JERUSALEM, Jan 2 (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans eventually to scrap a U.S.-led “road map” to peace with the Palestinians and instead seek Washington’s blessing for annexing occupied West Bank land, a newspaper said on Monday.

The report by senior staff of Maariv newspaper gave no source, but Sharon’s initial plans for last year’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip were first floated in a similar way.

Sharon’s spokesman declined comment, while a senior Israeli political source dismissed the report as “pure speculation”.

A senior Palestinian official said he doubted whether the United States or the European Union would endorse the plan described by Maariv.
The paper said Sharon, who is up for re-election in March, would argue that Israel was justified in abandoning the peace plan and setting borders unilaterally because of the failure of the Palestinians to crack down on militant groups.

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who sparked international condemnation by calling the Holocaust a “myth”, has likened Zionism to fascism and said Israel was created in order to expel Jews from Europe.

Analysts have said Ahmadinejad’s frequent anti-Israel comments are aimed at boosting his standing at home and in the Islamic world. Diplomats say his remarks have hardened Western attitudes towards Iran’s nuclear programme.

In written answers to questions from the public reproduced in several newspapers on Monday, Ahmadinejad said the creation of Israel after World War Two had “killed two birds with one stone” for Europe.

The objectives achieved by Europe were: “Sweeping the Jews out of Europe and at the same time creating a European appendix with a Zionist and anti-Islamic nature in the heart of the Islamic world,” he said.

“Zionism is a Western ideology and a colonialist idea … and right now it massacres Muslims with direct guidance and help from the United States and a part of Europe … Zionism is basically a new (form of) fascism,” he added.
reuters.com/india

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Iraq’s oil minister said Monday he resigned after the government last week gave him a forced vacation and replaced him with Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi following criticism about fuel price increases.

Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum said he quit because the government raised fuel prices by nine times on Dec. 19, a decision he had strongly criticized.

“This decision will not serve the benefit of the government and the people. This decision brings an extra burden on the shoulders of citizens and caused an increase in the prices of all essential materials. It also caused a reaction on the Iraqi streets,” al-Uloum said.
guardian.co.uk

Puppet State Brought Down By Price Controls?
…And get this: Iraq’s on-the-books oil exports are at their lowest level in two years. No oil leaving and no oil coming in – at least on the books. This is the stuff of which genuine revolutions are made.

Remarkable isn’t it? What the rebels, insurgents, and terrorists have yet to accomplish – the end of US puppet rule in Iraq – may yet be accomplished by bad energy policy. And this policy was not only imposed after the US invasion but has been continued in the years since, leading to an ever-worse catastrophe.

The mystery to explain is why a country that is incredibly oil rich – with the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world – would face a massive shortage of all oil products. If you knew nothing more than this detail, and you knew something about the history of economic debacles, you might guess: price controls. You would be right.

From what I can gather from public sources, the government assumes ownership of all oil in the country. That hardly makes the Iraqi situation unique in the region, but what is unique is the combination of subsidies and price controls that led gasoline to be fix-priced at 5 cents per gallon until very recently.

You don’t have to be an economist to know what the results of this policy would be. Not only does it lead to overconsumption. The number of vendors willing to distribute the stuff in the open market collapses. What’s left is bought in Iraq and sold to neighboring countries at a profit.

Thus does a policy designed to make oil cheap for all result in the bizarre world in which a country full of oil underground would not have any of the stuff available above ground.

01/02/05 “ICH” — — Caught in gratuitous and illegal spying on American citizens, the Bush administration has defended its illegal activity and set the Justice (sic) Department on the trail of the person or persons who informed the New York Times of Bush’s violation of law. Note the astounding paradox: The Bush administration is caught red-handed in blatant illegality and responds by trying to arrest the patriot who exposed the administration’s illegal behavior

Bush has actually declared it treasonous to reveal his illegal behavior! His propagandists, who masquerade as news organizations, have taken up the line: To reveal wrong-doing by the Bush administration is to give aid and comfort to the enemy.

Compared to Spygate, Watergate was a kindergarten picnic. The Bush administration’s lies, felonies, and illegalities have revealed it to be a criminal administration with a police state mentality and police state methods. Now Bush and his attorney general have gone the final step and declared Bush to be above the law. Bush aggressively mimics Hitler’s claim that defense of the realm entitles him to ignore the rule of law.

Bush’s acts of illegal domestic spying are gratuitous because there are no valid reasons for Bush to illegally spy. The Foreign Intelligence Services Act gives Bush all the power he needs to spy on terrorist suspects. All the administration is required to do is to apply to a secret FISA court for warrants. The Act permits the administration to spy first and then apply for a warrant, should time be of the essence. The problem is that Bush has totally ignored the law and the court.
informationclearinghouse.info

What happened these past days in Bolivia was a great revolt by those who have been oppressed for more than 500 years. The will of the people was imposed this September and October, and has begun to overcome the empire’s cannons. We have lived for so many years through the confrontation of two cultures: the culture of life represented by the indigenous people, and the culture of death represented by West. When we the indigenous people–together with the workers and even the businessmen of our country–fight for life and justice, the State responds with its “democratic rule of law.”

