Democracy Now! Interview
informationclearinghouse.info

There is no truth to reports that Israelis staying at the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman on Wednesday were evacuated by Jordanian security forces before the bombing that took place there.

The Israelis were escorted back to Israel by Jordanian security personnel only after the attacks had taken place, contrary to earlier reports.

Al Qaida said Thursday that it had carried out the triple suicide bombings at the Radisson, Grand Hyatt and Days Inn hotels in downtown Amman, in which at least 57 people, including an Israeli, were killed.
haaretz.com

I made the mistake of not posting this article last night, before it was ‘updated’. Last night, it said just the opposite.

…These aren’t “riots”. This is social rebellion, directed at decades of French imperial rule, and ultra-capitalist and racist policymaking at home. After the “decolonization” process finished in Africa (oddly leaving the former colonies entirely dependent on the Banque de France for their monetary policymaking and at the whim of French military decision-making), the colonized were supposed to be offered life in France as a sort of reparation for the destruction that went along with the imperial era. This, predictably, has turned out to be nothing more than a bone that the French have thrown at their dependents to try to keep them quiet. The idea is this: give them cheap, shitty housing away from the beautiful Metropole of Paris, give them minimum wage paying work, and hope that they shut up.
axisoflogic.com

Why is France Burning? Rebellion of a Lost Generation

Saturday night was the 10th day of the spreading youth riots that have much of France in flames — and it was the worst night ever since the first riot erupted in a suburban Paris ghetto of low-income housing, with 1295 vehicles — from private cars to public buses — burned last night, a huge jump from the 897 set afire the previous evening. And, for the first time, the violence born in the suburban ghettos last night invaded the center of Paris — some 40 vehicles were set alight in Le Marais (the pricey home to the most famous gay ghetto in Paris, around the Place de la Republique nearby, and in the bourgeois 17th arrondissement, only a stone’s throw from the dilapidated ghetto of the Goutte d’Or in the 18th arrondissement.

As someone who lived in France for nearly a decade, and who has visited those suburban ghettos, where the violence started, on reporting trips any number of times, I have not been surprised by this tsunami of inchoate youth rebellion that is engulfing France. It is the result of thirty years of government neglect: of the failure of the French political classes — of both right and left — to make any serious effort to integrate its Muslim and black populations into the larger French economy and culture; and of the deep-seated, searing, soul-destroying racism that the unemployed and profoundly alienated young of the ghettos face every day of their lives, both from the police, and when trying to find a job or decent housing.

To understand the origins of this profound crisis for France, it is important to step back and remember that the ghettos where festering resentment has now burst into flames were created as a matter of industrial policy by the French state.

11/07/05 “Washington Post” — — Last year, U.S. intelligence agencies and military planners received instructions to prepare up-to-date target lists for Syria and to increase their preparations for potential military operations against Damascus.

According to internal intelligence documents and discussions with military officers involved in the planning, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in Tampa was directed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to prepare a “strategic concept” for Syria, the first step in creation of a full fledged war plan.

The planning process, according to the internal documents, includes courses of action for cross border operations to seal the Syrian-Iraqi border and destroy safe havens supporting the Iraqi insurgency, attacks on Syrian weapons of mass destruction infrastructure supporting the development of biological and chemical weapons, and attacks on the regime of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
informationclearinghouse.info

Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi deputy prime minister and leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) party, has won the conditional support of the Iranian leadership for his decision to contest the elections independently of the “Unified Iraqi Coalition.” Senior officials in Tehran have also expressed their support for Chalabi as the prime minister after the Iraqi elections to be held in mid-December if he wins enough seats in parliament that qualifies him to compete with the other likely leading candidates former Prime Minister Dr. Iyad Allawi, incumbent Prime Minister Dr. Ibrahim al-Jafari, and Adel Abdul Mahdi, the prominent leader in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) and vice president.
aawsat.com

Washington elite bring Chalabi in from the cold
Ahmed Chalabi comes in from the cold today, arriving in Washington to meet senior Bush administration officials for the first time in two years – despite lingering allegations that the Iraqi politician provided bogus pre-war intelligence, and a continuing investigation into whether he passed US secrets to Iran.

The investigation began 17 months ago, after US intelligence officials alleged that he or his aides had informed Tehran that Washington had broken Iran’s spy codes. Iraqi forces, backed by US troops, raided Mr Chalabi’s offices in May last year, and the Baghdad authorities issued an arrest warrant for his security chief, Araz Habib, accusing him of being an Iranian agent.

