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Annan warns U.S. on Iran
May 16 2005
By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned the Bush administration that the Security Council
might deadlock if asked to punish Iran for its nuclear program.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says of relations with the U.S.: "I'm afraid that
it has gone sour again."
The United States and Britain have called for Iran to be brought before the Security
Council if it carries out threats to resume efforts to make nuclear fuel. The United
States and Britain believe the fuel could be used for bombs, while Iran contends that it
is to generate power. China and Russia, which have strong economic ties to Iran, might
veto any push to sanction Iran, Annan suggested in interviews with USA TODAY.
"Action or inaction will have a great impact on future cases and on our efforts to
promote nuclear non-proliferation," Annan said. A deadlock on Iran, he said, could
embolden North Korea and future North Koreas.
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Between
the Mullahs and Bush
April, 17, 2005
by Nicholas Schmidle
On December 6, a crowd of more than 1,000 rambunctious students booed and heckled and
mocked Iranian President Mohammad Khatami in an auditorium at Tehran University.
"Khatami, Khatami, where are your promised freedoms?" they chanted.
"Khatami, Khatami, shame on you!"
Eight years before, Khatami caught the students' imagination when he brandished a
miniature copy of Iran's constitution and vowed, in the same speech, to uphold the rule of
law. Now, the president has become something of a tragic joke among many Iranian students.
"The students are very disappointed because they paid a heavy price for supporting
Khatami," said student leader Abd Allah Momeni, "but in return they got
nothing."
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Reject
the Law of Silence
From the BBC's capitulation to the Israeli government, to the rush to eulogise a
deeply reactionary Pope, pressure on the media is leading to insidious new state
propaganda.
04/08/05
John Pilger
"New Statesman" - - Can you imagine the BBC apologising to a rogue regime that
practises racism and ethnic cleansing; that has "effectively legalised the use of
torture" (Amnesty); that holds international law in contempt, having defied hundreds
of UN resolutions and built an apartheid wall in defiance of the International Court of
Justice; that has demolished thousands of people's homes and given its soldiers the right
to assassinate; and whose leader was judged "personally responsible" for the
massacre of more than 2,000 people?
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Blix
says war motivated by oil
Apr 8, 2005
AP - Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has said that oil was one of the reasons
for the US-led invasion of Iraq, a Swedish news agency reports.
"I did not think so at first. But the US is incredibly dependent on oil," news
agency TT quoted Blix as saying at a security seminar in Stockholm.
"They wanted to secure oil in case competition on the world market becomes too
hard."
Blix, who helped oversee the dismantling of Iraq's weapons programs before the war, said
another reason for the invasion was a need to move US troops from Saudi Arabia, TT
reported.
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US fears civil
war in Kirkuk
04/08/05
American officers have warned that giving all senior positions to the Kurds in Kirkuk
would lead to rioting by the Arab and Turkomen communities.
April 7— The US military has warned that ethnic tension in the oil rich northern
Iraqi city of Kirkuk has reached flashpoint, according to a report carried by the Knight
Ridder news agency.
------------------------------------------------
The
myth of an Israeli strike on Iran
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
April 07, 2005
BERLIN - There is much talk these days of an impending Israeli military strike against
Iran's nuclear facilities, fueled most recently by a London Times article indicating that
the Israeli parliament had given the initial nod to the planned attack - to take care of
what the Israeli politicians of various persuasions regularly describe as the
"biggest existential threat" to the Jewish state.
Yet a careful examination of the various logistical, operational feasibility as well as
geopolitical and regional aspects or consequences of this much-debated scenario leads us
to the opposite conclusion, namely, the impractical and unworkable nature of the so-called
"Osirak option", named after Israel's successful aerial bombardment of Iraq's
nuclear reactor in 1981.
------------------------------------------------
The
Terrorism of War
04/07/05
By Ron Jacobs
- - Burlington, Vermont - - Since US planes first started bombing the mountains and plains
of Afghanistan back in October 2001, we have heard and read plenty about the US "war
on terrorism." As has become quite apparent to those who aren't blinded by the
rulers' propaganda, this war has very little to do with defeating terrorism and much to do
with attempting to establish permanent US domination of the world and its resources. Like
the Athenian, Roman, and British empires before it, the US government and the interests it
serves need easy and unchallenged access to resources, labor and markets to maintain not
only a certain margin of growth (which means profit), but to continue to exist.
