Britain and Iran clashed openly last night after a senior British official directly accused Tehran of supplying Iraqi insurgents with sophisticated roadside bombs that have killed eight British soldiers and two security guards since May.

The bombs, triggered when an infra-red beam is touched, have created havoc among British forces in southern Iraq. They release a projectile capable of penetrating armoured vehicles, against which the British army has virtually no defence.

The British official said that Iranian interference in Iraq could be related to British pressure on Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons ambitions. “It would be entirely natural that they would want to send a message ‘Don’t mess with us’,” he said. An Iranian government spokesman rejected the British accusations and said it was opposed to the insurgency in Iraq.
guardian.co.uk

10/05/05 “TomPaine.com” — — A flurry of Arab diplomacy over the last few days is unfolding in a rear-guard effort to prevent the crisis in Iraq from exploding into what Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal warned last month could be a regional civil war involving not only Iraq, but all of its neighbors.

The main, and well-deserved, target of Saud’s ire was the increasingly authoritarian and brutal rule of the main Iraqi Shiite parties, especially the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), whose Badr Brigade militia are terrorizing Iraq’s secular, urban Shiite population and carrying out death-squad attacks against Sunnis. The attacks against the Sunnis are aimed not only at the Iraqi armed resistance but at secular, nationalist Sunni leaders and activists.

Last week, I reported on the fear of Shiite militias and death squads as reported by Aiham Al Sammarae, an Iraqi oppositionist and former minister under the interim government in 2004 who is trying to broker a deal with the Iraqi resistance. Since then, other reports have surfaced concerning the extensive violence carried out by paramilitary forces tied to SCIRI and to Al Dawa, SCIRI’s partner in the Shiite religious bloc in Iraq. By now it is clear that if Tony Soprano lived in Iraq, he’d be a member of the Shiite militia. Consider the following report from CBS News:

CBS News correspondent Lara Logan reports there is a secret, ruthless cleansing of the country’s towns and cities. Bodies—blindfolded, bound and executed—just appear, like the rotting corpses of 36 Sunni men that turned up in a dry riverbed south of Baghdad.

CBS News traced 16 of those men to a single street in a Baghdad suburb, where family members showed CBS News how the killers forced their way into their homes in the middle of the night and dragged away their sons and fathers.

“My uncles were tortured, they even poured acid on them,” a young boy told CBS News.

Clutching photographs of the murdered men, the women and children left behind came together to grieve.

One woman said as her husband was marched away she sent her son after him with his slippers, but his abductor sent the child back with a chilling message: No need for slippers—he will come back dead.

They were targeted for one reason alone: all were Sunnis.

Or this, from the Chicago Tribune :

In the dead of night, bands of armed men in Iraqi commando uniforms stormed Baghdad’s Hurriyah neighborhood in late August, breaking down doors with sledgehammers and grenades.

If the family inside was Shiite, the gunmen moved on to another house, witnesses said. If the family was Sunni, the gunmen tore through the building, demolishing furniture and manhandling those inside. More than 70 young Sunni Arab men were whisked away.

Countless atrocities, too, have been perpetrated by Sunni gangs and by terrorists associated with Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. But the killings by the Shiite militias are far more chilling because they have an entirely different quality: They are carried out by gunmen tied to the U.S.-supported regime in Baghdad. They don’t draw criticism from U.S. officials, and most American media reports continue to portray the Shiites as victims and the Sunnis as aggressors.

Still, it is the ferocity of the Shiite fanaticism governing Iraq today, and the ruling circle’s ever-closer ties to Iran, that prompted Prince Saud to warn of a regional civil war sparked by the Shiites. He brought that message to Washington last week, talking to senators and to the Washington press corps. He then flew back to the Middle East to attend a meeting of Arab foreign ministers, including Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hossein Zebari. We’ll come to the Arab League meeting shortly, but first some background:
informationclearinghouse.info

Wolfowitz and Negroponte: “The Salvador Option.”

A Wolfowitz in sheep’s clothing
10/04/05 “New York Times” — — WASHINGTON – Paul Wolfowitz is having fun.

“It’s fun to have the chance to be a retail politician again,” he told Andrew Balls of The Financial Times on a recent trip to India. It was an economic odyssey designed to warm up his image by tipping off the press to record his shirt-sleeve visit to a slum and his street-dancing with children in Andhra Pradesh.

When the reporter noted that Wolfowitz’s role as No.2 at the Pentagon must seem distant, he agreed, saying, “Yes, it does seem like a long time ago.”

A lot has changed for this architect of the Iraq war since he left the scene of the accident. Following the lead of that other wooly-headed war theoretician, Robert McNamara, Wolfie scuttled to the World Bank, where he changed the subject from bollixing up Iraq to fixing up Africa.

