West meddling in Mideast 'kiss of death'

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 18:16:47 By Eva Manasieva, Press TV, Vienna An interview with Dr. Karin Kneissl, one of Europe's most insightful scholars on Middle Eastern politics. Dr. Kneissl is a teacher of International Relations at Webster University in Vienna, and a guest lecturer at universities in Lebanon and Germany. Previously she was a Professor at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, University of Vienna and IMADEC University. She has served in the Foreign Service of the Republic of Austria (i.e., the political section, office of the Legal Adviser: Department of Human Rights, Cabinet of the Federal Minister,) at the Austrian Delegation to UNESCO in Paris, the Austrian Mission to the UN (UNOV) in Vienna, and at the Austrian Embassy in Madrid, Spain. She has just recently had published an analytical book on the Middle East The Cycle of Violence between Orient and Occident. Dr. Kneissl has shared some of her insights with our reporter in Vienna, Austria. Q: Do you think the EU as an organization is becoming more and more centralized or decentralized? A: It's a difficult question. Well, with the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaty when the European Community turned into the European Union, actually the momentum was more toward inter-governmental cooperation rather than integration. That was so because the member countries were realizing that through these treaties too much power went to Brussels; they wanted to stop that - therefore I think this lead to more decentralization. Actually, I think that you cannot fully define the EU as an international organization or a federation, its something in between. Actually, many people don't want it ever to become a federation. However, in certain areas it's still possible to say that the EU has really centralized, this would include agriculture. In other areas - such as energy politics, foreign affairs and security issues - it is NOT centralized, because these matters are the most important symbols of state sovereignty. Many EU member states are not willing to give up their most important attributes of state sovereignty. Q: Interestingly you mentioned foreign policy and energy as symbols of sovereignty. It's understandable why foreign policy is a sign of sovereignty, but how is it that along with that you mentioned energy? A: The reason I linked foreign policy and energy together is because energy is the precondition for any economy to work. The EU is energy dependent. We import most of our energy from outside. Therefore it's closely related to our relations with other states. This can change if we autonomously produce energy, but I don't think this will take place at any time in the near future. Q: You mentioned that the EU imports most of its energy, where does it import its energy from? A: Most of our oil comes from the Middle East; most of our gas comes from Russia and North Africa. The EU wants to diversify its energy imports. By this I mean that they do not want to be dependent on any one particular area of the world for energy import. Q: Do you think that the EU has specifically chosen unattainable goals for Turkey so as to prevent it from entering into the EU? Is the EU serious in its negotiations with Turkey? A: I think the conditions for Turkey are the same as for any other country which wants to enter the EU; these conditions cannot actually be called negotiations. The reason for that is because there are agreed upon standards based on which the state is admitted into the EU. The states which want to be part of the EU have to meet them. However, for example, in the case of Turkey adapting certain parts of its legislation would be harder then, let's say, for Croatia. But the goals are not unattainable. Q: Do you think it is realistic to believe that Turkey will become an EU member? A: It's very hard to say for me because even if Turkey does achieve all of its legislative reforms in accordance with the EU standards, there are other areas where a lot of work and reform must be done. On the other hand, we have some EU member states openly proclaiming their opposition to Turkey's entrance into the EU. Some states clearly stated that they will put this matter on a national referendum and if one of the EU member countries says that we do not want Turkey in the EU, the entire process of Turkish admission will be put into limbo. I think such an approach in dealing with Turkey is not an honest one. Therefore, I think it may happen that in two or three years Turkey will say that it does not want to join the EU anymore. I have also observed less and less enthusiasm in Turkey about joining the EU. Q: Will Turkish intervention in Iraq further decrease its chances of becoming an EU member? A: Yes, it definitely will decrease its chances for entering the EU simply because one of the criteria of entering the EU is not to be in armed conflict and have the rule of law. Q: As you know one of the hot issues being discussed in the region currently is the US Congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide. There were many editorials published in the Middle East saying that one of the reasons for such a harsh resolution against a very sensitive issue for Turkey is the results of the last parliamentary elections where the Turkish population by voting for the AK party shifted its path towards an Islamic identity. Do you think that one of the reasons for this resolution is to signal Turkey to be careful in its choices? A: I think the issue of the Armenian genocide is not linked to the last elections. It is purely a matter related to the influence of the Armenian lobby in the US and elsewhere. For example, this issue had been in the French parliament two years ago which was before the current elections. Q: How do you think the EU reacted towards the last parliamentary election results in Turkey? A: The EU reacted calmly. The outcome of the election was expected. Actually I think that this kind of government was pushed more by the United States of America rather than by the Europeans. The reason for this is that the US wants to show that AKP party is the right model of an Islamic party. I personally don't think that the AKP party is a typical model of an Islamic party. The US and Britain, who pushed for the AKP victory wanted to show that the path for all Islamic parties to follow was the path taken by the AKP. Q: Do you think that the EU is mistaken in coming closer and closer towards the US position on some crucial issues in the ME; specifically in relation to its approach towards the democratically elected HAMAS government and the Iranian nuclear issue? A: I think there is no clear European position. There is a position of states who are members of the EU. Some of those states are keener in following the coercive diplomacy of the US and some are less keen. For example today the French government is much closer to the US then the previous government, but this can change because governments come and go. Italy and Spain totally defected from the US camp of coercive diplomacy. Five years ago the US could totally count on Madrid and Rome in their support, but today Italy and Spain are not in favor of the American coercive diplomacy. We must also take into account that public opinion in the EU is against any sort of military intervention in the Middle East. However, there is a big gap between the public opinion and the European governments. For example, the European public is not interested in who HAMAS is and who Fatah is, but they see the injustices being done to Palestinians and they are against that. Nevertheless, the EU governments and specifically Germany and Austria will not take a clear-cut position against Israel because of the so called shadow of the Second World War. However, such positions weaken the credibility of the EU in the region. For example, the EU approach towards the HAMAS victory in the parliamentary elections in 2006 was of a kind which harmed its credibility. The EU basically openly said that we acknowledge the fairness of the elections and their results, but we will not recognize them because we don't like HAMAS. Such an approach toward HAMAS seriously harms the credibility of the EU. The west can say a hundred times “Be more democratic, treat women better, be nice to your environment” and so on, but if we don't act according to our own standards, then we loose our credibility. However, I think in relation to HAMAS the EU is on the move, but it is not yet totally clear towards which sort of position they will lean. Q: As you have seen in the past 10 years, there is a strong Islamic revival in the Middle East. As a person who is familiar with the roots of political issues in the Middle East I would like to ask you if you think that the EU and the West [NATO members] in general are ready to deal with the increasing political power and popularity specifically of Hezbollah, The Muslim Brotherhood and HAMAS? Do they want to deal with them? A: I think they have no clue how to deal with them. Well, let me mention Hezbollah as an example with which I am more familiar. The EU does not regard Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The US regards Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and this is one of the major disagreements between the EU and the US. I remember during last year's war in Lebanon at one of the press conferences which I attended, the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU Javier Solana stated that the “EU does not regard Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.” The Italian government throughout the war had contacts with Hezbollah to arrange a cease fire. When it comes to other Islamic movements stretching from Southeast Asia to North Africa, the west and the EU has a case by case approach. In some cases it gets involved where it has interests and in other cases they don't care. However, if you compare the EU and the US, the US gets involved much more often. In the past the US supported many of the Islamic movements; this was so even after the Cold War because the US saw them as some sort of a deterrent to whatever other “evil” forces they saw. In general, when the West gets involved with political movements in the Middle East, it's often a “kiss of death” situation as was the case with the PLO. Many years ago the PLO was taboo in the West. Then, when the West embraced them and the PLO embraced the West, the PLO lost a lot of its credibility. I personally think that the main thing the EU and the West should not do is interfere, specifically with the election results as they did in Algeria in 1991 by supporting the military takeover, or as they recently did in the Palestinian territories by isolating HAMAS. It's up to the people to vote for whom they want to vote for. Q: Do you foresee a major shift in the arena of Arab politics in the near future; do you think any major leadership or policy changes will take place? A: Yes I think transition will take place simply because of biology. Old people pass away. For example, such change can happen in Egypt. If the son of President Mubarak cannot take over, then slowly an evolutionary change can happen in Egypt, maybe towards the Muslim Brotherhood which is the best organized political movement. Q: As you mentioned earlier, the West lost a lot of its credibility by not acting according to its own standards. Do you think that the West will start to act in accordance with its own standards and ideals? A: We had a strange and not so bright experience practicing “moral” politics which in reality was not “moral” politics, because in general I personally believe that there are no morals in politics, but instead interests. Therefore today the policies are interest-driven, because we are not acting in accordance with our own standards as we have witnessed in Algeria and recently in Palestine. This should not be so, because if it continues, the extremist forces will have grounds to convince people to join their side. Q: Do you personally believe in moral politics? A: I believe that there must be a general framework of morale in politics which must include honesty and the principle of not doing to others what you don't what to be done to yourself. Q: What are the chances of a US attack on Iran in your opinion? What specific steps do you think China and Russia will take if the US attacks Iran? A: I think that a military attack on Iran will not happen unless there is some crazy decision making in Washington. I see the talk of war right now as a sort of psychological war. However, unfortunately things happen out of coincidence and not because they were planned. But if some crazy decision does take place and the war with Iran does start then I think the Chinese and the Russians will react harshly. We already see that these two countries are opposed to a third set of UN sanctions. They did agree on the previous two sets of sanctions because they were very light. The Chinese can apply economic pressure on the US. Today, the United States of America is in a very bad economic situation. If the Chinese simply refuse to buy the US dollar bonds, that alone can bring the US to its knees. Q: In what direction is the issue of the Iranian nuclear program going now? A: I think its going in the direction of a diplomatic stalemate. I think a big mistake that the Americans have made is that they took the Iranian nuclear program issue out of the IAEA and gave it to the UN Security Council. The US should have known that they cannot do much to Iran through the UN Security Council. By keeping it at the level of the agency (the IAEA) they could have saved face on the diplomatic field. Q: Are you saying that diplomatically the US is leading itself into a dead end? A: Well, diplomacy was never the strength of the US. If the US wants to gain a diplomatic victory and the ability to use the UN Security Council against Iran then they need the Chinese and the Russians. They should do their outmost not to annoy the Chinese and the Russians. However, they are doing the opposite. They are irritating the Chinese by inviting the Dalai Lama and annoying the Russians with the missile defense shield. Q: Many leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement member countries have often proposed a change in the structure of the UN Security Council. The latest leader to do so was President Ahmadinejad. Mr. Ahmadinejad stated that “The present structure and working methods of the Security Council, which are legacies of the Second World War, are not responsive to the expectations of the current generation and the contemporary needs of humanity.” He suggested that “the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the African continent should each have a representative as a permanent member of the Security Council, with veto privilege.” Do you think the current UN Security Council structure can be changed without a major war? A: The restructure of the UN Security Council has been under debate for over 15 years now. There exists a panel which worked on the restructuring issue and they have submitted some nice recipes even on how to reform the UN charter and not just the UN Security Council. However, we have not yet seen any of it in action. I believe that we should merge the seat of France and Britain on the UN Security Council into one EU seat and have more countries in the UN Security Council. However, those who have power now will not give it up so easily. I fear that in case we might face a military confrontation of global dimension, as you mention, such a war would destroy the entire UN-system as a whole as it happened to the League of Nations during the Second World War. Given the degree of armament, the overkill factor in the nuclear arsenals and the many other weapons of mass destruction existent in so many states, humankind would suffer from such a war in a horrible way. Albert Einstein once said: “I don't know what World War III will look like, but the next war after WW III people will fight again with stones.” So my sincere hope is that all decision-makers are aware of the risk in launching wars of such a dimension. We have simply rented this planet earth from the next generation and it is our obligation to hand it over to the children in a responsible way. We are condemned to work together peacefully if we wish to survive in a decent way. Latest News US sends mixed signals to Iran US: Plans for attack on Iran 'routine' Iran's women 'thriving' at Rugby Iran inline skater in Asian final UK studies: Chew gum to lose weight Canada's dollar hits record high Putin likens US plan to Cuba crisis Spotlight Reports Amid increasing pressure on Gaza, Abbas meets olmert Interviews West meddling in Mideast 'kiss of death' Reflections The devils in the mountains News Analysis Turkey-Syria: from foe to friend QUICK VOTE If Bush mounts World War III under the pretext that Iran has acquired the necessary nuclear knowledge, he will be faced with ----- international opposition international consent US public condemnation Results international opposition (69%) international consent (13%) US public condemnation (17%) Current Weather