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Khomeini Airport to go on stream April 30
April 07, 2005
TEHRAN (AFP) – Iran’s new airport will go on stream on April 30 after being
shut down last year over the involvement of a Turkish consortium, the country's transport
minister was quoted as saying Tuesday.
But Mohammad Rahmati suggested that this time there would probably be no role for a
foreign company at Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport, the student news agency
ISNA reported.
------------------------------------------------
The
Psychodynamics of Occupation and the Abuse at Abu Ghraib
An Interpretation After One Year of Revelations
04/07/05
By Stephen Soldz
"ICH" - - There are various explanations for what went on at Abu Ghraib. The
official US position is that a "few bad apples" among the reservist military
police (MPs) there went out of control, violating orders to treat the prisoners humanely
-- "Animal House on the night shift," as former defense secretary James
Schlesinger described it.(1) The MP defendants claim that they were following orders to
soften up the prisoners as a prelude to interrogation. Investigative journalists have
documented in detail the chain of memos, orders, and "advice" that led from the
top reaches of the US administration to the actions of those MPs.
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'Sausage-making'
in Iraq
April 06, 2005
The continued political impasse in Iraq is increasingly being viewed by the four
senior-most Shi'ite clerics of Iraq - the Marjaiya - as a symbolic defeat of their
aspirations of seeing a Shi'ite-dominated government take control in Iraq. The Marjaiya
has not run out of options yet. The question now is how long is it going to wait before
attempting to break the impasse.
------------------------------------------------
A British Obituary of Pope John Paul II
The Pope has blood on his hands
The Guardian; April 05, 2005
John Paul II became Pope in 1978, just as the emancipatory 60s were declining into the
long political night of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. As the economic downturn of
the early 70s began to bite, the western world made a decisive shift to the right, and the
transformation of an obscure Polish bishop from Karol Wojtyla to John Paul II was part of
this wider transition. The Catholic church had lived through its own brand of flower power
in the 60s, known as the Second Vatican Council; and the time was now ripe to rein in
leftist monks, clap-happy nuns and Latin American Catholic Marxists. All of this had been
set in train by a pope - John XIII - whom the Catholic conservatives regarded as at best
wacky and at worst a Soviet agent.
What was needed for this task was someone well-trained in the techniques of the cold war.
As a prelate from Poland, Wojtyla hailed from what was probably the most reactionary
national outpost of the Catholic church, full of maudlin Mary-worship, nationalist fervour
and ferocious anti-communism. Years of dealing with the Polish communists had turned him
and his fellow Polish bishops into consummate political operators. In fact, it turned the
Polish church into a set-up that was, at times, not easy to distinguish from the Stalinist
bureaucracy. Both institutions were closed, dogmatic, censorious and hierarchical, awash
with myth and personality cults. It was just that, like many alter egos, they also
happened to be deadly enemies, locked in lethal combat over the soul of the Polish people.
------------------------------------------------
Analysis:Did John Paul II bring down Communism?
By Robin Shepherd
United Press International
April 5, 2005
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia -- Vaclav Havel, the former Czech president and perhaps the greatest
of eastern Europe's anti-communist dissidents, well remembers the day in 1978 when Karol
Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II. "I think we were so delighted we danced for
joy," he said. Havel and his friends were not the only ones. When the new pontiff
visited his native Poland a year later, 10 million people -- more than a quarter of the
population -- turned out to cheer his arrival.
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Pope John Paul II was seeker of 'truth' : Iran
April 05, 2005
LONDON, April 4 (IranMania) - Iran's Shiite Muslim clerical regime paid tribute to Pope
John Paul II Sunday, praising the late pontiff as a seeker of "truth, justice and
peace".
"Pope John Paul II was a disciple of religious mysticism, philosophic deliberation
and thought and artistic and poetic creativity," President Mohammad Khatami wrote in
a condolence message to Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano.
"By emphasising his experience and teachings, (he) earnestly tried to utilise them in
the path of the triumph of truth, justice and peace," said Khatami, who held an
historic meeting with the pontiff at the Vatican in 1999.
