London – British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Wednesday that neighbouring African countries had a responsibility to address the crisis in Zimbabwe, and suggested it could hamper his G8 goal of helping the continent.

Blair said it was harder to argue for a boost in international aid to Africa with such a prominent example of “abuses of governance and corruption.”

President Robert Mugabe’s so-called urban renewal campaign has displaced hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans.

Mugabe says he is trying to fight crime, maintain health standards and restore order in Zimbabwe’s cities. But the opposition, which has its strongholds among the urban poor, says the blitz is intended to punish its supporters, who voted against the government in recent parliamentary elections.

Blair was asked in the House of Commons whether he would call on South African President Thabo Mbeki to help the suffering people of Zimbabwe when he attends the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland next week.

Blair said he would, and added, “We will continue to exert all the pressure we can… But in the end the best pressure will come from those countries surrounding Zimbabwe.”

“We have to make sure that African countries realise the deep responsibility there is to sort this out themselves,” he added.

“We are going to the G8 to try to make the case for helping poverty in Africa,” Blair added. “There is no doubt at all that it is harder to make that case whilst abuses of governance and corruption occur in African countries.

“Now I do not believe that what is happening in Zimbabwe should prevent us from still taking action on poverty in Africa. I think that would be wrong. But it is right also to say that of course we should draw attention not just to the abuses in Zimbabwe but also the urgent necessity of changing what is happening in that country for the benefit of its own citizens.”
Full: news24.com

What crushing hypocrisy. We will help you on the condition that you ‘deal’ with Mugabe, whose great sin was to expel whites off stolen land. Whatever moral outrage they manage to muster about these evictions or whatever they are, the real issue is Mugabe’s willingness to take on the West and his refusal to play along with this ‘aid’ charade. So in exchange for illusory debt relief, Africa is forced to capitulate to European demands. This is the devil’s bargain, and I wish African leaders would call the bluff. This is just another sickening chapter in the tawdry history of imperialism.

President Bush told the nation last night that the war in Iraq was difficult but winnable. Only the first is clearly true. Despite buoyant cheerleading by administration officials, the military situation is at best unimproved. The Iraqi Army, despite Mr. Bush’s optimistic descriptions, shows no signs of being able to control the country without American help for years to come. There are not enough American soldiers to carry out the job they have been sent to do, yet the strain of maintaining even this inadequate force is taking a terrible toll on the ability of the United States to defend its security on other fronts around the world.

We did not expect Mr. Bush would apologize for the misinformation that helped lead us into this war, or for the catastrophic mistakes his team made in running the military operation. But we had hoped he would resist the temptation to raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks. We had hoped that he would seize the moment to tell the nation how he will define victory, and to give Americans a specific sense of how he intends to reach that goal – beyond repeating the same wishful scenario that he has been describing since the invasion.
Full: nytimes.com

Well since the Times was one of the main perpertrators of the 9-11/Saddam story, their moral outrage at this late date is extremely hypocritical.

CIA analysts forced 30 flights to be cancelled and raised the US terror alert from yellow to orange because they thought that al-Qaida was sending hidden messages through the headlines of the Arabic television news channel al-Jazeera, it has been revealed
According to a report by NBC, CIA experts thought they had decoded messages that they believed gave dates, flight numbers and geographic coordinates for targets that included the White House, Seattle’s Space Needle and even the small town of Tappahannock, Virginia, which has a population of 2,000.

“These credible sources suggest the possibility of attacks against the homeland around the holiday season and beyond,” said the homeland security chief, Tom Ridge, at the time of the incident in December 2003.

But in an interview with NBC 18 months later he conceded that the intelligence analysis was “bizarre, unique, unorthodox, unprecedented”, and that “speaking for myself I’ve got to admit to wondering whether or not it was credible.

“Maybe that’s very much the reason that you’d be worried about it, because you hadn’t seen it before.”

Code yellow denotes a significant risk of terror attacks. Code orange denotes a high risk, and additional precautions are taken at public events.

The analysis led to several international flights, operated by Air France, British Airways, Continental Airlines and AeroMexico, being cancelled.

Seven men – one French, one American and five Algerians – were questioned in Paris and released.

“The people with Arab-sounding names turned out to be, for example, a diplomat and a sports player. There were no terrorists,” a police source told the newspaper Le Parisien at the time.
Full: guardian.co.uk

Embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff was an avatar of greed and contempt who betrayed his friends and associates, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asserted yesterday.

McCain, presiding over the third of four scheduled hearings by the Indian Affairs Committee on Abramoff’s questionable business dealings with Indian tribes involved with gambling, turned the spotlight on Abramoff client the Mississippi Band of Choctaws, which he represented from 1995 to 2004.

“Today’s hearing is about more than contempt, even more than greed,” McCain said. “It is simple and sadly a tale of betrayal.”