Jumblatt scolds Israel for not crushing Hezbollah

Mohamad Shmaysani Readers Number : 687

23/10/2007 News reports on several news sites focused on meetings between Lebanese MP and key February 14 figure Walid Jumblatt with a number of Israeli officials. According to the Nablus internet site, Jumblatt had held a meeting with former Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Kaplinski. The site quoted a senior official in the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Affairs as saying that the Jumblatt – Kaplinski meeting was held under the sponsorship of the institute management. The Washington Institute had also organized lectures for Jumblatt and Kaplinski last Friday during the annual conference for the founders of the institute. According to the internet site, Jumblatt told Kaplinski: "You have fought and won six wars against the Arabs, although they were wars fought against nations and regular armies. The Arabs had expected your defeat in these wars, however you were defeated by a sectarian militia in the war which we and a large section of the Arab public were hoping you'd triumph in." Jumblatt was referring to Hezbollah's defeat of Israel in its 34-day aggression against Lebanon in the summer of 2006. "You ultimately left the weapons arsenal of this militia untouched so as to fight us with, because you did not enter south Lebanon and crush its dens and warehouses; this is your fatal mistake," Jumblatt told Kaplinski according to the internet site. He added: "In all you previous wars against Lebanon, you used to enter and stay for months and years, even though this was not necessary. When this became necessary, you refrained from doing it. Frankly, I don't understand how your leaders think. Are you acting in collusion with Hezbollah to kill us?" It seems that Kaplinski sought to reassure Jumblatt when he said in his lecture that Israel had drawn lessons from last year's war and that "in the next round we will involve larger ground forces into Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah's arsenal and training centers, and perhaps stay in Lebanon for weeks or months if necessary." Moreover, the Watan internet site quoted an Arab diplomat as saying that Walid Fares, a Lebanese American, had finalized necessary arrangements for the secret meeting between Jumblatt and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Washington. The Arab diplomat told the site that Walid Fares, who has strong ties with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), had booked a special suite at a luxurious hotel in Washington for the Jumblatt – Barak meeting. The Israeli Omedia internet site quoted this time sources close to Jumblatt as saying that the latter had met with a representative of Israeli PM Ehud Olmert. The site added the meeting was attended by US vice president Dick Cheney or his representative and that the meeting was positively concluded. The Israeli site also said that Jumblatt had met on several occasion with Israeli officials and groups.

