Following the Post’s report that the US was considering using military bases in Georgia as a platform for a possible attack on Iran, the Georgian chief of General Staff denied the claims.

“This is utterly absurd,” Levan Nikoleishvili, the Georgian chief of the General Staff told Russian news agency Novosti following the Monday morning report.

The Jerusalem Post was told that American officials have been quietly probing whether Georgia, situated just northwest of Iran, will be willing to allow Washington to use its military bases and airfields in the event of a military conflict with Teheran.
jpost.com

02/19/06 “Toronto Star” — — We are stumped by the failure of our democratic concepts to gain a foothold in the Arab world,” wrote Michael Bell, a former Canadian ambassador to Israel, in the Globe and Mail last week.

I wonder which “democratic concepts” Bell had in mind — apparently not the concept that people are free to elect the government they choose.

This is the most basic democratic concept of all. And it’s clearly gained a foothold among Palestinian Arabs, who last month exercised their democratic rights by rejecting a corrupt government that had failed to advance the peace process, and electing the militant Hamas party.

Obviously the Palestinians failed to understand the subtle nuances of Western “democratic concepts.” Just because the West urges them to elect a government doesn’t mean they’re free to elect a government the West considers unacceptable.

The New York Times reported last week that the “United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again.”

If only the Palestinians would get it right the first time, it wouldn’t be necessary for the West to intervene in their democratic process.
informationclearinghouse.info

US threatens to cut aid to Iraq if new government is sectarian
The US and Britain are pressuring Iraq’s dominant Shia community to relinquish two key ministries in negotiations for a new government, as the country was hit by a wave of bombings that killed at least 24 people.

The US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, warned yesterday that Washington might cut aid to the Iraqis if the new government included sectarian politicians, pointing out that the US had spent “billions” in building up the police and the army.

“American taxpayers expect their money to be spent properly. We are not going to invest the resources of the American people into forces run by people who are sectarian,” he said. He singled out the defence and interior ministries, saying they should be in the hands of people “who are non-sectarian, broadly acceptable and who are not tied to militias”.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, flew into Baghdad last night and was expected to deliver a similar message. A Foreign Office spokesman said that while it was up to Iraqis to decide on their government members, “we are keen to see these two departments in the hands of competent people, probably technocrats”.

avid Irving, the discredited historian and Nazi apologist, was last night starting a three-year prison sentence in Vienna for denying the Holocaust and the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Irving, who appeared in court confidently yesterday morning carrying his book Hitler’s War and a PG Wodehouse paperback, immediately vowed to appeal against the sentence. “I’m very shocked,” he said as he was led from Vienna’s biggest courtroom back to the cells where he has been held for the past three months.

…Austria has Europe’s toughest law criminalising denial of the Holocaust. Irving went on trial for two speeches he delivered in the country almost 17 years ago. He was arrested in November last year after returning to Austria to deliver more speeches despite an arrest warrant against him and being barred from the country.

In the two 1989 speeches he termed the Auschwitz gas chambers a “fairytale” and insisted Adolf Hitler had protected the Jews of Europe. He referred to surviving death camp witnesses as “psychiatric cases”, and asserted that there were no extermination camps in the Third Reich.

State prosecutor Michael Klackl said: “He’s not a historian, he’s a falsifier of history.” Arguments over freedom of speech were entirely misplaced, he added: “This is about abuse of freedom of speech.”
guardian.co.uk

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 — In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

…The program’s critics do not question the notion that wrongly declassified material should be withdrawn. Mr. Aid said he had been dismayed to see “scary” documents in open files at the National Archives, including detailed instructions on the use of high explosives.

But the historians say the program is removing material that can do no conceivable harm to national security. They say it is part of a marked trend toward greater secrecy under the Bush administration, which has increased the pace of classifying documents, slowed declassification and discouraged the release of some material under the Freedom of Information Act.

Experts on government secrecy believe the C.I.A. and other spy agencies, not the White House, are the driving force behind the reclassification program.
nytimes.com

Bishops in New Zealand have urged the country’s 500,000 Roman Catholics to boycott a network which plans to air an episode of South Park featuring a bleeding statue of the Virgin Mary.

