US cuts funding to "democracy" groups in Iran

This funding was under Bush but now cut. Anyway it hurt real human rights activists in Iran who opposed that funding.

Drones Kill Civilians in Pakistan

New study says 320 civilians have been killed by US drones in Pakistan since 2006.

Jundallah

Sahimi says that there is ample evidence that the George W. Bush administration was deeply involved in funding Jundallah. While it is not clear what the policy of the Obama administration is regarding Jundallah (the State Department flatly rejected Iran’s accusations), it is unlikely that the CIA’s direct or indirect support for Jundallah has ended.
But despite its claims, Jundallah is a sectarian, not liberation, movement. It is made of Sunni extremists who hate the Shi’ites, and its goal is to foment conflict between the two sects.
There is a movement in Pakistani Balochistan against the discrimination that the Baloch people suffer at the hands of the central government. The Baloch minority (totaling about 1 million) in Iran has also been discriminated against, although the Iranian government has been trying to improve the economy there. But Jundallah is not part of either struggle. Jundallah is simply a Sunni Salafi group of the Taliban or al-Qaeda variety, believed by many to have links to both groups and to be involved in drug trafficking as well.

He makes an important point that such probably US-backed attacks act also as an inhibitor on the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, which the US opposes:

But Iran and Pakistan have signed an agreement to construct a pipeline from southern Iran to Pakistan for transporting Iran’s natural gas to Pakistan. Initially, the pipeline was supposed to continue to India, but under pressure by the Bush administration, India withdrew from the project.

If constructed, the Iran-Pakistan pipeline, which has been dubbed "the peace pipeline," will be in direct competition with the pipeline through Afghanistan, if and when that pipeline is constructed. Instability in Iran’s Baluchestan will scare away potential investors in the Iran-Pakistan pipeline, and may prevent its construction altogether. These facts play an important role in Jundallah’s attack on Iran, but the mainstream media has ignored them.

ATonline also discusses the fact that Saudia Arabia is worried about Iran's rising influence in the region.

DEpleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan

See Counterpunch article here.

Colombia land grabs

An article in the Guardian describing how mining, timber and other companies pay some armed groups to chase peasants away from their land and grab the land for their commercial activities.

Locals have even less love for palm oil companies. They swept in in the 1990s on the heels of rightwing paramilitaries who killed and evicted peasants from their fields of corn and yucca, claiming they were guerrilla sympathisers.

Thousands of farmers, displaced and desperate, sold their land to companies that planted thousands of hectares of palm, which is used to make margarine, crisps, chocolate, soap, cosmetics and biofuel.

Armed groups have seized around 5.5m hectares during the past two decades, with indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities bearing the brunt, the relief agency Cafod said. "Current policies promoting the exploitation of natural resources, most recently biofuels, increase the risk that land belonging to displaced communities will end up, by dubious or illegal means, in the hands of businesses."

State loans have funded the palm expansion, with some firms returning the favour by funding President Alvaro Uribe's election campaigns. He promotes the plantations as a way to bring the countryside into the 21st century.

The army, officially neutral, appears to side with plantation owners. The Guardian accompanied one peasant, Jorge Lopez, 64, as he tried to reclaim his land after a 12-year absence. Soldiers first tried to block him, then summoned the palm company foreman.

The government, embarrassed by international scrutiny and criminal investigations into 23 palm companies, recently ordered some firms to return land to peasants.

Taliban finances

The C.I.A. recently estimated in a classified report that Taliban leaders and their associates had received $106 million in the past year from donors outside Afghanistan, a figure first reported last month by The Washington Post. Private citizens from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and some Persian Gulf nations are the largest individual contributors, an American counterterrorism official said.
Top American intelligence officials and diplomats say there is no evidence so far that the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or other Persian Gulf states are providing direct aid to the Afghan insurgency. But American intelligence officials say they suspect that Pakistani intelligence operatives continue to give some financial aid to the Afghan Taliban, a practice the Pakistani government denies.

Drugs is a second source of income.

A third major source of financing for the Taliban is criminal activity, including kidnappings and protection payments from legitimate businesses seeking to operate in Taliban-controlled territory, American authorities say.

The United States has created two new entities aimed at disrupting the trafficking networks and illicit financing. One group, the Afghan Threat Finance Cell, is located at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul. The second group, the Illicit Finance Task Force based in Washington, also aims to identify and disrupt the financial networks supporting terrorists and narcotics traffickers in the region.

See also this article in the WP.

Iraq oil contracts

Iraq's cabinet approved the contract with BP to develop the Rumaila field.

But anti-war groups criticized the deals.

Iran oil trading in non-dollar currencies

Since October 2007, Iran has received 85 percent of its oil revenues in currencies

other than the US dollar and Tehran is determined to find a substitute for the US dollar for the rest of its 15 percent of oil revenues.

Peter Galbraith and the Kurds' oil

An article describing Peter Galbraith's dealing in Kurdish oil is here.

Galbraith--the son of John Kenneth Galbraith--has worked as an adviser for the Kurds in Iraq and has argued strongly for a decentralization of the country, including strong Kurdish control over the oil resources in their region.
But in June 2004, Galbraith established a small, U.S.-registered company, Porcupine, that held a five percent stake in a newly exploited oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, a Norwegian daily revealed last Saturday.
So the issue is that he had a conflict of interest.

Agent Orange

The VA estimates that there may be as many as 200,000 US veterans who are suffering from Agent Orange-related illnesses. But according to a court case brought on behalf of Vietnamese victims, which was dismissed by a US Federal District Judge who ruled that there was “no basis for the claims,” there are at least three million Vietnamese, and possibly as many as 4.8 million, who are suffering the same Agent Orange-related illnesses as American veterans and their children. It is estimated that as many as 800,000 Vietnamese in the country’s south currently suffer from chronic health problems due to Agent Orange exposure, either to themselves, or to a parent or grandparent. Most of these victims, some of whom are retarded, and others of whom cannot walk or have no use of their arms, need constant care.

Agent Orange was sprayed over 1.4 million hectares—12% of the total land area of Vietnam and almost 25% of the southern half of the country.

Karzai's cabinet

Karzai promised a lot of political positions in return for electoral support. Also, he has to balance warlords and ethnic chiefs with bureaucrats and technocrats and Western favorites.

House votes for Iran sanctions

The vote was 414-6. The bill permits US states, local governments and pension funds to end investments in firms that have 20 million dollars or more invested in Iran's petroleum or natural gas operations.

Security and opium cultivation in Afghanistan

A map of Afghanistan showing that areas where security is worst also have higher levels of opium cultivation.

Russia's nuclear preemptive strike doctrine

Russia, just like NATO, reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first.
See also here.

Iran

Sahimi on Iran: On the first day of negotiations Iran made a symbolic, yet significant, concession. It agreed to transfer three quarters of its low-enriched uranium (LEU), about 1200 kg, to Russia to be enriched to 19.5 percent (Iran’s LEU is at the 3.8 percent level) and then to France to be converted to fuel rods. Tehran needs the fuel for its 5 MW nuclear research reactor, now operating at 3 MW due to lack of fuel; it will completely run out of fuel in 18 months after all of its Argentine-supplied fuel is spent. Note that once enriched uranium is converted to fuel rods, it can never be used for weaponization.