The P0litical insanity of Washington Caesar

Mired in the disastrous Iraq quagmire, opposed by a majority of Americans, George W. Bush has reached new depths of reckless, belligerent bellowing. At a recent news conference, he volunteered that he told our allies that if they're “interested in avoiding World War III,” Iran must be prevented from both developing a nuclear weapon or having “the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” To what level of political insanity has this Washington Caesar descended? Only two countries can start World War III-Russia and the United States. Is Bush saying that if Russia, presently opposed to military action against Iran, persists with its position, Bush may risk World War III? If not, why is this law-breaking warmonger, looking for another war for American GIs to fight, while his military-age daughters bask in the celebrity lime light? Why is he using such catastrophic language? Surely, he does not think Iran could start World War III. His own intelligence agencies say that, even assuming that the international inspectors are wrong and Iran is moving toward developing the “knowledge” of such weapons, it can't build its first such weapon before 3 to 5 years at the earliest. They recall that President Reagan and his Vice President, George Herbert Walker Bush urged, funded and equipped Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran-a nation that has not invaded any country in over 250 years-which took around 700,000 Iranian lives. Moreover, the undeniable historical record shows that US companies received licenses from the Department of Commerce, under Reagan, to ship Saddam the raw materials necessary to make chemical and biological weapons. Saddam used such lethal chemical weapons, with the tolerance of Reagan and Rumsfeld, on Iranians to devastating effect in terms of lives lost. Then George W. Bush labels Iran a member of the “axis of evil” along with Iraq, ignoring a serious proposal by Iran in 2003 for negotiations, and shows what his language means by invading Iraq. Seymour Hersh, the topflight investigative reporter for the New Yorker magazine has written numerous articles on how the crowding of Iran, including infiltrating its interior, has become an obsession of the messianic militarist in the White House. The Pentagon is more cautious, worrying about our already drained Army and the absence of any military strategy and readiness for many consequences that would follow Bush's “bombs away” mentality. Then there is the matter of the Democrats in Congress. After their costly fumble on Iraq, the opposition Party should make it very constitutionally clear, as recommended by former New York Governor, Mario Cuomo in a recent op-ed, that there can be no funded attacks on any country without a Congressional declaration of war, as explicitly required by the framers of our Constitution. But the Democrats are too busy surrendering to other Bush demands, whether unconstitutional, above the law or just plain marinated in corporate greed. Some of this obeisance was all too clear in the Democrats questioning of Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Michael B. Mukasey. After the two days of hearings, no Democrat has yet announced a vote against Mukasey, even after he evaded questions on torture and argued for the inherent power of the President to act contrary to the laws of the land if he unilaterally believes he has the inherent constitutional authority to do so. This position aligns Mukasey with the imperial views of Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and Gonzales on the “unitary Executive.” In short, reminiscent of the divine right of Kings, the forthcoming Attorney General believes Bush can say that 'he is the law' regardless of Congress and the judiciary. After two recent lead editorials demonstrating its specific exasperation over the Democrats' kowtowing to the White House, the New York Times added a third on October 20, 2007 titled “With Democrats Like These…” The editorial recounted the ways Democrats, especially in the Senate, have caved on critical constitutional and statutory safeguards regarding the Bush-Cheney policies and practices of spying on Americans without judicial approval and accountability. Accusing the Democrats of “the politics of fear,” the Times concluded: “It was bad enough having a one-party government when the Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues.” There is more grist coming for the Times' editorial mill. Last week, the first African-American chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, Charles Rangel (D-NY), declared that Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, Jr., fresh from Wall Street, had persuaded him, during a decade of increasing record profits, to lower the porous corporate income tax rate from 35% to 25%. “We can live with that,” Chairman Rangel declared. Would the working families in his District, who would be paying a higher tax rate on their modest income, agree?

Somalia: Ongoing Intimidations of Journalists in Mogadishu And Garowe

Shabelle Media Network (Mogadishu)

20 October 2007
Posted to the web 21 October 2007

Mogadishu

Abdi Farah Jama Mire, Director of Radio Garowe, and Mohammed Dahir Yusuf, Producer of the Radio were released, but the Isse Abdullahi Mohammed, the Editor of the Radio is still detained. The three journalists were arrested by heavily armed Puntland security forces on Friday afternoon.

The Radio station, which was also closed on Friday, 19 October, is still closed.

Abdirashid Abdulle Abikar, a photojournalist working with AFP news agency was briefly arrested on Friday morning by the security agents of the Transitional Federal Government. Following hours of questioning at the CID, he was released Friday afternoon.

Abdirashid Abdulle Abikar, who is Secretary of Training of the National Union of Somali Journalists, was arrested whilst taking photos from wounded people at Madina hospital. His photographic camera and other equipment were confiscated. The reason of the arrest is unknown.

Abdullahi Mohammed Hassan "Black", Editor-in-Chief of Mogadishu based Ayamaaha Daily Newspaper, was arrested on Friday afternoon by forces from National Security Agency at the newspaper's office in Mogadishu. He was held overnight, and was released Saturday morning. The motive behind the arrest remains unidentified.

US arms messing Lebanon

	21/10/2007 Source almanartv Prominent British Journalist Robert Fisk warned of "phantoms now returning to haunt Lebanon." In his article in the Independent, Fisk described Lebanon as a country "peopled with ghosts" adding that the militias which tore it apart more than 30 years ago, are real. Fisk warned of "a sheer scale of weaponry arriving in Lebanon" believed to have come from the vast stock of 190,000 rifles and pistols which the US military "lost" when they handed them out to Iraqi police officers without registering their numbers or destination. "Fouad Siniora's Lebanese government – supplied by the US with recent shipments of new weapons for the official Lebanese army – has now admitted that militias are also being created among Muslim pro-government groups. Widespread reports that Saad Hariri – son of the assassinated ex-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri – has himself created an embryo militia have been officially denied. But a number of armed Hariri supporters initially opened fire into the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian camp after its takeover by pro-Al-Qaida gunmen last April. Hariri's men also have forces in Beirut (supposedly unarmed) and again this is denied. Those who suspect the opposite, however, might like to check the register of the Mayflower Hotel in the western sector of Beirut," Fisk wrote. Siniora's government, according to the British journalist, is well aware of the dangers that these new developments represent in a country in which only Hezbollah, classed as a "resistance" movement, hitherto had permission to bear arms. "The American plan to chop up Iraq, it seems, is another ghost that has crept silently into Lebanon," Fisk concluded.

Expert: Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia 'a disastrous miscalculation'

Expert: Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia 'a disastrous miscalculation' 20 Oct 20, 2007 - 9:50:31 PM Listen Dr. Michael Weinstein Interview Part1 [Play MP3 | Play Real] and Part2 [Play MP3 | Play Real] SPECIAL COVERAGE by Yusuf Ali, managing editor MELBOURNE, Australia Oct 19 (Garowe Online) - Ethiopia's decision to invade neighboring Somalia under the pretext of "protecting" that country's transitional government has transformed into 'a disastrous miscalculation,' an expert on Somali politics said. Dr. Michael Weinstein, a professor at Purdue University in the United States, told Australia's SBS Somali-language radio service that Ethiopia is in a "weak position" nearly 11 months into the invasion. "It [Ethiopia] now has to be in the difficult position for itself to choose sides and its going to alienate many of its clients [in Somalia]," Dr. Weinstein said. Dr. Weinstein [Image: Purdue University website] The Ethiopian-backed transitional government, led by President Abdullahi Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, is entangled in a serious political dispute that has largely divided an already weak government. Furthermore, military conflict in relatively quiet northern Somalia has placed the Ethiopian government is a difficult position where it has to choose between two of its loyal clients, the breakaway Somaliland republic and the Puntland regional autonomy. "Somaliland is feeling very isolated," Dr. Weinstein says. Somaliland troops ousted Puntland security forces from the disputed town of Las Anod earlier this month. Thousands of residents have led Las Anod fearing armed reprisal after Puntland President Mohamud "Adde" Muse vowed to retake the town by military force. Dr. Weinstein linked Somaliland's military incursion into Las Anod as being propelled by the need to reach colonial-era boundaries it claims as the basis for declaring independence from Somalia. "Somaliland is very anxious to get back these territories [Sool and Sanaag regions] it claims for itself because it senses there might be a unified Somalia," Dr. Weinstein says. But he stressed that Puntland, which controlled Las Anod since 2002, has been weakened economically and militarily by support for President Yusuf's transitional federal government (TFG) and mismanagement within the Puntland government. "Muse, the president of Puntland, has not been able to pay his troops," Dr. Weinstein said. On the Yusuf-Gedi rift, Dr. Weinstein said the Ethiopian government is playing a classic game of "divide and rule" by supporting both parties to the conflict. He argued that the main cause for the political rift between the TFG leaders surfaced when Prime Minister Gedi pushed for a Petroleum Law to be passed in parliament. Yusuf signed an exploration agreement for his native Mudug region with the Chinese National Offshore Oil Company, a deal that Gedi distanced himself from. "Parliament is fairly evenly divided," Dr. Weinstein said, referring to Yusuf's attempt to unseat Prime Minister Gedi via a parliamentary no confidence vote. Thus far, Gedi has resisted any pressure to resign or to appear in front of parliament and face the confidence motion. The rift between the TFG leaders has not only divided the weak transitional government but it has also managed to place regional power brokers and the United Nations in an unfavorable position. "We see signs of desperation going on. We see Uganda saying 'we are going mediate between the TFG and the opposition'," said Dr. Weinstein, who is the Somalia expert for the Power and Interest News Report thinktank. Uganda is the only African Union member state to deploy peacekeepers to Mogadishu where an Islamist-led insurgency aims to violently overthrow the TFG. "[UN Special Envoy for Somalia Ahmedou Ould] Abdallah says he will go to Asmara to speak with anyone, that his mind is open and that he is not completely behind the TFG," Dr. Weinstein said during the interview. The Eritrean capital, Asmara, is hub for an umbrella organization of Somali opposition figures, including senior Islamists and former TFG officials. He said the Eritrean government, locked in a border dispute with Ethiopia since 2000, has shown no sign of stopping its interference in Somali affairs. But Dr. Weinstein was most critical of open-handed U.S. and European support for the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. The U.S. and European governments have been "pushed into a corner by their own doing" by openly backing the Ethiopian invasion, according to Dr. Weinstein. He likened Ethiopia's "disastrous miscalculation" in Somalia to the ongoing U.S. quagmire in Iraq. "Western donor powers have been absolutely stupid" by backing the Ethiopia-TFG military push to unseat the Islamic Courts movement late last year, Dr. Weinstein argued. He said that the Islamist takeover of Mogadishu in mid-2006 was "a genuine revolution" that brought peace to Mogadishu. Source: Garowe Online

