Chinese interest in Iraqi oil

In recent years China has been quite interested in acquiring energy resources overseas, the latest chapter of this quest being Iraq.

Iran elections

Reese Erlich, Stephen Zunes and Trita Parsi all have articles arguing that those who see the CIA and US imperialism behind the protests misread the situation; the protests were independent and could not have been directed by the CIA, which is not omnipotent.

Red Cross report on Gaza blockade

The Red Cross released a damning report Monday on the effects of the Israel-led blockade on the Gaza Strip, describing the 2-year-old measure as having trapped the coastal territory's 1.5 million residents "in despair."

The international humanitarian organization lamented the fact that the blockade, imposed after Hamas seized control of Gaza two years ago, was impeding reconstruction efforts after Israel's offensive in the Strip at the beginning of the year.

"Gaza neighborhoods particularly hard hit by the Israeli strikes will continue to look like the epicenter of a massive earthquake unless vast quantities of cement, steel and other building materials are allowed into the territory for reconstruction," the report said.

Drugs in Central Asia

McClatchy reports on drugs in Afghanistan and Tajikistan in an article that highlights an important point about US policy towards drugs: combating the drugs trade is often superseded by other foreign policy objectives. In short, the US isn't doing much to fight the drugs trade because some of its important allies benefit from it, therefore it's better to do nothing about drugs and keep the allies.
Excerpt explaining that the West is not pressuring Tajikistan's president to fight drugs because he's an ally, even if many believe he controls the drugs trade:

Despite the public nature of the drug trade and related corruption in Tajikistan, however, the West has done relatively little to pressure President Rahmon.

Some Western officials acknowledge that it's the result of a political tradeoff: No one wants to risk alienating Rahmon on the issue of drug corruption because his authoritarian regime's cooperation is important for preventing Islamic militants from using the Tajik-Afghan border as a sanctuary.

"The Americans want to have a logistics base here, so do you think they're going to pressure the government about corruption?" said William Lawrence, a chief adviser for a U.N. Afghan border-management program based in Dushanbe. "The answer is no."

The U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe declined to comment, but a State Department official said that such balancing acts were common.

"There is always going to be a tradeoff based on different foreign-policy objectives, different security objectives, the tolerance for different types of corruption, different levels of corruption," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic protocol. "I don't think the situation in Tajikistan, frankly, is that much different than the rest of Central Asia in terms of these types of tradeoffs."

A second Western diplomat in Dushanbe was more blunt about Western governments ignoring reports on Tajikistan's official complicity in drug corruption.

"We send reports every month to our capitals, very negative, but they don't (care)," said the diplomat, whose country has troops in Afghanistan. "Because it's a so-called stable country leading to Afghanistan, we accept it."

Israeli settlements

Here is a good summary article of what Israeli settlements are, when they started, etc.

Iran elections

Dilip Hiro on the Iranian elections.

Israeli plumber works against occupation in West Bank

The NYT tells the story of an Israeli plumber working in the West Bank with other Israelis to make lives better for Palestinians and to resist the occupation. He is harassed by the Israreli authorities for his work, of course.

Obama like Bush again

The WP reports that the White House is "crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely." Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war.

US abuses of prisoners in Afghanistan

An investigation by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has revealed that former detainees at the U.S. Bagram airbase in Afghanistan were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs.

The BBC’s conclusions are based on interviews with 27 former detainees who were held at Bagram between 2002 and 2006. None of these men were ever charged with a crime. Hundreds of detainees are still being held in U.S. custody at the Afghan prison without charge or trial.

Amnesty International said it was "shocked" by the Bagram claims. It noted that a new detention center is currently under construction at the camp.

Obama moves to fund dissidents in Iran

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which reports to the secretary of state, has for the last year been soliciting applications for $20 million in grants to "promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in Iran," according to documents on the agency's website. The final deadline for grant applications is June 30.

This funding may actually hurt Iranian dissidents more than anything, as it gives reasons to the Iranian government to crack down on them by pointing to foreign interference.

The USAID call for applications can be found here.

MEK in Iraq

An article about the Iranian dissident/terrorist group based in Iraq and variously labeled PMOI, MEK or MKO.

It says that some Western politicians are calling for supporting the group in opposition to the Iranian mullah regime. The group is based in Iraq and has been accused by Human Rights Watch of committing human rights abuses towards individuals who disagreed with them.

Americans support Israeli settlements in Occupied Territories

An interesting op-ed in the Washington Post outlines concisely how many individuals and groups in the US fund Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories.

Israel ceding some control to Palestinians

Israel gave some extra control to Palestinian security forces over a few cities in the West Bank. Israel has also eased some of the checkpoints within the West Bank.

The change appears rather small though, as the UN, which has monitored the changes, said Israel's restrictions on Palestinian movement as a whole were becoming more entrenched:

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report this week there were now 613 obstacles in the West Bank, including 68 permanently manned checkpoints – five fewer than a month ago. It said there were other restrictions on the Palestinians, including Israel's West Bank barrier, restricted roads, the permit regime and closed military zones and nature reserves and settlements.

Some checkpoints were no longer permanently staffed or had only ad hoc checks. However, the UN said: "Some of the measures implemented in the past year have contributed to a further entrenchment of the system of access restrictions."