McCain traced the trail of money from the Choctaws’ coffers to a private company controlled by Abramoff, a private Jewish school founded by Abramoff and even paramilitary groups in Israel.

According to an e-mail released at the hearing, Abramoff and his associate Michael Scanlon charged the Choctaw tribe $7.7 million in 2001 for public affairs and grassroots lobbying. After Scanlon spent $1.2 million on the activities, the two split the rest.

Much of the money Abramoff and Scanlon solicited from the Choctaws was filtered through various nonprofit groups, allowing Abramoff to conceal the fact that most of it was not spent on lobbying or public-affairs activities benefiting the Choctaws, records show.

For example, the Choctaws paid $1 million in 2002 to the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank of which Abramoff was a board member.

Although the tribe was led to believe it was paying for “professional services” performed as part of Scanlon’s public-relations duties, half of the money went to a company controlled by Scanlon, Capitol Campaign Strategies; $50,000 went to repay a personal loan Abramoff incurred during his days as a filmmaker; and the remaining $450,000 was a donation to a charity controlled by Abramoff, the Capital Athletic Foundation.

The great majority of the contributions to the foundation were later passed on to the Eshkol Academy, an all-boys Orthodox Jewish school in Columbia, Md., that Abramoff founded. The foundation also paid a monthly stipend and Jeep payments to a high-school friend of Abramoff who conducted sniper workshops for members of the Israeli Defense Force in Israel’s West Bank.
Full: thehill.com

For the past few nights the moon has appeared larger than many people have seen it for almost 20 years. It is the world’s largest optical illusion, and one of its most enduring mysteries.

It can put a man in space, land a probe on Mars, but Nasa can’t explain why the moon appears bigger when it’s on the horizon than when it’s high in the night sky.

The mystery of the Moon Illusion, witnessed by millions of people this week, has puzzled great thinkers for centuries. There have even been books devoted to the matter.

Not since June 1987 has the moon been this low in the sky, accentuating the illusion even further.

But opinion differs on why there is such an apparent discrepancy in size between a moon on the horizon and one in the distant sky.
Full: bbc.co.uk

…Mr. Jazaery said he worried about the power of religion among young Iraqis. Anyone who was born after 1980 grew up during Iraq’s decline into war and economic sanctions. Corruption and poverty have eroded the once-strong educational system, leaving young people vulnerable to populist leaders like Mr. Sadr.

“They can read, they can write, but they can’t understand,” Mr. Jazaery said. “That’s good for dictatorship and dangerous for democracy. It’s a spare army for all hard-line elements.”
Full: nytimes.com

Yeah well what’s our excuse for the erosion of our educational system, where the worst victims of disastrous policies are not sufficiently educated to either see through the smokescreen and whitewash or articulate their opposition?

China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials.

U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack.
Full: washtimes.com

The Bush administration is planning the government’s first production of plutonium 238 since the cold war, stirring debate over the risks and benefits of the deadly material. The substance, valued as a power source, is so radioactive that a speck can cause cancer.

Federal officials say the program would produce a total of 330 pounds over 30 years at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling site outside Idaho Falls some 100 miles to the west and upwind of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Officials say the program could cost $1.5 billion and generate more than 50,000 drums of hazardous and radioactive waste.

Project managers say that most if not all of the new plutonium is intended for secret missions and they declined to divulge any details. But in the past, it has powered espionage devices.

“The real reason we’re starting production is for national security,” Timothy A. Frazier, head of radioisotope power systems at the Energy Department, said in a recent interview.

He vigorously denied that any of the classified missions would involve nuclear arms, satellites or weapons in space.
Full: nytimes.com

And they sweat Iran about ‘peaceful nuclear energy.’ In Newspeak a ‘vigorous denial’ is an admission.

WASHINGTON – Former CIA Director Robert Gates sighs deeply as he pores over reports of growing unrest in Nigeria. Many Americans can’t find the African nation on a map, but Gates knows that it’s America’s fifth-largest oil supplier and one that provides the light, sweet crude that U.S. refiners prefer.

It’s 11 days before Christmas 2005, and the turmoil is preventing about 600,000 barrels of oil per day from reaching the world oil market, which was already drum-tight. Gates, functioning as the top national security adviser to the president, convenes the Cabinet to discuss the implications of Nigeria’s spreading religious and ethnic unrest for America’s economy.

Should U.S. troops be sent to restore order? Should America draw down its strategic oil reserves to stabilize soaring gasoline prices? Cabinet officials agree that drawing down the reserves might signal weakness. They recommend that the president simply announce his willingness to do so if necessary.

The economic effects of unrest in faraway Nigeria are immediate. Crude oil prices soar above $80 a barrel. June’s then-record $60 a barrel is a distant memory. A gallon of unleaded gas now costs $3.31. Americans shell out $75 to fill a midsized SUV.