Change of nuclear negotiator

Iran's top nuclear negotiator resigns
Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:41:47

Iran's SNSC Secretary Ali Larijani

Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani has announced resignation from his post.

Larijani had repeatedly resigned from his post which was finally accepted by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, government spokesman, Gholam-Hossein Elham, told reporters at his weekly press conference.

Elham added that appointing a successor to Larijani was under consideration.

Larijani had reportedly submitted his written resignation two weeks ago.

Certain sources said that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Larijani had differences of opinion regarding the country's peaceful nuclear case.

Saeed Jalili, Deputy Foreign Minister for European and Ameriacna Affairs, has reportedly been appointed new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.

The former SNSC secretary will take part at the council's sessions as representative of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

SF/GM

Iran appoints new nuclear negotiator
Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:24:49

Iran's new top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili

Iran's Deputy FM Saeed Jalili has been appointed as the country's new chief nuclear negotiator after Ali Larijani's resignation.

Jalili previously served as Deputy Foreign Minister in European and American affairs.

The 42-year-old is one of the new faces in the foreign ministry who was named by FM Manouchehr Mottaki in September 2005 as Deputy Minister.

Jalili was born in 1965 in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad. He started his diplomatic career in 1989 and has worked in the office of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

Former Secretary of the National Security Council Ali Larijani will take part at the council's sessions as the representative of the Leader.

CS/RE

No change in Iran's N-policy
Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:04:55

Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi

A senior presidential advisor says that new appointments in Iran's nuclear team will have no effect on Tehran's overall nuclear policy.

Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, the top presidential advisor, indicated that Iran's nuclear policy is determined by the leader of the Islamic revolution and the president.

Earlier Government Spokesman, Gholam-Hossein Elham had confirmed Saeed Jalili, Deputy Foreign Minister for European and Americana Affairs, has been named new Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and the country's top nuclear negotiator.

Ali Larijani, who served as Iran's nuclear negotiator, will take part at the Supreme National Security Council's sessions as the representative of Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

MT/RE

Mullen: U.S. Forces Could Attack Iran if Needed Despite Iraq, Afghanistan Strains

Mullen: U.S. Forces Could Attack Iran if Needed Despite Iraq, Afghanistan Strains

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Oct. 11: Members of Turkey's Workers' Party protest against the U.S.'s passing of a bill describing World War I-era killings of Armenians as genocide.

PENTAGON — While military action against Iran is a last resort, the U.S. has the resources to attack if needed despite the strains of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the top U.S. military officer said Thursday.

Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the focus now is on diplomacy to stem Iran's nuclear ambitions and its support for insurgents in Iraq.

But, he told reporters, "there is more than enough reserve to respond (militarily) if that, in fact, is what the national leadership wanted to do."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons could set of an arms race in the Middle East. "The risk of an accident or a miscalculation or of those weapons or materials falling into the hands of terrorists seem to me to be substantially increased," he said.

Appearing together before reporters for the first time since Mullen became chairman on Oct. 1, they expressed concern about Iran and Turkey — hot spots commanding attention even as the military focuses on the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both leaders warned of serious repercussions if Congress were to pass a nonbinding resolution labeling as genocide the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, around World War I.

"I don't think the Turks are bluffing. I think it is that meaningful to them," Gates said. "I think there is a very real risk of perhaps not shutting us down" in terms of access to Turkish airspace for resupplying U.S. troops in Iraq, but of at least restricting it.

"I will say again it has potential to do real harm to our troops in Iraq and would strain — perhaps beyond repair — our relationship with a key ally in a vital region and in the wider war on terror," the Pentagon chief said.

At the same time, Gates said the U.S. and the Iraqis are "prepared to do the appropriate thing" in acting against the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, that has conducted raids into Turkey from northern Iraq.

The Turks have expressed frustration about the lack of action by the U.S. against the group. Gates attributed that largely to a lack of specific intelligence.

The Turkish parliament this week authorized the government to send troops across the border to go after the Kurdish rebels, despite repeated pleas from Washington to focus on diplomatic efforts.

Gates also said he believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin is serious about trying to play a constructive role in resolving the crisis over Iran's nuclear program.

"President Putin takes Iran seriously as a security concern for Russia, and I think they are prepared to take some actions as befits that," Gates said.

Mullen said the U.S. military is working hard to stem the flow from Iran into Afghanistan of high-tech materials for roadside bombs. The military has said that parts from the armor-piercing bombs, which have killed hundreds of troops in Iraq, are now getting into Afghanistan.

Mullen said he is not aware of any high-level Iranian government connection to the weapons in Afghanistan, although officials have said that is a concern in Iraq.

At a separate Pentagon news conference, Afghanistan's defense chief, Abdul Rahim Wardak, told reporters that his government recently obtained evidence that Iranian weapons are entering his country.

He said he raised the matter with Iranian officials last month and they denied any involvement.

Also Thursday, Gates said the private security guards in Iraq — such as those who killed a number of Iraqi citizens — may be hurting the U.S. military's effort to stabilize the country.

The military and the contractors, he said, have conflicting missions. While the contractors are trying to keep alive those people being guarded, the military is striving to improve relations with the Iraqis and solidify the government.

"There have been instances where, to put it mildly, the Iraqis have been offended and not treated properly" by the private guards, Gates said. "So those kinds of activities work at cross-purposes to our larger mission in Iraq."

Gates said he plans to confer with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about tighter controls over the contractors.

1974: New speed limit to curb fuel use

British drivers must adhere to reduced speed limits from midnight tonight as the government tries to save fuel.

Speeds limits on motorways will remain 70mph (112kph), but on dual carriageways they will become 60mph (96kph), and on all other roads 50mph (80kph).

Motorists could previously drive up to a limit of 70mph.

Anyone breaking the new restrictions will be reported, though not necessarily summoned.

