Time to shut-down the UN by Mike Whitney

Hugo Chavez was right a few months ago when he said that the United Nations had outlived its usefulness and was only serving the interests of the powerful nations. The “alleged” standoff with Iran proves that the UN has degenerated into a rubber stamp for US aggression. Its main purpose now is to provide international cover for American plans to redraw the map of the Middle East and integrate dissident states into the neoliberal economic system.

Afterword: Failed States by Noam Chomsky

We began by considering four critical issues that should rank high on the agenda of those concerned with the prospects for a decent future. Two of them are literally matters of survival: nuclear war and environmental disaster. The first danger is ever-present, beyond imagination, and in principle avoidable; practical ways to proceed are understood. The second is longer-term, and there is much uncertainty about how a serious crisis can be averted, or at least mitigated, though it is clear enough that the longer the delay in confronting the tasks, they harder they will be. And again, sensible measures to proceed are well known. The third major crisis is that the government of the global superpower is acting in ways that enhance these threats, and others as well, such as the threat of terrorism by enemies. That conclusion, unfortunately all too credible, brings to prominence a fourth critical issue: the growing democratic deficit, the gap between public will and public policy, a sign of the increasing failure of formal democratic institutions to function as they would in a democratic culture with vitality and substance.

US privacy campaigners fear mark of the beast byJames Sturcke

A decision by the Bush administration to proceed with what is believed to be the largest radio frequency tagging programme in history has triggered protests from US privacy campaigners.

The US department of agriculture (USDA) wants to keep track of all livestock production and movements in what it claims is an attempt to improve the traceability of disease outbreaks.

By 2009, 40m cattle will have been tagged, and the scheme is to be extended to include the billions of chickens and other animals farmed every year in the US.

How Much is the War in Iraq Costing? by WINSLOW T. WHEELER

The Congressional Research Service has just released a new report on the past and possible future costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pending Congress’ action on the new emergency supplemental, which should complete fiscal year 2006 expenses, the costs will be up to $439 billion by the end of this year. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg; details follow. The full report is available at www.cdi.org/smrp.

Iran Leader Warns U.S. Against Attacking by NASSER KARIMI

Even as it threatened to ravage U.S. global interests, Iran sent its top nuclear official to Vienna, Austria, for talks with the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency ahead of a Friday Security Council deadline for Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment activities.

"The Americans should know that if they invade Iran, their interests around the world would be harmed," supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told workers gathered ahead of May Day, the international workers' holiday, state television reported.

What's really happening in Tehran by Pepe Escobar

The point is not that Ahmadinejad is a suicidal nut bent on confronting the US by all means available. The point is that the president leads just one of four key factions in a do-or-die power play, and he is following his own agenda, which is not necessarily the Iranian theocratic leadership's agenda. Washington neo-conservatives for their part may want regime change - but that won't happen with another shock and awe.

Ahmadinejad is playing the typical Bonapartist - using a political deadlock to go all the way toward dictatorship. Rafsanjani may also be a Bonapartist, but the difference is he's not interested in dictatorship. The ideal outcome of this whole "nuclear crisis" would be an Iran moving to a moderately liberal alliance between eternal pragmatist Rafsanjani - the only one capable of subduing the Pasdaran - and the semi-secular left, which still regards Khatami as the least bad of all possible models. It may not be paradise, but it certainly beats war.

Nuclear War Plan : the nuclear option in Global Strike

At the end of September 2006, the Joint Functional Component Command for Space and Global Strike is scheduled to achieve Full Operational Capability (FOC). That event builds on Global Strike capabilities developed over many years to provide new offensive strike options to the President against proliferators of weapons of mass destruction.

This chronology lists the most important of the developments that led to the creation of the Pentagon's newest and most offensive strike plan. Although Global Strike is primarily a non-nuclear mission, the information collected for this chronology reveal that nuclear weapons are surprisingly prominent in both the planning and command structure for Global Strike.

All War-All The Time by William Blum

One observer has summed up the legal arguments put forth by the Bush administration thusly: "The existing laws do not apply because this is a different kind of war. It's a different kind of war because the president says so. The president gets to say so because he is president. ... We follow the laws of war except to the extent that they do not apply to us. These prisoners have all the rights to which they are entitled by law, except to the extent that we have changed the law to limit their rights."

Study shows undue Israeli influence on U.S. policy by PAUL FINDLEY

The fear of being charged with anti-Semitism outranks all other worries that bedevil politicians, and the lobby has marketed it so efficiently that a wall of silence shields the American people from awareness of the lobby’s activities and U.S. complicity in Israel’s longstanding abuse of international law and Arab human rights, violations that the rest of the world follows with dismay and anger.

