Ruling Bloc Urged Israel to Kill Sayyed Nasrallah

The February 14 bloc insisted on exposing its role in the 2006 Israeli aggression against Lebanon, after some of its figures denied what the head of the Winograd commission said about the existence of a "classified part of the war report which was not revealed so as not to "endanger Israel's security and foreign relations." However, does Eliyahu Winograd need to fabricate these words as some February 14 figures have claimed?

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had made an extraordinary effort to ban the publication of his full statement to the Winograd Committee, because of the "sensitive information" it contains pertaining to the war.

"For obvious reasons, the unclassified Report does not include the many facts that cannot be revealed for reasons of protecting the state's security and foreign affairs," the Winograd report said. Israeli leaks have uncovered the context of what is being concealed within the papers of the Winograd report. These leaks confirm that some members of the February 14 bloc had contacted the Israelis during the 2006 war not only to demand they crush Hezbollah, but to liquidate its Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah as well.

On the 19th of July 2007, Israeli political analyst Emanuel Rosen said that a "well informed political source" informed him that Olmert and members of his government "received a letter from the Lebanese government in the last 24 hours of the war asking them not to stop the war before Hezbollah was crushed adding that it is extremely preferable to liquidate Nasrallah." "For the first time, we reveal in this book that moderate Arab states and people close to the Lebanese government have conveyed messages to the Israeli government via different sides demanding Israel continues the war until Hezbollah was completely crushed," said Avi Issacharoff in his book "Spider Webs, The Story of the Second Lebanon War." For his part, Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman was even clearer about these contacts. He said: "I was at the United Nations Headquarters during the war and you cannot imagine how many Arab foreign ministers and ambassadors came to me and told me to complete the mission and eliminate Hezbollah."

Facing attempts by the February 14 bloc to acquit Israel from a premeditated war in 2006, Israeli political and military officials confirmed Israel had prepared for the war and that it initiated it not to gain back two captured soldiers, but to crush Hezbollah.

"Israel initiated a long war, which ended without its clear military victory," article 11 of the Winograd report said. Amir Peretz, who was Defense Minister during the war said: "Is there really someone who believes that the kidnapping of those two soldiers is what led to the war, of course not. If we had not waged this war, we would have found ourselves a few years from now in front of more dangerous threats than we had discovered."

"Yes, there had been plans. One of these plans was dubbed (Uppermost Waters). It was based on a plan which I personally made years before the war. We trained on it and just before the war were in the process of renovating it," said Eyal Ben-Reuven who was the second in command in the northern region during the war.

Anyway, this is a small part of what was uncovered in Israel. Perhaps what the coming days would reveal about the collusion of the February 14 bloc in the 2006 war could be momentous.

courtesy almanartv

Army Officers Charged over 'Black Sunday' Incidents

12/02/2008 The Lebanese government commissioner at the Military Tribunal, Judge Jean Fahd, charged 79 people, including three army officers, 16 soldiers and 60 civilians, for their role in the 'Black Sunday' incidents that took place on January 27 leaving seven martyrs and 50 injured civilians. The charges included murder, violation of military instructions, possession of unlicensed arms and causing unrest, setting rubber tires and tossing hand grenades. Two officers (Majors) and 11 soldiers were accused of "involuntary manslaughter" for shooting into the crowd during demonstrations against blackout. One officer (Colonel) and five soldiers were charged with violating military orders. 60 civilians were also charged with causing unrest as well as attacking soldiers, 53 of them in absentia. According to the charge sheet, six of the martyrs were killed by army bullets. However, a probe is still underway to determine who killed Ahmad Hamza, the Amal movement officer of coordination with the Lebanese Army, who was shot in the back while trying to pacify the situation. Hence, the first phase of the investigation into the Black Sunday crime is over. If convicted, those charged could be sentenced from 5 years in prison to capital punishment. The file would now pass from the Government Commissioner to the Examining Magistrate to issue an indictment. The case would be submitted to the permanent military court. The sheet of charges did not mention the snipers who were caught on camera during the demonstrations, yet the families of seven martyrs and the injured will not have their wounds closed before the final results and the verdict. ( It is interesting to note how far the various parties in Lebanon willing to go and commit themselves to other external elements for the sake of power and at the expense of their Arab unity.)

The French Government's hypocrisy, Islam and Holocaust revisionism (2)

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:44:29
A Second Open Letter to France's Ambassador to the US by Paul Grubach

Faurisson was severely injured in a nearly fatal attack on Sept. 16, 1989.

This is a Second Open Letter to France's Ambassador to the United States by Paul Grubach February 8, 2008

Ambassador Pierre Vimont Embassy of France in the United States 4101 Reservoir Road, NW Washington, D. C. 20007

Dear Ambassador Vimont

As you are undoubtedly aware by now, Holocaust revisionist scholar Dr. Robert Faurisson will probably stand trial for comments he made at the Iran Holocaust Conference of December 2006. Allegedly, he violated France's Gayssot Act, a statute passed in 1990 that prohibits any public doubt about the alleged Jewish Holocaust.

There is a new development to this ongoing story that I would like to bring to your attention.

On January 24, Dr. Faurisson was taken into police custody for questioning and a search of his house was carried out. In my last open letter to you of January 15, I brought attention to the hypocritical double standard of the French government.

In September 2006, high school teacher Robert Redeker made a scathing attack upon the Prophet Mohammed and the Islamic religion in the center-right daily Le Figaro. Because of threats to his life, he was forced to go into hiding.

The French government immediately came to his defense, offering him police protection and a public statement on his behalf. In reference to Redeker's case, former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called the threats to his life "unacceptable," and added: "We are in a democracy. Everyone has the right to express his views freely, while respecting others, of course." (See The New York Times, 30 September 2006, p. A 3)

That this is an outrageous lie is demonstrated by the ongoing plight of Dr. Faurisson. In 1991, French "democracy" demanded that Dr. Faurisson be removed from his university chair. In July 2006, French "democracy" again violated his inalienable right to freedom of speech and research. He was convicted of "Holocaust denial" by a Paris court over remarks he made on Iranian television, and was given a three-month suspended prison term and he has to pay 18 000 euros.

Clearly, as the cases of Redeker and Faurisson show, one has the right to attack and violate the sacred beliefs of Muslims, but one has no right whatsoever to question and repudiate the Holocaust doctrine, one of the most sacred beliefs of Jewish-Zionism. The sacred belief and taboo of the Jewish people is enshrined in law in France. If you contest the Holocaust, you are prosecuted and persecuted.

