The Washington Post is upset with Andres Manuel López Obrador. Because Obrador is demanding a recount in an election with several irregularities (if not cases of fraud), the Post suggests he is Stalinist, anti-democratic and threatens to move the country back to authoritarianism.

The Post Editorial stated that Obrador has made “wild charges” in his dispute with the preliminary election results and states “international and independent Mexican observers detected no such abuse,” as if there were absolutely no experts that disagreed with those the Post talked to.

But as UpsideDownWorld reported in early July, there are quite a few reasons why a recount would be warranted. They include:

08/07/06 “The Independent” — — So the great and the good on the East River laboured at the United Nations Security Council – and brought forth a lemon. You could almost hear the Lebanese groan at this draft resolution, a document of such bias and mendacity that a close Lebanese friend read carefully through it yesterday, cursed and uttered the immortal question: “Don’t these bastards learn anything from history?”

And there it all was again, the warmed-up peace proposals of Israel’s 1982 invasion, full of buffer zones and disarmament and “strict respect by all parties” – a rousing chortle here, no doubt, from Hizbollah members – and the need for Lebanese sovereignty. It didn’t even demand the withdrawal of Israeli forces, a point that Walid Moallem, Syria’s Foreign Minister – and the man the Americans will eventually have to negotiate with – seized upon with more than alacrity. It was a dead UN resolution without a total Israeli retreat, he said on a strategic trip to Beirut.

A close analysis of the American-French draft – the fingerprints of John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, were almost smudging the paragraphs – showed just who is running Washington’s Middle East policy: Israel. And one wondered how even Tony Blair would want to associate himself with this nonsense. It made no reference to the obscenely disproportionate violence employed by Israel – just a sleek reference to “hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides” – and it made only passing reference to Hizbollah’s demand that it would only release the two Israeli soldiers it captured on 12 July in return for Lebanese and other Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.

The Security Council said it was “mindful of the sensitivity of the issue of prisoners and encouraging the efforts aimed at settling the issue [sic] of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel”. I bet Hizbollah were impressed by the “mindful” bit, not to mention the “sensitivity” and the soft, slippery word “settle” – an issue which can be “settled” in maybe 20 years’ time. Then came the real coup de grâce. A demand for the “total cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks” and the “immediate cessation” by Israel of “all offensive military operations”. Bit of a problem there, as Hizbollah spotted at once. They have to lay down their arms.

informationclearinghouse.info

Israel running US or vice-versa? Israel is used as the vicious bulldog everybody loves to hate.

The draft UN resolution

Pakistan appears to have embarked on a dramatic expansion of its nuclear arsenal with the construction of a new heavy water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for up to 50 warheads a year, according to a report released yesterday by a US thinktank.
The report by the Institute for Science and International Security (Isis), is largely based on commercially available satellite images showing a large building site at a nuclear production complex at Khushab, in Pakistani Punjab. Isis, a non-governmental nuclear watchdog, estimates that the huge rectangular building under construction and the circular structure inside it almost certainly represent the early stages of a 1,000MW reactor capable of generating more than 200kg (440lbs) of weapons-grade plutonium per year. When completed it would be 20 times the size of the existing reactor at Khushab.

The Khushab complex uses deuterium oxide, known as heavy water because of its chemical similarity to water, to produce plutonium and tritium, which is used as a booster in nuclear fission weapons.

The Isis report suggests the Indian government must know of the new reactor and may be seeking to increase its own plutonium production. In an agreement with the Bush administration, under review by Congress this week, India insisted several of its own nuclear reactors remain exempt from international safeguards.

“South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at a minimum vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material,” the Isis report said.
guardian.co.uk

IRAN is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb, an investigation has revealed.

A United Nations report, dated July 18, said there was “no doubt” that a huge shipment of smuggled uranium 238, uncovered by customs officials in Tanzania, was transported from the Lubumbashi mines in the Congo.

Tanzanian customs officials told The Sunday Times it was destined for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, and was stopped on October 22 last year during a routine check.

The disclosure will heighten western fears about the extent of Iran’s presumed nuclear weapons programme and the strategic implications of Iran’s continuing support for Hezbollah during the war with Israel.

It has also emerged that terror cells backed by Iran may be prepared to mount attacks against nuclear power plants in Britain. Intelligence circulating in Whitehall suggests that sleeper cells linked to Tehran have been conducting reconnaissance at some nuclear sites in preparation for a possible attack.

The parliamentary intelligence and security committee has reported that Iran represented one of the three biggest security threats to Britain. The UN security council has given Iran until the end of this month to halt its uranium enrichment activities. The UN has threatened sanctions if Tehran fails to do so.

timesonline.co.uk

Half of US still believes Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction

just follow the yellow-cake road

Aug. 14, 2006 issue – The Bush administration insists Iraq is a long way from civil war, but the contingency planning has already begun inside the White House and the Pentagon. President Bush will move U.S. troops out of Iraq if the country descends into civil war, according to one senior Bush aide who declined to be named while talking about internal strategy. “If there’s a full-blown civil war, the president isn’t going to allow our forces to be caught in the crossfire,” the aide said. “But institutionally, the government of Iraq isn’t breaking down. It’s still a unity government.” Bush’s position on a pullout of U.S. troops emerged in response to news-week’s questions about Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Warner warned last week that the president might require a new vote from Congress to allow troops to stay in Iraq in what he called “all-out civil war.” But the senior Bush aide said the White House would need no prompting from Congress to get troops out “if the Iraqi government broke down completely along sectarian lines.”

msnbc.msn.com

Responding to reports that formaldehyde may be sickening hurricane victims living in government-provided travel trailers along the Gulf Coast, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has reversed course and ordered air quality tests to determine if some of the units are emitting unacceptably high levels of the toxic gas.