Iraq oil contracts

In a few days, the process of deciding which oil companies obtain contracts for Iraq's oil fields.
The Iraqi government hopes to finish contract negotiations by the end of August.
Most of the world’s big oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum and Chevron, are expected to submit bids. The companies were expelled from Iraq in 1972, after Saddam Hussein nationalized the oil industry.

Iran elections

Asia Times online questions the recent Chatham House study (an article by Kaveh Afrasiabi).

Obama and opium in Afghanistan

The Obama administration is shifting policy on drugs in Afghanistan, moving away from crop eradication and promoting alternative livelihoods. This will be welcome by most analysts, as spraying just makes it harder for poor farmers to generate income, and when crops are eradicated in some area, more planting of poppies happens in another area to compensate anyway.
Richard Holbrooke, the special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said President Barack Obama's administration was making "significant adjustments" from the previous George W. Bush team. "We are downgrading our efforts to eradicate crops -- spraying -- a policy we think is totally ineffectual," Holbrooke testified before Congress.
Critics, even within the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan, have feared that the United States was pushing impoverished peasants into the Taliban.
Holbrooke said the Obama administration was also ramping up agricultural aid to provide Afghans with alternative livelihoods.

Obama signs $106 billion war bill

Obama just signed a bill passed by Congress of the amount of $106 billion, most of which is for extra military spending. Also, the bill denies funding for closing Guantanamo Bay prison, showing that the US government is in no hurry to close the prison.
Passing a bill for such a large amount on military spending keeps the military industrial complex happy, but also acts as an economic stimulus in this time of crisis. The same economic stimulus could just as well be achieved through spending on civilian projects, but that would not satisfy the establishment as it would redistribute income to the population at large, as opposed to keeping it for military and high-tech corporations. Also, maintaining a climate of fear through boosting the military is important to keep the population docile and unquestionning...

World Drug report 2009

The World Drug report 2009 has been released here.

Among other things, it says that opium cultivation in Afghanistan, where 93 per cent of the world's opium is produced, decreased by 19 per cent in 2008.

It also says that consumption of synthetic drugs such as ecstasy have leveled off in developed countries but increased in developing countries.
I have personally witnessed the use of synthetic drugs in Dublin, Ireland. I'm not sure if Ireland fits in developed or developing countries though, so not sure how this affects the data presented in the report...

US support for Pakistan's nuclear program

Andrew Cockburn reports that the US has supported Pakistan's nuclear weapons program since its inception, up to this very day. He writes:
“Most of the aid we’ve sent them over the past few years has been diverted into their nuclear program,” a senior national security official in the current administration recently told me. Most of this diverted aid -- $5.56 billion as of a year ago – was officially designated “Coalition Support Funds” for Pakistani military operations against the Taliban. It may be that this diversion came as a terrible shock to Washington, but the money has been routinely handed over essentially without accounting being required from the Pakistanis. The GAO has huffed at items such as the $30 million shelled out for non-existent roads, of the $1.5 million for “naval vehicles damaged in combat” but that was as far as public complaints went. In the meantime, as Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen confirmed recently, the Pakistanis have been urgently increasing their nuclear weapons production.

A former national security official with knowledge of the policy explained this insouciance to me. “We want to get in there and manage [their nuclear program]. If we manage it, we can make sure they don’t start testing, or start a war.” In other words, the U.S. is helping the Pakistanis to modernize their nuclear arsenal in hopes that the U.S. will thereby gain a measure of control. The official aim of U.S. technical support, at an estimated cost of $100 million a year, is to render the Pakistani weapons safer, i.e., less likely to go off if dropped, and more “secure”, meaning out of the reach of our old friends the extremists.

Iran elections

Sahimi on the elections in Iran and the historical origins of the reformist-conservative split in Iran.

Iraq summary and the future

Patrick Cockburn neatly summarizes the Iraq War and what might be next. In short, Iraq first suffered the 2003 US invasion, then the Sunni Arab guerilla campaign against US troops (which killed or wounded 35,000 US troops) in 2003-2007, and at the same time (2003-2007) there has been a devastating Sunni-Shia civil war which left tens of thousands dead and 5 million displaced. The Shia won the civil war. The Sunni insurgents then switched sides to ally themselves to their former US enemies, out of both revulsion toward Al-Qaeda and facing defeat by the Shia. Now those Sunnis are supposed to be reintegrated into the Iraqi forces, but they are not safe as the Shia-led government knows they are in a way enemies.
With the American withdrawal, there might be war between the Kurds and the Arabs; the Kurds feel threatened because they are weakened by the departure of the US, to which they are allied.