However, the sacred beliefs of Muslims are not enshrined in law. If you attack Muslim beliefs, this is depicted as an expression of "freedom of speech." Once again, this is evidence of a hypocritical double standard. I have come across another case which further bolsters my point.

Do you recognize the name of the French Jewish writer, Marek Halter? He co-founded the so-called "anti-racist" group, SOS-Racisme. There is an interview of him in the February 11, 2005 issue of the English edition of The International Jerusalem Post, (pp. 9-11).

Halter claims that France's rapidly growing Islamic population is too frequently incompatible with democracy. Let me give you two of his direct quotes. Halter stated: "All of a sudden we realize that they [Muslims] are not a small minority anymore and that the way most of them practice their religion is not compatible with French democratic principles." He also stated: "Muslims threaten to weaken a French democracy that no longer knows how to impose its rules without seeming oppressive."

In April 2007 the European Union made inciting racism and xenophobia crimes throughout its 27 member states in a landmark decision. Even before April 2007, when Halter made these statements, inciting racism and xenophobia in France were outlawed.

That is to say, Halter made these statements when these "racism and xenophobia" laws were on the books. A French prosecutor could cogently argue that Halter's statements incite hatred and xenophobia against Muslims, and thus, the man should be prosecuted. After all, he is stating that Muslims as a group threaten to weaken and even destroy French "democracy."

This will cause people to hate Muslims. Your so-called French "democracy" allows him to make anti-Muslim statements. Yet, Robert Faurisson is put on trial by this same French "democracy" for making statements that contest and debunk Holocaust orthodoxy.

Do you see my point, Ambassador Vimont? France grants "freedom of speech" to Jewish people like Marek Halter who criticize and attack Muslims. Yet, "democratic" France denies freedom of speech to non-Jews like Faurisson who question and debunk the orthodox view of the Holocaust.

If France was truly a democracy as former Prime Minister de Villepin claims, it would defend Dr. Faurisson's right to freedom of research on the Holocaust. That is to say, there would be no "limits in advance" or "prewritten conclusions" about his Holocaust research.

After all, France grants freedom of research for atheists and others who deny the existence of God or attack the Islamic and Christian religions.

If the French government does prosecute and imprison Dr. Faurisson for his Holocaust revisionist views, this will only demonstrate to the world the truth of his arguments. The French government cannot disprove his Holocaust revisionism with reason and science, but must resort to oppressive laws and prison sentences in its attempt to silence truth.

Sincerely, Paul Grubach

A copy of this letter has been sent to Press TV

Arab FMs back initiative on Lebanon

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:47:47
Arab FMs have voiced their consensus on abiding by an Arab initiative and continuing efforts to resolve the Lebanese political crisis.

In a statement issued after an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers at the headquarters of the Cairo-based Arab League (AL), Arab top diplomats lauded the efforts made by AL Secretary General Amr Moussa, urging all Lebanese parties to respond to Moussa's efforts.

The AL Council held the meeting on Sunday at the foreign ministerial level to discuss the outcome of efforts made to implement the Arab plan on the Lebanese issue which was endorsed by Arab foreign ministers earlier this month.

The council reviewed Moussa's report, his assessment of the outcome of his efforts to get rival Lebanese leaders to agree to details of an Arab initiative to end the political deadlock as well as his recommendations to continue Arab efforts to implement the initiative.

In addition, the council voiced its extreme concern over the continuation of the Lebanese crisis and its dangerous consequences on Lebanon's stability and security, Xinhua reported.

It also called for continuing meetings that had been started between all Lebanese sides upon an invitation from Moussa.

The Arab ministers urged all sides in the dispute to vote for Michel Suleiman in a new parliamentary session to be held on Feb. 11.

Lebanese presidential seat has been vacant since former president Emile Lahoud ended his term on Nov. 24, 2007, and the Lebanese parliament has postponed a parliamentary session to elect a new president for a 13th time.

MSH/BGH

Chomsky: Gazan democracy intolerable

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:25:43

American political analyst, Noam Chomsky

Renowned American political analyst, Noam Chomsky, says the Palestinians are being punished for standing up to the US and Israel.

In an interview with Mehr news agency Chomsky said the major crisis in Gaza started when Hamas won in 'a free and fair election.'

"The West, which despises democracy unless it comes out "the right way", immediately turned to punishment of the people for the crime of not following the orders of the US and Israel, " he said.

He also criticized what he called the "US-Israeli takeover of whatever is of value in the West Bank with considerable violence".

Referring to the Annapolis conference as "a joke in poor taste", Chomsky maintained it has nothing to do with Israel-Palestine.

'It was an effort by Bush and Rice to line up the "moderate" Arab states -- that is, the extreme fundamentalist tyrannies that are expected to follow orders -- in an anti-Iran alliance,' he said

Chomsky also called on Islamic states, and everyone else, to put an end to the savage punishment of Palestinians by the U.S.-Israeli alliance.

MT/HAR

Bush's Middle East legacy

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:35:23
An interview with Scott Lucas by Afsaneh Ostovar,
Press TV, Tehran

Scott Lucas has been on the staff of the University of Birmingham since 1989 and has been Professor of American Studies since 1997. He is the Executive Director of Libertas: The Center for the Study of US Foreign Policy, Adjunct Professor of the Institute for North American and European Studies at Tehran University and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for American Studies and Research at American University of Beirut. He is also the Associate Editor of the Journal of American Studies.

He began his academic career as a diplomatic historian but, believing the approach was now narrow, began considering the role of "propaganda", "culture" and "ideology" in the history of US and British foreign policy.

Here is an interview with him about The US President George W. Bush's tour to the Middle East.

Q. What were the goals of US President, George W. Bush's Middle East tour?

A. I think Bush's trip should be seen in three contexts: 1) the public priority --- a settlement between Israel and Palestine; 2) the priority of the past --- remaking the Middle East through regime change in Iraq; 3) the priority of the present --- remaking the Middle East through "containment" of Iran.

Anyone with "a lick of common sense," as my grandfather would say, can see that there is no realistic prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. President Clinton spent almost eight years pursuing this without success; President Bush is proposing to achieve this within 12 months. Still, the pretence has to be maintained. It has to be maintained for US domestic opinion, which needs to see a Presidential commitment to "peace" rather than further military operations/occupation in the region, and for Arab governments who cannot maintain support for American policy without the appearance that there is some movement on Israel/Palestine.