------------------------------------------------
US
forces are prisoners in their own fortresses
04/04/05
Sitting in Saddam Hussein's palace they can stare over the parapets but that is as
much as most will ever see of Iraq
By Robert Fisk
"The Independent" - - I drove Pat and Alice Carey up the coast of Lebanon this
week to look at some castles. Pat is a builder from County Wicklow, brave enough to take a
holiday with his wife in Beirut when all others are thinking of running away. But I wanted
to know what he thought of 12th-century construction work.
How did he rate a Crusader keep? The most beautiful of Lebanon's castles is the smallest,
a dinky-toy palisade on an outcrop of rock near the village of Batroun. You have to climb
a set of well-polished steps - no hand-rails, for this is Lebanon - up the sheer side of
Mseilha castle and then clamber over doorsills into the dark, damp interior.
------------------------------------------------
Iranian New Year Celebrations Unite Afghans
Animosities Forgotten During Nowruz Holiday
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 4, 2005; Page A17
MAZAR-E SHARIF, Afghanistan -- "Looking at the audience, I see that you are all
Kandaharis," the singer said into the microphone as he surveyed a sea of heads
sporting the sparkly caps and long-tailed turbans common to that southern city. "But
my Pashto is not strong, so I hope you will enjoy our music in Dari."
------------------------------------------------
US has no time for Minutemen on Mexican border
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
04 April 2005
They Touted themselves as fearless patriots standing up for the defence of the homeland.
Their enemies painted them as dangerous vigilantes who threatened to create a bloodbath on
the US-Mexican border. In the end, the so-called Minuteman Project a private,
month-long initiative to patrol the southern Arizona border and fend off illegal
immigrants has turned out to be little more than an April Fool's joke.
------------------------------------------------
US
relied on 'Drunken liar' to justify war
04/04/05
'Crazy' Iraqi spy was full of misinformation, says report
Edward Helmore
"The Observer" - - New York - - An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi
has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq. According to a
US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for
pivotal intelligence on Iraq's alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile
labs was a spy described as 'crazy' by his intelligence handlers and a 'congenital liar'
by his friends.
------------------------------------------------
Zandi hails
Iranian football fans' role in 2-1 win over Japan
April 3, 2005
Berlin, April 2, IRNA-Fereydoun Zandi praised Iranian football fans for their non-stop
support of the Iranian national squad during its recent Asian World cup qualifying victory
against Japan at Tehran's Azadi Stadium.
"I played my first international game at home against Japan in Tehran, in front of
120,000 fans. You get goose bumps just listening to the national anthem. You can hardly
describe the atmosphere and I could not even hear my own words," Zandi said Saturday
in an interview with the online site of his Bundesliga club FC Kaiserslautern.
------------------------------------------------
Insurgents attack
Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison
April 3, 2005
Assault on jail results in 18 U.S. casualties, officials tell NBC News
WASHINGTON - A group of 40 to 60 insurgents attacked the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq late
Saturday in a well-coordinated assault that inflicted 18 American casualties, U.S.
military officials told NBC News.
U.S. officials, who spoke with NBC News in Washington, said insurgents attacked with two
car or truck bombs, 40 mortars and an intense ground assault.
------------------------------------------------
Army
reservist witnesses war crimes
04/03/05
New revelations about ongoing brutality at Abu Ghraib.
By Paul Rockwell
"Online Journal" - -Aiden Delgado, an Army Reservist in the 320th Military
Police Company, served in Iraq from April 1, 2003 through April 1, 2004. After spending
six months in Nasiriyah in Southern Iraq, he spent six months helping to run the
now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad. The handsome 23-year-old mechanic was a
witness to widespread, almost daily, U.S. war crimes in Iraq. His story contains new
revelations about ongoing brutality at Abu Ghraib, information yet to be reported in
national media.
I first met Delgado in a classroom at Acalanes High School in Lafayette, California, where
he presented a slide show on the atrocities that he himself observed in Southern and
Northern Iraq.
------------------------------------------------
Canadian
Intelligence Agencies on a rampage of arrest and torture
Aftermath: Complicity of Liberal Canada to Terrorize Citizens
04/03/05
By Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.
