BAGHDAD — Iraq’s interim government has met U.S. officials and Iraqi politicians regarding a postponement of the Jan. 30 elections.

Iraqi officials said Prime Minister Iyad Alawi and Defense Minister Hazem Shalaan have determined that insurgents would torpedo Sunni participation in the elections, a move that could split the country.

“Alawi sees no point in the elections, but doesn’t want to do anything without a consensus that would include the United States,” an Iraqi official said. “He has been talking to everybody to ensure that any delay would be limited and agreed by all.”
Full Article: worldtribune.com

The killer wave that swallowed tens of thousands of Muslims was an act of Allah designed to punish the Christians. So went the convoluted logic of some Muslim imams in recent sermons from Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian territories.
If it weren’t for the diligent monitoring of Muslim clerics by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Americans would be in the dark about the outpourings of dangerous drivel fed to devout Muslims gathered in mosques for Friday prayers.
Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajiid explained God’s tsunami punishment of Christians stemmed from “the Christian holidays [that] are accompanied by forbidden things, by immorality, abomination, adultery, alcohol, drunken dancing and revelry. A belly dancer costs 2,500 pounds a minute and a singer costs 50,000 pounds an hour, and they hop from one hotel to another from night to dawn.
“Then they spend the entire night defying Allah. … At the height of immorality, Allah took revenge on these criminals. … Allah struck them with an earthquake. He finished off the Richter scale. All nine levels gone.”
In the same vein, Sheikh Mudeiris, at a Palestinian Friday sermon in Gaza, said, “When oppression and corruption increase, the law of equilibrium applies. I can see in your eyes you are wondering what is the ‘universal law of equilibrium.’ This law is a divine law. If people are remiss in implementing God’s law and in being zealous and vengeful for His sake, Allah unleashes his soldiers in action to take revenge.”
In Saudi Arabia, one of last year’s measures to counter mosque-generated violence was a ban on imam’s using the word “jihad,” or holy warrior. But the content hadn’t changed much without the banned word. Saudi cleric ‘Aed Al-Qarni told the worshippers, “Throats must be slit and skulls must be shattered. This is the path to victory.” He was reacting to the death of a brother “killed by the brothers of apes and pigs, the murderers of the prophets.” In case there was any doubt, he was referring to the Jews of Israel.
He then deplored lamented the lack of Muslim backbone: “One billion two hundred million nobodies. We are incapable of taking action, of being useful, of harming the Jews. The most people do today is to verbally protest over the TV channels or to demonstrate. What is the use of this? … We must sacrifice people like Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rantisi, and Ahmad Yassin, and thousands of others. Houses and young men must be sacrificed. Throats must be slit and skulls must be shattered. This is the path to victory, to shahada and to sacrifice.”
Imam Al-Qani went to explain the “idolatrous” people of Vietnam, Cambodia and South Africa, “nations with no calling or divine law make sacrifices … in people, blood and souls. All the more reason we should too, the nation of Islam.”
Saudi clerics have also urged Iraqis to resist “the American occupation of Iraq.” They can urge jihad without the proscribed word for holy war.
Saudi Sheikh Fawzan Fawzan said God’s unlisted number informed him the tsunami was punishment for homosexual behavior and fornication over Christmas, even if the victims are Muslims. “All that’s left for us to do,” he said, “is to ask for forgiveness. We must atone for our sins, and for the acts of the stupid people among us. … We must fight fornication, homosexuality, usury, fight the corruption on the face of the Earth, and the disregard of the lives of protected people.”
Full Article: washingtontimes.com

Jan. 17 issue – Four years ago George W. Bush used to call him “the shadow” and promised a fresh start by pledging to “uphold the honor and dignity” of the presidency. He even joked to late-night TV’s David Letterman that one of his top 10 priorities in the White House would be to give the Oval Office “one heck of a scrubbing.”