What does the “rule of law” mean for indigenous people? For the poor, the marginalized, the excluded, the “rule of law” means the targeted assassinations and collective massacres that we have endured. Not just this September and October, but for many years, in which they have tried to impose policies of hunger and poverty on the Bolivian people. Above all, the “rule of law” means the accusations that we, the Quechuas, Aymaras and Guaranties of Bolivia keep hearing from our governments: that we are narcos, that we are anarchists. This uprising of the Bolivian people has been not only about gas and hydrocarbons, but an intersection of many issues: discrimination, marginalization , and most importantly, the failure of neoliberalism.
counterpunch.org

…The aim of the tour is, according to a recent communique, to “build a national programme of anti-capitalist and leftwing struggle”. By dubbing his caravan “The Other Campaign”, Marcos made it clear that much of the strategy hinges on rubbishing the July presidential election.

In a series of preparatory meetings in the jungle in August and September, Marcos reserved particular venom for the front-runner, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, calling him a traitor who would “give it to all of us” if he won. This alienated former fans in the intelligentsia who see Mr Lopez Obrador’s candidacy as an unprecedented opportunity for the left.

The government has made little comment on his tour plans. But should the authorities decide to arrest the rebel leader and outlaw, identified by the government in 1995 as former university teacher Rafael Guillén, Marcos instructed his supporters in a communique not to resist. “Run away and spread the word,” he wrote, “and bring me tobacco.”
guardian.co.uk

Baby Noor ‘responsive and smiling’
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — Baby Noor, a 3-month-old Iraqi girl in need of urgent surgery to treat a dangerous birth defect, is in good condition and will undergo her operation within the next 10 days, according to a Saturday statement from the hospital where she’s being treated.

…Noor’s journey began when Georgia National Guard members raided her family’s home in Baghdad looking for weapons. As Noor’s parents nervously watched the soldiers searching their home, the girl’s grandmother — unfazed — thrust Noor at the Americans, showing them a purple pouch protruding from her back. (Watch Noor steal the guardsmen’s hearts — 2:11)

“I saw this child as the first-born child of the young mother and father, and really, all I could think of was my five children back at home and my young daughter,” Lt. Jeff Morgan said. “And I knew if I had the opportunity whatsoever to save my daughter’s life, I would do everything possible.”

Blowing up the other baby Noors: US forces step up Iraq airstrikes
…The number of airstrikes in 2005, running at a monthly average of 25 until August, surged to 120 in November and an expected 150 in December, according to official military figures.

In October, 2004, after taking TeenScreen, a 10-minute computer test developed in the psychiatric department of Columbia University, 16-year-old Chelsea Rhoades of Indiana was told she had two mental health problems, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and social anxiety disorder. The diagnoses were based upon Chelsea’s responses that she liked to help clean the house and didn’t “party” much.

Chelsea is one of countless children who get labeled with fraudulent diagnoses every day. The difference in her case is that her parents, who were unaware that TeenScreen had infiltrated their daughter’s school and had not given permission for the screening, reacted quickly. They filed a lawsuit against the officials of the high school who allowed the test to be administered and the TeenScreen program. In doing so, the Rhoades took a stand for all parents across the nation.
counterpunch.org

…We are nearing the end of the fourth decade of Israel’s chronic war of occupation of Palestinian lands. The web of corruption spun by this festering wound has had plenty of time to reach into the deepest nooks and crannies of both Palestinian and Israeli societies.

America’s decisive support of Israel’s war, including more than 100 billion dollars and dozens of UN vetoes, has ensnared us in the same web. To sustain the unending flow of money and materiel, American politics has had to yield to the ways of the war: lies, denial, and intimidation.

At this point, it’s difficult to understand anyone’s surprise or indignation at the state of Palestinian society in the territories. What would your community be like, after suffering nearly a century of colonial hell under the British and the Israelis, being driven off your land and made stateless refugees nearly sixty years ago? If now you were being fenced and walled inside the scraps of your last refuge, could your once strong and resilient social fabric resist unraveling into corruption, gang warfare, and economic destitution?
counterpunch.org

…So if the politics of global inequality has come of age, what are its ingredients? At a political level, the rhetoric is grandiose. Any aspiring world statesman now has to deliver speeches on child mortality and talk about female literacy rates in the developing world as if they a) knew what they were on about and b) spent the early hours worrying about it. There’s a new expectation of government. That’s a step change from the era of Reagan and Thatcher.
guardian.co.uk

The adjustment of imperial rhetoric makes the reality all the more lethal.