Excerpt:

Iraqis will not come to love each other in the foreseeable future, but this does not necessarily mean they will try to kill each other. Iraqis have seen two wars since 2003. The first was waged by the Sunni Arabs against the US occupation. The Sunni guerrillas were highly effective and killed or wounded 35,000 American troops. The second conflict was a sectarian civil war between the Sunni and Shia communities which left tens of thousands dead and five million displaced. It was fought because after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein the Shia (60 per cent of Iraqis) had allied themselves to the Americans to displace the Sunni (20 per cent) as the predominant community in control of the Iraqi state. Both these wars are now over and both had winners and losers. The Shia defeated the Sunni and Baghdad is now at least three-quarters Shia. Much of the Sunni middle and professional class fled to Jordan and Syria and is unlikely to return. Facing defeat by the Shia and in revulsion against al-Qa’ida, the Sunni insurgents switched sides and allied themselves to their former American enemies. With their identities known and facing Iraqi government security forces 600,000-strong these ex-insurgents are unlikely to be willing or able to go back to war.

The one war which might still take place is between the Kurds and the Arabs. The Kurds were the heart of the old opposition to Saddam Hussein. They also had a stroke of luck in 2003. The Turks refused to join the US invasion of northern Iraq or allow their own territory to be used for an attack. The Iraqi Kurds, somewhat to the Americans’ surprise, became the main US allies. The Kurds advanced south, taking Kirkuk and Nineveh, mixed Kurdish-Arab provinces outside what became the highly autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. They found they had bitten off more than they could digest. The Kurds are now very nervous as their power starts to decline as the Americans depart, the Arabs of northern Iraq organize themselves and the central government in Baghdad becomes militarily and politically stronger. “This is the day every day Kurd was afraid of,” lamented a Kurdish observer in Sulaimaniyah. “Once more we are alone and face to face with Baghdad.”

US will keep air base in Kyrgyzstan

The US was supposed to lose its air base in Kyrgyzstan, useful for delivery for military operations in Afghanistan, but now a new deal has been signed. It still requires the approval of Kyrgyzstan's parliament.
A government source told Reuters earlier on Tuesday that under the new deal, annual rent for using Manas will increase to $60 million from $17.4 million.
Manas is home to about 1,000 U.S. personnel and serves as a key refuelling point for aircraft used in military operations in nearby Afghanistan.

Trade with Iran skyrocketed under Bush, and increasing under Obama

Trade with Iran is increasing.
Iran spent nearly twice as much on U.S. imports during President Barack Obama's first months in office as it did during the same period in 2008, showing that despite trade penalties and tense relations, the two countries are still doing business.
The US exported for $96 million of goods to Iran from January to April 2009, compared to $51 million during the same period in 2008. Soybeans, wheat and medical supplies — all considered humanitarian items exempt from U.S. trade sanctions — are among the top exports this year.

Several countries have been more than willing to do business with Iran. Those exporting more than $1 billion in goods to Iran last year included China, $8 billion; Germany, $5.7 billion; Italy, $3.2 billion; France, $2.6 billion; and Japan, $1.9 billion.

That compares with about $747 million in exports to Iran by Britain, $689 million by Belgium, about $685 million by Spain and $683 million by the U.S.

The value of U.S. exports to Iran rose exponentially under Bush, even as he called the country part of an "axis of evil." In 2001, Bush's first year in office, they totaled just $8.3 million, a tiny fraction of last year's number ($683 million).

Netanyahu's speech

Uri Avnery has a good article on Netanyahu's speech on Palestine. He makes a good point that Netanyahu is once again using a trick often used by the stronger party in international negotiations, which consists in making demands on the weaker party that for sure will be rejected by the latter. This helps picture the weaker party as "stubborn" and blames it for the collapse of the negotiations.

So Netanyahu used the phrase "Palestinian state"; maybe symbolically this is important, but in practice, he put a series of conditions to conduct negotiations that he knows the Palestinians can't accept. That will ensure that Palestinians will reject entering into negotiations, and then they will be pictured as the guilty party.

This is pasted from Avnery's listing of Netanyahu's conditions:

Condition 1: The Arabs have to recognize Israel as "the nation-state of the Jewish people" (and not just "a Jewish state," as many in the media erroneously reported). As Hosni Mubarak has already answered: No Arab will accept this, because it would mean that 1.5 million Arab citizens of Israel are cut off from the state, and because it would deny in advance the right of return of the Palestinian refugees – the main bargaining chip of the Arab side.

It should be remembered that when the United Nations resolved in 1947 to partition Palestine between a "Jewish state" and an "Arab state," they did not mean to define the character of the states. They were just stating facts: there are two mutually hostile populations in the country, and therefore the country has to be divided between them. (Anyhow, 40 percent of the population of the "Jewish" state was to consist of Arabs.)

Condition 2: The Palestinian Authority must first of all establish its rule over the Gaza Strip. How? After all, the Israeli government prevents travel between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and no Palestinian force can pass from one to the other. And the solution of the problem by establishing a Palestinian unity government is also ruled out: Netanyahu flatly declared that there would be no negotiations with a Palestinian leadership that includes "terrorists who want to annihilate us" – his way of referring to Hamas.

Condition 3: The Palestinian state will be demilitarized. This is not a new idea. All peace plans that have been put forward up to now speak about security arrangements that would protect Israel from Palestinian attacks and Palestine from Israeli attacks. But that is not what Netanyahu has in mind: he did not speak about mutuality, but about domination. Israel would control the air space and the border crossings of the Palestinian state, turning it into a kind of giant Gaza Strip. Also, Netanyahu’s style was deliberately overbearing and humiliating: he obviously hopes that the word "demilitarized" will be enough to get the Palestinians to say "no."