The episode, Bloody Mary – to be screened on May 10 by TV Works – shows a statue of Mary bleeding, taken to be a miracle until the pope says it is menstruation. A letter from New Zealand’s seven Catholic bishops, read at masses, called the episode “ugly and tasteless”.
guardian.co.uk

…As it is with all such intrusions on our privacy, it won’t be easy to put your finger on exactly what’s wrong with this technology. It won’t really amount to a new form of control, as all the people who accept the implants will already be subject to monitoring or tracking of one kind or another. It will always be voluntary, at least to the extent that anything the state or our employers want us to do is voluntary. But there is something utterly revolting about it. It is another means by which the barriers between ourselves and the state, ourselves and the corporation, ourselves and the machine are broken down. In that tiny capsule we find the paradox of 21st-century capitalism: a political system that celebrates choice, autonomy and individualism above all other virtues demands that choice, autonomy and individualism are perpetually suppressed.

While implanted chips will not lead to the mass scanning of the population, another use of the same technology quite possibly will. At the end of last month, a leaked letter from Andy Burnham, the Home Office minister, revealed that the identity cards for which we will involuntarily volunteer will contain radio frequency identification chips. This will allow the authorities to read the cards with a scanner. I propose that as the technology improves, the police will be able to scan a crowd and (assuming everyone is carrying his voluntary-compulsory ID card) produce a list of whom it contains. I further propose that it will take only a year or two for this to seem reasonable.
guardian.co.uk

…The new delays come after an agreement that the case should be concluded within a further ten weeks.

The Bushman case is already the longest and most costly in Botswana’s history, despite being brought by the country’s poorest inhabitants.

Stephen Corry, Survival’s director, said: “The government lawyers are aware of the serious funding problems facing the Bushmen and seem to be using that against them. Rather than attempting to facilitate a smooth court process, they are trying to draw this case out as much as possible. To say that things are not looking good for the Bushmen is an understatement.”
int.iol.co.za

02/19/06 “Sunday Times” — — RADIATION detectors in Britain recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere after the “shock and awe” bombing campaign against Iraq, according to a report.

Environmental scientists who uncovered the figures through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain.

Government officials, however, say the sharp rise in uranium detected by radiation monitors in Berkshire was a coincidence and probably came from local sources.

The results from testing stations at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Aldermaston and four other stations within a 10-mile radius were obtained by Chris Busby, of Liverpool University’s department of human anatomy and cell biology.

Each detector recorded a significant rise in uranium levels during the Gulf war bombing campaign in March 2003. The reading from a park in Reading was high enough for the Environment Agency to be alerted.

Busby, who has advised the government on radiation and is a founder of Green Audit, the environmental consultancy, believes “uranium aerosols” from Iraq were widely dispersed in the atmosphere and blown across Europe.

“This research shows that rather than remaining near the target as claimed by the military, depleted uranium weapons contaminate both locals and whole populations hundreds to thousands of miles away,” he said.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) countered that it was “unfeasible” depleted uranium could have travelled so far. Radiation experts also said that other environmental sources were more likely to blame.

The “shock and awe” campaign was one of the most devastating assaults in modern warfare. In the first 24-hour period more than 1,500 bombs and missiles were dropped on Baghdad.

During the conflict A10 “tankbuster” planes — which use munitions containing depleted uranium — fired 300,000 rounds. The substance — dubbed a “silver bullet” because of its ability to pierce heavy tank armour — is controversial because of its potential effect on human health. Critics say it is chemically toxic and can cause cancer, and Iraqi doctors reported a marked rise in cancer cases after it was used in the first Gulf conflict.

The American and British governments say depleted uranium is relatively harmless, however. The Royal Society, the UK’s academy of science, has also said the risk from depleted uranium is “very low” for soldiers and people in a conflict zone.

Busby’s report shows that within nine days of the start of the Iraq war on March 19, 2003, higher levels of uranium were picked up on five sites in Berkshire. On two occasions, levels exceeded the threshold at which the Environment Agency must be informed, though within safety limits. The report says weather conditions over the war period showed a consistent flow of air from Iraq northwards.

Brian Spratt, who chaired the Royal Society’s report, cast doubt on depleted uranium as a source but said it could have come from natural uranium in the massive amounts of soil kicked up by shock and awe.

Other experts said local environmental sources, such as a power station, were more likely at fault. The Environment Agency said detectors at other sites did not record a similar increase, which suggested a local source.

A MoD spokesman said the uranium was of a “natural origin” and there was no evidence that depleted uranium had reached Britain from Iraq.
informationclearinghouse.info

U.S. demands for reform at the United Nations have triggered an angry backlash among a bloc of mostly developing nations that comprise the majority of the membership. Many diplomats are complaining that the United States is trying to seize control of the world body.

