Often writing as "William Ashton" in the authoritative Jane's Intelligence Review, Mr Selth has described in various articles how Singapore has sent the junta guns, rockets, armoured personnel carriers and grenade launchers, some of it trans-shipped from stocks seized by Israel from Palestinians in southern Lebanon.
Singaporean companies have provided computers and networking equipment for Burma's defence ministry and army, while upgrading the bunkered junta's ability to network with regional commanders — so crucial as protesting monks take to the streets of 20 Burmese cities, causing major logistical headaches for the Tatmadaw, the Burmese military.
The Illusion of Dividing and Conquering in Iraq by Ron Jacobs
If anyone still believes that Iraq is a free and sovereign state, a couple recent moves in Washington should put a rest to that thought forever. The first is the response to the most recent slaughter by the Blackwater mercenaries. The second is the vote on September 26, 2007 in the US Senate that calls for the division of Iraq into semi-autonomous regions that would be decided by the US client government inside Baghdad's Green Zone.
The response to the Blackwater murders from the Green Zone government was strong at first. The Minister of the Interior demanded the exit of the mercenaries from Iraq and possible prosecution of the murderers. Then the pressure from Washington began and the forceful language from the Green Zone Iraqis became considerably more conciliatory. As it stands at this writing, the Iraqi legislature is considering passing a law that would make the private mercenaries fighting Washington's war in Iraq the responsibility of the Pentagon. This would mean that they would answer to the men in uniform wearing lots of medals. It doesn't mean that their murderous actions would be punished, but it would mean that they would have to be sanctioned by the Pentagon. Given that there seems to be very few US military officers of high rank whose careers are not tied to Washington's version of success in Iraq, this change in the command chain seems like it will make very little difference in how the Blackwaters of the war operate.
by Rory Carroll in Caracas Saturday September 29, 2007 The Guardian
Red carpets, brass bands, bear hugs and a hero's welcome: there is at least one part of the Americas that loves Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
South America this week greeted the Iranian president as a brother and benefactor, defrosting him after his icy reception in New York. The leaders of Bolivia and Venezuela embraced Mr Ahmadinejad and blessed Iran's nuclear programme, underlining how much influence Washington has lost over a region it once considered its backyard.
The Iranian president signed a series of energy and trade deals during brief stopovers which extended Tehran's foothold in South America. In contrast to the insults heaped on him in New York, the visitor was feted as a strategic ally in the struggle against gringo imperialism. Cuba and Nicaragua echoed the rhetoric.
There hasn't been any mentions in American media (even by the politcal left) of the past crimes of the United States against Iran.
The United States had toppled the democratically elected government of Mossadegh in 1953 and put in his place the puppet Shah. (See this book review of All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss17/booknotes-All.shtml )
During the Iran-Iraq war the United States sold weapons and gave false intelligence to both sides of the conflict. (see http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2292 ) Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger had said about the war, too bad both sides can't lose.
While the American media scolds Ahmadinejad for supposedly denying the Holocaust, you have Americans in denial of the genocide in Iraq.
The United States had helped Saddam Hussein into power (see http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/217.html ) and supported him, strategically and financially, when he was committing his worst atrocities.
Through two invasions, sanctions, and use of chemical weapons, millions of Iraqis have died and millions of Iraqis have fled their homes.
The fact of the matter is that every single administration, since Jimmy Carter have supported and financed the "Islamic terror" network, created during the Carter administration at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war. (See Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, 12 September 2001). al Qaeda is a instrument of US intelligence: a US sponsored intelligence asset. Where was Osama on Septembers 11?
There is evidence that the whereabouts of Osama are known to the Bush Administration.
On September 10. 2001, "Enemy Number One" was in a Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi, courtesy of America's indefectible ally Pakistan, as confirmed by a report of Dan Rather, CBS News. (See our October 2003 article on this issue)
He could have been arrested at short notice which would have "saved us a lot of trouble", but then we would not have had an Osama Legend, which has fed the news chain as well as George W's speeches in the course of the last five years.
According to Dan Rather, CBS, Bin Laden was hospitalized in Rawalpindi. one day before the 9/11 attacks, on September 10, 2001.