Unlike the Powell maxim “If you break it, you own it,” the Wolfowitz philosophy is “If you break it, walk away from it.”

Where on earth are those who egged on the Iraq civil war?

Puppets, Policies and Priorities
…The most flagrant example of this tactic in the modern world is the Presidency of the United States of America, where one expendable, and not totally obedient, President has been replaced by another who has been programmed to do exactly as his operators wish. We saw this when disaster struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and the current puppet was seen to be seeking help in reading from a class of small children, or, when the hurricane Katrina struck the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans was flooded, the string-pullers overlooked the need to tell him about it for several days. In both cases, he was left for vital (though short) periods without instructions, since the puppet-masters had not realised that this time-lag would be noticed by so many.

I am not suggesting that these shadowy and extremely sinister figures should come out of hiding to speak for themselves, but it makes it essential for every citizen to try to unmask these manipulators who exercise real power over the state and the lives of every single person within it.

What we do know, because of the policies which have been revealed to the world, is that these puppet-masters have no interest in, or loyalty towards, the country which they control. They clearly have other loyalties, and there are three groups which have come to light, and some of the rulers are loyal to all three, others to two of them and still others just to one. The common factor in these three loyalty groups is that they are all bound to harm the interests of the general population of the U.S.A.

Although they are often intertwined, it is worthwhile to examine each of these strands of crude treachery separately, and I will call them, for the sake of simplicity, rampant capitalism, Zionism and (supposedly Christian) obfuscation.

In August 2005, Israel configured its 38-year illegal military occupation of the Gaza Strip by unilaterally ‘disengaging’ from the territory and evacuating its illegal Jewish settlers. However, the Palestinian territory continues to be under Israel’s brutal occupation. Israel’s ‘disengagement’ plan is nothing but Israeli PR, over-sold by Western media to divert the public from the brutality of Israel’s Occupation of Palestinian land. Israeli military control of the world’s largest open-air prison will continue unhindered, with tacit support of Western powers.
axisoflogic.com

Botswana’s police commissioner said on Tuesday that officers had fired rubber bullets to disperse a group of about 35 Bushmen protesting their eviction from ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

The Basarwa tribesmen had been trying to break through blockades and enter the reserve on Saturday, police commissioner Edwin Batshu said. Some demonstrators, including mothers with infants and young children, were briefly detained, but were not charged, he said.

The Kalahari Bushmen said their leader, Roy Sesana, was arrested and beaten by police. One protester was shot in the jaw and hospitalised, according to a tribal spokesperson who did not want to be named for fear of police retaliation.

The Batswara accused the government of evicting them to relocation camps in an effort to clear the land for De Beers mining giant to explore for diamonds and minerals.

An estimated 2 000 people have been relocated to camps. However, several families were still living in the reserve, cut off from food and water, the Bushmen said.
mg.co.za

Kigali – Rwanda will conditionally accept a request from Belgium to hand over a Belgian missionary charged with inciting and planning Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, said the attorney general on Wednesday.

A Rwandan community court in September charged Belgian priest Guy Theunis with inciting and planning the 1994 genocide in which more than half a million people were killed.

Because the local court said Theunis was an alleged leader of the 100-day slaughter, the case was transferred for trial to a conventional court, where the missionary faces the death penalty. Belgium has no death penalty.

“The major aspect left to deal with before the handover is a guarantee from Belgium that whatever process he goes through, he will stand trial,” said Attorney General Jean de Dieu Mucyo.

Belgium’s request for Theunis’ handover was sent to Rwanda on September 28, said Emmanuel Rukangira, a senior prosecutor in charge of the priest’s case.

Theunis – who worked as the editor of Rwanda’s periodical Le Dialogue – denied allegations that he incited the genocide by reproducing articles from the Kangura, a newspaper that promoted the killing of members of the Tutsi ethnic minority.

A United Nations tribunal had convicted the editor of Kangura, Hassan Ngeze, and sentenced him to life in prison.
news24.com

…From CNN:
Five weeks after Katrina, New Orleans is calling off the house- to-house search for bodies. Teams have pulled 964 corpses from storm- ravaged areas across southeastern Louisiana. Authorities admit more bodies are probably out there. They’ll be handled on a case-by-case basis. The count is far short of the 10,000 dead once predicted by New Orleans mayor. As of today, the death toll from Hurricane Katrina stands at just under 1,200.

Searchers and residents insist there are still plenty of dead to find in New Orleans. Once again, they say the Ninth Ward is being ignored because it is poor and black.
scoutprime.blogspot.com

Orleans Parish DA Eddie Jordan on Racial Stereotyping, Police Looting and Private Military Contractors

Guess which country the CIA World Factbook describes when it says, “Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20 percent of households.”