Mr Chalabi and his organisation, the Iraqi National Congress, denied all the charges and claimed that the CIA was out to smear him. At the time Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, promised a criminal investigation into the charges, but it appears to have made little progress. Mr Chalabi, now Iraq’s deputy prime minister, has offered to give evidence, but, his lawyer has said, the FBI failed to respond; nor have his closest supporters in the Pentagon been questioned. After a few months as a fugitive, Mr Habib is reported to have returned to Baghdad.

Okay so the Iranian government (or elements of it) and the neocons are in alignment. Surprise surprise.

…Chinese business is blazing a trail across the continent. Trade with China has almost tripled in five years. Railways in Angola, roads in Rwanda, a port in Gabon and a dam in Sudan have all been paid for with Chinese loans and built by Chinese contractors. Business with Nigeria and South Africa is booming. And this year China is expected to overtake the UK as Africa’s third largest trading partner.

The driving ingredient is oil. China’s flagship African project is in Sudan. Isolation from the west meant that Khartoum barely pumped a barrel of crude a decade ago. Now, after intensive Chinese investment, it has the third largest oil business in sub-Saharan Africa.
guardian.co.uk

Last year, as U.S. casualties mounted in Iraq, only three residents in two neighborhoods of Manhattan’s upper East Side – the city’s richest area – joined the Army, Air Force or Navy.

Just a few blocks farther north, in a swath of East Harlem, 45 people enlisted.

At the same time, an astounding 113 joined in the Morrisania and Highbridge sections of the South Bronx.

Meanwhile, in two zip codes of Brooklyn’s poverty-stricken East New York, 116 men and women joined the military.

And in the immigrant neighborhoods of Elmhurst and Corona in Queens, 73 signed up.

That’s all according to the Pentagon’s own personnel records, which were obtained under a Freedom of Information request and released for the first time last week by the nonprofit National Priorities Project.

The records track military recruitment by state, county, zip code and racial and ethnic group – even by high school. The Marines weren’t included because they did not provide sufficient data to track recruits’ place of residence.

The national figures show what you might expect: Youth from low-income areas are far more likely to end up in the military.

This is the most convincing proof yet that as the war drags on – and without a compulsory draft – our battle-weary military has become a ghastly dividing line between rich and poor and black, Latino and white.
commondreams.org

CINCINNATI (AP) – Four years after riots tore this city apart, Cincinnati voters elected a black mayor for the first time.

State Sen. Mark Mallory defeated Councilman David Pepper, both Democrats, in a nonpartisan mayoral runoff Tuesday to lead Ohio’s third-largest city.

Rioting broke out in 2001 after an unarmed black man was shot and killed by a white police officer trying to make an arrest. While racial tensions have calmed, crime, safety and revitalizing downtown remain leading issues.
guardian.co.uk

Blow for Bush in regional polls

A last-minute intervention by the US president, George Bush, failed to win the governorship of the southern state of Virginia for his Republican party in a night of improved election results for the Democrats.

City and state polls in the so-called off-year election saw Democrats win the governor’s office in New Jersey and the defeat of propositions from Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to cap spending and limit the powers of the California state legislature.

The Republicans held City Hall in New York, where Michael Bloomberg, the socially liberal mayor, won re-election, but voters ousted a religiously-inclined Pennsylvania school board that promoted the teaching of intelligent design alongside the theory of evolution.

The nine-person Dover area school board was taken to court by parents over the policy and lost eight of its members in the vote.

The city of San Francisco banned military recruiting in high schools.

WASHINGTON – The CIA leak scandal has peeled back the veil on the most closely held White House secret of all: the subtle but unmistakable erosion in the bond between President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Multiple sources close to Bush told the Daily News that while the vice president remains his boss’ valued political partner and counselor, his clout has lessened – primarily as a result of issues arising from the Iraq war.

“The relationship is not what it was,” a presidential counselor said. “There has been some distance for some time.”
nydailynews.com

Quite obviously a deliberate ‘leak’.

The US government has unveiled a “non-lethal” laser rifle designed to dazzle enemy personnel without causing them permanent harm. But the device will require close scrutiny to ensure compliance with a United Nations protocol on blinding laser weapons.
newscientist.com