"Pakistan. Pakistan's Military Intelligence (ISI) told CBS that bin Laden had received dialysis treatment in Rawalpindi, at Pak Army's headquarters.
DAN RATHER, CBS ANCHOR: As the United states and its allies in the war on terrorism press the hunt for Osama bin Laden, CBS News has exclusive information tonight about where bin Laden was and what he was doing in the last hours before his followers struck the United States September 11.
This is the result of hard-nosed investigative reporting by a team of CBS news journalists, and by one of the best foreign correspondents in the business, CBS`s Barry Petersen. Here is his report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARRY PETERSEN, CBS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Everyone remembers what happened on September 11. Here`s the story of what may have happened the night before. It is a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
CBS News has been told that the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.
Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. On that night, says this medical worker who wanted her identity protected, they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them. She says it was treatment for a very special person. The special team was obviously up to no good.
"The military had him surrounded," says this hospital employee who also wanted his identity masked, "and I saw the mysterious patient helped out of a car. Since that time," he says, "I have seen many pictures of the man. He is the man we know as Osama bin Laden. I also heard two army officers talking to each other. They were saying that Osama bin Laden had to be watched carefully and looked after." Those who know bin Laden say he suffers from numerous ailments, back and stomach problems. Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the Taliban, says the military was often there to help before 9/11.
It should be noted, that the hospital is directly under the jurisdiction of the Pakistani Armed Forces, which has close links to the Pentagon. U.S. military advisers based in Rawalpindi. work closely with the Pakistani Armed Forces. Again, no attempt was made to arrest America's best known fugitive, but then maybe bin Laden was serving another "better purpose". Rumsfeld claimed at the time that he had no knowledge regarding Osama's health. (CBS News, 28 January 2002)...
The CBS report is a crucial piece of information in our understanding of 9/11.
It refutes the administration's claim that the whereabouts of bin Laden are unknown. It points to a Pakistan connection, it suggests a cover-up at the highest levels of the Bush administration.
Dan Rather and Barry Petersen fail to draw the implications of their January 2002 report. They suggest that the US had been deliberately misled by Pakistani intelligence officials. They fail to ask the question:
Why does the US administration state that they cannot find Osama?
Just one note: Remember in September 2004 when Dan Rather was made to leave CBS news after reporting on President G.W. Bush’s military record? He was accused of using forged documents. No one has said anything was forged or false in Rather's Spetemebr 2001 reporting on Osama Ben Laden.
Why wouldn’t an attack which killed 3,000 people be specifically mentioned? Journalist Ed Haas’ investigates this,
On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”
A poll earlier this year of more than 1,000 young adult British Muslims found that 36 per cent believe those who convert to another faith should be punished by death.
Pope Benedict is particularly concerned about the persecution of Christians in Iraq since the invasion of 2003.
Before then, there were about 1.2million Christians in the country. But the number has dropped to below 600,000.
Did it bother the Pope when the United States helped bring Saddam Hussein into power? The U.S. and other Western countries supported Saddam, strategically and financially when he was committing his worst atrocities?. Is he concerned about the millions of innocent women, men and children that were killed by bombings in two invasions, the use of chemical weapons by the United States and the sanctions that were placed against the people of Iraq? What about the millions of Iraqis that have fled their homes into the surrounding countries?
While tolerance of others must be addressed by Muslims, it would help if the Pope set the example by speaking up against how Western countries, while preaching human rights and democracy, go around engaging in regime change and supporting brutal kings and dictators who do their bidding? He won't be doing this anytime soon because these mass murders and violations of human rights are what gives him and those living in the West their comfortable lifestyles.
I don't expect he will be addressing the region in which the most killings and rapes are occurring, the predominantly Christian Congo. It is because the United States, Israel, and Europe benefit from the diamonds, other natural resources, and sale of weapons that deaths and suffering of the Congolese does not matter.
Organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Save Darfur Coalition are silent on the role of the United States and other democracies in fueling the violence in Sudan.