Beyond this public appearance, the Bush Administration is trying to hold up the idea that --- after almost five years --- they are on the brink of success in Iraq. This is an illusion, of course. However, having spent so much money and ended so many lives (American and Iraqi) in the quest to replace Saddam Hussein with a suitable pro-American government and to demonstrate American power to all in the Middle East, there cannot be an admission of failure.

This brings us to the current Bush Administration goal. Having failed to remake the Middle East through a suitable, stable post-Saddam Iraq, the US Government needs another core issue to hold together its political, economic, and military strategy. This strategy continues to rest upon Israel as a "pillar" in the Middle East but also has to safeguard the American position with Arab states. The answer to this, diverting attention from Palestine and indeed Iraq, is to portray the necessity of an anti-Iranian coalition.

Q. What is your speculation on the seriousness of the United States' commitment to peace in Palestine?

A. Any serious attempt at an Israeli-Palestinian settlement would have to offer possibilities --- to each side --- on the issues of Jerusalem [al-Quds], right of return, Israeli occupation, and borders. The current Bush initiative offers little to the Palestinian side on any of these issues.

1) Bush avoided the question of Jerusalem [al-Quds] on his trip. He did not, for example, confront the issue of the extension of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem [al-Quds], even though the Israeli Government had offered a token "pullback" of some (but not all) of the illegal settlements.

2) Bush announced the need for compensation of displaced Palestinians without any consideration of who would provide that amount (estimated at $100 to $150 billion). At most, this is an indication that the right of return is off the American (and, of course, Israeli) agenda.

3) On borders and occupation, some in the US and British press highlighted Bush's call for an end to occupation. Significantly, however, he did not specify that Israel would have to withdraw from all of the territory it seized in 1967 nor did he address the issue of a contiguous Palestinian state without the interruption of Israeli fences, settlements, and checkpoints.

And, of course, Bush did not refer to a settlement that included Gaza, which I suggest is a pretty significant omission.

Q. What do you think Bush will offer in his Middle East trip?

Publicly he will offer rhetoric about an American commitment to stability based on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Privately, he will be offering a lot of economic and military aid to those Arab governments who continue to back an approach ensuring an American presence through the isolation of Iran.

Q. Why is Bush taking his first trip in the twilight of his presidency?

A. Because, having failed to succeed in his primary goal of establishing US power through a post-Saddam Iraq, he has to be seen to be doing something. Otherwise, he is just a "lame duck."

Q. Why does Israel continue its offensive against Palestinians after the Annapolis conference?

Because Israel will seek to negotiate with Abbas from a position of strength and will continue to try to isolate and, indeed, break Hamas. My belief is that a "Palestinian state" for Israel and the US means a compliant state based on a relatively weak leadership. Hamas is a challenge to that approach.

Q. How do you see the future of Israel's plans for occupying more regions of the West Bank? What prompts this regime to continue its expansionist policies?

A. My belief is that the Israeli notion of security rests upon a need for a permanent "superiority" over any Palestinian entity. Thus occupation is not an end in itself to expand the borders of Israel but to ensure that there is never sufficient Palestinian strength to challenge Israel's political/economic/military position.

Q. How has the United States contributed to the realization of Israeli ambitions?

A. At this point, US and Israeli interests are largely convergent. That is, the maintenance and projection of American power rests upon support for Israeli power --- political, economic, and military.

Q. Can the US be a peace broker to the Palestine-Israel conflict while it is the main supporter of the Israeli regime?

A.The issue is whether, given the US relationship with Israel, others (Arab governments, the European Union, Russia, the United Nations) continue to defer to Washington as the primary broker of discussions.

Q. What is the Bush's legacy for the Middle East?

A.In light of what has happened in Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, the legacy of the American attempt to remake the region has been destruction and instability.

The more important question for me is how those in the region try to pursue political, economic, and cultural development --- including the pursuit of "freedom" and "democracy" --- which is not dependent upon being either "with" or "against" the United States.

Further thoughts on this can be found in the talk "Shifting the Gorilla: De-Centring America in the Middle East"(
http://www.libertas.bham.ac.uk/analysis/index.htm at http://www.libertas.bham.ac.uk/analysis and http://www.libertas.bham.ac.uk/analysis/index.htm.)

Q. Do you believe Bush has been successful in rallying the regional countries against Iran?

A. I doubt that the United States will succeed in forging an anti-Iranian coalition, at least to the extent of enforcing economic sanctions and political isolation. In my opinion, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf States are not convinced that attention to Iran should come before, for example, stability in Iraq and a meaningful resolution of the Israel/Palestine question. At a practical level, Persian Gulf States are far too dependent upon trade with Iran to bear the economic cost of supporting American sanctions.

If I was being cynical, I would suspect that some Arab states such as Saudi Arabia are happy to listen to the American song of isolating Iran as long as the outcome is more military assistance and arms sales.

AO/RE

Root to peace - stop denying the majority

Hezbollah sets resolution terms

The government accuses Hezbollah of being loyal to Syria and Iran

The Lebanese opposition group Hezbollah has said openly that it will not allow a president to be elected unless it gets a third of the cabinet seats.

This would give Hezbollah and its allies a veto over key decisions.

The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, blamed the US for obstructing a solution to Lebanon's political crisis by opposing such a move.

The western-backed Lebanese government has repeatedly rejected the opposition's demand for powers of veto.

The government has proposed reforming the cabinet to give the president a casting vote.

Hezbollah and its allies have been demanding a third of the cabinet seats since the 2006 war with Israel - which Hezbollah regards as a victory - but until now they had not publicly linked the issue to a presidential vote.

Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who is aligned with the government, said Hezbollah was making impossible demands and was more loyal to Syria and Iran than to Lebanon.

Political paralysis

The dispute between the government and opposition has left Lebanon without a president for more than five weeks.

A parliamentary session to elect a president was postponed for the 11th time on 28 December, and is now due to begin on 12 January.

solution lies in a partnership through a constitutional guarantee (and) through a veto power for the opposition, which represents more than half of the Lebanese people Hassan Nasrallah

Government and opposition agree on that the next president, traditionally a Maronite Christian and elected by parliament, should be the head of the army, Gen Michel Suleiman.

But they disagree over the shape of a future government.

The wider political crisis has paralysed the government and parliament for more than a year, and spilled over into armed clashes and political assassinations.