"ICH" - - British author and producer Adam Curtis (“The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear”, BBC
documentary challenging the American version of ‘War on Terrorism’), pointed out
clearly: “international terrorism is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and
distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through
governments around the world, the security services and the international media.” In
an age of knowledge, wisdom and human respect, we are the latest victims of this
‘dark illusion’, an organized political fraud intended to glue Muslims to the
terrorism myth. The American and British ruling elite has invested heavily to
institutionalize animosity towards Muslims and the Arabs. The new 21st century colonial
masters views humanity in numbers and digits, not as living moral beings with rights and
dignity.
------------------------------------------------
Another
country
As rumours persist of US plans to invade Iran, Rageh Omaar, the face of the BBC during
the Iraq war, visits Tehran - and finds a nation far removed from the one George Bush
seems to fear
April 2, 2005
The Guardian
One of the first things that western visitors see at Tehran's Mehrebad airport is two
large portraits of Imam Khomeini, and his successor as the country's supreme leader,
Ayatollah Khamanei. Next to them is an advert for a Nokia mobile phone. It is a useful
symbol of what is happening in Iran. Two years after the invasion of Iraq, the talk again
is of war, as George Bush and Tony Blair claim that Iran supports terrorism. Commentators
on both sides of the Atlantic use words like "eerie" to describe the
similarities between the crises.
------------------------------------------------
Ancient minaret damaged in Iraq
04/02/05
BAGHDAD: Iraqi police say an explosion has damaged one of the most important Islamic
architectural monuments. The spiral minaret, in the town of Samarra, is more than 1,000
years old. Police say insurgents blew up the top section of the 52m Malwiya tower, which
had been used by US soldiers as a lookout position.
------------------------------------------------
The
fraud of US democracy crusade
American media silent over mass protest in Bahrain
04/02/05
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The hypocrisy of Washington’s self-proclaimed crusade for democracy in the Middle
East found damning expression this week in the nearly total silence of the US government
and the American media over a demonstration that brought tens of thousands of protesters
into the streets of Bahrain last Friday demanding democratic reforms.
The contrast between the reaction to this popular upsurge against a dictatorial monarch in
the Persian Gulf and the attention lavished on the so-called “Cedar Revolution”
in Lebanon could not have been starker.
------------------------------------------------
Rethink on Iran's nuclear ambitions
04/01/05
FRANCE, Britain and Germany are considering letting Iran keep nuclear technology that
could be used to make bombs, diplomats said yesterday.
Such a step would lead to a clash with Washington, which has backed European Union talks
with Iran on condition Tehran renounce all activities that could produce nuclear fuel.
However, a US State Department spokesman dismissed the diplomats' remarks, saying
Washington and the three big EU countries were still united in insisting Iran must halt
all sensitive technology.
Sharing Washington's suspicions that Iran may be planning to develop nuclear arms, the EU
trio has offered Iran political and economic incentives to scrap its uranium enrichment
program, which can produce reactor fuel but could also give Tehran the capability to make
bomb-grade material.
------------------------------------------------
U.S. Dismisses Nuclear Tour As 'Staged Media Event'
04/01/05
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami (center) accompanied journalists on the tour
of the Natanz facility. (AFP)
Iran's President Mohammad Khatami has taken a group of journalists into an underground
nuclear facility that Washington wants dismantled. Until 2002, Tehran had kept the
existence of the Natanz facility a secret. Iranian officials continue to deny allegations
from the United States that facilities like Natanz are part of a program to enrich uranium
for nuclear weapons. But the U.S. State Department is dismissing yesterday's tour as a
"staged media event" that falls short of the openness needed to end the nuclear
dispute.
------------------------------------------------
America's
superpower status is about to end
04/01/05
"Cincinnati Post" - - Assume that the people who run defense and foreign policy
in the Bush administration are as ferociously intelligent as they think they are.
What would their grand strategy be?
The very phrase "grand strategy'' has a antiquated ring; enlightened modern opinion
rejects the notion that relations between the great powers are just a zero-sum game. But
this is a group of people who are steeped in traditional modes of strategic thought: Dick
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley and Condoleezza Rice would all
have worked quite comfortably for Cardinal Richelieu or Count Bismarck. (Whether they
would have been hired is, of course, another question.)
