November 26, 2007

Congress, Courts Examine 'State Secrets'
In federal courts and on Capitol Hill, challenges are brewing to a key legal strategy President Bush is using to protect a secret surveillance program that monitors phone calls and e-mails inside the United States. Under grilling from lawmakers and attack by lawsuits alleging Bush authorized the illegal wiretapping of Americans, the White House has invoked a legal defense known as the "state secrets" doctrine – a claim that the president has inherent and unchecked power to shield national security information from disclosure, either to plaintiffs in court or to congressional overseers.
Read Associated Press news report at ap.google.com

November 19, 2007

Polish defense chief wants to rethink stance on missile defense
Poland's new defense minister said the country should take a new look at whether allowing the United States to base part of a missile defense system in the country would serve its interests, according to a newspaper interview published Monday. Bogdan Klich's remarks, published in the Dziennik daily, underlined the shift in thinking on the issue under Poland's new government, which took power Friday. The new prime minister, Donald Tusk, and his government have vowed to take a firmer stand in its relations with the United States. Under former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Warsaw began negotiations with Washington on its request to place 10 interceptor missiles in the country, frequently expressing strong support for the plan as a way to strengthen the trans-Atlantic alliance. But in the interview, Klich was quoted as saying that Poland must once again "weigh the benefits and costs of this project for Poland. And if that balance results unfavorably, we should draw a conclusion from those results."
Read article in the International Herald Tribune

November 18, 2007

Chavez warns US at Opec summit
Venezuela's president has warned that oil prices could more than double if the US attacks his country or Iran. In his opening address on Saturday at a rare Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries summit in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital, he declared that the group should "assert itself as an active political agent". "If the United States was mad enough to attack Iran or aggress Venezuela again the price of a barrel of oil won't just reach $100 but even $200 dollars," he said.
Read article at aljazeera.net

November 15, 2007

America suffers an epidemic of suicides among traumatised army veterans
More American military veterans have been committing suicide than US soldiers have been dying in Iraq, it was claimed yesterday. At least 6,256 US veterans took their lives in 2005, at an average of 17 a day, according to figures broadcast last night. Former servicemen are more than twice as likely than the rest of the population to commit suicide. Such statistics compare to the total of 3,863 American military deaths in Iraq since the invasion in 2003 - an average of 2.4 a day, according to the website ICasualties.org.
Read article in The Times (UK)

November 15, 2007

Missiles May Be Deployed in Belarus
A general warned Wednesday that Russia could deploy short-range missiles to Belarus as part of efforts to counter planned U.S. missile defense sites in Europe, Itar-Tass reported. Colonel-General Vladimir Zaritsky, chief of artillery and rocket forces for the ground forces, said, "Any action meets a counteraction, and this is the case with elements of the U.S. missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic."
Read article in the Moscow Times (Russia)

November 14, 2007

MEPs demand EU action on secret CIA prisons
STRASBOURG - MEPs investigating secret CIA prisons in Europe are demanding that member states take action on their evidence. The evidence from the parliament's temporary committee on CIA activities in Europe, presented on Wednesday in Strasbourg, concerns an interception by the Swiss satellite, Onyx, of a fax between the Egyptian foreign minister in Cairo and his ambassador in London. According to MEPs, the interception reveals that 23 Afghan and Iraqi citizens are subject to interrogation on a daily basis at military centres in the Ukraine Romania, Kosovo and Macedonia. "We have strong serious, specific evidence that a military base in the Ukraine was used to detain prisoners by the CIA," said Italian socialist deputy Claudio Fava, co-leader of the temporary committee, at a press conference on Wednesday.
Read article at theparliament.com

November 13, 2007

'Hidden Costs' Double Price Of Two Wars, Democrats Say
The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, according to a new study by congressional Democrats that estimates the conflicts' "hidden costs"-- including higher oil prices, the expense of treating wounded veterans and interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars. That amount is nearly double the $804 billion the White House has spent or requested to wage these wars through 2008, according to the Democratic staff of Congress's Joint Economic Committee. Its report, titled "The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War," estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far cost the average U.S. family of four more than $20,000. "The full economic costs of the war to the American taxpayers and the overall U.S. economy go well beyond even the immense federal budget costs already reported," said the 21-page draft report, obtained yesterday by The Washington Post.
Read article in the Washington Post (USA)

November 12, 2007

US most important UK ally – Brown
Gordon Brown has said Britain's "most important" relationship is with the US, in his first major foreign policy speech since becoming prime minister. He warned that he had "no truck with anti-Americanism" and said the EU should strengthen ties with the US.
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: Given that a British Royal Navy aircraft carrier will be deployed in the Gulf next spring, the evidence would appear to be increasing that Gordon Brown has agreed to support US air strikes against Iran.