Long interview

Sheikh Nasrallah's comments came in an interview with a private Lebanese TV station, and were aired simultaneously by Hezbollah's al-Manar TV.

"A solution lies in a partnership through a constitutional guarantee (and) through a veto power for the opposition, which represents more than half of the Lebanese people," he said.

"As long as there is a US decision not to give the opposition a veto power, this means there won't a presidential election," he said.

"[The government] wants to fully control authority and rejects partnership with the other party," Sheikh Nasrallah said.

A dictator created then destroyed by America

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 17:34:09

By Robert Fisk, The Independent UK

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies?

Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?

No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don't gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn't invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead - and thousands of Western troops are dead - because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalized and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam's shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created.

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds?

We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.

And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished" - who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement.

Hours before Saddam's death sentence, his family - his first wife, Sajida, and Saddam's daughter and their other relatives - had given up hope.

"Whatever could be done has been done - we can only wait for time to take its course," one of them said last night. But Saddam knew, and had already announced his own "martyrdom": he was still the president of Iraq and he would die for Iraq. All condemned men face a decision: to die with a last, groveling plea for mercy or to die with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last hours on earth.

His last trial appearance - that wan smile that spread over the mass-murderer's face - showed us which path Saddam intended to walk to the noose.

I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us - and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam's executioners.

I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib - only months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and killings of our own - and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of Hilla.

One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator's soft, damp hand. Yet the old war criminal finished his days in power writing romantic novels.

It was my colleague, Tom Friedman - now a messianic columnist for The New York Times - who perfectly caught Saddam's character just before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, "part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck". And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.

But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered from Saddam's cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman's lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails.

"Handed over to the Iraqi authorities," he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a "martyr" to the will of the new "Crusaders".

When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam's return by his execution, the West's enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Ba'athist regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there's a thought. So many crimes avenged.

But we will have got away with it.

MD/MG

Jumblatt lies to Syrians for 25 years

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:50:10

Walid Jumblatt

Lebanon's head of progressive socialist Party, Walid Jumbalat, admits that he has deceived the Syrians for almost twenty five years.

I am not a real ally to Syrians and I am lying to them, said Jumblatt in an interview with Press TV.

The Lebanon's Druze leader claimed that his father was killed by the Syrians.

'I decided to fix a pact with the devil and to shake hand the one who killed my father,' said Jumbalat, denouncing the fact that he had not the courage to declare the claim 25 years ago.

Jumblatt implicitly admitted that he is ready to cooperate with Americans rather than his fellow citizens, accusing Hezbollah of facilitating or ignoring Syrian killings.

"I will not give the veto power for the sake of Hezbollah and their allies and the Syrian regime," he said.

"They can take it by force over our dead bodies" but "I am not going to give up the veto power for the sake of Hezbollah," he added.

He rejected the fact that he has ignored Hezbollah stance on abandoning a national unity government for the sake of electing a president.

"We didn't ignore them but we will not give the blocking minority which means to topple the Taif [Agreement] and to topple all the power of the government," said Jumbalat.

Jumblatt denied that he is not going to give Hezbollah the veto power they want because he is scared that he might lose his popularity.

He emphasized that his party's candidate is Michel Suleiman and they will stick to him.

MHE/RA

Ethiopia leaves key Somali town

Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu

The Ethiopians are not popular in Somalia
Ethiopian troops have withdrawn from a key town in central Somalia.

Islamist insurgents say they now control Guriel, where Ethiopia had a big military base to secure the road linking the two countries.

A BBC correspondent in Somalia says it is not clear why the Ethiopian troops withdrew without any fighting.

Guriel was a stronghold of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which lost power to Ethiopian-backed government troops a year ago this week.

The BBC's Ayanleh Hussein in Guriel says residents have been cheering the Ethiopians' departure.

During the occupation the local hospital was out of use as it was used as the Ethiopians' military base, he says.

Meanwhile, unrest continues in the capital, Mogadishu, where most Ethiopian forces in the country have been based since last year's invasion, which ended the UIC's six-month rule.

The bodies of four civilians were discovered after battles between insurgents and Ethiopian troops on Thursday around the animal market in the north of the city.

Somalia has been politically fragmented since 1991 and the country's transitional government, faced with an insurgency, is dependent on international aid and Ethiopian military support.

The Top 10 New Organisms of 2007

FROM OTHER BLOGGERS.

By Alexis Madrigal 12.26.07 | 12:00 AM

Above: A special filter in a dark room shows a cat (left) with a red fluorescent protein that makes it glow when exposed to ultraviolet rays, next to a normal cloned cat (right) at Gyeongsang National University in Jinju, South Korea.
Below: In normal light, a normal cloned cat (left) stands next to two cats which have been cloned to glow red, but only in ultraviolet.
Photo: AP / Yonhap, Choi Byung-kil

Genetic engineering isn't just for scientists in ivory towers or corporate R&D labs anymore. Researchers are still creating new mice and crops every week, but the tools and knowledge necessary to create organisms never before seen on Earth have pushed out to pet breeders, artists and college kids.

A Wired News first, here we count down the top 10 organisms that didn't exist on Dec. 31, 2006.

1. Ashera GD hypoallergenic cat

Lifestyle Pets has created a cat it calls the Ashera GD, which has been genetically engineered to be hypoallergenic. The high-tech blend of exotic cat varieties doesn't come cheap: This kitty in the window retails for $27,000 -- nothing to sneeze at. The ultra-rich around the world, however, don't mind the price tag. Six of the cats sold in December, three of them in the company's best market: Russia. Next year, expect a transgenic cat, which will remain kitten-size throughout its life.

2. Butanol-producing E. coli

Genetic engineering is getting so easy, even a kid can do it. A team of students from the University of Alberta, "the Butanerds," competed in the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition, creating an E. coli strain that produces butanol fuel (albeit rather inefficiently). The Butanerds have competition from a host of well-funded startups, like Synthetic Genomics and LS9, which are trying to genetically modify single-celled organisms to create the fuels of the future.

3. Artful fluorescent tadpoles

At an Ohio State art show earlier this year, Russian artist Dmitry Bulatov presented his genetically engineered tadpoles, which glow red and green. Bulatov, the curator of the Kaliningrad Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Art in Russia, is one of a handful of artists around the world using biotechnology to create art. The field is controversial, because it involves experimenting with living things without a medical or therapeutic purpose. Bulatov edited a collection of essays on these issues called Biomediale: Contemporary Society and Genomic Culture.