------------------------------------------------
Powell criticises Bush on Iraq
Geoff Elliott, Washington correspondent
April 01, 2005
FORMER US secretary of state Colin Powell claims he is "furious and angry" about
being misinformed over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and has criticised George W.Bush
and Donald Rumsfeld for their clumsy rhetoric in the lead-up to the war.
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Anthrax
for Export
04/01/05
U.S. companies sold Iraq the ingredients for a witch's brew
April 1998 Issue
The United States almost went to war against Iraq in February because of Saddam Hussein's
weapons program. In his State of the Union address, President Clinton castigated Hussein
for "developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver
them."
"You cannot defy the will of the world," the President proclaimed. "You
have used weapons of mass destruction before. We are determined to deny you the capacity
to use them again."
Most Americans listening to the President did not know that the United States supplied
Iraq with much of the raw material for creating a chemical and biological warfare program.
Nor did the media report that U.S. companies sold Iraq more than $1 billion worth of the
components needed to build nuclear weapons and diverse types of missiles, including the
infamous Scud.
------------------------------------------------
Cairo
to Kabul to Guantanamo
04/01/05
A Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper
`Abd al-Salam `Ali al-Hila arrived in Cairo on an EgyptAir flight, Friday, September 19,
2002, checking in the Semiramis Intercontinental, a five-star hotel overlooking the
capital’s Tahrir Square.1 Al-Hila disappeared within a week of his arrival in Egypt.
According to his brother, `Abd al-Wahab al-Hila, he is believed to have been taken first
to Baku, Azerbaijan, and he was then transferred to U.S. custody in Afghanistan. After
being held for some sixteen months in Afghanistan, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay, where he
is still being held.
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Iran
prevail in DPRK
AFP, Pyongyang
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Iran overpowered North Korea 2-0 in Pyongyang on Wednesday in a spiteful Asian World Cup
qualifying match in which the home team and crowd of 70,000 at Kim Il-Sung stadium reacted
furiously to their loss.
A first-half goal credited to Mehdi Mahdavikia but which appeared to take a deflection off
some clumsy North Korean defence gave Iran early breathing space in a very tight start to
the game.
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Dubai-Iraq ferry sails on a tide of wonder
By Otto Pohl International Herald Tribune
Thursday, March 31, 2005
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates The passengers begin arriving around 3 p.m. for the evening
ferry to Iraq. They bring refrigerators, bicycles and satellite dishes, piled high on
oversize luggage carts.
For many, the journey will be a long-awaited opportunity to see a land they fled long ago.
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Iran Air launches direct Tabriz-Baku flight
Tabriz, East Azarbaijan prov, March 28, IRNA-Iran's flag carrier, Iran Air, on Monday
launched its first direct flight from this northwestern Iranian city to Baku, the capital
of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Iran Air will operate its Tabriz-Baku flight once a week on Mondays.
Officials from East Azarbaijan province and Azeri consulate in Tabriz were present at the
inaugural ceremony.
Governor General of East Azarbaijan Province Mohammad-Ali Sobhanollahi said at the
ceremony Monday that expansion of ties with Turkey and Azerbaijan is a top priority for
the provincial administration.
------------------------------------------------
Iran
growing in strength, says coach Ivankovic
30 March 2005
by FIFAworldcup.com
A 2-1 victory over section favourites Japan has sent Iran to the top of Group 2 alongside
Bahrain in the final Asian qualifying round for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany™. For
Iran’s Croatian coach, Branko Ivankovic, the victory was their most important in
recent years – and could have a significant bearing on their World Cup prospects.
Going into the next match with little-known Korea DPR in Pyongyang, the 50-year-old told
FIFAworldcup.com that, after taking four points from two matches, he was 100 per cent
confident that his team could qualify.
FIFAworldcup.com: It goes without a saying that Japan and Iran?the two highest-ranked
Asian teams in the FIFA World Rankings, are the most fancied sides in Group 2. How
important was the 2-1 victory over Japan to your qualifying hopes?
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