chávez pours millions more into pioneering music scheme
¤ The Reality on the Ground in Iraq from Nir Rosen
¤ Couric Admits Her Rosy Report From Iraq Is Based On 'What The U.S. Military Wants Me To See'

¤ Blood sellers find market niche in Baghdad
As the Iraqi National Centre for Blood Donation (INCBD) urges Iraqis to donate more blood to help meet increasing demand, individuals wishing to sell their blood congregate at hospitals in the hope of being able to make some money. Those offering rare blood types are best able to cash in.
"In many cases, desperate families look for blood sellers who can be found around the hospital and at the [Baghdad's main] blood centre," Abdallah Farhan Ahmed, a surgeon at Medical City Hospital, said. "The most expensive blood types are the rare ones and we cannot force people to give them for free."

¤ Iraq Oil: The Vultures are Waiting

¤ Fluoride, Teeth, and the Atomic Bomb
Some fifty years after the United States began adding fluoride to public water supplies to reduce cavities in children's teeth, declassified government documents are shedding new light on the roots of that still-controversial public health measure, revealing a surprising connection between fluoride and the dawning of the nuclear age.
Today, two thirds of U.S. public drinking water is fluoridated. Many municipalities still resist the practice, disbelieving the government's assurances of safety.

¤ Bush in surprise Iraq visit
¤ Why did Bush go to Iraq today?
¤ No level of lying is too great for supporters of the war.
¤ Haditha Massacre- video
¤ Russia prepares to respond to USA's missile defense plans in Europe

¤ The Next Quagmire
The most effective diplomats, like the most effective intelligence officers and foreign correspondents, possess empathy. They have the intellectual, cultural and linguistic literacy to get inside the heads of those they must analyze or cover. They know the vast array of historical, religious, economic and cultural antecedents that go into making up decisions and reactions. And because of this-endowed with the ability to communicate and more able to find ways of resolving conflicts through diplomacy-they are less prone to blunders.

¤ Dear Dubya: Call Ahmadinejad's Bluff!
Hey George, word on the street is that you have your heart set on blowing up Iran. Well who can blame you since you have all those GI Joes and Cherry Bombs to play with?
Before I get into the liquid meat and carbon fiber potatoes, I just wanted to say what a fine job you've done in Iraq. You should be proud. How many world-historical leaders have careened through time with your legacy? Beyond a shadow of a doubt you are "Destined for Destiny."

¤ How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bombing Iran

¤ In The US, Class War Still Means Just One Thing: The Rich Attacking The Poor
In July the Florida Republican state representative Bob Allen was caught offering to pay a black undercover cop $20 so that he could perform oral sex on him in a park. Allen's defence? Blow jobs and cash are to black males what kryptonite is to Superman - the only known means of depleting their superhuman strength. "There was a pretty stocky black guy," he explained to the arresting officer. "And there was nothing but other black guys around in the park." Fearing he "was about to be a statistic", he claimed he would have said anything just to get away. Allen had indeed become a statistic - yet another desperate conservative politician mangling logic to explain his hypocrisy.

¤ Another Black Eye for US Boasts
¤ Post-Mortem America
¤ Fake Photos Helped Lead US to War in Iraq
¤ The Basra endgame and the trading of blame

Book details Rice's struggle with diplomatic setbacks
Posted: Monday, September 3, 2007

In her two years as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice has had limited success in her efforts to fix the US diplomatic setbacks she helped create during President George W. Bush's first term, says a new book on the chief US diplomat.

As Bush's national security advisor during his first term, Rice was at the center of decisions that she has struggled to mend since becoming secretary of state in January 2005, journalist Glenn Kessler writes in "The Confidante."

"She was one of the weakest national security advisors in US history. Her inexperience and her mistakes in that job have shaped the world and colored the choices she must handle as secretary of state," writes Kessler, who covers US diplomacy for The Washington Post.
Full Article : breitbart.com

Haitians request support from Venezuela to eradicate illiteracy
Posted: Sunday, September 2, 2007

Caracas, Aug 29th (ABN) - A group of social grassroots fighters from Haíti held a meeting in the Venezuelan Ministry of People’s Power for Education (MPPE) to request support in order to eradicate illiteracy in that country, which affects about 60% of the population.

The Haitian delegates, who had visited Venezuela last August 22nd to attend the First Meeting of the Haitian Diaspora, were welcomed by the Education Development Vice-Minister, Gisela Toro, along with the General Director of Samuel Robinson foundation, Zully Hernández and Multilateral Organism Chair of the Education Ministry, Marisela Rojas.
Full Article : mathaba.net

US- Right-wing Zionist witch-hunt ousts principal
Posted: Sunday, September 2, 2007

New York City: Right-wing Zionist witch-hunt ousts principal of new Arabic school

A reactionary campaign based on anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry in New York City has forced the resignation of the Muslim-American principal of a newly created charter school that offered education in Arabic language and culture.

