WASHINGTON – National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said Thursday that the al-Qaida terror network remains the “top concern” of the U.S. intelligence community, followed closely by the nuclear activities of Iran and North Korea.

Negroponte told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a relatively rare public session that Iran probably does not yet have nuclear weapons, nor the fissile material needed for producing them.

“Nevertheless, the danger that it will acquire a nuclear weapon and the ability to integrate it with the ballistic missiles Iran already possesses is a reason for immediate concern,” he said.
msnbc.msn.com

Negroponte should be on top of everybody’s list. His appearance right at this moment is ominous.

I was so concerned about this issue that I wrote a book, “Why They Hate Us So Much: 100 Facts About 9/11, Islam, and the Middle East- You Don’t Know But Should.”

I am a Desert Storm/Desert Shield veteran. During the war I went into Iraq with the XVIII Airborne Corps. Before the war I taught my unit Arabic numerals, basic Arabic, and basic Arabic history. What was most disturbing and at the same time interesting to me was the complete and total lack of knowledge “intelligent” Americans had about Islam and the Middle East. In the almost 15 years since the war- I must say it has gotten worse not better. How is that? How can we be dumber about the region with all of the channels we have in America and the thousands upon thousands of hours that have been dedicated to the Middle East due to the second Iraqi War, the Palestine/Israeli conflict, and 9/11? How can the country ! with the largest college and university system on Earth be that ignorant of a people and place that will absolutely determine both our future as a country and how we live as a people for the rest of the 21st Century?
kavkazcenter.com

More than 20,000 paramilitaries have now laid down their arms in Colombia following the latest disarmament drive under the peace process, officials say.
Over 2,500 fighters of the Central Bolivar Bloc surrendered their weapons at a ceremony in the town of Santa Rosa, north of Bogota.

The government believes this faction controlled a coca production area.

Under the peace process, those who have committed crimes and agree to disarm face reduced prison terms.

Most of the rank-and-file paramilitaries are expected to be pardoned and can be eligible for job-training programmes and a monthly government stipend for two years.
bbc.co.uk

Can we discern the hand of Chavez and Castro here? Will Uribe now reject Plan Colombia and throw the North Americans out?

…The debate on the politicisation of the Forum will continue through the Karachi meet this March and on into Nairobi next year. “It is the peoples and social movements, not the leaders, who must mobilise and exert pressure on the governments, because without mobilisation, nothing can be achieved,” said Belgian activist Eric Toussaint, president of the Brussels-based Committee for Cancellation of the Third World Debt.

For her part, Francisca Rodríguez of the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women of Chile, maintained that “the Forum needs to re-examine itself and take a leap forward, because we are refusing to consider political approaches, and that is counterproductive.”

“If we don’t take this step forward, we will forever be nothing more than social tourists,” she stressed.
commondreams.org

DAVOS, Switzerland – The Swiss Alpine ski resort of Davos has never suffered a disaster like Hurricane Katrina, which left 1,326 people dead and 6,644 missing after passing through the southeastern U.S. city of New Orleans last August.

In fact, the cultural, social and climatic differences between the cities are so vast that they seem to share almost nothing in common, except perhaps for the fact that both attract large numbers of tourists.

But according to New Orleans community activist Jay Arena, there is another common link that the two cities share: the power exerted by politically conservative, economically neoliberal power elites.

Davos is the host city for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) gathering of the world’s political, economic and business elites, described by Arena as “a group of unelected, unresponsive, unaccountable capitalist elites meeting in private” to chart out the future of the entire planet.

This process is strikingly similar to the Bring New Orleans Back Commission established by Mayor Ray Nagin to oversee post-hurricane reconstruction efforts, Arena told IPS.

Many have criticised the mayor’s commission as being highly stacked with business leaders and real estate developers. As a result, Arena noted, people like real estate mogul Joseph Canizaro, “one of the biggest contributors to the (George W.) Bush administration,” will now have the power to make plans that will affect “the lives of tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people in New Orleans.”

“And at the same time, they try to co-opt some community organisations and labour unions to legitimise their criminal enterprise,” he added.
commondreams.org

More than half of Africa is now in need of urgent food assistance.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is warning that 27 sub-Saharan countries now need help.

