Iran rules out nuclear suspension

Iran will not return to a full freeze of its disputed nuclear fuel activities and Western demands for such confidence building measures are unacceptable, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday.

Iran, Israel: The good, the bad and the ugly by Kaveh L Afrasiabi

In light of the political uproar caused by the comments of Iran's president against Israel, it is important to examine the comments, which call for the destruction of the state of Israel, within the context of Iran's overall foreign policy.

Superpower Showdown by James P. Pinkerton

The history of world great-power conflict is too obvious—and too ominous—to be ignored. We need to see the trouble coming, and we should be ready, and steady, when it arrives. A proper balance-of-power strategy would mean that when conflict erupts, it erupts in other countries first. That’s the formula for being the happy third, and it has been—and is—the right formula for dealing with ascendant and perhaps violent countries that we can’t contain and don’t want to fight.

A grim reckoning

The Volcker committee has issued its final report on the UN-administered oil-for-food programme in Iraq, and it makes for grim reading: kickbacks were paid in connection with the contracts of over 2,000 companies. National prosecutors may now take an interest.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Doing Israel's Bidding by Kurt Nimmo

Israel’s Likudites could not ask for more: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has called for Israel to “be wiped off the map,” thus underscoring the Zionist argument that Muslims want to kill all Jews or at least push them into the sea. Of course, this will never happen, nor should it. Most people with common sense simply want Israel to stop punishing the Palestinians for the fact they have lived in Palestine, centuries before European Zionists decided to steal their land. Most rational people want peace between Israel and the Palestinians, that is to say Israel must go back to the 1967 borders and allow the Palestinians to form their own state. This will not happen anytime soon and Ahmadinejad gives the Zionists further excuse to make sure it doesn’t, thus prolonging and extending the crisis in the Middle East.

London becomes BNP heartland

New research has found that support for the British National Party is higher in London than any other part of the UK, with 23 per cent of Londoners saying they would consider voting for the far-Right party.

Bush Threatens Sanctions, Even Force, against Syria by Maggie Farley

But when asked what the United States would do if Syria did not change its policies, he said: "We're going to use our military. It is the last, very last option. No commander in chief likes to commit the military, and I don't. But on the other hand, you know, I have worked hard for diplomacy and I will continue to work the diplomatic angle on this issue."

Lawrence of Arabia and the Perils of State Building by John Hulsman, Ph.D.

Since the end of the Cold War, America's efforts at state building--be it in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Afghanistan, or Iraq--have suffered from a tendency to reinvent the wheel. That is, policymakers have acted as if these efforts have never been tried before, and consequently, vital lessons that might have been learned as to how the process might better work have instead been neglected. For example, the United States is not the first country to try to forge stable political entities in the Middle East: The lessons of British efforts at state building in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during World War I have been almost entirely neglected, to our peril.

Succession crisis rattles Kuwait

Both Emir Jaber Al Ahmad Al Sabah and Crown Prince Saad Al Abdullah Al Salem Al Sabah were said to no longer function due to illness.

The government has also been rocked by unprecedented criticism as well as demands to revise the mechanism for leadership succession, Middle East Newsline reported. So far, the government has refused to respond to questions by Kuwait's parliament, regarded as one of the most independent in the Middle East.

Galloway faces jail for fresh corruption claims by EBEN HARRELL

Senator Norm Coleman, the chairman of an investigative subcommittee, said he will send the evidence to US Department of Justice and to British authorities. Mr Galloway could now face charges in America of perjury, making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding. Each charge carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a £140,000 fine.

The Anti-Syria Scam by Paul Craig Roberts

Syria has done nothing to the US and poses no threat to the US. The Syrian government is concerned about Syria becoming unhinged by schisms like the Sunni-Shi’ite schism set loose in Iraq by the incompetent Bush administration.

Why does Condi Rice think the Bush administration has the right to decide who heads the Syrian government? According to news reports, the Bush administration has asked the Israeli and Italian governments to nominate a replacement for the current president of Syria.

Saddam trial: whose 'demons' are they anyway? by David Chandler

Saddam's fate is today of little relevance to the people of Iraq and, if anything, the proceedings, which will detail the regime's murder and torture of Shias 23 years ago, are likely only to reinforce the country's religious and regional political divide. The Saddam trial has less to do with the Iraqi people overcoming their Saddam past than with the US and Britain distancing themselves from Iraq's post-Saddam present.