The maximum penalty for speeding has been doubled to £100.

Publicity campaign

Police patrols in unmarked cars will be looking for drivers not observing the new restrictions and will also be using speed traps.

A major publicity campaign informing drivers of the new restrictions was launched last week and so road signs will not be changed.

Police expect the new speed restrictions to lead to a rise in the number of speeding offences but a fall in the number of road accidents.

The measures have been introduced indefinitely by Energy Secretary, Eric Varley, as part of a 12-point package of energy conservation measures aimed at saving £700m in imports annually.

Oil prices fluctuate

The Ministry of Transport said even a speed reduction of 5mph would save about £10m a year in fuel costs.

Mr Varley unveiled the package six days ago to the House of Commons as the landed price of imported oil is now five times higher than a year ago.

Prices rose after the Middle East oil embargo during the Arab-Israeli war last year.

The plan includes restrictions on heating levels and on the use of electricity for outdoor display and advertising.

There will also be loans to industry for energy-saving investment and a doubling of the standards of thermal insulation for new homes.

The strict controls on energy consumption will form the British way of life for the foreseeable future, he said.

Last November petrol ration coupons were introduced and in February 1972 a three-day working week was imposed on British industry to conserve power supplies due to the coal miners' strike.

In the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the Arab oil-producing countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo on supplies to the US on 20 October 1973. For the wider world, oil prices went through the roof, from around $3 a barrel before the war to over $11 by early the following January. The crisis led to a recession in 1975, the first of four world downturns where oil price increases caused by events in the Middle East played a key role. The finger of blame was also pointed at Opec when prices spiked in the second half of 2000 and prompted fuel protests across much of Europe. But in recent years, Opec has been trying to ensure market stability through a price range mechanism and, as more sources of oil come to market, consumer countries are also less reliant on oil from Opec countries. In 1974, the US Congress imposed a nationwide 55 mph (89 km/h) speed limit - it was estimated that a speed of 55 mph used 17% less fuel per mile than a speed of 75 mph. The limit was unpopular, especially in Western states and in 1987 states were allowed to raise speed limits to 65 mph (104 kmh) on rural interstate highways. All federal speed limit controls were lifted in 1995, leaving speed setting to the states.

Blackwater and Bush's War

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:58:24
by Sheldon Richman

If Iraq is really a sovereign country, which is the fiction maintained by the Bush administration, then why aren't the Blackwater USA personnel who are accused of murdering 17 innocent Iraqis accountable to the criminal justice system in that country?

Private contractors such as Blackwater have had immunity from criminal prosecution, but Congress now has voted to make them liable under US law. That seems odd. If an American commits a crime in Iraq, why should he be accountable to US authorities? It shouldn't matter that he was under contract to the US government.

If the tables were turned and Iraqis under contract to Iraq's government were murdering Americans on our streets, Congress would be singing a different tune.

We shouldn't be surprised by the treatment of Iraq as a ward of the United States. That attitude has been at the center of US policy since President Bush decided to go to war.

Ask yourself why American politicians almost unanimously favor imposing “benchmarks” on the Iraqi government. If Iraq is sovereign, by what right do they make any demands at all? The war parties (yes, the Democrats too) would reply that “we” (who?) have vital interests in the region.

But that reveals quite a lot. When a government insists that the country it speaks for has vital interests worldwide, the defense of which may require direct or indirect intervention at any time - and it is in a position to carry out that intervention - it is an imperial power, call it what you will.

Blackwater's involvement in Iraq has been ugly but misunderstood.

The presence of security contractors in Iraq does not signify that the war has been privatized. Unfortunately, the word "privatization" has been corrupted over the years. It used to mean that a service provided by government was fully relinquished to the private marketplace.

For example, if a city government picked up the trash, it could privatize that function simply by stopping and letting private companies offer trash-removal services directly to city residents.

But somewhere along the line “privatization” has come to mean “government's contracting with private companies for the provision of services.” Some cities have turned the management of their schools or water plants over to contractors. This has been touted as a way to achieve efficiencies that government cannot match because if one contractor doesn't produce, it can be replaced by a competing one.

Whatever the merits of that argument, the arrangement is not privatization for one obvious reason. The government pays contractors with money forcibly extracted from the taxpayers and the services are forced on everyone. In a free market, sellers and buyers are free. Consumers are at liberty to reject services they don't want.

But under phony privatization, consumers are not free to say no. They are taxed by the political authorities, who pay the contractors (who are often cronies) for services the authorities want. This is nothing like a free market.

Calling the situation in Iraq a privatized war is absurd. With all the resources of the US government at his disposal, President Bush sent troops to invade Iraq, overthrow the government, and subdue the population. It was a government operation from top to bottom.

The American people were the financiers without the power to stop the juggernaut. (Who would have offered his own money voluntarily for this war?) That the administration has used taxpayer money to buy the services of “private” companies changes nothing about this story. And if such companies exist by virtue of tax money, are they really private?

In a corporatist economy such as ours, government funnels lots of money to nominally private firms to accomplish things it might have done directly. But there is no essential difference between those two ways of doing things. What counts is who controls the money.

If the government were to close down the Internal Revenue Service and hire H&R Block to collect taxes, would that be privatization of the tax system? The question answers itself.

Adding Google adSense to a Blogger Blog

3 Chechens win suit in Strasbourg

Publication time: 5 October 2007, 17:27

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Thursday to award compensation to three plaintiffs from Chechnya who survived a mopping-up operation by federal occupation forces in Grozny in 2000.

The Strasbourg-based court ruled that federal government should pay the three women almost 200,000 euros, Ekho Moskvy radio reported. Two of the plaintiffs barely survived the operation in January 2000, while the third witnessed the execution of her relatives by Russian invaders, the radio station said.

The ruling lambasted the Chechen puppet authorities for being sluggish and unprofessional in their investigations of the killings in a Grozny suburb in January and February 2000.

Chechen puppet prosecutors investigated the killings only after journalist Anna Politkovskaya -- who was murdered last year -- wrote about them in a newspaper, said the Russia Justice Initiative, a group that provides Chechens with legal aid.

Also Thursday, a Chechen activist called on the West not to turn its back on the people of Chechnya.

Natalya Estemirova -- a member of the Memorial human rights group who was in London to collect the first annual Anna Politkovskaya Award for women defenders of human rights in war -- said she hoped the award would raise awareness.

"I hope that the fact of this award will help. I say: Chechnya is part of Europe. You cannot simply forget us," she said.

The group Reach All Women in War is awarding the prize, backed by at least six Nobel Peace Prize winners, in honor of Politkovskaya. Irish Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire will present the award in London on Friday to Estemirova, who lives in Grozny.

Estemirova said the violence in Chechnya has continued unabated, with rival armed groups carrying out kidnappings and disappearances, and torturing prisoners to obtain confessions.

"Kidnappings are not rare. Disappearances of people after kidnappings are not rare. Killings are not rare," she said. "Now what is happening is the killing of Chechens by Chechens. This is the most dangerous of all, because it never ends."

Source: Reuters

Kavkaz Center

Added: September 12, 2007
From: 1obsolete

chechnya inside rebel territory
a repo... chechnya inside rebel territory
a report from chechnya mass killings of civilians
russian attempts to portray the war in chechnya as a war on terror is both a lie and a failure nearly all those killed and tortured are innocent civilians a a genocide against a tiny nation.

U.S. may attack, but will Iran fight back?

Publication time: 12 September 2007, 20:46

For several years tensions between the United States and Iran over the latter's nuclear program have waxed and waned. War between the two sides has been confidently predicted, with even the date of the US attack given by Internet pundits. Nothing happened. With so many past false alarms it is hard to take seriously the renewed rumors of war between the two sides. However, this time things may be different.