Condition 4: Undivided Jerusalem will remain under Israeli rule. This was not proposed as an opening gambit for negotiations but presented as a final decision. That by itself ensures that no Palestinian, nor any Arab or even any Muslim, could accept the proposal.

In the Oslo Agreement, Israel undertook to negotiate about the future of Jerusalem. It is an accepted legal rule that if one undertakes to negotiate, one accepts to do so bona fide, on the basis of give and take. Therefore, all peace plans provide that East Jerusalem – wholly or partly – will be returned to Arab rule.

Condition 5: Between Israel and the Palestinian state there will be "defensible borders." These are code words for extensive annexations by Israel. Their meaning: no return to the 1967 borders, not even with a swap of territory that would allow for some of the large settlements to be joined to Israel. In order to create "defensible borders," a major part of the occupied Palestinian territories (which altogether make up just 22 percent of pre-1948 Palestine) will be absorbed into Israel.

Condition 6: The refugee problem will be solved "outside the territory of Israel." Meaning: not a single refugee will be allowed to return. True, all realistic people agree that there can be no return of millions of refugees. According to the Arab peace initiative, the solution must be "mutually agreed" – which means that Israel has to agree to any solution. The assumption is that the two parties will agree on the return of a symbolic number. This is a highly charged and sensitive matter, which must be treated with prudence and the utmost sensitivity. Netanyahu does the opposite: his provocative statement, devoid of all empathy, is clearly designed to bring about an automatic refusal.

Condition 7: No settlement freeze. The "normal life" of the settlers will continue. Meaning: the building activity for the "natural increase" will go on. This illustrates the saying of Michael Tarazy, a legal adviser to the PLO: "We are negotiating about sharing a pizza, and in the meantime Israel is eating it."

All this was in the speech. No less interesting is what was not in it. For example, the words: Road Map. Annapolis. Palestine. The Arab peace plan. Occupation. Palestinian sovereignty. Opening of the Gaza Strip border crossings. Golan Heights. And, even more important: there was not a hint of respect for the enemy who must be turned into a friend, in the words of the ancient Jewish saying.

2.8 million Afghan refugees

UNHCR reports that as of late 2008, there are 2.8 million Afghan refugees, located in 69 different asylum countries (most of them are in Iran and Pakistan).

Iran's elections

Juan Cole has a detailed commentary on the Iranian elections, with a discussion of a new study by Chatham House. Cole concludes that the elections were stolen:
"The election was stolen. It is there in black and white. Those of us who know Iran, could see it plain as the nose on our faces, even if we could not quantify our reasons as elegantly as Chatham House."

Iraq's oil contracts

Patrick Cockburn reports on the oil contracts with foreign companies about to be awarded. Contracts will be service contracts to develop six of Iraq's largest fields over 20-25 years.

There has been opposition to the terms of the deals on the part of some Iraqis, such as those working in Iraq's state-owned oil industry.

Nevertheless the contract terms are not particularly good for the international oil companies, but if they get them, they would have a foot in Iraq's oil business for future contracts.

In any case, the Iraqi government desperately needs money, hence its push to award contracts to exploit oil.

Documentary on Afghanistan

Brave New Films has a new documentary on Afghanistan. Here is part 1:

Israel arms India

Israel has become India's leading supplier of weapons, UPI reports. This is an example of Israel acting as a US proxy to build up ties with strategic allies, in this case India.

Venezuela, Hamas, Hezbollah, Swaziland support Ahmadinejad

McClatchy reports that in the wake of the Iranian elections, Ahmadinejad has received support from the King of Swaziland; Hamas, the militant Palestinian organization; and Hezbollah, the radical Lebanese group.

Iran and Venezuela have recently paved the way toward closer economic and political relationships, which has alarmed Washington, which considers Latin America as its "backyard."

Hamas rejects Carter plea to recognize Israel

Hamas rejected Jimmy Carter's plea to recognize Israel: a Hamas official said that "Recognizing Israel is completely unacceptable." Hamas had however accepted a two-state solution, which is a tacit acceptance of Israel as a state.
This shows that Hamas has maintained a somewhat ambiguous position on the recognition of Israel and the 2-state solution. Hamas is certainly open to a two-state solution, as its leaders have stated many times; however they also adopt opposite positions sometimes.

Serbia 10 years later

Stephen Zunes has a good retrospective article on Serbia here.

Obama plans to spend $5 TRILLION on defense, even excluding Iraq and Afghanistan

If we consider the US military budget excluding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (which receive some funds separately), "the Pentagon's annual appropriations for 2009 were $514 billion. For 2010, Gates is requesting $534 billion. The flow is to increase by $20 billion." So Obama is increasing defense spending over Bush.
And it's not just for the coming year that Obama is planning to increase military spending. According to projections in the budget and excluding Iraq and Afghanistan, "the presidentially approved budget plan would continue increasing the Pentagon's budget: by another $8.1 billion in 2011 (up 1.5 percent), another $9 billion in 2012 (up 1.6 percent), and $10.4 billion in 2013 (up1.8 percent), and so on all the way out to 2019."
"Obama plans to spend $2.47 tril lion on the Pentagon for the years 2010 to 2013. If he makes it into a second term, he plans to spend an other $2.58 trillion for the years 2014 to 2017. Put together for the eight years, 2010 to 2017, Obama plans to spend $5.05 trillion."