But what appear as isolated disasters brought about by drought or conflict in countries like Somalia, Malawi, Niger, Kenya and Zimbabwe are – in reality – systemic problems.

It is African agriculture itself that is in crisis, and according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, this has left 200 million people malnourished.

It is particularly striking that the FAO highlights political problems such as civil strife, refugee movements and returnees in 15 of the 27 countries it declares in need of urgent assistance. By comparison drought is only cited in 12 out of 27 countries.

The implication is clear – Africa’s years of wars, coups and civil strife are responsible for more hunger than the natural problems that befall it.
bbc.co.uk

I find it ‘particularly striking’ that in this whole raft of articles by the BBC that no mention is made of IMF/World Bank ‘development goals’ that mandate cash-cropping that exhaust the land and make it impossible for Africa to feed itself.

By all means, blame Africa’s situation on the ineptitude of Africa without a mention of continuing Western pillage.

Can aid do more harm than good?
What is to be done?

Mr Easterly and others are not arguing that the solution to perverse incentives lies in withholding emergency aid.

They contend that it could be made to work better in a number of ways, including:

-Providing compensation to local farmers
-Making sure aid stops when things improve
-Giving hungry families cash rather than food
-But the most effective move would be to focus less on emergencies and more on chronic problems. Mr Easterly says this could be done cheaply in the Sahel.

Improving access to clean water and distributing re-hydration tablets, for instance, would help eradicate diarrhoea, which drains nutrients away and makes children particularly vulnerable.

Tony Vaux, for his part, calls on the media to present a balanced picture of the situation of the ground, and not see their role as promoting the NGOs public appeals.

But he does not hold out much hope.

“When I first joined Oxfam in 1972 there was a famine in the Sahel, exactly like the famine today,” he recalls.

Three decades and umpteen appeals later the same emergencies keep recurring, he says ruefully.
The NGOs bread and butter depends on the existence of hunger forever. In Dickens’ Bleak House there is a woman who is busily wringing her hands and gathering up aid for the Poor Black People of Africa while her unkempt children are tumbling into the fireplace of her filthy house.

Newspapers across Europe have reprinted caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to show support for a Danish paper whose cartoons have sparked Muslim outrage.

Seven publications in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain all carried some of the drawings.

Their publication in Denmark led Arab nations to protest. Islamic tradition bans depictions of the Prophet.

The owner of one of the papers to reprint – France Soir – has now sacked its managing editor over the matter.

The cartoons have sparked diplomatic sanctions and death threats in some Arab nations, while media watchdogs have defended publication of the images in the name of press freedom.

Reporters Without Borders said the reaction in the Arab world “betrays a lack of understanding” of press freedom as “an essential accomplishment of democracy.”

‘Spiting Muslims’

France Soir and Germany’s Die Welt were among the leading papers to reprint the cartoons, which first appeared in Denmark last September.

The caricatures include drawings of Muhammad wearing a headdress shaped like a bomb, while another shows him saying that paradise was running short of virgins for suicide bombers.

France Soir originally said it had published the images in full to show “religious dogma” had no place in a secular society.
bbc.co.uk

‘Religious dogma’ has been replaced by secular ‘humanist’ dogma: reduce the world to cinders while you talk about civilization and moral virtues and political freedom.

…A recent study by the United Nations Development Program and International Monetary Fund shows that 20 percent of the population has fallen below the international poverty line of $1 per day per person.

The numbers of families registering for assistance with the labor and social affairs ministry has more than tripled since the war to 171,000 and even that, according to Leila Kazem, a director general at the ministry, is a “drop in the ocean”.

“After the war, a new dangerous issue arose in Iraqi society – poverty, which is clear to everyone,” she said, blaming unemployment and violence that has been killing off the main breadwinners, something “which is happening every hour of every day”.