US President George W Bush has said he will not leave office (in January 2009) with Iran retaining the capability to develop nuclear weapons. Unless Iran agrees to give up all hope of a nuclear-weapons program, as Libya and North Korea have done, a US military strike against Iran will probably occur at some point between now and the US presidential elections in November 2008. A short, victorious war with Iran, leaving its nuclear facilities in ruins, will, it is hoped, assure the Republican candidate of victory in that election.

With a time frame of only a little over a year, the Bush administration is anxious to arrange a showdown with Iran as soon as possible. The United Nations route, with sanctions imposed on Iran by the Security Council, is proving too slow and uncertain. The International Atomic Energy Authority's attempt to broker a deal with Iran over its nuclear plans will undoubtedly be disregarded by the Americans in the same way every plan to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was ignored in the run-up to the attack on Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Even those Americans actively seeking to provoke a war with Iran have had little success in finding or provoking a suitable incident that can be presented to the American people as a good reason to launch an attack on Iran. Despite the seizure of Iranian personnel in Iraq, at Irbil in January and more recently in Baghdad, the Iranians have refrained from any reckless response, although only their people seized in Baghdad have been returned. The capture of British sailors in March by Iranian Revolutionary Guards might have been a suitable flash point. However, Tehran soon released the sailors after squeezing every propaganda advantage from their capture, and Britain specifically asked the United States not to exacerbate the situation.

Since the beginning of the year there have been constant US claims of Iranian interference in Iraq and of the Iranians supplying arms to militias and insurgents in that country. However, no clear link has ever been established between the Iranians and any particular attack on US forces. Even if the United States chose to respond to these alleged Iranian hostile acts with "hot pursuit" Special Forces raids into Iran or the bombing of alleged "terrorist" training camps in that country, this would not precipitate the sort of crisis needed to justify a wholesale assault on Iran's nuclear facilities and its armed forces in the near future.

Any idea that a US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would be merely a scaled-up surgical strike like Israel's bombing of Saddam's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 must be put aside. The attack on Iran would encompass not only its nuclear sites, but all its air defenses and all its means of military retaliation, in fact all sections of its armed forces, as well as government command and control facilities. It has been suggested that this would be accomplished by the destruction of 1,200 Iranian targets in three days of massive aerial assaults, the sort of "shock and awe" attacks that were promised in Iraq in 2003 but had less impact than expected.

With time running out and convincing pretexts for war hard to find, the Bush administration may well decide to launch an attack on Iran anyway. Iran is already diplomatically isolated, but if the United States undertakes unprovoked aggression against a sovereign state, it may well find itself equally isolated. No doubt the British would find a few planes and warships to provide a token force to show solidarity with their US ally, but wider support would be hard to find. Since one of the declared aims of any attack on Iran is, in the words of Bush, "to prevent a second Holocaust", some Israeli participation is likely. A few Israeli planes might join the US aerial assault on Iran, but Israel's most likely role would be to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, and perhaps the Syrians, should they decide to support the Iranians.

In the US scenario, when the dust settles after the aerial onslaught, the chastened ayatollahs will crawl out of the ruins and give in to all of Bush's demands. But what if they do not? US plans for the attack on Iran rule out a land war because the United States lacks sufficient troops, but why should the victim tailor his response to suit the aggressor's preconceptions? The vital question in the unfolding US-Iran crisis is not whether the Americans plan to attack Iran, since they are clearly prepared to do so, but whether the Iranians, after enduring the initial onslaught, have the will and resources to fight back.

With Iran's regular armed forces largely destroyed, the Iranian government would have to fall back on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to organize further resistance and retaliation. According to its new commander, the IRGC is ready and able to undertake extensive operations in asymmetrical warfare with a superior military opponent. Mining and suicide attacks by boats and planes might well disrupt tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, leading to a rapid increase in world oil prices. No doubt the United States would organize tanker convoys with full air and sea protection, but the mosquito forces of the IRGC might still pierce such defenses. If the Iranians could carry out a sustained campaign against shipping in the Persian Gulf, the US might well be forced to start occupying Iranian ports to deny bases to the attackers. Once troops were ashore, they would soon be drawn into battles with guerrillas in the Iranian hinterland.

While not all Iraqi Shi'ites are as pro-Iranian as some reports suggest, there can be little doubt that many in Iraq's majority population would fight in support of their neighbors and co-religionists. The war against the US in Iraq would be intensified, and no doubt Iranian forces would openly enter Iraq to support that struggle as well as supplying resisters with more advanced weaponry such as shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles.

Indeed, given the present power vacuum in southern Iraq, the Iranians might even manage to occupy important cities such as Basra. If a major land war developed in Iraq, the United States would be compelled to expand its army there considerably. This could only be done in the short run by stripping the US and overseas garrisons such as South Korea and Okinawa of all combat troops. In the longer term, the US government might have to consider reintroducing conscription to sustain troop numbers, whatever the domestic political consequences.

As in Iraq in 2003, the US plan for a military attack on Iran presupposes that once the enemy has suffered a massive initial blow he will accept the inevitable and surrender. In Iraq, the conventional armed forces were easily broken, but the unconventional war with local insurgents and militias is still raging more than four years later. Similarly, the Iranian armed forces might be severely damaged by America's aerial assault, but the IRGC and other less conventional forces might continue the struggle in Iraq, in Iran's borderlands, and in the waters of the Persian Gulf for years to come. Fears of the "Shi'ite crescent" will have given birth to an arc of war stretching from Palestine to Pakistan.

Source: Asia Times Online

Kavkaz Center

MKO fueling Iran-West tension

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:30:52

The terrorist group MKO has alleged that Iran is constructing a secret underground nuclear facility for military purposes in central Iran.

The group claimed on Thursday that the new underground military facility is located near the Natanz uranium enrichment plant.

The MKO made the allegations at a news conference in Paris and said it has passed its information, which it claims came from sources inside Iran, to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, but has so far not received a response.

The group gave no evidence to back up its claims.

The People's Mujahadeen Organization of Iran (MKO) has long been placed on Washington's and the European Union's lists of terrorist organizations. It is accused of assisting Saddam in the massacre of thousands of innocent Iraqis, as well as carrying out countless terrorist attacks inside Iran.

Lebanese parties arming for conflict

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:02:56

Hezbollah MP Hussein al-Haj Hassan has given word that Lebanon's parties are arming their supporters in preparation for internal conflict.

The lawmaker said Saturday that Samir Geagea leader of the right-wing Lebanese Forces, Walid Jumblatt leader of the Socialist Progressive Party, and Saad Al-Hariri chairman of the Al-Mustaqbal faction are preparing their supporters for a domestic armed confrontation.

Al-Haj Hassan added that the National Army informed the government of such developments, but that the ruling March 14 Alliance censured the media.

Other sources say that Michel Aoun, the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement has confirmed that domestic forces are preparing themselves for clashes.

Speaking at the memorial ceremony for Nahr al-Bared victims on Saturday, Aoun called on the Lebanese to unite to achieve sovereignty and avoid armed conflicts, IRNA reported.

Aoun termed the current state of affairs in Lebanon as critical and condemned the recent violence as a breach of tradition. He said that different parties should unite; instead of blaming one another and battling, they should reconcile in the name of a united Lebanon.

How would the space mission solve our problems?

Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) is amused by the fanatical atmosphere and the publicity generated on the launch of the first Malaysian to space. It is yet another desperate move by the ruling party to beat up the drums on this space mission after the 50 years Merdeka celebration fizzled out and when people came back to reality. Now it is a space fantasy which is taking us on another ride of the Malaysian Boleh trip.

The reality is Malaysia exchanged palmoil for a space trip. In October 2003, the Malaysian Government signed an agreement with Russia where Russia will buy RM1.1 billion worth of palm oil and send a Malaysian into space as part of a multi-billion-ringgit deal for 18 Sukhoi 30-MKM fighter jets.

Besides that Capitalism has taken science to yet another new dimension with the introduction of space tourism. Space tourism is a new phenomenon of filthy rich individuals and private companies paying to go to space.