If you guessed the United States, you’re right.

The United States has rising levels of poverty and inequality not found in other rich democracies. It also has less mobility out of poverty.

Since 2000, America’s billionaire club has gained 76 more members while the typical household has lost income and the poverty count has grown by more than 5 million people.

Poverty and inequality take a daily toll seldom seen on television. “The infant mortality rate in the United States compares with that in Malaysia — a country with a quarter the income.” says the 2005 Human Development Report. “Infant death rates are higher for [black] children in Washington, D.C., than for children in Kerala, India.”
informationclearinghouse.info

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President George W. Bush asked Congress on Tuesday to consider giving him powers to use the military to enforce quarantines in case of an avian influenza epidemic.

He said the military, and perhaps the National Guard, might be needed to take such a role if the feared H5N1 bird flu virus changes enough to cause widespread human infection.

“If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country? And how do you, then, enforce a quarantine?” Bush asked at a news conference.

“It’s one thing to shut down airplanes. It’s another thing to prevent people from coming in to get exposed to the avian flu. And who best to be able to effect a quarantine?” Bush added.

“One option is the use of a military that’s able to plan and move. So that’s why I put it on the table. I think it’s an important debate for Congress to have.”
reuters.myway.com

After his administration’s incompetence and indifference had lethal consequences in Katrina’s wake, President Bush has been scrambling to regain his footing. He’s called for an “unprecedented response to an unprecedented crisis.” In religious services at the National Cathedral, he called on America to “erase this legacy of racism” exposed by those abandoned in Katrina’s wake. He’s called on Congress to appropriate more than $60 billion in emergency relief and outlined a recovery program likely to cost up to $200 billion, or nearly as much as the Iraq War.

All this has led the press to compare his plans to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Don’t fall for it. A close look at the Bush plan reveals that this is a bad deal from a deck stacked against the poor who suffered the most in Katrina’s wake.

The first clue came from Bush’s first act. He issued orders erasing the prevailing wage for work on rebuilding the Gulf, and his administration gave Halliburton a lucrative no-bid contract to begin the work. Then he designated Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana an enterprise zone, and, using emergency authority, waived all worker protections in the region — protections for equal employment, for minority contractors, for health and safety, for environmental protection.

We’re learning that when Bush promised to remove the legacy of racism in New Orleans, he meant he’d remove the poor who were victims of that racism. Bush’s secretary for Housing and Urban Development, Alphonso Jackson, revealed that to the Houston Chronicle.

“Whether we like it or not, New Orleans is not going to be 500,000 people for a long time,” the HUD secretary said. “New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.” Jackson predicted New Orleans will slowly draw back as many as 375,000 people, but that only 35 percent to 40 percent of the post-Katrina population would be black. (Before Katrina, New Orleans was two-thirds black.) “I’m telling you, as HUD secretary and having been a developer and a planner, that’s how it’s going to be.” Jackson revealed that he advised Mayor Ray Nagin not to rebuild the overwhelmingly black 9th Ward.
suntimes.com

ALLAS, Oct. 4 – By 1979, Harriet E. Miers, then in her mid-30’s, had accomplished what some people take a lifetime to achieve. She was a partner at Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, one of the most prestigious law firms in the South, with an office on the 35th floor of the Republic National Bank Tower in downtown Dallas.

But she still felt something was missing in her life, and it was after a series of long discussions – rambling conversations about family and religion and other matters that typically stretched from early evening into the night – with Nathan L. Hecht, a junior colleague at the law firm, that she made a decision that many of the people around her say changed her life.

“She decided that she wanted faith to be a bigger part of her life,” Justice Hecht, who now serves on the Texas Supreme Court, said in an interview. “One evening she called me to her office and said she was ready to make a commitment” to accept Jesus Christ as her savior and be born again, he said. He walked down the hallway from his office to hers, and there amid the legal briefs and court papers, Ms. Miers and Justice Hecht “prayed and talked,” he said.

She was baptized not long after that, at the Valley View Christian Church.

It was a pivotal personal transformation for the woman now named for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, not entirely unlike that experienced by President Bush and others in the Texas political and business establishment of that time.

Ms. Miers, born Roman Catholic, became an evangelical Christian and began identifying more with Republicans than with the Democrats who had long held sway over Texas politics. She joined the missions committee of her church, which is against legalized abortion, and friends and colleagues say she rarely looked back at her past as a Democrat.

“There weren’t that many Republicans in Texas in those days,” said Merrie Spaeth, a director of media relations at the White House under Ronald Reagan who met Ms. Miers after moving to Dallas in 1985. “Harriet is what you would call a Southern lady. It is marvelous to watch her in meetings with huge egos, where she allows people to think good results are the product of their own ideas.”
nytimes.com