But when President Bush welcomed Bill Clinton into that same office last week, those barbs were ancient history. After Clinton remarked how much he liked the new Oval Office rug, Bush encouraged him to praise his interior designer—Laura. (He did.) Over lunch with the president’s father, the compliments flowed the other way. When Bush 41 inquired whether Chelsea Clinton had marriage plans, Bush 43 declared how impressed he was with the former president’s daughter

For two men at opposite ends of the political spectrum, the relationship between the 43rd and 42nd presidents has grown surprisingly warm and personal over the last six months. Clinton endorsed Bush’s approach to the tsunami catastrophe, defending him against criticism about his initial response as well as raising cash alongside the president’s father. Friends and aides say the two men enjoy each other’s company and, as fellow pros, respect each other’s political talents.
Full Article: msnbc.msn.com

Richard Dowden argues that we need to understand the people and politics of this continent, before we attempt to save it

Gordon Brown wants a Marshall Plan to save Africa, just as America ‘saved’ Europe at the end of the Second World War. His speech last Thursday at the National Gallery in Edinburgh was full of missionary zeal to end poverty and disease.

It’s good that he cares, but he has failed to ask why Africa is poor. He seems to think a lack of aid is the cause. The sad truth is that Africa has had a Marshall Plan several times in the past 50 years and has little to show for it. Until we understand why, Brown could be raising expectations for Africa yet again – and making things worse by failing to deliver.

The analogy between Europe in 1945 and Africa today is false. At the end of the war, Europe had peace and a highly skilled population. The job was rebuilding – all that was missing was finance. The US provided $13 billion over three-and-a-half years (about $76bn at today’s prices) to buy American food and goods to rebuild Europe. If distributed equally, every European would have received $49, or $293 at today’s prices.

Africa has had about a trillion dollars in aid in the past 50 years, roughly $5,000 for every African living if distributed at today’s prices. If aid were the solution to Africa’s problems, it would be a rich continent by now.

Africa has been made poor by unstable politics. The ruling class has failed to create viable states that provide health, education and economic opportunity. As a result, literacy rates are low and civil services are weak. Until the politics is right, huge amounts of aid would make things worse.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

WHOSE ‘ruling class’? What a bunch of revisionist history.
Africa has never been flooded with aid. Aid has trickled in until there is some disaster or other, then ’emergency aid’ comes to apply band-aids. But even further, this business of ‘we’ needing to understand, ‘we’ whose job it is to save…with NO acknowledgement of imperialism and slavery, scoffing at any notion of reparations…this hullaballoo in England about ‘saving Africa’ has nothing whatsoever to do with Africa, not really, but rather some fantastic imperialist illusion of ‘Africa’, the stage on which they enact their worst impulses, or their ‘best’, as THEY dictate, as THEY decide. There can be no good outcome to any of this. It is simply not possible. They have the power equation backwards. They think to ‘save’ Africa? It is Africa that will have to save them.

It will be one of the biggest parties in American history, but half of the country will be left out. With a price tag of up to $50 million, President George W Bush’s inauguration in 11 days’ time will be an unashamed celebration of Red America’s victory over Blue America in last November’s election.

It is going to be the most expensive, most security-obsessed event in the history of Washington DC. An army of 10,000 police, secret service officers and FBI agents will patrol the capital for four days of massive celebrations that some critics have derided as reminiscent of the lavish shindigs thrown by Louis XIV, France’s extravagant Sun King.

More than 150,000 people, nearly all Republicans whose tickets are a reward for election work, will pack the Mall to hear Bush take his oath of office on 20 January. There will be nine official balls, countless unofficial ones, parades and a concert hosted by Bush’s daughters, Jenna and Barbara.

Amid the official pageantry will be many huge parties laid on by companies wishing to win favour with Washington’s power players. Anyone who is anyone in Republican circles will be in town. Many Democrats will be leaving. With so many big names in one place, security measures will include road blocks, anti-aircraft guns guarding the skies and sniper teams patrolling the rooftops.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – The United States military said it dropped a 500-pound bomb on the wrong house outside the northern city of Mosul on Saturday, killing five people. The man who owned the house said the bomb killed 14 people, and an Associated Press photographer said seven of them were children.

The strike in the town of Aitha, 30 miles south of Mosul, came hours before a senior U.S. Embassy official in Iraq met with leaders of the Sunni Arab community to apply political pressure against their threat to boycott Jan. 30 elections. The Arab satellite broadcaster al-Jazeera said the Sunnis asked the Americans to announce a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Violence also continued, with at least eight Iraqis killed.

American officials repeatedly have insisted the vote go ahead, but it is an extremely delicate time, with Iraq’s government perceived by many as closely tied to the U.S.-led coalition.