The families, however, do not receive any special treatment at the ministry. “We don’t have a separate category for victims of terrorism, we just talk about needy families,” she said.
metimes.com

…Bush has no intention of occupying Iran. Rather, the goal is to destroy major weapons-sites, destabilize the regime, and occupy a sliver of land on the Iraqi border that contains 90% of Iran’s oil wealth. Ultimately, Washington will aim to replace the Mullahs with American-friendly clients who can police their own people and fabricate the appearance of representative government. But, that will have to wait. For now, the administration must prevent the incipient Iran bourse (oil-exchange) from opening in March and precipitating a global sell-off of the debt-ridden dollar. There have many fine articles written about the proposed “euro-based” bourse and the devastating effects it will have on the greenback. The best of these are “Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar” by William R. Clark, and “The Proposed Oil Bourse” by Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D.
informationclearinghouse.info

Iran building secret nuke tunnel: claim
WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 (UPI) — Iran is building a secret tunnel in Tehran for nuclear weapons research and development, an Iranian dissident has claimed.

The tunnel was being constructed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Alireza Jafarzadeh, president of Strategic Policy Consulting, Inc. told a meeting at the National Press Club in Washington Tuesday.
Jafarzadeh has made similar allegations before. It has not been possible to independently verify all of them.

Iran Incapable of Building Nuclear Bomb — Russian Expert
02/01/06 “Baku Today” — — Iran is not capable of building its own nuclear weapons, the former head of a nuclear power plant and current regional leader in southern Russia said Wednesday.

“In reality, the U.S. is provoking Iran, accusing it of aiming, along with the implementation of its peaceful nuclear programs, to create its own nuclear weapons,” Governor of the Saratov Region Pavel Ipatov was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying.

Iran’s Ahmadinejad says Bush should face ‘people’s tribunal’
“You who support the Zionist puppet regime, you who support the destruction of Palestinian homes, you have no right to talk about liberty or human rights,” Ahmadinejad said in comments directed at the US president.

The Defense Ministry a few days ago gave NIS 2.4 million to 28 Palestinians who were tortured by the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service. The payment was made after an out-of-court settlement was reached with the plaintiffs, who agreed that suits brought to the Tel Aviv Magistrate and District courts would be turned down.

One of the plaintiffs, Benan Oudeh, 31, of Qalqilya, arrested a few years ago for throwing stones, told Haaretz yesterday that his testicles were beaten so badly in the interrogation room that they had to be amputated.
haaretz.com

U.S. State Department to investigate failure to foresee Hamas victory
…U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged earlier this week that she was surprised by Hamas’s defeat of the Fatah party, which had dominated Palestinian politics for years.

“She’s asked her staff to look into that. Why is it that we didn’t see this coming?” US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
The news was full of it for weeks, where was she?

U.S. Evangelists to boost Israel support in wake of Hamas win
The victory of Hamas in last week’s Palestinian election will likely strengthen the relationship between Israel and evangelicals, Knesset members and Christian leaders said Monday.

‘75% of Hamas voters oppose destruction of Israel’
Three-quarters of Palestinians that voted for the Hamas say they are opposed to calls for the destruction of Israel, according to a poll published on Tuesday.

The Palestinian Authority’s Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda daily survey stated that 84% of Palestinians support a peace deal with Israel.

More than 75% of the peace-deal supporters voted for Hamas.

U.S. Congress moves to legislate against Hamas-led PA
…The legislation introduced by Ross-Lehtinen and Lantos is broad in reach and scope, and includes measures aimed at strengthening travel restrictions to the U.S. on members or associates of Hamas, integrated into the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), municipalities, and other constituent elements.

Furthermore, the legislation wants the U.S. to withhold contributions to the UN proportional to the amounts the UN provides to such entities or to UN programs with the PA; call for the Palestinian territories to be designated a “terrorist sanctuary,” and eliminating the PLO offices in Washington.

Polls: Peretz’s Moroccan roots deter Ashkenazi voters
Two months ago, after he won the Labor Party chairmanship, Amir Peretz declared enthusiastically in his victory speech that the demon of ethnic discrimination had been “disconnected from life support” and “buried.” But the demon, as demons are wont, has refused to die. Polls commissioned by Labor show a “drain” of traditional Ashkenazi voters from the party due to an aversion to Peretz’s Moroccan origin.