November 9, 2007

Food on agenda for US-EU trade talks
The first meeting of the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) takes place in Washington this week, with the freeing up of the food trade on the cards. The trade talks aim to improve trade relations between the two powerhouses in an effort to remain competitive on a global basis, particularly in view of growing pressures from Asian traders. US and EU negotiators say they hope to reach deals on regulatory rules that limit trade in food during the two day talks, which begin in Washington tomorrow.
Read article at nutraingredients-usa.com
Comment: Signed in April 2007, the transatlantic economic integration agreement that created the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) threatens the harmonizing of U.S. dietary supplement legislation to restrictive European regulations. To learn more, click here.

November 8, 2007

Falling in love again
For a whirlwind 26 hours Nicolas Sarkozy attempted yesterday to recapture US hearts with a message tailor-made for Fox News: America can count on France. And for a moment senators listening to the French president's address to a joint session of congress might have been lulled into believing that French and American soldiers had stood shoulder to shoulder in every conflict since the American war of independence. There was no mention of Iraq or of the fact that his predecessor Jacques Chirac had led European opposition to the war. Mr Sarkozy solemnly pledged to stay engaged in Afghanistan for as long as it takes. In fact, France is withdrawing its special forces from the country.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)
Comment: Sarkozy presented himself as a 'friend of America' but the reality is much more sobering. His visit served to plan the first nuclear war in the history of mankind. To learn more about Sarkozy, click here.

November 8, 2007

The EU is trying to trick developing countries into poor trade deals
These negotiations are flawed and unnecessarily hurried, say Alex Cobham and Sophie Powell
Peter Mandelson and Louis Michel, the EU's commissioners for trade and development, are staggeringly disingenuous in their broadside at those raising concerns about the impact on poor countries of the EU's stance in trade negotiations (This is not a poker game, October 31). They claim "The economic partnership agreements (EPAs) that the EU is negotiating with six African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) regions [will] take a trading relationship based on dependency and turn it into one based on diversification and growth." Such an outcome is unlikely if they insist on using every trick possible to extract more sweeping deals than ACP countries believe are in their best interests.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)

November 2, 2007

US diplomats resist forced duty in Iraq: report
US State Department diplomats have criticized new rules that will force some to work in Iraq against their will or risk dismissal, the Washington Post reported Thursday. Their complaints were voiced at a meeting of hundreds of diplomats and senior officials to hear Harry Thomas, the department's director of human resources, describe the new policy. Service in Baghdad was "a potential death sentence," said a man who identified himself as a 46-year Foreign Service veteran, the Post reported. "Any other embassy in the world would be closed by now," he said to sustained applause, the Post reported, citing an audiotape of the meeting.
Read article at afp.google.com

November 2, 2007

Navy to patrol Gulf in the spring
A Royal Navy aircraft carrier will be deployed in the Gulf next spring, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed. Illustrious will sail for the highly sensitive waters near Iran accompanied by Edinburgh, a Type 42 destroyer whose main role is providing air defence, and Westminster, a Type 23 frigate. Two minesweepers and three support vessels from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary will complete the deployment for Operation Orion 08. The ships will spend about six months in the Gulf, the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. Their presence may coincide with a crucial period in the West's confrontation with Iran. Observers believe that the spring is the last possible moment for President George W Bush to order military strikes against Iran's nuclear programme.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
Comment: When questioned about this development, the British Ministry of Defence claimed that the deployment had been "planned for a while." Just like the attack on Iraq, in other words…

October 29, 2007

Trash Talking World War III
America's allies and increasingly the American public are playing a ghoulish guessing game: Will President Bush manage to leave office without starting a war with Iran? Mr. Bush is eagerly feeding those anxieties. This month he raised the threat of "World War III" if Iran even figures out how to make a nuclear weapon. With a different White House, we might dismiss this as posturing - or bank on sanity to carry the day, or the warnings of exhausted generals or a defense secretary more rational than his predecessor. Not this crowd. Four years after his pointless invasion of Iraq, President Bush still confuses bullying with grand strategy. He refuses to do the hard work of diplomacy - or even acknowledge the disastrous costs of his actions.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)

October 28, 2007

UN nuclear watchdog chief expresses concern about anti-Iran rhetoric from US
The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Sunday he had no evidence Iran was working actively to build nuclear weapons and expressed concern that escalating rhetoric from the U.S. could bring disaster.
Read article in the International Herald Tribune