Deadly serious war games by Ehsan Ahrari

It is not exactly a closely guarded military secret when the announcement appears as a dispatch in USA Today, a national newspaper that appears on every street corner, indeed, virtually every hotel in the land. The message this week: the National Strategic Gaming Center of the National Defense University (NDU) will conduct a "war gaming" exercise on July 18 involving Iran's nuclear program.

Does Iran's President Want Israel Wiped Off The Map - Does He Deny The Holocaust? by Anneliese Fikentscher and Andreas Neumann

To raze Israel to the ground, to batter down, to destroy, to annihilate, to liquidate, to erase Israel, to wipe it off the map - this is what Iran's President demanded - at least this is what we read about or heard of at the end of October 2005. Spreading the news was very effective. This is a declaration of war they said. Obviously government and media were at one with their indignation. It goes around the world.

But let's take a closer look at what Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said. It is a merit of the 'New York Times' that they placed the complete speech at our disposal. Here's an excerpt from the publication dated 2005-10-30:

Generals fall out over Rumsfeld by Deirdre Griswold

Washington has been spectacularly unsuccessful in stabilizing a neocolonial regime in Iraq. The very thing they totally disregarded from day one—the sentiment of the Iraqi people—has made it impossible to truly effect “regime change.” They have killed or captured the former leaders of Iraq, devastated much of the country, and instigated virtual civil war but they have not succeeded in establishing a puppet regime with the strength and authority to roll back the Iraqi commitment to self-determination born out of the 1958 anti-colonial revolution.

Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame has called on military figures who disagree with Rumsfeld not to resign but instead to leak to the public the latest plans for an attack on Iran. Ellsberg in 1971 was the Defense Department analyst who gave the New York Times 7,000 pages of top-secret documents that exploded many of the government’s myths about the Vietnam War.

America meets the new superpower by Clifford Coonan

Since the Chinese economy began to open up a quarter of a century ago, there are 400 million fewer desperately poor people in China. Now Beijing wants the remarkable domestic growth story to count for something in global terms. China has already overtaken Britain and France to become the world's fourth largest economy and Mr Hu's visit to Washington represents a culture clash on a global scale. China, the emerging Asian superpower, is ruled with an iron fist by the Communist Party, which has transformed a once centrally planned economy into a free market one, "socialist with Chinese characteristics".

"Ollanta Humala Jolts Peru into Populism" by Dr. Michael A. Weinstein

If they are successfully organized, the social action groups would function like Chavez's "Bolivarian Circles," creating a network of local support for Humala outside the formal institutional structure and ushering in what Ecuador's President Alfredo Palacio calls a "divided state."

Peru is poised to join its Andean neighbors in an intensified populist shift through a jolt from the right. Whoever assumes the presidency, the neo-liberal model has been set aside.

The Ongoing War on Truth in Iraq by Dahr Jamail

Disturbingly, this obvious U.S.-backed Shia militia invasion of a Sunni neighborhood may well be a prelude to what the U.S. military is calling a "second liberation of Baghdad," which they will carry out with the Iraqi army when a new government is installed.

The Sunday Times reports that U.S. commanders both in Iraq and at an army base in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., are planning a "carrot-and-stick" approach by offering suffering populations "protection" from sectarian violence in exchange for "rooting out insurgent groups or al-Qaeda."

Sound like Mafia tactics to you?

Hu's White House lunch: Rare but not bloody by Brian Wingfield

Chinese President Hu Jintao was to touch down in the United States on Tuesday, and most pundits seem to believe that his visit - which includes his first trip to the White House - will yield little in the way of tangible results.

No one is expecting any deals to be made on contentious economic disputes. No one anticipates Hu promising to cut his country's military spending and energy consumption or announcing a new crackdown on rampant intellectual property theft. In fact, US President George W Bush will not even honor him with a formal state dinner. (The two presidents will have a very formal lunch instead.)

Busting Empty Bunkers by Gordon Prather

When Bush became president, all DPRK nuclear materials, reactors and associated facilities were "frozen" under IAEA lock and key, subject to the US-IAEA-DPRK Agreed Framework of 1994. But, shortly after the White House Iraq Group was set up to manage the Operation Iraqi Freedom pre-war propaganda campaign, Bush unilaterally abrogated the Agreed Framework.