If all this sounds like a Hollywood drama, it’s not. These scenarios unfolded in a simulated oil shock wave held Thursday in Washington. Two former CIA directors and several other former top policy-makers participated to draw attention to America’s need to reduce its dependence on oil, especially foreign oil.

Fast-forward to Jan. 19, 2006. A blast rips through Saudi Arabia’s Haradh natural-gas plant. Simultaneously, al Qaida terrorists seize a tanker at Alaska’s Port of Valdez and crash it, igniting a massive fire that sweeps across oil terminals. Crude oil spikes to $120 a barrel, and the U.S. economy reels. Gasoline prices hit $4.74 a gallon.

Gates convenes the Cabinet again. Members still disagree on whether America should draw down its strategic oil reserves. Homeland Security chief James Woolsey, who ran the CIA from 1993 to 1995, argues that a special energy czar is needed with broad powers to bypass the bureaucracy and impose offshore oil drilling and construction of refineries.

That won’t help now, though, or resolve any short-term issues, counters Gene Sperling, who was President Clinton’s national economic adviser.

The energy secretary suggests that relaxing clean-air standards could help refiners squeeze out every last drop of gas. That makes the interior secretary, former Clinton Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner, bristle. She blames Detroit for the mess because automakers failed to develop hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars.
Full: realcities.com

by Hans von Sponek
In discussing UN involvement before and after the 2003 invasion of US, UK and other coalition forces into Iraq, a clear distinction has to be made between the policy makers and the civil servants expected to carry out the policies, i.e., between member governments in the UN Security Council and the UN Secretariat.

If this is done, it quickly becomes clear that primary responsibility for the human catastrophe in Iraq lies with the political UN, with those member governments in the UN Security Council who had the power to make a difference. The failure of the Council to make a humanitarian, ethical and legal difference is much more monumental than is commonly known. There is not only the betrayal of the Iraqi people but also the betrayal of the UN Charter and the betrayal of the international conscience.

Why is this so?

World leaders were hiding behind the curtain of the UN Security Council to premeditate their betrayal before and after the illegal war of 2003. There can be no more doubts, the facts are present, that the US and UK governments were actively pursuing regime change by force at a time when the world was made to believe that international law, peaceful solutions to the conflict and the protection of the Iraqi people, were part of the US and UK governments’ approach. They were not. Once the asymmetrical war was over, it also became clear to the international public that those who carried out this war had reached higher heights of irresponsibility by fighting this war without a strategy for peace.

The objective was to maintain a strangle-hold on Iraq. Means of ‘disarray’ and ‘deception’ were deployed to justify the end of ‘domination’. Iraq’s armed forces were sent home. Civil servants were retired without evidence of wrong doing, simply because they had belonged to the Baath Party. New laws, the Transition Authority laws (TAL) were introduced by decree. These laws tried to re-colonize Iraq economically and institutionally and create dependence even in such areas as agriculture by banning local seed stocks in favour of genetically modified seeds to be imported from the Unites States. The ensuing Iraqi opposition and chaos left the occupying powers stymied and bewildered.

How did the UN Security Council and the UN Secretariat react to these bilateral aberrations?

Over a decade, the UN Security Council condoned what two permanent members, the US and the UK, were doing to pursue, first, their Iraq containment policy and later their regime replacement agenda. This amounted to nothing less but the de facto bilateralization of the Security Council. The rhetoric of the Iraq debates in the Council showed that there was an abundance of awareness of the evolving humanitarian crisis in Iraq. At the same time there was a severe shortage of political will to take timely steps to redress this situation.

It was known to all members of the Security Council that the linkage between disarmament and comprehensive economic sanctions meant that the people of Iraq were made to pay a heavy price in terms of life and destitution for acts of their government. It was known to all members of the Security Council that the inadequacy of the Council’s allocations for the oil-for-food programme and the bureaucracy with which this humanitarian exemption was implemented worsened the chances of survival of many Iraqis. It was known to all members of the Security Council that the refusal by the Council to allow the transfer of cash to Iraq’s central bank needed to run the nation, to pay for training, installation of equipment and institution building, encouraged the Government of Iraq to increase illegal means to obtain cash.

It was known to all members of the Security Council that the establishment of the two no-fly-zones within Iraq had little to do with the protection of ethnic and religious groups but a lot with destabilization. All members of the Security Council were aware that following ‘Operation Desert Fox’ in December 1998, the US and the UK governments, giving their pilots enlarged rules of engagement, used Iraqi airspace as training grounds, eventually in preparation for war. The Security Council had access to air strike reports when such reports were prepared by the UN in Baghdad and therefore all members of the Security Council knew of the destruction of civilian life and property. Yet, the Security Council did not ever debate the legality of the no-fly-zones to challenge two of its members that they maintained these zones without a UN mandate.

All this was known.
Full: commondreams.org