Rumsfeld sets new China tone by Jing-dong Yuan

The lack of engagement between the two militaries allows deeply held suspicions, worst-case scenarios and unfounded presumption to dictate policy. Beijing views US defense transformation and global posturing as attempts at encirclement. The Pentagon is building strong military ties with countries on China's periphery, in particular with Japan and India. The US military presence now extends from Southeast Asia to Central Asia.

Huge majority of Iraqis want coalition to go by Ned Temko

According to the report, fewer than one in 100 respondents felt the presence of American, British and other allied troops was improving security in the country.

Forty-five per cent countrywide were said to believe that the attacks on the troops were justified - a figure that rose to 65 per cent in the Maysan, one of the provinces policed by the British. No fewer than 82 per cent, according to the report, declared themselves 'strongly opposed' to the presence of coalition troops.

Was the Iraqi Constitution Vote Fixed? by KEVIN ZEESE

The questions about whether there was vote fraud are serious, but will probably not be resolved to the satisfaction of many. As a result Sunni's are likely to discount the vote and the violence is unlikely to abate. Time reports some Sunni views: "We have proved we are against the constitution," said Mishaan al-Jubouri, a Sunni legislator from the Liberation and Reconciliation Party. "The Sunni Arabs will reject this constitution totally."

Anti-Iran propaganda indicates war is imminent

An analysis of recent American and British rhetoric exhibits the hallmarks of pre-war propaganda. The evidence strongly indicates that the allies have set a course for war with Iran.

Is China headed for a social 'red alert'? by Francesco Sisci

But if the Chinese government were democratic - one head one vote - it could well be more difficult than it is today to hold the hundreds of millions of peasants crowded in Henan, Hebei, Hunan and Hubei from storming the deserted west, just as American pioneers swarmed through the thinly populated prairies of the American West in the 19th century.

The occupiers' trial by Pepe Escobar

This trial - the first test - is based on a concrete fact. But the defense has a point as it contests the legitimacy of the tribunal itself. Thus the danger: Saddam the tyrant has a golden opportunity to (re)present himself to the Sunni Arab popular masses as Saddam, martyr of the American empire.

White House was worried about rogue CIA group: reporter

A new account of the CIA leak scandal rocking the White House suggests top US presidential aides were seriously concerned about a dissident faction inside the US spy agency that appeared to work even behind the back of the CIA director to debunk the notion Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Israel, Iran, and the US: Nuclear War, Here We Come by Jorge Hirsch

The stage is set for a chain of events that could lead to nuclear war over chemical weapons in the immediate future. If these events unfold, the trigger will be Israel, the target Iran, the nuclear aggressor the U.S. These are the reasons:

More Highly Credible Whistle Blowers Identifying Global 'Al-Qaeda' Terrorism as State Controlled by Paul Joseph Watson

During an interview for an Australian documentary, former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid unequivocally fingered the Indonesian authorities as the true culprits behind the 2002 Bali bombings.

Tony Blair Former MI5 Informant?

Ex-MI5 officer David Shayler alleged so at a public meeting in Bristol last week, as was reported in the Bristol Evening Post. Money quote:

Mr Shayler believes Dr David Kelly was an MI6 agent who was murdered and he alleged that Tony Blair worked for MI5 before he became Labour leader.

Israeli Oligarch's Ill-Gotten Loot Channeled to Dubya's Brother by Christopher Bollyn

During a Sept. 22 visit to Latvia, Neil Bush, the brother of President George W. Bush, appeared with his business partner, the fugitive Russian oligarch and Israeli citizen, Boris Berezovsky. Berezovsky’s appearance in Riga with the brother of the U.S. president caused significant consternation for the Latvian government due to Russian demands for his extradition on charges of fraud.

Power vacuum in West

Today’s unipolar world, in which the world’s only hyper-power lives beyond its means, with massive current account and budget deficits funded by Chinese and Japanese central banks, and no longer has the guts, patience, skill and commitment to root out global terrorism and failed states, is an unstable, transitional state of affairs. The beneficiary will not be the EU, which has neither the military nor economic muscle to replace the US and is anyway in even faster decline. In ways that are uncertain and hard to divine, the balance of power is clearly switching from the Atlantic to East Asia. It will be a messy process, made all the worse by the drift of the US and EU. It will be a shift in power ripe for exploitation by those with the interests of neither the West nor East Asia at heart. No wonder al Qaeda is licking its lips.