The price for a flight brokered by Space Adventures to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft is now $30 million. Flights are fully booked until 2009.

Among some of the people who have gone to space since Dennis Tito became the first "fee-paying" passenger in 2001 are South African computer millionaire Mark Shuttleworth and Gregory Olsen an owner of a company which produces specialist high-sensitivity cameras.

According to Alexei Krasnov, head of the Russian space agency's manned programs said that four space tourists have paid about $20 million for the pleasure of spending a week on the orbital station and said that each tourist flight deal is discussed individually and is considered a commercial secret.

The latest space tourist, Anousheh Ansari, 40, an Iranian-born American businesswoman, returned to Earth after paying around $20 million for about eight days in space. The Malaysian Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor (SMS) is the latest of the list of space tourist.

While the Malaysians are kept busy with news on roticanai in space and fasting in space which are seen as new breakthroughs in science, the truth is before this Malaysian, more than 400 people have traveled to space not including many monkeys, chimpanzees, mice, frogs, tortoise, fish and dogs. Many of them have sacrificed or being sacrificed in many missions.

The question before us is how this mission is going to resolve our problems in planet earth. PSM seeks answers on how can a space mission, worth billion of ringgit resolve the following problems faced by the nation :

1.Increasing Ethnic and racial disharmony
2.Increasing income gap of the rich and poor
3.Increasing corruption at all levels
4.Suppression of democratic rights – free and fair election, rights to assemble, expression and association, free media and others.
5.Increasing suffering incurred by the people with the rising of basic goods, fuel prices and controlled items.
6.The suffering incurred with the introduction of privatization and neo-liberal policies such as privatization of the health care, water and other basic amenities.
7.The suppression of workers through pro employer bills while workers are denied a basic living wage.
8.The continues decline of the Judiciary

Millions of ringgit is spent and wasted to send one person to space while the money could have been put in good use to improve the livelihood of the common people. While the ruling party points us to the star and takes us for a ride in space, this mission is just an ego trip by a Government which has lost its purpose and sense on what needs to be done for the betterment of the people.

S.Arutchelvan
PSM Secretary General
10th October 2007

visit BERSIH

'Made in USA' crisis in Iraq

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:57:46
By Ismail Salami, Press TV, Tehran

The recent reports of the Blackwater shooting last month questioned the statements by Blackwater murderous mercenary thugs that they were responding to armed insurgents when 17 Iraqis were massacred in cold blood on September 16 at a Baghdad intersection.

The three rooftop Kurdish witnesses said they had not seen any gunfire, which could have possibly provoked the shooting by Blackwater guards. Forensic evidence indicated gunfire came only from the guns normally used by security guards and American military.

A senior US military had earlier told the Washington Post that Blackwater guards were escorting a US State Department official and that they were apparently unprovoked when they opened fire on Iraqi civilians.

Speaking to The New York Times, the witnesses came to cast doubt on an account by US State Department that a Blackwater vehicle had been disabled in the shooting. Blackwater and the US State Department have declined to clarify the ambiguities of the case.

On September 16, an armed State Department convoy guarded by Blackwater USA was moving near Nisour Square in the Mansour neighborhood in Baghdad. In the meantime, an Iraqi vehicle entered the square. The Blackwater operatives, protecting a senior State Department official, opened fire on the vehicle, killing the driver. Then they launched a grenade at the car. Inside the car was a young Iraqi family -- man, woman and infant. To the horror of the witnesses, the bodies of the mother and child were melded together by the flames.

Then, the Blackwater mercenaries started a shooting spree. Gunfire raged through the crowds and lifeless bodies of men, women and children dropped on the streets. It was a terrifying scene. A ten-year-old boy jumped out of a bus to escape the clutches of death. People were crawling on the streets in fear of their lives.

The Iraqi government took a severe swipe at the Blackwater mercenaries and demanded that they be shipped out of the country.

"We will not allow Iraqis to be killed in cold blood," Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said. "There is a sense of tension and anger among all Iraqis, including the government, over this crime."

There are reportedly over 100,000 such 'contractors' operating in Iraq, of which Blackwater accounts for 6,000.

The merchants of death decline to admit to their murderous profession. Erik Prince, the founder of Backwater USA, said in an interview, “It's just not accurate to call us mercenaries because you have Americans working for the American government. That in no way meets the definition of a mercenary. So I think “mercenary” is a slanderous term, kind of an inflammatory word [used] to malign us. Taking US military or law-enforcement veterans, and putting them back to work and using the skills that they have acquired over the years to teach other US active-duty military, law enforcement units, [is] just filling the gaps that exist in the US military.”

On Tuesday, Oct. 2, Erik Prince was called to Capitol Hill to defend his company. He sent his lawyer instead. Blackwater has been involved in 195 shootings in Iraq since 2005, “in the majority of cases firing their weapons from moving vehicles without stopping to count the dead or assist the wounded.” Blackwater is known for its homicidal activities. 195 shootings have been reported since 2005 and Blackwater contractors fired first in 163 cases.

A war profiteer, Prince hires soldiers of fortune to conduct operations, which used to be performed by uniformed US military personnel. It may be naively imagined that the Bush administration can weather criticism for its crimes committed not by its military but by a band of mercenaries who serve the same master.

The 'war on terrorism' got the ball rolling for the firm. However, political connections were more instrumental. Erik Prince is a former SEAL who is extremely involved in Republican Party politics. Since 1998, he has funneled about $200,000 to GOP committees and candidates, including President Bush.

Some senior CIA and Pentagon officials have taken top jobs at Blackwater, including firm vice chairman Cofer Black, who was the Bush Administration's top counterterrorism official at the time of the 9/11 attacks. Robert Young Pelton, author of 'Licensed to Kill', says that an early Blackwater contract-a secret no-bid $5.4 million deal with the CIA-came in 2002 after Prince placed a call to Buzzy Krongard, who was then the CIA's executive director.

Blackwater is recruiting Jose Rodriguez, the CIA's superspy as director of the National Clandestine Service. Rodriguez has some former agency friends at Blackwater, notably Rick Prado, with whom he served in Latin America and who is now Blackwater's Vice President of Special Programs.

Since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Blackwater's annual federal contract revenue has grown from less than $1 million to almost $600 million. The private security firm Blackwater should be sued for war crimes and slaughtering Iraqi citizens.

Blackwater is not merely a security firm; it is the US occupation mercenary company, which started its role in the summer of 2003, after receiving a $27 million no-bid contract to provide security for Ambassador Paul Bremer, the original head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Blackwater is not merely a criminal company of the US occupation but an agent in service of the US administration to conduce to chaos and crisis in war-torn Iraq. The weapons that turned out to be in the hands of the PKK, the Kurdish militant group were smuggled into Iraq by Blackwater. PKK is designated a 'foreign terrorist organization' by international community.

It seems that the US is adamant on remaining militarily engaged in the Middle East rather than opting for a less interventionist foreign policy.

Now the question is: why does the US administration wish to conduce to crisis in the war-ravaged country? The simple answer is: to use crisis as an excuse to stay on in the country. As long as there is crisis, there is justification for longer military presence. Blackwater creates crisis in Iraq and thus guarantees longer US military presence.

Ismail Salami is the author of 'Iran, Cradle of Civilization' and dozens of articles on Middle East issues.

I finally made the slow-fly list

I finally made the slow-fly list
Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:37:48
By Kevin Barrett, Mujca.com
What does it take to get on the no-fly list?

I've got all the qualifications and then some.

I'm an Irish Muslim anarchist -that's three strikes against me already.

I think the two worst terrorist groups in the Middle East are the Israeli Defense Forces and their US military proxy-and I do not hesitate to voice that opinion, including under FBI interrogation.

And I devote most of my time and resources to spreading the news that 9/11 was an inside job.