Debbie Almontaser, the principal of Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), scheduled to open in September in New York City, was hounded out of her job by means of a media furor whipped up by right-wing and Zionist groups. The immediate pretext for her ouster was her failure to immediately condemn another Arab-American group, with no connection to the school, for producing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan "Intifada NYC." The word Intifada is associated with the Palestinian campaign of popular resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Full Article : wsws.org

Felix Becomes Category 4 Hurricane
Posted: Sunday, September 2, 2007

ORANJESTAD, Aruba - Hurricane Felix strengthened into a dangerous Category 4 storm Sunday as it toppled trees and flooded homes on a cluster of Dutch islands before churning its way into the open waters of the Caribbean.
Full Article : sun-sentinel.com

The War Criminal in the Living Room
Posted: Sunday, September 2, 2007

¤ Pentagon 'three-day blitz' plan for Iran
THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians' military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for "pinprick strikes" against Iran's nuclear facilities. "They're about taking out the entire Iranian military," he said.
Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: "Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same." It was, he added, a "very legitimate strategic calculus".

¤ U.S. Obsessed With Using Force

¤ Bush Plans War on Iran
The Sunday Times of London is reporting that the Pentagon has plans for three days of massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran. Last week, Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, told a meeting of The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal, that the military did not intend to carry out "pinprick strikes" against Iranian nuclear facilities. He said, "They're about taking out the entire Iranian military."
Bush has already set the wheels in motion. With Rovian timing, Alberto Gonzales' resignation was sandwiched between two Bush screeds - one aimed at ensuring Congress scares up $50 billion more for the occupation of Iraq, the other designed to scare us into supporting war on Iran. As Gonzales rides off into the sunset, the significant questions are who will take his place and how that choice will facilitate Bush's occupation of Iraq and attack on Iran.

¤ Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran?
¤ Cold War II
¤ British troops leave Basra base in Iraq
¤ Britain's Guantánamo
¤ More Than 1,800 Iraqis Killed in August

¤ The War Criminal in the Living Room
The media is silent, Congress is absent, and Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran.
US Navy aircraft carrier strike forces are deployed off Iran.
US Air Force jets and missile systems are deployed in bases in countries bordering or near to Iran.
US B-2 stealth bombers have been refitted to carry 30,000 pound "bunker buster" bombs.
The US government is financing terrorist and separatist groups within Iran.
US Special Forces teams are conducting terrorist operations inside Iran.
US war doctrine has been altered to permit first strike nuclear attack on Iran and other non-nuclear countries.

¤ 'They wanted them poor niggers out of there.'
"They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain't had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that's just the bottom line."
It wasn't a pretty statement. But I wasn't looking for pretty. I'd taken my investigative team to New Orleans to meet with Malik Rahim. Pretty isn't Malik's concern.
We needed an answer to a weird, puzzling and horrific discovery. Among the miles and miles of devastated houses, rubble still there today in New Orleans, we found dry, beautiful homes. But their residents were told by guys dressed like Ninjas wearing "Blackwater" badges: "Try to go into your home and we'll arrest you."

¤ US-Allawi Coup May Be On Its Way

¤ Vital Lockerbie evidence 'was tampered with'
The key piece of material evidence used by prosecutors to implicate Libya in the Lockerbie bombing has emerged as a probable fake.
Nearly two decades after Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Scotland on 21 December, 1988, allegations of international political intrigue and shoddy investigative work are being levelled at the British government, the FBI and the Scottish police as one of the crucial witnesses, Swiss engineer Ulrich Lumpert, has apparently confessed that he lied about the origins of a crucial 'timer' - evidence that helped tie the man convicted of the bombing to the crime.

¤ USA equipping a private army in preparation for an invasion of Venezuela
¤ How BAE and a rather mysterious Labour peer get rich as our troops die
¤ IRAQ: Children Starved of Childhood
¤ Walt & Mearsheimer's Proof That 'Tail Wagged the Dog'
¤ Sunni AMS denies dialogue with U.S.
¤ Baghdad's New Owners
¤ Our Unknown Air War Over Iraq

¤ Our Leader is a Mass Murderer, and Our Democracy is a Sham
After Iraq's "transformative" experiment in democracy - which arrived by way of the coalition's immoral war of aggression led by its evil sponsor, the United States - can that country still be referred to as the free world's "defender of liberty?"

While history has witnessed similar barbaric wars, Bush's war of democracy arrived on the back of tanks on the 9th of April, 2003, with a company of exiled traitors rushing close behind and championing the war of "liberation" that has resulted in the slaughter of Iraq, Iraqis and their civilization.

¤ Welcome to the new US embassy
¤ The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five
¤ Intellectuals and the "War on Terror"
¤ Just Another WTF Week in Bushland
¤ Fake Photos Helped Lead U.S. to Invade Iraq
¤ September Song: As The AP Twists the Numbers in Iraq
¤ Do Venezuela and Hugo Chavez Frias presently have more going for them than Uncle $ugar and George W. Bush?

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