Tensions flared this week when the two highest-ranking members of the U.S. House International Relations Committee charged that a 132-member group of U.N. member states, known as the G-77, had been “working feverishly” to block efforts to clean up the institution.

The two Congressmen,Committee Chairman Henry Hyde and ranking Democrat Tom Lantos wrote a letter to the leader of the G-77, South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, warning that U.S. lawmakers would be following their actions, and would hold them accountable.

Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram said the Congressmen’s words had infuriated many members of the group.

“There is consternation and perhaps a sense of injury at the tone and the substance of the letter,” said Munir Akram.

G-77 Chairman Kumalo of South Africa angrily dismissed the letter, saying it was not worthy of a reply.

“We noted the contents of their letter which we think are very unfortunate, and as you read, the letter is threatening and full of misinformation, and we will set the record straight in a substantive way, but we will not be responding to the U.S. Congress,” said Dumisani Kumalo.

Other G-77 envoys expressed concern that the United States was using the issue of reform in an attempt to take power from the General Assembly where all 191 member states are represented, and give it to the Security Council, which is dominated by big and powerful countries.

They noted that Washington’s U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, in his position as Security Council president for February, has scheduled meetings on two key reform issues, sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers, and allegations of fraud in purchasing hundreds of millions of dollars of supplies for peacekeeping missions.

Ambassador Kumalo says both those issues should be the province of the General Assembly.

“We can’t have the General Assembly taken for granted, it’s been taken for granted for too long, and we’re going to stand up for the General Assembly,” he said. “We have an oversight role.”
voanews.com

Sunday Times (London)-THE American military have been operating flights across Europe using a call sign assigned to a civilian airline that they have no legal right to use.

Not only is the call sign bogus — according to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) — so, it appears, are some of the aircraft details the Americans have filed with the air traffic control authorities.

In at least one case, a plane identified with the CIA practice of “extraordinary rendition” — transporting terrorist suspects — left a US air base just after the arrival of an aircraft using the bogus call sign.

The call sign Juliet Golf Oscar (JGO) followed by a flight number belongs, says the ICAO, to a now bankrupt Canadian low-cost airline called Jetsgo of Montreal.

But for several years and as recently as last December it has been used selectively by both the American air force and army to cover the flights of aircraft to and from the Balkans.

These range from Learjet 35 executive jets to C-130 transport planes and MC-130P Combat Shadows, which are specially adapted for clandestine missions in politically sensitive or hostile territory.

A Sunday Times analysis of flight plans and radio logs has placed these aircraft at locations including Tuzla in Bosnia, Pristina in Kosovo, Aviano, the site of a large joint US-Italian military air base in northern Italy, and Ramstein in Germany, the headquarters of the US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE).

On December 11, 2004, USAFE in Ramstein filed a flight plan for a Learjet 35 to fly from Tuzla to Aviano. The flight plan was copied to 15 addressees including Tuzla airport, Aviano airport and a mysterious recipient labelled “xxxxxxxx”.

The aircraft’s identity was given as JGO 80, the flight was a Learjet 35 operated by the Department of Defence and the registration was 99999E.

The status of the flight was given as “humanitarian”. But it was also given as “state”, which means government, and as “protected”, which means diplomatic.

During the time the plane was in the air, USAFE changed some of the flight plan timings and at the same time the registration changed. The aircraft metamorphosed into 40112E but continued to be a Learjet 35 and was still JGO 80 and a humanitarian, government and diplomatic flight.

While the Learjet was on the ground at Tuzla, an Ilyushin 76 was loading a cargo of 45 tons of surplus weapons and ammunition sold off by the Bosnian military and destined for Rwanda in defiance of a UN embargo.

The Ilyushin left Tuzla, flew over Italy and headed south in the direction of Africa. The American Learjet took off 55 minutes later.

In a report exposing arms trafficking to war-torn central Africa, Amnesty International has suggested that “US security authorities were engaged in a covert operation to ferry arms to Rwanda in the face of political opposition from the European Union”.

Another interesting convergence of flights occurred in February 2004. On February 24, an MC-130P Combat Shadow using the call sign JGO 50 took off from Aviano for an unknown destination.
commondreams.org

Lest we think the U.S. has nothing to do with the slaughter in DR Congo…