UK bill marks the end of true parliamentary democracy by John Pilger

Those who fail to hear these steps on the road to dictatorship should look at the government's plans for ID cards, described in its manifesto as "voluntary". They will be compulsory and worse. An ID card will be different from a driving licence or passport. It will be connected to a database called the NIR (National Identity Register), where your personal details will be stored. These will include your fingerprints, a scan of your iris, your residence status and unlimited other details about your life. If you fail to keep an appointment to be photographed and fingerprinted, you can be fined up to £2,500.

The Passionate Attachment by Albert Doyle, LL.B., LL.M.

The Bush administration would have Americans believe that the problems in the Middle East are caused by Saddam Hussein, Muslim fundamentalism and mindless terrorism. Increasingly Bush & Co. see all foreign policy matters through the distorting lens of their own “war on terrorism” vision. In fact, a principal if not the main cause of conflict in the Middle East is another “ism,” namely Zionism and the blind support given it by the United States.

Imminent decline of the American empire? by Ramzy Baroud

The world is changing, yet the US government refuses to abandon its old ways: militaristic, self-defeating and overbearing. Indeed, the US must remold, not only its policies in the Middle East, but also its hegemonic policies throughout the world. For once, the US administration needs to tap into its sense of reason, and discern the "warning signs", that should lead to "the re-examination of [its] goals and means." A first step is to bring the troops home, and with them the entire doctrine that unrestrained violence and perpetual wars can further the cause of an already distrusted superpower.

The Al Qaeda Myth by Tom Porteous

The recent revelations of the non-existent role of Al Qaeda in the London bombings and of the Pentagon's deliberate exaggeration of Al Qaeda's role in Iraq reinforce the argument that in their response to the threat of Al Qaeda (the so called "war on terror," or "Long War"), the United States and its allies are making strategic errors of monumental proportions.

The war on Iran by Pepe Escobar

The ominous signs are "on the table" for all to see. The Pentagon has its Long War, the rebranded "war on terror" that Vice President Dick Cheney swears will last for decades, a replay of the war between Eastasia and Oceania in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Iraq's US/UK Permanent Bases : Intentional Obfuscation by Sarah Meyer

In February 2002, Zoltan Grossman wrote the following cogent perception entitled New US Bases: Side Effects or Causes of War? “Even if this administration pulls combat troops out of Iraq in the future, it intends to keep at least four large permanent military bases, and access or 'basing rights' to many smaller bases, to keep control over oil supplies and shipments, support counterinsurgency operations, and to use Iraq as a launching pad against Iran or Syria. The only way that Washington can avoid this impression is to explicitly renounce any future permanent military bases in Iraq."

U.S. War on Iran: When, Not If

The United States and Iran seem to have firmly set on a path that leads to the hell of war. There are hopes for the best - and I myself would be happy to be erring on the pessimistic side - but the way things look here and now, hopes are increasingly overshadowed by grim reality.

Assertive statements on the American side and Gulf wargames on the Iranian side equally scream of muscle-flexing. Either side, while portraying the other as a new evil empire, is in fact perfectly aware of the danger the opponent poses to its core ideological and political values. Though neither risks thumbing its nose on third-party peacemakers, neither actually listens to whatever they say.

Missing the Big Story: The CIA's War with the White House by Rick Moran

What appeared to be more of the same effort to “get” the President by the CIA couldn’t go unanswered. Scooter Libby is paying for the White House trying to do something about the leaking and sniping done by the Administration’s partisan opponents and others may as well. But to posit the notion that the Wilson/Plame imbroglio took place in a vacuum and was a matter of sheer “revenge” is lunacy. The facts do not support such a claim. But you’d never know it because of the curious reluctance on the part of both the mainstream press and the New Media to face up to the consequences of CIA perfidy in the lead up to the election.

Esther Pollard: Bush is Willing to Free Pollard This Week

Speaking on Channel Two's Monday morning television talk program, Esther Pollard said, "Someone who is very close to President Bush came to me last night and said that Bush is ready to free Jonathan even in time for the upcoming Passover holiday [which starts Wednesday night] - as long as Olmert makes an official request."

Experts: Neither Israel, U.S. nor Iranians likely to stop Iran nukes

"The United States is the only country in the world that has capability of carrying out the estimated thousand strike sorties needed to destroy the Iran's nuclear program," [Ret.] Col. Patrick Lang, director of the Middle East section of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said. "The objective has to be not to destroy the program, but to set it back a desired number of years."

12 groups 'control 60% of Israel' by Aaron Klein

The groups reportedly achieved tight economic ownership by structuring their companies in pyramid-style, putting top holding companies in charge of smaller companies that all are beholden ultimately to the 12 groups. The U.S. largely eliminated this style of privatized influence nearly 80 years ago through a series of restrictions on ownership and the implementation of double taxation of dividends paid by a company to its parent organization.

