Kurt Nimmo
As suspected, and claimed on this blog over the weekend, the inflammatory anti-Muslim cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten were a deliberate provocation designed to outrage and incite Muslims and thus engender support in Europe and America for the manufactured “clash of civilizations” engineered by the Straussian neocons. As Christopher Bollyn writes for the American Free Press, the neocon operative behind the cartoon scheme is Flemming Rose, cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, who has “has clear ties to the Zionist Neo-Cons.” Rose “traveled to Philadelphia in October 2004 to visit Daniel Pipes, the Neo-Con ideologue who says the only path to Middle East peace will come through a total Israeli military victory. Rose then penned a positive article about Pipes, who compares ‘militant Islam’ with fascism and communism,” Bollyn reveals.
kurtnimmo.com

The acting Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said yesterday that he plans to annex the Jordan Valley and major Jewish settlement blocks to Israel in drawing new borders, according to a television station that recorded an interview with him yesterday.

In Mr Olmert’s first policy statement since he succeeded Ariel Sharon last month, Channel 2 television said that he made clear he intends to carry through his predecessor’s vision of creating an emasculated Palestinian state on Israel’s terms.
guardian.co.uk

Hamas sets out conditions for peace
The political leader of Hamas said today that he would only accept a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if Israel withdraws to its pre-1967 borders and accepts the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
“When Israel says that it … will withdraw from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and grant the right of return, stop settlements and recognise the rights of the Palestinians to self-determination, only then Hamas will be ready to take a serious step,” Khaled Meshal told the BBC.

“There’s a problem that happened to the Palestinians. They were a people that used to live on their land, and did not find justice from the international community,” he said.

“There are roots to the problem, but in reality we now say that if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, there could be peace and security in the region, and agreements between the sides, until the international community finds a way to solve everybody’s problems.”

Asked whether, if Israel “changed”, and was prepared to implement a two-state solution along the pre-1967 borders, Hamas would accept it, and live in peace alongside it, Mr Meshal said: “If Israel changes, come and ask me to change.”

Iran Greatest Threat, Most Americans Think
A new poll finds Americans now think Iran is the biggest threat to the U.S.

As recently as October, Iraq, China, and North Korea ranked as the most threatening.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which did the poll, says among people who’ve been following recent news about Iran, there’s even greater concern.

President Bush has been warning about Tehran’s nuclear program, which also worries many other countries.

The UN Security Council is taking it up, which prompted Tehran to order UN surveillance gear and seals be removed.

The poll found two-thirds or more of Americans think if Iran develops nuclear weapons, it’s likely to attack Israel, Europe, or the U.S.
This is the level of discourse taking place in most of the country. It sounds like it’s written for third-graders, and indeed millions of Americans can’t read any better.

…But contrary to conventional wisdom in dominant media, Bush’s supposed super-candid “addicted to oil” statement was more about deception than frankness. This is for two reasons. The first one is simple: the U.S. imports just 20 percent of its petroleum from the Middle East, the obvious geographic meaning (though he may also have had Venezuela in mind) of Bush’s phrase “unstable parts of the world.”

The second reason is a bit more complex. When it comes to America, Iraq, oil, war, and world geography, the really honest and relevant point regarding U.S. policy is that Uncle Sam is addicted to global dominance and empire. That addiction and not any direct-use reliance on Persian Gulf petroleum is the real reason “we” are in Iraq (against the wishes of “our” own populace not to mention those of the Iraqis) and not likely to leave anytime soon.
zmag.org

The neo-liberal transformation of Iraq is portrayed as a humanitarian venture. Western corporations and occupying governments now talk of the liberation of Iraq from the “tyranny of Saddam’s planned economy”.

On the day that major hostilities were declared over, Tony Blair told the Iraqi people, “Saddam Hussein and his regime plundered your nation’s wealth. While many of you live in poverty, they have the lives of luxury. The money from Iraqi oil will be yours – to be used to build prosperity for you and your families.”

This has turned out to be another shameless lie. Saddam’s regime was undoubtedly corrupt, in the sense that he established a system of patronage and rewards for the elite that remained closest to him. But the scale and intensity of the corruption and fraud perpetrated by the occupation is unprecedented in modern history.

The largest part of the money spent by the US-British occupation was not US or international donor funds, but oil revenue that belongs to the Iraqi people. During the period of direct rule the US spent, or committed to spend, around £11.3 billion, most of which was disbursed to US corporations.