How to constitute a civil war by Pepe Escobar

Iraqis desperately need security, electricity, water, food rations, health care, education, jobs. Instead they get a referendum on a constitution few of Iraq's theoretical 15.7 million voters have debated and fewer still have even seen. Why? Because the occupying power said so. So forget about the real priorities needed to make life liveable. No constitution will be able to rule over a battlefield.

Venezuela's economic war against U.S.

Earlier in the week, according to the Financial Times, Venezuela shifted between $10 billion and $20 billion in U.S. Treasuries into funds sent to Europe amid frigid relations between President Hugo Chavez and the Bush administration.

We need to be told by John Pilger

''The propagandist's purpose," wrote Aldous Huxley, "is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." The British, who invented modern war propaganda and inspired Joseph Goebbels, were specialists in the field. At the height of the slaughter known as the First World War, the prime minister, David Lloyd George, confided to C P Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian: "If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know, and can't know."

What has changed?

Syria warns 'gates of hell will open' if U.S. attacks by Leila Hatoum

In the latest official Syrian comment on the increasing pressure on Damascus, Premier Naji Otari said "all the gates of hell will open on the U.S. if it attempts to attack Syria." Otari was replying to a report this week in Newsweek magazine revealing that Washington had debated launching military strikes inside Syria against camps used by insurgents operating in Iraq.

Changes in Iraqi constitution approved

Seeing no contradiction between the principles of democracy and the principles of Islam, that statement is followed up by the following two provisions:

"No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established."

"No law that contradicts the principles of democracy may be established."

Suicide in Syria

THE death of Ghazi Kanaan, Syria’s former security supremo in Lebanon and then his country’s interior minister, raises many disturbing questions. The Syrian authorities say they believe that the death was suicide. However the sheer timing of Kanaan’s demise, just days before the release of a UN report into the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri must raise doubts.

Democracy: The God That Failed by Justin Raimondo

Chalmers Johnson, the trenchant critic of American militarism, has characterized the U.S. as an "empire of bases," and what we are witnessing is the extension of this global system of linked launching pads for American military intervention from Kyrgyzstan to Ukraine to Iraq. This, and not the creation of genuine liberal democratic societies, is our real foreign policy objective.

CONFESSIONS OF A GLOBALIST by James P. Tucker Jr.

“Will Hutton, an economic analyst and former newspaper editor who attended a Bilderberg meeting in 1997, says people take part in these networks in order to influence the way the world works, to create what he calls ‘the international common sense’ about policy,” BBC said.

It's time to take seriously a US-led global recession - Lau Nai-keung

It is well known that the US is the world's biggest economy, taking up about 30 per cent of global GDP, but it is now also the world's biggest debtor country. According to the most authoritative person on this subject, the US Comptroller General David Walker, who audits the federal government's books, the tab for the long-term promises the US Government has made to creditors, retirees, veterans and the poor amounts to US$43,000 billion, US$145,000 per US citizen, or US$350,000 for every full-time worker.

Setting Up Abbas by Jeff Halper

From Sharon's point of view it's a done deal. Israel has won its century-old conflict with the Palestinians. Surveying the landscape - physical and political alike - the Israeli Prime Minister has finally fulfilled the task with which he was charged 38 years ago by Menachem Begin: ensure permanent Israel control over the entire Land of Israel while foreclosing the emergence of a viable Palestinian state.

Germany Getting First Female Chancellor by DAVID McHUGH

Conservative leader Angela Merkel was set to become Germany's first female chancellor under a power-sharing agreement that would end Gerhard Schroeder's seven years in office, party officials said Monday.

The deal was contingent on votes by party conferences and in parliament, a process that could take several weeks. It's already been approved by party leadership committees.

Intra-Palestinian Conflict

So dire is the situation that the government of Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei is to submit its resignation to Abbas so that he can form a new government capable of handling the chaos now rampant throughout the territories. That Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are closer than ever to the point of implosion is a situation worlds away from that of only a few weeks ago when Hamas was reveling in some of the best days it had ever known, celebrating Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. It claimed that its attacks had forced Israel into a humiliating retreat, and that Gaza was just the beginning.

Free Trade and an Emerging Revolutionary Planet by Robin Mathews

That is why many parts of the planet are moving, now, into revolutionary postures. They know (A) Free Trade is a big swindle, guaranteeing poverty and suffering. (B) Comparative Advantage is a lie. Period. (C) Wealthy capitalists have used the two together as a way of getting a large part of the world’s population into near slavery. (D) The only way out of this destructive entanglement is to fight a way out.

