Israelis have always been horrified at the idea of parallels between their country, a democracy risen from the ashes of genocide, and the racist system that ruled the old South Africa. Yet even within Israel itself, accusations persist that the web of controls affecting every aspect of Palestinian life bears a disturbing resemblance to apartheid. After four years reporting from Jerusalem and more than a decade from Johannesburg before that, the Guardian’s award-winning Middle East correspondent Chris McGreal is exceptionally well placed to assess this explosive comparison. Here we publish the first part of his two-day special report.
guardian.co.uk

Magazine shuts down after controversy
An economics magazine will be shut down after running an anti-Semitic article.

The promise to shut down Global Agenda was made in a Feb. 3 letter from the head of the World Economic Forum, Professor Klaus Schwab, to the head of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris.

Schwab said the article, which called for an international boycott of Israel, was “inflammatory and venomous.” It will be replaced in the reprinted Global Agenda with an editorial by Schwab about the values of the forum. He added that it will be the last issue of the magazine.

This is the group that throws the Davos fete every year…

…’I wish I hadn’t come back home from Iran after the Taliban left. I had a better life there, I had occasional work at least, so I am going back.’ Zahair Mohammad stands in the line trying, with hundreds of others, to get an Iranian visa. ‘I was thinking positively for a long time about rebuilding a life here in Kabul, where I was born, but I was wrong, very wrong. It’s time to go. I need to work abroad, like most, as a cheap labourer and send money home. What we’re hearing on the radio about a new Afghanistan is nothing but a dream.’ He gestures at the kilometre-long queue. ‘I was a refugee before and now I’m choosing to become one again. I’m not alone.’

Five years after the Taliban were deposed by a US-led military alliance, Afghanistan remains entrenched in poverty. Intense frustration with the government, particularly among refugees who returned amid promises of change, is growing. The Observer has learnt that such is the demand among ordinary Afghans to leave that this weekend the Interior Ministry has run out of the basic materials to make passports.
guardian.co.uk

Afghanistan fighting spreads to Pakistan
MILITANTS attacked Afghan government offices and a police convoy, continuing a series of assaults that has left at least 41 people dead in the region over two days, government officials said.

About 250 Afghan forces fought more than 200 rebels in the area’s fiercest fighting in months. At least 19 people were killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan on Saturday.

Afghan officials said US forces joined the battle Friday and yesterday but a US military spokesman said he could only confirm involvement in the first day of fighting.

The violence spread across the border as a roadside bomb exploded near an army vehicle yesterday in Pakistan in a north-western tribal region near Afghanistan, killing three security personnel, an official said.

02/03/06 “PRNewswire” — — Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson makes the startling claim that much of Powell’s landmark speech to the United Nations laying out the Bush Administration’s case for the Iraq war was false.

“I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council,” says Wilkerson, who helped prepare the address.

“I recall vividly the Secretary of State walking into my office,” Wilkerson tells NOW. “He said: ‘I wonder what will happen if we put half a million troops on the ground in Iraq and comb the country from one end to the other and don’t find a single weapon of mass destruction?'” In fact, no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.
informationclearinghouse.info

Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News has another scoop that probably portends the most important strategic military development of our generation.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has given the Navy go ahead to develop a conventionally armed Trident missile. Two dozen existing nuclear-armed submarine-launched missiles will be converted to carry conventional warheads. The missiles will then be assigned “global strike” missions to allow quicker preemptive attacks.

For the first time since intercontinental ballistic missiles were “captured” in arms control treaties 40 years ago as unique and potentially destabilizing weapons, the United States will muddy the waters by modifying an existing nuclear weapon for use in day-to-day warfare.

The conversion of Trident missiles abandons the strict segregation of nuclear from conventional weapons.

Were the United States ever to use its new conventional Tridents, the firing would also flirt with accidental nuclear war. Ballistic missiles aimed at targets in North Korea, for example, might falsely signal to China or Russia that the United States was attacking them.
washingtonpost.com

Ability to Wage ‘Long War’ Is Key To Pentagon Plan
The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a “long war,” yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions U.S. troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats.

Major initiatives include a 15 percent boost in the number of elite U.S. troops known as Special Operations Forces, a near-doubling of the capacity of unmanned aerial drones to gather intelligence, a $1.5 billion investment to counter a biological attack, and the creation of special teams to find, track and defuse nuclear bombs and other catastrophic weapons.

China is singled out as having “the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States,” and the strategy in response calls for accelerating the fielding of a new Air Force long-range strike force, as well as for building undersea warfare capabilities.

by Charles Sullivan
…We are witnessing an all pervasive mediocrity in government that has come as a result of a spectacular failure of citizenship. We are a people that value ease and convenience over self education, sacrifice and truth. We do not demand evidence in support of our views. We believe what we are told; and we do what we are told by authority. We do not like to make trouble. Asking questions requires self examining critical thinking, a skill that is rapidly disappearing from our culture of fluff and ease. We want the kind of life where the decisions are made for us—a life that does not place demands upon us. We want to be entertained, not informed by burdensome truths that may assault our conscience and cause psychological injury. That is dangerous knowledge because it would dispel the myths about what America really is. It would force us to think differently about who we are as a people. We would see us as the rest of the world sees us.
informationclearinghouse.info

I understand the horror and anger. I share it. But I don’t think ‘hitting the streets day after day’ is going to do it. I think we have to acknowledge that ‘the people’ never have run this country, counter to all the rhetoric. National strikes are not in our repertoire, nor is massive tax revolt. I wonder what citizenship has ever really meant here. I’m afraid the American people are in for a huge shock, and those of us who won’t be shocked are along for the ride anyway.