Bush 'is planning nuclear strikes on Iran's secret sites' by Philip Sherwell

Some US military chiefs have unsuccessfully urged the White House to drop the nuclear option from its war plans, Hersh writes in The New Yorker magazine. The conviction that Mr Ahmedinejad would attack Israel or US forces in the Middle East, if Iran obtains atomic weapons, is what drives American planning for the destruction of Teheran's nuclear programme.

Does Israel Conduct Covert Action in America? by Michael Scheuer

For years – even decades – U.S. citizens have been the subject of a political action campaign designed and executed by Israel. Currently, Israel's campaign is part steady-as-she-goes and part improvisation to neutralize an unexpected and – for Israel – worrying development. So far, Israel's covert political action is succeeding hands down. Americans are gradually being indoctrinated to believe Islamists are today's Nazis and that there is no "Israeli lobby" in America. Simply put, Israel is conducting a brilliant covert political action campaign in the United States, a campaign any intelligence service in the world would rightly be proud of.

Iran: The Logic of Deterrence by Christopher Layne

Still, although a nuclear-armed Iran is not a pleasant prospect, neither is it an intolerable one. Tehran won’t be the first distasteful regime to acquire nuclear weapons. The United States has adjusted to similar situations in the past and can do so this time. Rather than preventive war and regime change, the best policies for the U.S. with respect to Iran are the tried and true ones: containment, deterrence, and diplomatic engagement.

A new world with Chinese characteristics by David Gosset

Seriously engaging China is to accept the very possibility of Sinicization. The West, in a position of scientific and economic superiority since the Industrial Revolution, is used to treating China as a product of orientalism. For the majority of Westerners, China is either a museum - hence the surprise of many foreigners in China: "I was expecting something else!" - or a classroom: one has to lecture Chinese people on more advanced standards. The West has to reflect on these prejudices and to look at China as a living matrix of a civilization that is already shaping our time.

Iraq much worse off than before we "liberated" it by DOUG THOMPSON

Iraq posed no immediate threat to the U.S. We know that now. I suspect our elected leaders knew it before the invasion but chose to withhold that information from the American people, Congress and our allies. Such conduct is considered criminal in most civilized societies but America ceased to be a civilized place a long time ago. A civilized society does not torture civilians or massacre women and children.

Government in secret talks about strike against Iran by Sean Rayment

The Government is to hold secret talks with defence chiefs tomorrow to discuss possible military strikes against Iran.

A high-level meeting will take place in the Ministry of Defence at which senior defence chiefs and government officials will consider the consequences of an attack on Iran.

Tehran faces growing Kurdish opposition by James Brandon

A little-known organization based in the mountains of Iraq's Kurdish north is emerging as a serious threat to the Iranian government, staging cross-border attacks and claiming tens of thousands of supporters among Iran's 4 million Kurds.

Rebuking Bolton by Gordon Prather

Under a Safeguards Agreement concluded by Iran with the International Atomic Energy Agency – as required by the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – Iran agreed to allow IAEA inspectors to satisfy themselves that no "source or special nuclear materials" are being used or have been used in furtherance of a nuclear weapons program.

'The Taliban Are Terrorists' by Eric Margolis

Canadian troops are not social workers and won’t change local customs. Only naïve fools think they could. American and Canadian journalists who rushed to Afghanistan see none of this because they stay safely “embedded” with occupation forces. They get the usual cook’s tour and cheery assessments, and are fed PR handouts. Cheerleading for war and flag-waving may sell papers, but it is not responsible journalism.

Government in secret talks about strike against Iran by Sean Rayment

The Government is to hold secret talks with defence chiefs tomorrow to discuss possible military strikes against Iran.

A high-level meeting will take place in the Ministry of Defence at which senior defence chiefs and government officials will consider the consequences of an attack on Iran.

Gasp! If Attacked Iran Would Actually Defend Itself by Kurt Nimmo

According to the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, it is breaking news that Iran, if attacked by the United States, would respond in kind. “As tensions increase between the United States and Iran, U.S. intelligence and terrorism experts say they believe Iran would respond to U.S. military strikes on its nuclear sites by deploying its intelligence operatives and Hezbollah teams to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide,” writes Dana Priest. “Iran would mount attacks against U.S. targets inside Iraq, where Iranian intelligence agents are already plentiful, predicted these experts. There is also a growing consensus that Iran’s agents would target civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, they said.”