4. Insulin-producing lettuce

In July, a University of Central Florida researcher announced he had genetically modified lettuce heads that produce insulin. They could be transformed into time-release capsules for people with diabetes, to help them maintain blood-sugar levels without regular injections.

5. Super CO2-absorbing trees

With global warming all over the news in 2007, many schemes have been proposed for taking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Trees already do the world an admirable service sequestering carbon dioxide, but scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee are also genetically modifying poplar trees to increase the amount of carbon that the trees can store.

6. Rapid vaccine-making button mushrooms

In November, Darpa-funded Pennsylvania State University researchers unveiled a new method for rapidly producing vaccines: genetically engineered button mushrooms. Pharming, using plants as chemical factories, is beginning to catch on as a cheap way to synthesize drugs. Within a few years, the Penn State scientists say their 'shrooms will be able to make 3 million doses of vaccine in 12 weeks. Rapid-response vaccine-making could come in handy in case of a bioterror attack or bird-flu outbreak.

7. Glow-in-the-dark cats

Photographs of cats genetically engineered by South Korean scientists to glow red when exposed to UV light made headlines around the world. What most news stories didn't mention was the scientific potential for fluorescent creatures: The animals' glow acts as a "green light" that lets scientists know that their genetic transformations of other, non-glowing genes have worked.

8. Cancer-fighting Clostridium bacteria

Surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment mean that a cancer diagnosis is no longer always a death sentence. But certain oxygen-starved parts of tumors are still difficult to reach with the old methods. Enter the Clostridium family of bacteria. Injected into the body, they grow and multiply only in the oxygen-poor parts of cancer tumors. In September, scientists in the Netherlands showed they could arm Clostridium bacteria with therapeutic protein genes, essentially creating search-and-destroy tumor missiles.

9. Schizophrenic mice

July's news that Johns Hopkins researchers had created schizophrenic mice was a surprise, even to scientists who regularly create genetically altered mice to model human diseases. In recent years, we've seen very big mice, fearless mice, Rain Man mice and a host of others. But the schizophrenic experience of hallucinations, delusions of grandeur and paranoia seemed somehow distinctly human. However, scientists recently identified a single gene called DISC1 as a major schizophrenia risk factor, leading to the creation of these mice, which lack the gene. Anatomical examinations revealed similarities between the mice's brains and those of human patients. The mice also revealed behaviors -- trouble finding food, agitation in open fields -- that researchers say parallel human schizophrenic activities.

10. Yeast with poison-sensing rat genes

Temple University doctors announced in May that they'd genetically modified a strain of yeast to glow green in the presence of DNT, an ingredient in dynamite. The scientists used rat olfactory genes to sense the chemical and switch on fluorescent-protein producing genes. Biosensors might be better than man-made sensors for applications like detecting nerve gas, because they are cheap to produce.

THE CULPRIT & THE VICTIM

The Somalia syndrome
Tue, 25 Dec 2007 21:55:12
BY Noam Chomsky

THIS poor country keeps taking one blow after another," Peter Goossens observed two months ago in an interview with The New York Times' Jeffrey Gettleman. "Ultimately, it will break."

The country is Somalia, and Goossens directs the World Food Programme, which is now feeding some 1.2 million people there, 15 per cent of the population.

This tragic and tortured land is "marching right up to the edge of a crisis", Goossens said. "Any additional little thing, any little flood or drought, will push them over."

Somalia, war- and famine-torn, is beset from within and without. With a vigilance especially stepped up since September 11, the United States has reformulated its long-standing efforts to control the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia) as a front line in the "war on terror", and Somalia is at its very tip. The crisis in Somalia may be regarded partly as collateral damage from that "war on terror" and the geopolitical concerns reframed in these terms.

As Somalia sinks deeper into chaos, members of the African Union have sent small peacekeeping forces there, and pledged to send more if funding is made available. But they are unlikely to do so, "because there is no peace to keep (in Somalia) in the first place," Richard Cornwell, of the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, told Scott Baldauf and Alexis Okeowo of The Christian Science Monitor in May.

By November, the United Nations noted that Somalia had "higher malnutrition rates, more current bloodshed and fewer aid workers than Darfur," Gettleman reported. Indeed, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the top UN official for Somalia, described its plight as "the worst on the continent".

The United Nations, however, lacks the capacity to reach the people who are hungry, exposed, sick and dying in Somalia, according to Eric Laroche, head of UN humanitarian operations there.

"If this were happening in Darfur, there would be a big fuss," Laroche said. "But Somalia has been a forgotten emergency for years."

One distinction, hard to miss, is that the tragedy of Darfur can be blamed on someone else, in fact an official enemy — the government of Sudan and its Arab militias — while responsibility for the current disaster in Somalia, like others there that preceded it, lies substantially in our own hands.

In 1992, after the overthrow of the Somali dictatorship by clan-based militias and the ensuing famine, the United States sent thousands of soldiers on a dubious "rescue mission" to assist with humanitarian operations. But in October 1993, during the "Battle of Mogadishu", two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by Somali militiamen, leaving 18 US Army Rangers dead, along with perhaps 1,000 Somalis.

US forces were immediately withdrawn in a manner that continued the murderous ratio. "In the final stages of the troops' retreat, every bullet fired against them was answered, it seemed, by 100," Los Angeles Times correspondent John Balzar reported. As for the Somali casualties, Marine Lt. Gen. Anthony Zinni, who commanded the operation, informed the Press that "I'm not counting bodies ... I'm not interested."

CIA officials privately conceded that during the US operations in Somalia, in which 34 US soldiers were lost, Somali casualties — militiamen and civilians — may have been 7,000 to 10,000, Charles William Maynes reported in Foreign Policy.

The "rescue mission", which may have killed about as many Somalis as it saved, left the country in the hands of brutal warlords.

"After that, the United States — and much of the rest of the world — basically turned its back on Somalia," Gettleman reports. "But in the summer of 2006, the world started paying attention again after a grass-roots Islamist movement emerged from the clan chaos and seized control of much of the country", leaving only an enclave adjoining Ethiopia in the hands of the Western-recognised Transitional Federal Government.

During their brief tenure, the Islamists "didn't cause us any problems", Laroche reports. Ould-Abdallah called the six months of their rule Somalia's "golden era", the only period of peace in Somalia for years. Other UN officials concur, observing that "the country was in better shape during the brief reign of Somalia's Islamist movement last year" than it has been since Ethiopia invaded in December 2006 to impose the rule of the TFG.