For some strange reason these activists are not too concerned about the Congo were a larger number of killings and rapes have occurred. Can it be because the United States, Israel and Europe benefit from the diamonds, other natural resources, and sale of weapons, that the death of millions of black Africans in the Congo is not so tragic? See http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm
The US and Britain have always maintained that the war to oust Saddam Hussein was about weapons of mass destruction - not oil.
US President George Bush said Saddam was a threat to world security because he could sell the weapons on to terrorists.
But Mr Greenspan, a Republican who was boss of the US Federal Reserve for 18 years, said that was not the whole truth, according to a copy of the book seen by Associated Press.
"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil," he is reported to have written.
This story hasn't got the same attention as the killing of the Dutch filmmaker by a Muslim.
The media outlets that reported it did not ask the obvious question: If the American man wanted to punish someone for the Iraq war, why didn't he punish himself, since it is the United States that led the invasion of Iraq and is responsible for most of the deaths and destruction?
Hartmann, a US citizen, first sought-out a Dutch soldier in the southern Dutch city of Roosendaal, but could not find one and turned his axe on a student waiting for a train on a platform at the city's station, said a Dutch news agency.
By Ben Terrall June 19th, 2007 Faleh Abood Umara, General Secretary of the Southern Oil Company Union (affiliated with the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions) worked for the Southern Oil Company in Basra for 28 years. Umara was detained by Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1998 for union activities. In the post-Saddam years he has worked on his union’s negotiating team with both the Oil Ministry and British occupation authorities, defending the rights of oil company workers.
His colleague Hashmeya Mushin Hussein, President of the Electrical Utility Workers Union, is the first woman to head a national union in Iraq. The Electrical Utility Workers are affiliated with the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW).
USLAW (U.S. Labor Against the War ) National Coordinator Michael Eisenscher introduced the speakers, pointing to the roots of Iraq labor unions in the country’s struggle against British imperialism, and the brave efforts of trade unionists under Saddam Hussein. Eisenscher noted that the June 2005 tour of Iraqi labor leaders USLAW coordinated (all three of the labor federations represented on that tour called for an end to the occupation in order to restore peace and end terrorism in Iraq) took place a month before a national meeting of the AFL-CIO, thereby helping achieve passage of a resolution by that U.S. labor body saying troops in Iraq “deserve a commitment from our country’s leaders to bring them home rapidly.” Eisenscher described this as the first time in its 50 year history that the federation took a position in opposition to a U.S. war while it was being waged, contrasting with unfortunate past history that earned it the label “AFL-CIA.” (The federation long served as an echo chamber for Washington’s cold war anti-communism, and helped facilitate brutal repression in Latin America and elsewhere. . . . Since the U.S. high command has announced that it will arm “Sunni insurgents,” allegedly to fight al-Quaida, after years of equipping Shia militias, it doesn’t take much effort to see how Washington might be contributing to fragmentation in Iraq. And as Iraq specialists Antonia Juhasz and Raed Jarrar wrote about the oil law on CounterPunch: “Many Iraqi oil experts are already referring to the draft law as the “Split Iraq Fund,” arguing that it facilitates plans for splitting Iraq into three ethnic/religious regions. The experts believe the law undermines the central government and shifts important decision-making and responsibilities to the regional entities. This shift could serve as the foundation for establishing three new independent states, which is the goal of a number of separatists leaders.” Meanwhile, the Iraq oil law’s granting dominance to multinational oil giants behind the Bush Administration continues to be largely overlooked by the U.S. media and politicians in Washington. Instead, the mostly unquestioned spin from Washington is that the U.S. is working to heal divisions: UPI energy correspondent Ben Lando, who has written extensively about the oil workers’s strike, this week described Lt. Gen Martin as “the latest U.S. government official to push a common but false claim that the controversial draft oil law will lead to a just division of the proceeds from oil sales and pave the way for reconciliation in the war-torn nation.” In fact, under the Iraq oil law still being negotiated, foreign oil giants stand to be the primary beneficiaries of those proceeds. As Antonia Juhasz wrote, “The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers or share new technologies. They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability” by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country. The vast majority of Iraq’s oil would then be left underground for at least two years rather than being used for the country’s economic development. Complete article is at http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/06/iraq-union-leaders-speak-out-against-occupation/ Additional information at http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/06/1359232