This is a constant stimulus to the American economy, which is one reason why military spending is useful to the White House.

Warlords still powerful in Afghanistan

The Washington Post reports how warlords still exert much power as Afghan presidential elections are coming closer.

The Telegraph makes the same point.

Hamas accepts 2-state solution

Ismail Haniya, leader of Hamas, said he would be prepared to accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 border. He said:

'We are pushing towards the dream of having our independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.'

'If there is a real project that aims at resolving the Palestinian cause on establishing a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, under full Palestinian sovereignty, we will support it,' he continued.

He made this announcement as Jimmy Carter was visiting Gaza.

More money voted for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

The House of Representative approved by 226 to 202 a $105.9 billion emergency spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Agent Orange in Vietnam: an ongoing war crime

Marjorie Cohn writes that from 1961 to 1971 the US military sprayed Vietnam with Agent Orange, a defoliant. Between 2.5 and 4.8 million people were exposed to Agent Orange. 1.4 billion hectares of land and forest - approximately 12% of the land area of Vietnam - were sprayed.
The consequences? " The Vietnamese who were exposed to the chemical have suffered from cancer, liver damage, pulmonary and heart diseases, defects to reproductive capacity, and skin and nervous disorders. Children and grandchildren of those exposed have severe physical deformities, mental and physical disabilities, diseases, and shortened life spans. The forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam have been devastated and denuded. They may never grow back and if they do, it will take 50 to 200 years to regenerate. Animals that inhabited the forests and jungles have become extinct, disrupting the communities that depended on them. The rivers and underground water in some areas have also been contaminated. Erosion and desertification will change the environment, contributing to the warming of the planet and dislocation of crop and animal life."

The US government and the chemical companies knew that Agent Orange was dangerous but still kept producing and using it:
"The U.S. government and the chemical companies knew that Agent Orange, when produced rapidly at high temperatures, would contain large quantities of Dioxin. Nevertheless, the chemical companies continued to produce it in this manner. The U.S. government and the chemical companies also knew that the Bionetics Study, commissioned by the government in 1963, showed that even low levels of Dioxin produced significant deformities in unborn offspring of laboratory animals. But they suppressed that study and continued to spray Vietnam with Agent Orange. It wasn’t until the study was leaked in 1969 that the spraying of Agent Orange was discontinued."

An estimated 3 million Vietnamese people were killed in the war, which also claimed 58,000 American lives. For many other Vietnamese and U.S. veterans and their families, the war continues to take its toll.

60% of Afghanistan's Taliban are foreigners

A Talibab commander said that 60% of Taliban in Afghanistan were from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other countries.

Private contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq

A new report called "At What Cost? Contingency Contracting In Iraq and Afghanistan" describes contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jeremy Scahill has a good summary of its contents here.

Some of the main points:

-From fiscal years (FY) 2001 through 2008, the Defense Department’s reported obligations on all contracts for services, measured in real-dollar terms, more than doubled — from roughly $92 billion to slightly over $200 billion. In fiscal year 2008, this figure included more than $25 billion for services to support contingency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. These figures do not include State and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contracts.

-Contracting is still an unclear picture: There is still no clear picture of who the contractors in theater are, what services they provide, which contracts they perform, and what their support costs are.

-U.S. Army Central Command’s second-quarter fiscal year 2009 census reflected 242,657 active DoD contractor personnel in its Southwest Asia area of operations. This total includes 132,610 in Iraq, 68,197 in Afghanistan, and 41,850 in other Southwest Asia locations.

-If we look only at security (armed) contractors: the total number of Department of Defense security contractors in Iraq is: 12,942 and 3,321 for the State Department. In Afghanistan, there are 4,373 DoD security contractors and 689 for the State Department. As we previously reported, in the first quarter of 2009, there has been a 29% increase in the number of security contractors in Afghanistan and will continue to grow.

-There are many more security contractors who work for the Iraqi government, for other contractors, etc.

-the services provided by contractor KBR — with $31.4 billion funded through March 20, 2009 — could have been delivered for billions of dollars less.

Iran nuclear report

Gordon Prather has an article about the latest IAEA report on Iran's nuclear activities.

Shanghai Cooperation Organization

The SCO is evolving, as reviewed by Asia Times online. China and Russia are cooperating in the field of energy:

"Again, belying all Western expectations that Russian and Chinese priorities in energy security diverge, the two countries have finally begun taking big strides on the ground in energy cooperation. A variety of factors went into it - the fall in demand for energy in the recession-struck European markets; strains in Russia-European Union energy relations; Russia's own search for diversification of its Asian market; Russia's energy rivalries with the European Union and the United States in the Caspian and so on - but the fact remains that Moscow is increasingly overcoming its hesitancy that it might get hooked to the massive Chinese energy market as an "appendage", as a mere provider of raw materials for China's economy."