The Ethiopian invasion, with US backing and direct participation, took place immediately after the U.N. Security Council, at U.S. initiative, passed Resolution 1725 for Somalia, which called upon all states "to refrain from action that could provoke or perpetuate violence and violations of human rights, contribute to unnecessary tension and mistrust, endanger the ceasefire and political process, or further damage the humanitarian situation."

The invasion by Somalia's historical enemy, Christian Ethiopia, soon elicited a bitter resistance, leading to the present crisis.

The official reason for US participation in Ethiopia's overthrow of the Islamist regime is the "war on terror" — which itself has engendered terror, quite apart from its own atrocities. Furthermore, the roots of the Islamic fundamentalist regime trace back to earlier stages of the "war on terror".

Immediately after September 11, the United States spearheaded an international effort to close down Al-Barakaat — a Dubai-based Somali remittance network that also runs major businesses in Somalia — on grounds that it was financing terror. This move was hailed by government and media as one of the great successes of the "war on terror". In contrast, Washington's withdrawal of its charges as without merit a year later aroused little interest.

The greatest impact of the closing of Al-Barakaat was in Somalia. According to the United Nations, in 2001 the enterprise was responsible for about half the $500 million remittances to Somalia, "more than it earns from any other economic sector and 10 times the amount of foreign aid (Somalia) receives".

Al-Barakat also played a major role in the economy, Ibrahim Warde observes in "The Price of Fear", his devastating study of Bush's "financial war on terror". The frivolous attack on a very fragile society "may have played a role in the rise ... of Islamic fundamentalists," Warde concludes — another familiar consequence of the "war on terror".

The renewed torture of Somalia falls within the context of US efforts to gain firm control over the Horn of Africa, where the United States is launching a new Africa command and extending naval operations in crucial shipping lanes, part of the broader campaign to ensure its domination of the world's primary energy resources in the Persian Gulf region and in Africa as well.

Just after World War II, when State Department planners were assigning each part of the world its "function" within the overall system of US domination, Africa was considered unimportant. George Kennan, head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, advised that Africa should be handed over to Europe to "exploit" for its reconstruction. No longer. The resources of Africa are too valuable to be left to others, particularly with China extending its commercial reach.

If poor Somalia collapses in starvation and misery, that is merely a sideshow of grand geopolitical designs, and of little moment.

Nightmare in Afghanistan

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 16:14:02
By Ismail Salami, Press TV, Tehran

'A Thousand Splendid Suns' is the second novel by the Afghan writer Khaled Hosseini who presently lives in the United States.

Set against the backdrop of thirty years of tumultuous Afghan history, Hosseini seeks to lay bare the innermost repressed human aspirations and a lingering desire for justice in a land crushed to the very bone by internal and external elements.

'A Thousand Splendid Suns' is the story of Mariam and Laila, the two wives of the savage Rasheed. Mariam is only fifteen when she is forced into marriage with Rasheed, who is dozens of years her senior. Two decades later when she cannot produce an heir to Rasheed, he marries fourteen-year-old Laila.

Mariam and Laila join hands to fight the tyrannical rule of a selfish husband. They share their joys and sorrows and brook the tyranny in the deep bond which takes shape between them. With the coming of Taliban to power misery comes after misery: starvation, brutality and fear beyond human imagination. In the end through love the characters triumph over misery and plight.

With inconceivable skill the writer wrings from the readers the utmost strain of pity and sympathy for the characters.

Like in his previous novel 'The Kite Runner', the characters are desperate creatures raped, beaten and stripped of happiness. Yet, they persevere in the path of life looking for a ray of hope in a brutal world created not only by the social conventions and traditions but by the blind ignorance and prejudice of the tyrants as well.

The interplay of love and hate constitutes the core theme of the novel. People fall into two categories, those who are capable of love and those who are incapable of it. Mariam the protagonist looks for love in a society where love is the privilege of a few. Even paternal love is denied her because she is the illegitimate child of a rich man who brought her to life in a moment of carnal whim. In other words, happiness is far beyond the reach of the protagonist.

Apart from the political overtones in the novel, the writer does not lend a political hue to the novel but views human life from a social viewpoint. He depicts Afghanistan in different historical junctures.

Laila is the alter ego of Mariam who suffers a similar destiny although she comes from an intellectual family. In fact, Hosseini shows the predicament of women in a traditional society who have no other duties than wifely ones. It does not matter who you are in the Afghan society but what sex you are. To be a woman is to be a misfortunate creature. To be a woman is a sin.

Under the Taliban the situation becomes even worse for women. The Taliban in fact symbolize the most deteriorated form of existence for women.

As a matter of fact, the regime change does not bring about any reform in the lifestyle of women. Something is rotten in the very beliefs and traditions of the society which bind women to a wheel of woes: hunger, drought, civil war and the cruelty of well-armed zealots.

Hosseini is a great story teller. He has a great power of description and profound insight into human conditions. The characters are described in an unforgettable way. Some provoke anger and the others tenderness and affection. The agony of the Afghan people is painted so vividly that one finds oneself part of their suffering.

Putin Signs Law Suspending Participation in CFE Treaty

source almanar

01/12/2007 Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a law suspending Russia's participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, the Kremlin announced.

The suspension takes effect Dec. 12. Under the moratorium, Russia will halt inspections and verifications of its military sites by NATO countries and will no longer be obligated to limit the number of conventional weapons deployed west of the Urals.

The 1990 arms control treaty set limits on the deployment of heavy conventional weapons by NATO and Warsaw Pact countries, to ease tensions along the border between the old Eastern bloc and Western Europe. The treaty was revised in 1999 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia ratified the updated treaty in 2004, but the United States and other NATO members have refused to follow suit, saying Moscow first must fulfill obligations to withdraw forces from Georgia and from Moldova's separatist region of Trans-Dniester.

Both houses of parliament passed the law on the moratorium at Putin's initiative.

Putin called for Russia's temporary withdrawal from the treaty amid mounting anger in the Kremlin over US plans to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

What will US do to Chavez Part 2?

