Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Iran elections
Red Cross report on Gaza blockade
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.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Drugs in Central Asia
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."
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Obama like Bush again
Saturday, June 27, 2009
US abuses of prisoners in Afghanistan
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
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
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.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Israel ceding some control to Palestinians
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
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
Obama and opium in Afghanistan
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
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...
Thursday, June 25, 2009
World Drug report 2009
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...
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
US support for Pakistan's nuclear program
“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
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Iraq summary and the future
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
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.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Trade with Iran skyrocketed under Bush, and increasing under Obama
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
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
Iran's elections
"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."
Friday, June 19, 2009
Iraq's oil contracts
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.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Israel arms India
Venezuela, Hamas, Hezbollah, Swaziland support Ahmadinejad
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
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.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Obama plans to spend $5 TRILLION on defense, even excluding Iraq and Afghanistan
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.
Hamas accepts 2-state solution
'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.Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
Agent Orange in Vietnam: an ongoing war crime
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.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Private contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq
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
Friday, June 12, 2009
Shanghai Cooperation Organization
"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
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
"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
"“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.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Obama covers up torture
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
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Obama and Iran
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
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
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...
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Iranian elections issues
Shell will pay $15.5 million
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.
Monday, June 8, 2009
US torture
Iraqi oil
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
Sunday, June 7, 2009
New Iran report
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Taliban financing more from Gulf than drugs
Iraq's new US-built death squad
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.""
Friday, June 5, 2009
US nuclear weapons
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.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Obama's speech to Muslim world in Cairo
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
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Americans against closing Guantanamo
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.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Obama and torture photos: Maliki's role
Monday, June 1, 2009
Irish would now vote yes to Lisbon Treaty
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.