" Thus, it has become a moot point whether Moscow has or has not yet realized the then president Vladimir Putin's four-year-old idea of forming an "energy club" within the SCO framework. Effectively, a matrix is developing among the SCO countries (involving member countries as well as "observers") in the field of energy cooperation. It has several templates - China on the one hand and Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan on the other; Russia-China; China-Iran; Russia-Iran; Iran-Pakistan; and, of course Russia's traditional ties with the Central Asian states. (If the current Iranian plan for an oil pipeline linking the Caspian Sea and the Gulf of Oman materializes soon, yet another template may be formed involving Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.)"

Hezbollah bloc won popular vote in Lebanon's elections

The western media claimed that the pro-west coalition in Lebanon had defeated Hezbollah. In fact, the bloc led by Hezbollah won 55% of the popular vote against 45% for the pro-west bloc.

Counterpunch has a good article summarizing this:

With 52 per cent of about 3 million registered voters actually voting, the opposition led by Hizbollah’s coalition received 55 per cent of the vote (840,000) but only 45 per cent of the seats (57). Hizbollah itself fielded only 11 candidates in deference to its coalition partners, the same number it had in the previous parliament. All of them won their seats overwhelmingly. On the other hand, the governing coalition received 45 per cent of the vote (692,000) and 55per cent of the seats. In essence, the governing coalition won 68 seats, while independents won 3 seats, but later joined the governing coalition for a total of 71 seats.

In other words, the make-up of the current parliament changed only by one seat from the previous one, and that merely only happened after the independents were enticed to join the governing coalition. Moreover, the real surprise was that Gen. Aoun’s party, the coalition partner of Hizbollah, received, according to the results announced by the Lebanese interior ministry, 52 per cent of the Christian vote, though picking up fewer seats than his Christian rivals. Only in a fantasy world would such numbers be declared “a clear repudiation of Hizbollah’s coalition program,” as the clearly biased mainstream media, particularly the NYT’s Thomas Friedman ,would have you believe.

So the real story of the elections is that the will of the Lebanese people did not carry the day and the principle of majority rule was not respected. The Hizbollah-led coalition had indeed won more votes than the pro-Western coalition by a hefty 10 per cent. When President Obama received 53 per cent of the popular vote to John McCain’s 47 per cent last November, it was declared by the media and political pundits as a crushing defeat for the Republicans and a mandate for real change.

Israel's indirect murders

John Pilger reports on the fact that people in Gaza are dying because Israel blocks humanitarian supplies:

"At 7.30 in the morning on 3 June, a seven-month-old baby died in the intensive care unit of the European Gaza Hospital in the Gaza Strip. His name was Zein Ad-Din Mohammed Zu’rob, and he was suffering from a lung infection which was treatable.

Denied basic equipment, the doctors in Gaza could do nothing. For weeks, the child’s parents had sought a permit from the Israelis to allow them to take him to a hospital in Jerusalem, where he would have been saved. Like many desperately sick people who apply for these permits, the parents were told they had never applied. Even if they had arrived at the Erez Crossing with an Israeli document in their hands, the odds are that they would have been turned back for refusing the demands of officials to spy or collaborate in some way."

Pilger also reminds us that it is the US and Israel which are blocking the international diplomatic consensus every year:
"Every year, for more than a generation, the UN has called on Israel to end its illegal and violent occupation of post-1967 Palestine and has voted for "the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination." Every year, those voting against these resolutions have been the governments of Israel and the United States and one or two of America’s Pacific dependencies; last year Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe joined them."

John Kerry says Iran has right to enrich uranium; Obama wants direct negotiations without preconditions

In an interview, John Kerry said Iran had the right to enrich uranium under international law:
"“The Bush administration [argument of] no enrichment was ridiculous . . . because it seemed so unreasonable to people,” said Mr Kerry, citing Iran’s rights as a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. “It was bombastic diplomacy. It was wasted energy. It sort of hardened the lines, if you will,” he added. “They have a right to peaceful nuclear power and to enrichment in that purpose.”"

Obama sais "“We are willing to have direct negotiations with the Iranians . . . without preconditions,” Mr Obama said at the weekend, arguing Tehran needed to give the world confidence it was not seeking nuclear weapons." This, if acted upon, would be a major change: direct negotiations without the precondition of suspending enrichment; this is what blocked the whole thing under Bush.

Obama covers up torture

The Obama administration again acts to cover up Bush administration torture policies. This time, CIA chief Leon Panetta formally objected to federal judge Alvin Hellerstein, who was considering releasing detailed information on 92 videotaped CIA torture sessions of detainees.

Panetta asserted that releasing the written information “could be expected to result in exceptionally grave damage to the national security by informing our enemies of what we knew about them, and when, and in some instances, how we obtained the intelligence we possessed.”

Pakistan offensive

Asia Times online reports on the latest developments in Pakistan, where the military is attempting to crush militants (Taliban and al-Qaeda).

Obama and Iran

Obama has apparently sent both conciliatory and antagonistic signs to Tehran since he assumed power.
Some have complained that Tehran has not responded positively enough. But, as Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett note, this is because Obama has done nothing to cancel Bush's hundreds of millions dollars covert operations program against Iran:
"the Obama administration has done nothing to cancel or repudiate an ostensibly covert but well-publicized program, begun in President George W. Bush’s second term, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to destabilize the Islamic Republic. Under these circumstances, the Iranian government — regardless of who wins the presidential elections on June 12 — will continue to suspect that American intentions toward the Islamic Republic remain, ultimately, hostile."