Venezuela to Expel US Diplomat

source almanartv

9/11/2007 Venezuela threatened to expel a US Embassy official for allegedly conspiring to defeat a referendum championed by President Hugo Chavez. The allegation, that the diplomat was plotting to sway public opinion, comes ahead of a fiercely contested referendum on reforms that would allow Chavez indefinite re-election and help him establish a socialist state in Venezuela. Sunday's vote has generated large pro- and anti-Chavez rallies and Chavez kept the rhetoric high on Wednesday by repeating his charge that Washington is plotting to kill him. In Caracas, Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro showed state television a document that was written by the unnamed embassy official and was to have been sent to the CIA as part of a plan to help ensure that Venezuelans vote against the proposed constitutional overhaul. "It's a script from the CIA to try to generate a block of opinion among Venezuelans that would give a sure victory to the 'No' vote," said Maduro. "We will investigate and if it's that way, we'll remove this person from here as a persona non grata." He did not provide more details of the alleged plot. A spokesman for the US embassy, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak on the matter, said he was unaware of the document. In Washington, State Department spokesman Rob McInturff said officials there were looking into the reports. Chavez, an ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, has had a friction-filled relationship with Washington. The Venezuelan leader accuses the US of supporting a 2002 coup that ousted him from office for two days. In February 2006, Venezuela expelled naval attaché John Correa for allegedly passing secret information from Venezuelan military officers to the Pentagon. On Tuesday, Chavez accused the CNN news network of "inciting" an assassination attempt against him. On Wednesday, Chavez said Washington is also seeking to kill him. In Sunday's referendum, Venezuelans will vote on proposed changes to 69 amendments of the nation's 1999 constitution. Castro: US could assassinate Chavez Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:03:45 Castro and Chavez have very close ties. The Cuban President warns his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, that the US could assassinate him or wage a civil war in Venezuela. "The irresponsible US government does not stop for one minute to think that killing the head of state in Venezuela, or a civil war there, given its huge oil reserves," Fidel Castro wrote in an editorial in Granma, the Cuban Communist Party's newspaper. Castro wrote he had cautioned his Venezuelan ally "very seriously" when they met on November 21. He had highlighted "the risks of assassination he was exposing himself to by constantly traveling in open-top vehicles," at the meeting. Chavez is a vocal critic of US president George W. Bush's warmongering policies.He earlier said that Bush must be taken to a madhouse. NM/DT - source presstv

They talk in Annapolis They kill in Gaza

Source almanartv

Israeli Air strike Martyrs 4 Palestinians

29/11/2007 Four Hamas resistance fighters have been martyred in a new Israeli occupation air raid and another attack in the Gaza Strip. The martyrs were identified as Saher Shahin, 25, and Imad Abou Tuhema, 22. They were members of the Al-Qassam, the armed wing of the Islamic resistance movement. An Israeli occupation army spokesman confirmed the raid, saying a helicopter attacked "several Palestinian suspects who were approaching the border." According to the United Nations Charter, struggle against military occupation of territories of the member states is legitimate. Two other members Abdallah Astal, 22, and Khami Abu Ruyia, 18 died when a tank shell hit them in another area in the south of the Gaza Strip. Two Hamas members were wounded and two others died in the air attack which took place near Khan Yunus in the south of the Gaza Strip late Wednesday.

All Options Open against Israel after Annapolis: Hamas

29/11/2007 Hamas warned on Thursday that all options were open for the Islamic resistance movement against Israel after a US conference that revived settlement talks and five days in which Israeli occupation troops had killed 12 resistance fighters in Gaza. "All options are open to answer any crime, especially after the Annapolis conference, which gave the Zionists a green light to commit more and more crimes against our people," said a statement from the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's military armed wing.

Since Sunday, Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip has killed 12 resistance fighters, most of them from the Islamic resistance movement. Hamas vigorously opposed the international conference in Annapolis, Maryland this week that revived Israeli-Palestinian talks after a seven-year freeze and to which the Islamic movement was not invited.

Hamas also warned the Palestinian leadership against making good on its pledge to implement the roadmap for Middle East talks - as expressed in a joint statement that the two sides agreed just before the start of the conference on Tuesday. The first phase of the roadmap - an international plan that has made next to no progress since its launch in 2003 - calls for the Palestinians to undertake "visible" steps against fighters planning attacks on Israelis.

"It is not acceptable to implement the steps in the first phase of the roadmap, especially if they arrest our mujahedeen or take our weapons," the statement said. "If this happens, it will mean a declaration of war between us and any side which implements the roadmap steps."

In their joint statement, read out by US President George W. Bush at the start of the Annapolis conference on Tuesday, the Israelis and Palestinians agreed "to immediately implement their respective obligations under the performance-based roadmap."

Fatah, Hamas to Join Ranks if Israeli Army raids Gaza

Readers Number : 126

30/11/2007 Fatah will fight alongside Hamas if and when the Israeli occupation army launches a military operation in the Gaza Strip, a senior Fatah official in Gaza City said Thursday. Israeli occupation troops take up a position during a battle on the Gaza border. "Fatah won't remain idle in the face of an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip," the official said. "We will definitely fight together with Hamas against the Israeli army. It's our duty to defend our people against the occupiers." The Fatah official said his faction would place political differences aside and form a joint front against Israel if the Israeli army enters the Gaza Strip. "The homeland is more important than all our differences," he said. The statements came amid reports that some Arab countries were planning to resume mediation efforts between Fatah and Hamas to avoid further deterioration in the aftermath of the Annapolis conference. According to the reports, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have decided to invite representatives of Fatah and Hamas for talks on ways of ending their power struggle. A senior Palestinian official who visited Cairo this week said the Egyptians and Saudis have reached the conclusion that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas won't be able to move forward with the talks with Israel without solving his problems with Hamas. The official said Abbas had given his blessing to Cairo and Riyadh to resume their efforts to end the crisis with Hamas. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak phoned Abbas Thursday and discussed with him the results of the Annapolis conference and the possibility of resuming negotiations between Fatah and Hamas. Abbas is currently on a visit to Tunisia, where he is expected to brief veteran PLO officials on the outcome of the conference. Earlier this week, the Egyptian government gave permission to several pro-Palestinian organizations in Egypt to send truckloads of food and medicine to the Gaza Strip. The trucks are scheduled to arrive in the Gaza Strip on Friday through the Rafah border crossing, which remains closed to travelers. Hamas, meanwhile, is bracing for a massive Israeli occupation army operation to halt the firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip. Sources in the Gaza Strip said Hamas's security forces have been placed on full alert and most of the movement's senior leaders have gone into hiding for fear of being targeted by Israel. In addition, Hamas has evacuated many of its security and civil institutions. Hamas leaders on Thursday tried to establish a link between the Annapolis conference and a potential Israeli army attack on the Gaza Strip. They said the latest escalation, which claimed the lives of some 20 Hamas members over the past week, was directly linked to the conference. Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan said Israel was stepping up its military operations in the Gaza Strip to cover up for the "failure" of the Annapolis conference. He said the thousands of Palestinians who demonstrated against the conference over the past few days in the occupied West Bank indicated that a majority of the public were opposed to Annapolis. Hamas legislator Mushir al-Masri said the killing of six Hamas resistance fighters over the past 48 hours was one of the direct results of the Annapolis conference. "The Annapolis conference has failed," he said. "This conference was nothing but an attempt to impose the American and Israeli agenda on the Palestinians. The conference also gave a green light to Israel to launch a big military operation in the Gaza Strip."