Late Saturday, a U.S. military statement said an F-16 jet dropped a 500-pound GPS-guided bomb on a house that was meant to be searched during an operation to capture “an anti-Iraqi force cell leader.”

“The house was not the intended target for the airstrike. The intended target was another location nearby,” the military said in a statement.
Full Article: apnews.myway.com

Hmmm…now let’s see…natural or unnatural disaster?

by Omar Barghouti
Many Palestinians are boasting that they will soon enjoy, again, the most free and democratic elections in the entire Arab World. The only problem is that electing a Palestinian president while still under the boot of the occupier is an oxymoron. Sovereignty and occupation are mutually exclusive. The world, including many well-informed readers, seem to think that the Palestinian people is actually practicing the ultimate form of sovereignty by freely choosing its own president. This is easily extrapolated in the heads of many to mean that Palestinians are in a way free. So what’s all this talk about occupation? Notice, for example, how little media attention is given now to the almost daily killings of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli occupation forces. Of course, the only thing that matters is who is running; who is not; what Mahmoud Abbas might have intended to say; or what Marwan Barghouti could have done only if. Bulldozing houses in Rafah, expanding colonies in Hebron and killing innocent children in Beit Lahya is simply a bore, a peripheral story, an ordinary occurrence in the midst of an election extraordinaire.

There are several things wrong in this picture, least of which is the fact that it is false.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

…The Labour “Marshall Plan” for Africa has almost no resemblance to its illustrious predecessor. Once you strip away the rhetoric about a “once in a generation chance to solve world poverty”, what is proposed is three initiatives. First, the writing off of Third World debts; second, the doubling of aid; third, the use of financial instruments to front-load aid, so future payments are sped up and received immediately. As so often with Labour, what these amount to is throwing public money at the problem, irrespective of the consequences. The last thing Africa needs is more aid. Already, it receives something like eight per cent of GDP in foreign aid, or 13 per cent if you strip out the big economies of South Africa and Nigeria (at its peak, the Marshall Plan amounted to three per cent of European GDP). Yet much of this money is wasted. Take but one example: the budget for the Department for International Development is growing at nine per cent a year, more than any other department, yet last year it spent £700 million on consultants.

Despite, or even because of, our largesse, some African states are actually going backwards. The reason is simple. They have failed to develop the free institutions – property rights, the rule of law and democracy – that Marshall recognised as so important, and that underpin true economic development. Instead, the likes of Zimbabwe, Sudan and Congo are plagued by war and political failure. Properly functioning government is a rarity. Flooding the continent with aid does not encourage the sort of confidence in individuals, nor the good governance necessary for Africa to thrive. But it does fill us at home with the warm glow of self-righteousness.
Full Article:telgraph.co.uk

On the 12th floor of an East Harlem housing project, Ray Simonse and his four-member squad of federal immigration agents thought they had their man cornered.

For days, the agents had tracked Juan Pablo Goris, 40, a native of the Dominican Republic who was in the USA illegally. The trail led to an apartment where Goris was believed to be staying with friends. The agents gathered there early one morning last month, figuring it would be the best time to catch him. But no one was home, so the frustrated agents moved to their next target. (Related link: Photo gallery)

It was a familiar scenario for the immigration agents, who are among about 80 fugitive hunters nationwide assigned by the Department of Homeland Security to find an estimated 400,000 illegal immigrants who disobeyed orders to leave the USA or who failed to appear at immigration hearings. In an unprecedented effort inspired by post-9/11 concerns about national security, DHS is using 18 teams of immigration agents to hunt for these fugitives and add some bite to immigration laws that for decades have rarely been enforced.
Full Article: yahoo.com/news

Doctors at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib used their medical knowledge to help devise coercive interrogation methods for detainees including sleep deprivation, stress positions and other abuse, it was reported yesterday.
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine provides the most authoritative account so far that doctors were active participants in the abuse of prisoners in America’s “war on terror”.

“Clearly, the medical personnel who helped to develop and execute aggressive counter-resistance plans thereby breached the laws of war,” says the article, which is based on interviews with more than two dozen military personnel and recently released official documents. It adds: “The conclusion that doctors participated in torture is premature, but there is probable cause for suspecting it.”
guardian.co.uk