US strategy and Iranian elections

Kaveh Afrasiabi discusses the upcoming Iranian elections and US foreign policy in the Middle East, which he neatly summarizes when he says that the US divides Middle East countries into "moderates" and "radicals". Those terms have nothing to do with a regime being progressive or radical, but rather radical = opposes Washington, and moderate = Washington allied.
That's why radicals include Hamas, Syria, Hezbollah and Iran; moderates include Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.

But the reality is different. For instance, Iran has a much more open political system than Saudia Arabia and the Gulf monarchies.

What some Arab countries fear with Iran is Tehran's brand of Islamist democracy, which could give ideas to their own repressed populations to ask for more liberties, etc.

In Afrasiabi's words:

"Rhetoric aside, the Barack Obama administration has shown a great deal of continuity with the George W Bush administration, by pursuing, in part via its Iran point man, Dennis Ross, the diplomatic track of bifurcating the region into "moderate" and "radical" camps. The former includes Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, with Iran, Syria, Hamas in Palestine and Lebanon's Hezbollah in the other camp.

The election for the 10th president of Islamic Republic exposes the hypocrisy and double standards of putting the considerably more democratic Iran below authoritarian Arab monarchies, as there is nothing "moderate" about the repression of women or Shi'ite minorities in Saudi Arabia, no matter how Washington spins it.

More than the nuclear issue, what the conservative oil sheikdoms in the Persian Gulf fear is Iran's brand of Islamist democracy that has mobilized masses of Iranians. The long-demobilized and politically docile populations in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates) could use Iran as a reference society and question the legitimacy of their archaic and tribal political systems that are perpetuated by the US for the sake of geo-economic and geostrategic interests."

Land mines in Iraq

There are 25 million landmines in Iraq, in addition to another 25 million unexploded ordnance pieces (including cluster bombs).

Many Iraqi civilians have been killed or maimed by those mines.

Since 1980, Iraq has endured three major wars: the Iran-Iraq war from 1980-88, the first Gulf War in 1991 and the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. All have had a part in making Iraq one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.

Iraq is asking for aid of the order of billions of dollars to remove those landmines.

It shouldn't be too hard for the US to make available a few billion dollars out of the huge $1 trillion or so it spends on the military every year. That is, if Obama suddenly became a moral agent...

Iranian elections issues

Juan Cole has a good post summarizing some of the issues on the upcoming Iranian elections opposing Ahmadinejad to Mousavi.

Shell will pay $15.5 million

The oil giant Shell has agreed to pay $15.5m in settlement of a legal action in which it was accused of having collaborated in the execution of the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other leaders of the Ogoni tribe of southern Nigeria.

The settlement is one of the largest payouts agreed by a multinational corporation charged with human rights violations. Shell and its Nigerian subsidiary SPDC have not conceded to or admitted any of the allegations, pleading innocent to all the civil charges.

But the scale of the payment is being seen by experts in human rights law as a step towards international businesses being made accountable for their environmental and social actions.

US torture

Alfred McCoy has a few articles on torture here and here. And an audio interview here.
McCoy traces the long history of US torture, putting in historical perspective the recent round of torture.

Iraqi oil

Iraqi Oil Report has a few good posts on the evolving situation regarding Iraq's energy resources.
Oil has started flowing from the KRG region (Kurdistan Regional Government) but the oil law is still unclear: "without a compromise over the control of oil policy, the rights to sign deals, and the nature by which foreign oil companies can access Iraq’s nationalized oil sector, any deals remain controversial."
The gas deal with Shell in Basra is moving ahead. Earlier, an analysis of the document had found the Shell joint venture could create a monopoly on all of Iraq’s gas – not just in Basra, and not just flared gas found in the oil producing process – with the requirement to feed domestic gas needs first unclear. A story to be followed.
The Iraqi Oil Law is still stuck in Parliament. There are disputes between the central government and the KRG over the right to sign contracts with foreign oil and gas companies and how to share revenues. Currently oil policy is torn between the Saddam-era guidelines, which consolidate nearly all oil policies and decisions within the Oil Ministry, and the Kurdistan Regional Government’s take on the 2005 Constitution giving it the rights to sign oil deals.
Finalizing the Oil Law is important as it is difficult to sign solid contracts for energy resources exploitation without it. Iraq is due to approve such deals by the end of June, but the contracts that are being bid on won’t be signed until the oil law is passed. This is the first offering of oil and gas fields for international oil companies to develop. A second round is expected to be completed by the end of this year. The Ministry of Oil has signed a variety of field development and drilling service contracts, and is in negotiations over a handful of others.
The KRG, meanwhile, has signed two dozen oil and gas exploration and development deals. The earliest, initially inked in 2004, have begun commercially producing and after a prolonged political dispute – still not over – oil is now being exported via the northern Iraq pipeline to Turkey. The central Iraqi government says the deals violate the central government’s sole authority to carry out oil policy such as signing contracts. This is compounded by a running dispute over territories outside the official KRG territory, claimed by Kurds – displaced and harassed from the area by Saddam Hussein – as well as Arabs and minority groups such as the Turkomen. The Kirkuk field, one of Iraq’s biggest and oldest, runs through the territories.
Both the KRG and the central government blame the other for creating the roadblock to passing the Iraq Oil Law. In its stead, the central government is operating under remaining Saddam-era laws (which consolidate oil policy under the central government's authority), and the KRG under the region’s own oil law. Both interpret the 2005 Constitution, vaguely worded in the arena of oil and territories, to back their agenda.
Finally, a reminder that because oil constitutes 95% of the Iraqi state's income, oil issues will always remain politicized. Today there are three prominent oil-related problems: the failure of Parliament to pass a new oil law, lack of new contracts and declining output.