The tests for formaldehyde –- listed as a human carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance, by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and a suspected human carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency — will be conducted by the EPA, which is currently working with FEMA to finalize a sampling plan, EPA spokeswoman Jennifer Wood said Thursday.

“EPA does not normally test indoor air … but there’s an exception in the Stafford Act that allows for cooperation and testing in a special situation,” she said.

FEMA spokesman Aaron Walker said the agency has requested the tests for formaldehyde “out of an abundance of caution” and added that agency officials remain “highly confident and comfortable in the travel trailer program.”
msnbc.msn.com

They can be “highly confident and comfortable”, since they don’t have to live in the damn things; or maybe they’re just high.

August 3, 2006 — A son of Osama bin Laden has gone from Iran to Lebanon with the mission to organize terror attacks against Israel, it was reported yesterday.Saad bin Laden, 27, one of the terror mastermind’s eldest sons, was released by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard last Friday, according to the German daily Die Welt. “From the Lebanese border, he has the task of building Islamist terror cells and preparing them to fight with Hezbollah,” the paper said, quoting intelligence sources.

“Apparently, Tehran is counting on recruiting Lebanese refugees in Syria for the fight against Israel, using bin Laden’s help,” it added.

The young bin Laden was supposedly under house arrest in Iran.

In 2004, Iranian former foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi said the country had jailed about a dozen al Qaeda suspects and would put them on trial. Among them were bin Laden and Saif al-Adel, the terror network’s security chief.

Up until this latest move, intelligence officials believed that Saad, who speaks fluent English, was part of a small cadre running al Qaeda from Iran.

“Our general view is Iran certainly does have a few al Qaeda-related figures,” said a counter-terrorism official when asked about the Die Welt report. “The general perception is Iran keeps these people as a bargaining chip.”

According to that official, Shiite Muslim Iran is not sympathetic to members of the Sunni-dominated al Qaeda but “they protect them as long as they think they can make use of them.”

nypost.com

Oh okay…

BINT JBEIL, Lebanon (Reuters) – “Four bodies inside this house”, reads the notice scrawled with charcoal on the remains of a house in the southern Lebanese village of Aynata.

In the neighbouring town of Bint Jbeil, the stench of death rises from the ruins of the once-bustling market street.

One village along in Aitaroun, tearful residents clutch white sheets and what belongings they can salvage, begging journalists and rescue workers alike for a ride out of “hell”.

“We have been living in hell and fear for 21 days, without power or water and we felt real hunger. We even ate stale and mouldy bread to keep going,” sobbed Zeinab Baalbaki, who said a number of her relatives have been killed in Israeli air raids.

“The children felt the worst pain because we could not find milk. Is it their fault, these people who had their homes brought down on their heads?”

After 21 days of Israeli air strikes, rescue workers have used a partial 48-hour respite to aerial bombardment to visit Lebanese border villages that have seen the worst of the violence and been largely cut off from the world.

There, they have found ruined buildings and largely deserted streets. Where residents have been stranded, some are now hungry or wounded and desperately waiting for a chance to get out.

The Lebanese government says dozens of bodies have yet to be recovered from beneath the rubble or from cars hit by Israeli missiles. The government has so far put the war’s death toll at 750, including unrecovered bodies.

reuters.co.uk

Walid Jumblatt, leader of the most powerful clan in Lebanon’s Druze community, said on Tuesday the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas had dealt a fatal blow to Lebanese hopes of a strong independent state, free of Iranian and Syrian influence.

Speaking from his family’s palatial 18th century redoubt high in the Shouf mountains above Beirut, Mr Jumblatt said the Shia Hizbollah movement already sensed victory.

He accused the movement of working to an Iranian and Syrian timetable when it kidnapped two Israeli soldiers on July 12, triggering a devastating Israeli retaliation. In the process Hizbollah had “stolen the hopes” of young Lebanese whose protests last year helped force Syria to withdraw its troops after 22 years in Lebanon.

But he said that like many Lebanese he had to support the Shia movement in its resistance against “brutal Israeli aggression”. They were “a well entrenched guerrilla army, not afraid to die, plus they are fighting Vietcong style”, he said. Israel’s widening offensive would only cause more destruction and weaken further the Lebanese state.

“After the 12 July, Lebanon is now unfortunately being entrenched solidly into the Syrian-Iranian axis,” he said. “The hopes of a stable, prosperous Lebanon where we could attract investments is over for now. It is a fatal blow for confidence.”

ft.com

Well this is going according to Israel’s timetable, that is for damn sure, but who knows how deep and entangled this web of deception goes? Your worst enemies could be your best friends…for all we know…

(Mexico City — July 30, 2006) The sea of yellow swept through the veins of Mexico City en route to the Zocalo on Sunday, the platelets returning to the heart. Yellow for clean elections; amarillo for democracy, as manifest in the candidacy of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who believes that his populist electoral victory in the presidential election three weeks ago was stolen from him and the working class and poor of Mexico who voted for him.

Unlike John Kerry, Obrador — the mayor of Mexico City — did not disappoint the perhaps 2 million people who completely filled the Zocalo and avenues in every direction for block after block after block. He has presented evidence of fraud at 70,000 polling places to the Supreme Court. And, as his voice echoed from loudspeakers everywhere, he called on his supporters to remain in the Zocalo (after apologizing to the thousands of street vendors who would be inconvenienced by the occupation), setting up dozens of large white tents — one for each Mexican state — for the vigil to use to organize itself and expand.

axisoflogic.com