Of this expenditure, £5 billion is unaccounted for. From the available evidence we know that much of it has vanished into the hands of corporations, corrupt public officials and elite Iraqi deal fixers.
socialistworker.co.uk

Iraqi voices are drowned out in a blizzard of occupiers’ spin
The deception that launched the invasion of Iraq now increasingly shapes media coverage of the occupation.

Three years after invading Iraq, George Bush and Tony Blair are still dipping into the trough of deception and disinformation that launched the war: hailing non-existent progress, declaring sanctimonious satisfaction with sectarian elections and holding out the mirage of early withdrawal. In reality, the occupation and divide-and-rule tactics have spawned death squads, torture, kidnappings, chemical attacks, polluted water, depleted uranium, bombardment of civilians, probably more than 100,000 people dead and a relentless deterioration in Iraqis’ daily lives.

WASHINGTON – At least nine senators were among 200 people herded into a Capitol parking garage Wednesday night after a security sensor indicated the presence of a nerve agent in their office building. Later tests proved negative.

“Test results have been cleared and all test results are negative, so that’s very good news,” said Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider.
yahoo.com

They served their time in the military in places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and more recently, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Most returned in good health.
But an NBC 30 investigation has found that for some soldiers, their service has meant a long and debilitating death sentence with mysterious diseases.

“I have good days, I have bad days,” said M. Sterry, of New Haven. “There were eight of us that served together. Six of my friends are dead.”

She looks healthy, but Sterry is a very sick woman who has no idea how much longer she will live.

“I’ve had three heart attacks, two heart surgeries. I have chronic headaches, chronic upper respiratory infections. I get pneumonia two or three times a year,” she said. “I have chronic fatigue, joint aches, muscle aches. I have a rash that migrates all over my body.”

…State Sen. Gayle Slossberg said one of the sources of the diseases may be depleted uranium. She was one of those who helped pass legislation last year setting up a health registry in Connecticut, strictly to keep records on our military personnel.
nbc30.com

Washington – President Bush wants to sell more public land across the West to raise money for schools, conservation and deficit reduction.

Bush’s proposed 2007 federal budget, sent to Congress on Monday, calls for granting the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management new authority to sell off land. Those agencies together control hundreds of millions of acres in Western states.

Democrats and environmentalists compare the idea to recent proposals by Tom Tancredo and other Republicans in Congress to sell federal land to pay for hurricane relief and invigorate the mining industry.

Dave Alberswerth of the Wilderness Society dubbed the new sell-off proposal “a billion-dollar privatization program.”

And Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., sees it as a destructive way to pay for what he considers reckless tax cuts. “It’s like selling your homestead to pay your credit cards,” he said.
denverpost.com

A group of high school students and their parents filed a class-action lawsuit today against the State Board of Education on behalf of the tens of thousands of California students who have failed the exit exam required to graduate.

The suit seeks a court order allowing students in this year’s graduating class to earn their diploma regardless of whether they passed the math and English portions of the exam.

Lawyers for the students plan to argue that underfunded schools have failed to adequately prepare minority and disadvantaged students for the exam and that the state board did not consider alternatives to the test, as required by law.

“We are telling kids that they do not get a diploma if they do not pass an exit exam. We think that is unfair. It is unwise and it is illegal,” said Arturo Gonzalez, the lawyer for the group.

“Many students in California have not been given a fair opportunity to learn the material on the exam,” said Gonzalez, who filed the lawsuit in Sacramento.
latimes.com

…A long-lost 17th century manuscript charting the birth of modern science has been found gathering dust in a cupboard in a Hampshire home. Filled with crabby italics and acerbic asides, the 520 or so yellowing and stained pages are the handwritten minutes of the Royal Society as recorded by the brilliant scientist Robert Hooke, one of the society’s original fellows and curator of experiments.

The notes describe in detail some of the most astounding and outlandish scientific thinking from meetings of the society between 1661 to 1682. There is the very earliest work with microscopes, confirming the first sightings of sperm and micro-organisms. There is correspondence with Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Christopher Wren over the nature of gravity, with the latter’s proposal to fire bullets into the air to see where they might drop. And there is a page that lays to rest the bitter controversy over who designed the watch that would eventually lead to the first measurements of longitude.
guardian.co.uk