Western Democracies Defending Apartheid

Olmert: Two States, or Israel is Finished

Al-ManarTV

29/11/2007 "If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told daily Haaretz Wednesday, the day the Annapolis conference ended in an agreement to try to reach a Mideast settlement by the end of 2008. Olmert said the Annapolis conference "met more than we could have defined as the Israeli expectations, but that will not absolve us of the difficulties there will be in the negotiations, which will be difficult, complex, and will require a very great deal of patience and sophistication." According to Olmert, "we now have a partner," in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "He is a weak partner, who is not capable, and, as Tony Blair says, has yet to formulate the tools and may not manage to do so. But it is my job to do everything so that he receives the tools, and to reach an understanding on the guidelines for an agreement. Annapolis is not a historic turning point, but it is a point that can be of assistance." On Wednesday, Olmert and Abbas met again separately with President George W. Bush, and later joined him, along with their chief negotiators, Israeli Foreign Minister Tsivi Livni and Ahmed Qurei, for a brief ceremony in the White House Rose Garden to inaugurate the Israeli-Palestinian talks. Olmert departed the U.S. Wednesday night and arrived in the occupied territories Thursday afternoon. Olmert's private conversation with Bush Wednesday centered on blocking the Iranian nuclear threat. Olmert told reporters Wednesday that "there is nowhere I encounter greater understanding for Israel's existential issues than in the Oval Office." At a meeting earlier this week in Washington, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov informed Defense Minister Ehud Barak that Russia has decided to supply the nuclear fuel rods for Iran's Bushehr power plant. The fuel will be sent to Iran in special packaging, in keeping with the instruction of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Lavrov told Barak, adding that "it is not so simple to open these packages without it being discovered." Ahmadinejad: Israel will not survive Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:08:07 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the Zionist regime will not survive as it is established based on atrocities and tyranny. He said after a cabinet session on Wednesday that the US-sponsored Mideast conference in Annapolis was doomed to 'failure'. The Iranian President added that the issue of Palestine could only be resolved through respecting the rights of the Palestinian nation and its will, the condemnation of the occupation and restoring the right of Palestinian refugees to return. "Soon, even the most politically optimistic individuals will agree that this conference was a failure from the start," Ahmadinejad continued. “The people who expected a breakthrough at the meeting were mistaken,” he concluded. MD/HGH/RE

An American story

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:24:31
By Hedieh Ghavidel, Press TV, Tehran

Dear Americans, PLEASE, don't stop to think!

Yes, Iran is after a nuclear bomb that is why the IAEA has released a report saying Tehran has been truthful about its nuclear activities. And of course the US government is against nuclear bombs and would never think of using them. Ask any Japanese about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and they will tell you all about it.

Nuclear weapons are bad. Nuclear technology is very bad; of course it depends on who has them and who uses them.

'No country' should have nuclear technology. 'No country' is Iran. The rest of the world does not fall under the 'no country' category.

It's absolutely fine, however, for India and Pakistan to have nuclear technology as much as it is necessary for France and China to sign the biggest nuclear deal in history. But 'no country' should be stopped before it can use nuclear technology to generate electricity.

What does NPT mean anyway? If Israelis don't want to sign such a treaty, why should they be forced to? How could one imagine the Israelis are after nukes?

How would IAEA inspectors know? They have never even seen an Israeli nuclear plant in the first place? Israel isn't an NPT member, so IAEA inspectors are not allowed to visit its nuclear facilities.

The innocent Israelis probably don't even know what a 'nuke' is and they are not considered 'no country' either, so there is no reason to worry.

There is no doubt the US government is after 'PEACE' that is why they are hosting a 'peace conference' on the Israel-Palestine conflict without the presence of the true representative of the Palestinian nation. How would Palestinians know what is in their best interest? How could they have any clue about what they want?

History has shown wise Americans should be allowed to impose their will on such inferior races, just as their forefathers laid the foundation of the US government on ethnic cleansing.

However, America is currently only concerned with humanitarian acts; therefore, it supports Israeli leaders who are patiently seeing to the cleansing of Palestine of all its original inhabitants.

American rulers take 'Global Peace' very seriously why else would they start an arms race in the Middle East? Serving two purposes at the same time, filling their pockets will oil dollar and threatening their arch enemy Iran.

Iranians are an uncultured race. They do not know the first thing about ethics. That is why their President accepted an invitation to speak at Columbia University, listened to the host insulting him and smiled while delivering his speech without insulting the host in return.

Iranians are violent people. They have traveled all the way across the world to invade the US' neighboring countries, Canada and Mexico, and constantly accuse Washington of helping terrorists kill their troops. Shame on them!

Tehran doesn't really want to see security in Iraq; that is why even though all relations with Washington were severed in 1979, Iran recently negotiated with compassionate Americans three times.

President Bush, America's role model in compassion, could not tolerate the gradually declining US economy, so he gave young Americans a window of opportunity, a chance to experience the American dream first hand in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the 'boys' get paid to willingly die and open up spots for new recruitment.

It is only fair to allow jobless young men to serve their country in a foreign land, kill and violate a couple of civilians and eventually become one of the faithfully departed. No one should miss out on this 'once in a life time' experience.

The American government is a model for all. It not only provides its youth with well-paid jobs, but also exports made-in-the-USA democracy to less-privileged nations without using unconventional weapons.

Most American soldiers who return home ill from radiation exposure have not sustained a battle injury. God's will is what defects children, whether they are American or Iraqi, for the US has never used DU weapons in Iraq. Even if they have, such weapons blessed by Washington only have redeeming qualities.

But of course, Americans need not stop to think.

HGH/RE