South Africa’s upwardly mobile professionals are flaunting their new wealth. But while they thrive in a resurgent country, impoverished millions are still struggling to survive in the townships.
guardian.co.uk

Rising global oil prices are bolstering the power of America’s enemies around the world, strengthening the regimes in Iran, Syria, Sudan and Venezuela and increasing Russia’s assertiveness in eastern Europe, US intelligence agencies said on Thursday.

Two days after President George W. Bush called for the US to end its “addiction to oil”, John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence, said the combination of rising demand for energy and instability in oil-producing regions “is increasing the geopolitical leverage of key producing states”.

Negroponte said in testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, that the most important election on the African horizon will be held in spring 2007 in Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country and largest oil producer. The vote has the potential to reinforce a democratic trend away from military rule—or it could lead to major disruption in a nation suffering frequent ethno-religious violence, criminal activity, and rampant corruption.

He said that speculation that President Obasanjo will try to change the constitution so he can seek a third term in office is raising political tensions and, if proven true, threatens to unleash major turmoil and conflict. Such chaos in Nigeria could lead to disruption of oil supply, secessionist moves by regional governments, major refugee flows, and instability elsewhere in West Africa.
finfacts.com

And?

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) – Hundreds of poor Haitians danced in the streets on Saturday and demanded the return of exiled leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide three days before a presidential vote that some fear will lead to chaos.

Loudspeakers mounted on trucks blared music as Aristide supporters waved banners, sang and danced in a campaign rally that wound from the streets of downtown Port-au-Prince into the sprawling Bel-Air slum.

They were marching in support of front-runner Rene Preval, an ex-president seen as an Aristide ally even though he has tried to distance himself from the firebrand former priest who was ousted in a rebellion two years ago.

“Preval, we can’t wait any longer, bring back Aristide,” the crowd chanted. One man lay in the street, a poster of Preval on one side and a poster of Aristide on the other.

“Preval and Aristide are twins!” others shouted.
washingtonpost.com

During the February 2 edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, Christian Coalition founder and 700 Club host Pat Robertson reiterated his call for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

When co-host Alan Colmes asked Robertson, “[I]f he [Chavez] were assassinated, the world would be a safer place?” Robertson answered, “I think South America would.” When Colmes later pressed Robertson, asking, “Do you want him [Chavez] taken out?” Robertson retorted, “Not now, but one day, one day, one day.” Earlier, Colmes had asked, “Should Chavez be assassinated?” Robertson explained that “one day,” Chavez will “be aiming nuclear weapons; and what’s coming across the Gulf [of Mexico] isn’t going to be [Hurricane] Katrina, it’s going to be his nukes.” Co-host Sean Hannity agreed that “the world would be better off without him where he [Chavez] is, because he is a danger to the United States.”
mediamatters.com

Major trade union federations, the biggest neighborhood social movements (in the combative city of El Alto) and rural landless movements are expressing consternation and hostility over several of newly elected President Morales’ cabinet appointments and their initial policy priorities, which go counter to the campaign promises of candidate Morales.

One of the worst predictors of most governments’ policies is their campaign rhetoric. This is especially the case of presidential candidates moving from the left toward the center. Much more reliable indicators of the actual policies of a newly elected regime come in the form of the Cabinet ministers appointed to key ministries.

President Morales has named sixteen Cabinet ministers, of which 7 have been called into question by the mass movements which brought Morales to the presidency. While overseas commentators and publicists praise the presence of several “Indians” and four women in the Cabinet, the popular movements in Bolivia are dismayed by the policies and past trajectories of nearly half of the new ministers. Salvador Ric Riera, a conservative Santa Cruz businessman and reputed multi-millionaire, accused by the local trade union leaders of money laundering and other shady activities, has been appointed Minister of Public Works and Services. In all previous regimes, Public Works was one of the most notorious for its corruption, especially in allocating public highway construction contracts. Given the importance that Morales has given to fighting corruption, most activists were appalled by the appointment of Riera, who was a last-minute financial contributor to Morales’ campaign. His appointment is seen as a concession to a section of the Santa Cruz oligarchy.

The key Ministry of Mines was handed to Walter Villarroel who defected from the rightwing UCS to jump on the Morales bandwagon. His appointment was denounced by mining leader Cesar Lugo because of Villarroel’s previous stint in government in which he helped to dismantle the Bolivian Mining Corporation (COMOBOL) and for privatizing one of the biggest iron mines in the world. He has also been attacked for supporting previous neo-liberal President Carlos Mesa and promoting private co-operatives rather than strengthening state enterprises under worker control.
counterpunch.org

Well, listen. Morales and Chavez are in this for the long-haul. Colombia’s Uribe says Chavez is his friend. It’s better to have some people in the government rather than using their big bucks to organize coups and such. We’ll just have to see.