Obama's speech to Muslim world

Watch a panel of experts discuss Obama's speech to the Muslim world with Fareed Zakaria. Juan Cole rebuts Benny Morris's non-sensical assertions about nuclear Iran and the Israel/Palestine conflict.

New Iran report

The IAEA released a new report on the state of Iran's nuclear activities. Not much new in fact: Iran has not suspended uranium enrichment, but no diversion of nuclear material toward military purposes has been found. This conclusion has repeated time and again by the IAEA; so once again, let's repeat the obvious: the Iranian nuclear "crisis" should be over.

Taliban financing more from Gulf than drugs

The top American diplomat for Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said that drugs was not the main source of income for the Taliban (drugs are assumed to generate about $300 million a year for the Taliban, less than half of their total funding). He emphasized instead private donations from Persian Gulf countries, believed to be a far more important source of income.

Iraq's new US-built death squad

The US has built a special operations force in Iraq which could become a major allied force to influence events there.

The Nation reports:

"The Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) is probably the largest special forces outfit ever built by the United States, and it is free of many of the controls that most governments employ to rein in such lethal forces. The project started in the deserts of Jordan just after the Americans took Baghdad in April 2003. There, the US Army's Special Forces, or Green Berets, trained mostly 18-year-old Iraqis with no prior military experience. The resulting brigade was a Green Beret's dream come true: a deadly, elite, covert unit, fully fitted with American equipment, that would operate for years under US command and be unaccountable to Iraqi ministries and the normal political process.

According to Congressional records, the ISOF has grown into nine battalions, which extend to four regional "commando bases" across Iraq. By December, each will be complete with its own "intelligence infusion cell," which will operate independently of Iraq's other intelligence networks. The ISOF is at least 4,564 operatives strong, making it approximately the size of the US Army's own Special Forces in Iraq. Congressional records indicate that there are plans to double the ISOF over the next "several years.""

US nuclear weapons

Obama has promised that the US would work towards the elimination of its nuclear weapons. The US and other nuclear weapons states are bound by the NPT to do so--and the NPT came into force in 1970, so they're a bit late.
As FPIF notes, "There is a simple test of the direction of policy: follow the money. In 2008, the United States spent at least an estimated $52 billion on its nuclear weapons program."
So as long as the US does not spend less on nuclear weapons, those promises will remain meaningless.
FPIF also notes that previous presidents JFK and Reagan also made promises similar to Obama's, but nothing significant happened, so it would not be the first time promises are made but no actions are taken.

Obama's speech to Muslim world in Cairo

The transcript and a video of Obama's speech to the Muslim world can be found here.

Some comments on a few quotes from the speech:

-"the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam."
"Globalization" has nothing to do with the opposition to the US voiced around the world; the opposition comes from American foreign policies, such as invading Afghanistan, then invading Iraq, then torturing people, etc.

-" The first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism in all of its forms."
So why don't you start by stopping the killing of innocent civilians in say Pakistan by drones and other places.

-America "reject[s] the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children."
A big lie: how many died in Iraq? Hundreds of thousands to over a million according to estimates.

Etc...

Cuba readmitted to OAS

The Organization of American States chose to readmit Cuba after 47 years of absence since 1962. This went against US wishes to isolate Cuba, which had started with the Cuban revolution and the Cold War.

Americans against closing Guantanamo

Two of every three Americans are opposed to closing Guantanamo, with an even higher percentage against moving some of the detainees from the "war on terror" prison to their own US states, poll results showed Tuesday.
By 40 to 18 percent, poll respondents said they believe Guantanamo has made the United States safer, accepting the arguments put forward by Obama's predecessor George W. Bush and his vice president Dick Cheney that the prison has boosted US security.

Obama and torture photos: Maliki's role

McClatchy reports that one reason why Obama did not want to release the torture photos was that Maliki "went ballistic" and told him that Baghdad would burn if he did so, meaning that violence would erupt in Iraq because Iraqis would be upset.

Irish would now vote yes to Lisbon Treaty

According to a new poll, 54% of Irish people would vote Yes on the Lisbon Treaty, against 28% who would vote No. Recently, the Yes vote made some gains.
This compares with a referendum result last June of 53.4% "No" and 46.6% "Yes." The Irish government has consented to holding a second Lisbon vote this autumn, subject to concessions in areas of concern for Irish voters, such as military neutrality, taxation and the retention of a European commissioner.