For more than a year, I have been flying all over North America lecturing on 9/11. I usually wear the 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB t-shirt Alex Jones gave me when I go through airport security. I tip the security people in deception dollars, and sometimes give them DVDs. I always make a point of urging the pilots and stewardesses on my flights to check out http://pilotsfor911truth.com

Despite all this, I somehow failed to make the no-fly list, or even the slow-fly list...until now.

Yesterday I flew home from New York, where I had spoken at the conference sponsored by http://ny911truth.org and participated in the ground zero events organized by http://wearechange.org.

At the Newark Airport ticket counter I saw the clerks' eyes widen as they saw me come up on their computer screens. They called their manager over. It took them twenty minutes instead of the usual two to get my baggage checked.

At the security checkpoint, my name was flagged and I was body-searched while they went through every inch of my carry-on bag.

Then while dozing at the gate I was awakened by a slightly gruff voice: ”Are you Kevin Barrett?” I opened my eyes and found myself surrounded by three people, two men and a woman, flashing FBI badges. ” Would you mind coming with us for a few moments?”

At the security room the lead agent said “I've checked out your stuff on the web and saw you on Fox.”

My response: ”So you're just bringing me here to get my autograph, right?” All three of them cracked up.

Then the lead agent pulled himself together. “Is this your?” he said, brandishing a beat-up spiral notebook. I admitted that it was.
“Do you know where we got it?”

“I must have forgotten it on the plane when I got off last Friday.”
“Why is there Arabic writing in it?”

I explained that I had grabbed an old notebook as I left the house with the intention of writing my New York speech on the plane. The old notebook happened to be one I had used during Arabic classes a decade ago.

The lead agent showed me a page of my own Arabic writing in the notebook. “Why is that word circled in red ink?”

I told him that maybe I had made a mistake in grammar or wording, and that either I or my teacher had circled it. I read the sentence aloud and translated it for him: “One day long ago, before the modern age had begun…” The word for modern, asri, was circled with red ink. I admitted I had no idea why. It looked fine to me. Maybe the problem was that the expression 'modern age', al-asr al-asri, was not idiomatic.

The agent ended the Arabic lesson and asked about the other strange stuff in the notebook. I sheepishly remembered that it included some bizarre little cartoons I had drawn, along with a draft of an unfinished play about the death of Vincent Van Gogh, A Murder of Crows. An extract:

ARTAUD: And what is the earth below complaining about under the wings of the splendid crows? Splendor for Van Gogh alone, no doubt, and on the other hand the splendid augury of an evil that can no longer touch him? The sky is low, brooding, purplish shoulders bruised by lighting. The weird gloomy fringe of the void surging up after the flash.

ACTOR: Van Gogh had a lot of doubles-doppelgangers. He had a brother, also named Vincent, who was born exactly one year to the day before he was.

ARTAUD: Yes, but did the brother die exactly one day to the year after Vincent was born? Van Gogh released his crows, black microbes of suicide spleen, a few centimeters from the top and the same at bottom of his canvas.

ACTOR: But Sweetman thinks all this Freudian b/s about his dead brother...

ARTAUD: ...following the black gash of the line where the flapping of their rich feathers threatens with suffocation from on high the re-swirling of an earthly storm.

ACTOR: Is just a cheap romantic legend, built on the idea of the artist-as-martyr, nailed together with psychoanalytic claptrap.

ARTAUD: In every psychiatrist there lurks a revolting and sordid atavism that makes him find an enemy in every artist, in every genius...

It goes on and on like this. I wondered whether the FBI had analyzed my unfinished play for hidden messages. 'A murder of crows' does sound kind of fishy...maybe the crows, those proverbial death-birds, stand for airplanes...and they're jet black, like Osama's new beard...maybe 'Van Gogh' is really Osama, and the 'murder of crows' will be death flights into US targets...the whole play could be one long coded message, left in an airplane magazine holder to be passed on to a courier headed for Osama's cave in Afghanistan. What else could explain these pages and pages of impenetrable drivel? Too bad the FBI doesn't train its agents in literary criticism, they'd find all kinds of great stuff in my unfinished play that even its author never realized was there.

After remarking on the suspicious stuff in the notebook, the agent changed tack. Gruffly, he announced that he was disturbed by some of my internet essays. I explained that I was just doing my patriotic duty to expose the 9/11 coup d'etat and re-establish constitutional rule. He asked whether I flew around the country saying these things. I said yes. He asked if anyone accompanied me on my travels. I said no, I usually travel alone to speaking engagements. He asked me where I had been staying in New York. I told him I stayed with fellow 9/11 activists. He said “We know you were at St. Mark's church.” Then he asked me point-blank: “Are you a terrorist?”

My response: “To answer that, we have to agree first on what terrorism is. Let's define it as 'killing or hurting civilians for political or military purposes.' Well, the biggest terrorist group right now is the US military, and the nastiest one is the Israeli IDF-they kill children by sniper fire as a matter of national policy. (2) Don't forget that a million people have been murdered in Iraq, most of them civilians.”

That wasn't the answer he wanted. “Do you belong to any terrorist group? Have you been to Iraq?”

I explained that I was working against terrorism and had never been to Iraq. I told him I oppose hurting or killing people except in the most clear-cut cases of self-defense. I told him I was working to catch the terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center and murdered 3,000 people, and that he and his FBI colleagues might want to consider joining me in that effort. ”You guys must know this stuff, if you've looked into it at all,” I said. They didn't deny it. In fact, they looked slightly uncomfortable. I urged them to visit http://patriotsquestion911.com and see what some brave former FBI, CIA, NSA and military people had to say about 9/11.

I asked them what they thought of Osama's fancy new beard, and they just sort of shook their heads. I said that as an Arabist-Islamologist, my professional opinion is that 'religious' Muslim men, especially self-styled extremists, are unlikely to dye their beards. As I understand it, dying the hair or the beard is pretty much a no-no in serious Islam, at least for men. Like tattoos, gold jewelry, and silk clothing, hair-dye for men is considered vain, and, in most varieties of Islamic law, either discouraged or prohibited. For this and other reasons, the latest video, like all the others since 2001, is almost certainly bogus.

Hitting my stride, I explained to them that Philip Zelikow, the main author of the preposterous 9/11 Commission Report, is a self-described expert in 'the creation and maintenance of public myths'. I pointed out that Zelikow co-authored a 1998 Foreign Affairs article on the likely political and cultural effects of a massive Pearl Harbor style terrorist event such as the destruction of the World Trade Center. In that article, Zelikow noted that such a mythic event would split time into a before and an after. The after, of course, was the 'whole new world' of post-9/11 terror hysteria. ”That's why we're here in this room right now,” I said. “We're living in Zelikow's 'after'.”

I told them it was ironic that they were interrogating me about the notebook I had used to write a speech entitled 'It's the Constitution, stupid!' I summarized my speech for them: The Constitution is under attack by neocon fascist madmen, and the prime political task of this election season is to save it. All of us who have signed oaths to 'defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic' had better start taking those oaths seriously. I summarized Bush's recent executive orders giving himself absolute power in the event of an emergency that he himself can define in any way he wants. “This country is on the wrong road,” I concluded, “and we've got to turn things around.” I didn't sense all that much disagreement from my audience of FBI agents.

The lead agent asked me about my teaching situation at the University of Wisconsin. I told him that I had been turned down for a tenure-track job at UW-Whitewater, even though I was the only qualified candidate, purely because of my political views. I added that I might be back at UW-Madison in the spring, but that it would be a tough choice for the university, given all the pressure they've been under.

On this issue the FBI team seemed sympathetic. They ended the interview by thanking me and wishing me luck in my academic career.

I, too, wish them good luck in their efforts to prevent terrorism and bring terrorists to justice-starting with the true perpetrators of 9/11.

On the flight home, I reflected that my encounter with the FBI had been a classic 'teachable moment'. Maybe 9/11 truthers should leave Arabic writing in airliner magazine pockets more often. But if you do, you'd better remember to give yourself an extra half hour next time you need to catch a plane.

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