Fears mount as US opens new military installation in Paraguay by Benjamin Dangl

Coup warning in Bolivia

The proximity of the Estigarribia base to Bolivian natural gas reserves, and the fact that the military operations coincide with a presidential election in Bolivia, has also been a cause for concern. The election is scheduled to take place on Dec. 4, 2005. Bolivian Workers Union leader Jaime Solares and Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) legislator Antonio Peredo, have warned of US plans for a military coup to frustrate the elections. Solares said the US Embassy backs right wing ex-president Jorge Quiroga in his bid for office, and will go as far as necessary to prevent any other candidate's victory.

The conquest of Southwest Asia by Pepe Escobar

It's still a case of "falling dominoes": first Iraq, then Syria and Iran, finally the Palestinians; the end result would be American domination of the whole Middle East, as far as neo-con doctrine goes. There are no doubts in this case on the axis which stands to profit: the fundamentalist Christian right, the powerful Jewish-American lobby and most of all the industrial-military complex. This "new", Greater Middle East would represent, in their worldview, the supreme victory of Judeo-Christianity over Islam. More than ever the "clash of civilizations" fallacy seems to be alive and kicking.

Martial Law and the Avian Flu Pandemic by Michel Chossudovsky

The statement of President Bush suggests the enactment of Martial Law in the case of an avian flu outbreak. Martial Law could also be established, using the pretext of an outbreak of avian flu in foreign countries and its potential impacts on the US.

In other words, the Military rather than the country's civilian health authorities would be put in charge.

The slow enmeshing of Iran by Linda S. Heard

The White House isn't really interested in slapping Iran with a long-drawn out sanction process, which would, in any case, boomerang as oil prices would soar.

Bush doesn't want guarantees that Iran isn't seeking nuclear WMD either. America's real goal is regime change in Iran, just as it was in Iraq, and in the absence of a genuine cassus belli, it is desperate for a pretext, even, if it has to resort to that same worn-out canard he used to invade Iraq.

Our Kurdish Problem by Justin Raimondo

As Iran and Israel face off on Iraqi terrain and the country falls into chaos and civil war, U.S. troops are caught in the crossfire – and still our politicians do nothing. Both parties, as Cindy Sheehan has discovered in her meetings with Republican and Democratic warmongers alike, are committed to our foreign policy of global intervention, especially when it comes to Iraq. Chuck Schumer's aide told her the war is "good for America" – a crackpot belief shared by John McCain and the neocon-run Republican party.

BILDERBERG DRIVEN TO PR BY 'NET'?

The BBC reporter notes that Bilderberg's secretive profile continues to give critics ammunition to impute malevolent intent. American Free Press editor Jim Tucker, he says, is convinced that the group organizes wars, and elects and deposes political leaders, and describes it as simply "evil." Davignon responds by pointing out what he believes are common sense fallacies of those who allege a Bilderberg conspiracy. "When people say this is a secret government of the world I say that if we were a secret government of the world we should be bloody ashamed of ourselves."

Bilderberg: Not 'Conspiracy' Just 'Talent Scouts' by URI DOWBENKO

"Viscount Davignon says his steering committee are simply excellent talent spotters. The steering committee 'does its best assessment of who are the bright new boys or girls in the beginning phase of their career who would like to get known.'

"Bright new boys and girls"?

Got that? When you're invited to a Bilderberg meeting, you're just an Illuminati Nigger.

Clinton's Global Gabfest a "Shadow World Government" by William F. Jasper

During the 1990s, it was Mikhail Gorbachev who hosted the premier planetary power palavers known as the State of the World Forums. Billionaires, princes, presidents, gurus, and poets gathered under Gorbachev’s auspices for power networking and "global problem solving" (read: world government scheming). The last big Gorby gabfest was in New York City in September 2000, to coincide with the UN Millennium Summit.

Britain, Iran playing with Iraqi Shi'ite fire by Mahan Abedin

Recent deadly attacks against British forces in southern Iraq and the seizure of two undercover British Special Air Service (SAS) agents in Basra, followed quickly by their dramatic rescue, have highlighted the superficiality of security and stability in the Iraqi south. They have also led to intense speculation as to the causes of the recent troubles in a region hitherto trumpeted as comparatively safe and secure.

What's Wrong With Cutting and Running? by Gen. (ret.) William E. Odom

If I were a journalist, I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren't they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better.