October 28, 2007

Thousands Protest In 11 US Cities Against Iraq War
Peace activists demonstrated in at least 11 cities across the United States Saturday to mark the fifth anniversary of the vote by the U.S. Senate approving the Iraq war. As Amy Bickers reports from the northwestern city of Seattle, the message was the same everywhere - end the war and bring the troops home.
Tens of thousands of anti-war activists protested across America Saturday calling for a swift finish to the war in Iraq and demanding a cut-off of U.S. congressional funding. The anti-war demonstrations took place in several major cities, including New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle.
Read article on the Voice of America website (USA)

October 26, 2007

Putin compares U.S. missile defense plans with 1962 Cuban crisis
Russian President Vladimir Putin compared on Friday U.S. missile defense system plans for Central Europe with the 1962 Cuban crisis. Speaking at a news conference following the Russia-EU summit in Portugal, the president said the plans, announced in January, to deploy missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic were reminiscent of the political crisis caused by the Soviet Union's missile bases in Cuba in 1962. "The situation is quite similar technologically for us. We have withdrawn the remains of bases from Vietnam and Cuba, but such threats are being created near our borders," Putin said.
Read article at RIA Novosti (Russia)

October 25, 2007

US missile defense proposals unacceptable and do not suit Russia - Serdyukov
U.S. missile defense proposals are unacceptable and do not suit Russia. There remain disagreements over a number of issues between Russia and NATO counties, in the first place over missile defense and the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said on Thursday, after an informal Russia-NATO Council meeting at the level of defense ministers. Underlining that Russia's position on missile defense remained unchanged, the Russian minister said "at least everything we've been offered does not suit us; we stick to our position, although it seemed to me Americans have begun to understand our concerns better."
Read article on the ITAR-TASS News Agency website (Russia)

October 24, 2007

Hans Blix questions U.S. fears over Iran
Former United Nations' chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has challenged U.S. President George Bush's assertion that Iran poses a nuclear threat and the world should take pre-emptive action.
Read article at ctv.ca (Canada)

October 22, 2007

Bush's Request for Wars Increases to $196 Billion
President Bush asked Congress on Monday to approve $196 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other national security programs, setting the stage for a new confrontation with Democrats over the administration's handling of Iraq. Mr. Bush's request increased the amount of the proposed spending by $46 billion over the $150 billion already requested this year.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

October 22, 2007

Companies Seeking Immunity Donate to Senator
Executives at the two biggest phone companies contributed more than $42,000 in political donations to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV this year while seeking his support for legal immunity for businesses participating in National Security Agency eavesdropping.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

October 20, 2007

Bush World War III rant shows he's really lost it now
George W. Bush put his foot in his mouth again when he warned of the possibility of World War III breaking out.
The irresponsible remarks of the president of a country armed with nuclear weapons shocked the world. "So I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," Bush told reporters at a White House press conference on Wednesday, exactly one day after Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Tehran and expressed support for Iran's peaceful nuclear program. What are we to make of the use of such language? Either Bush has gone totally mad and now makes statements without consulting his advisors, or the neoconservatives are dreaming of a new world order and no longer feel compelled to hide their goal. How can Bush talk this way when Iran's nuclear activities are open to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency? The IAEA, the UN's only nuclear supervisory body, has announced it has found no evidence suggesting that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapons program, and Iran and the agency have taken constructive steps to clear up the remaining ambiguities one by one.
Read article in the Tehran Times (Iran)

October 19, 2007

Clinton bucks the trend and rakes in cash from the US weapons industry
The US arms industry is backing Hillary Clinton for President and has all but abandoned its traditional allies in the Republican party. Mrs Clinton has also emerged as Wall Street's favourite. Investment bankers have opened their wallets in unprecedented numbers for the New York senator over the past three months and, in the process, dumped their earlier favourite, Barack Obama.
Read article in the Independent (UK)

October 19, 2007

Claims of secret CIA jail for terror suspects on British island to be investigated
· Legal charity urges action on Diego Garcia claims
· Prisoners may have been held in ships off coast
Allegations that the CIA held al-Qaida suspects for interrogation at a secret prison on sovereign British territory are to be investigated by MPs, the Guardian has learned. The all-party foreign affairs committee is to examine long-standing suspicions that the agency has operated one of its so-called "black site" prisons on Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean that is home to a large US military base.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)

October 15, 2007

U.S. Cancer Death Rates Are Found to Be Falling
Death rates from cancer have been dropping by an average of 2.1 percent a year recently in the United States, a near doubling of decreases that began in 1993, researchers are reporting.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: The vast bulk of these decreases have taken place since the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) was passed by Congress in 1994. DSHEA classifies supplements as foods and places the burden of proof on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to show that any particular dietary supplement is unsafe. The text of DSHEA makes specific reference to Congress having found that there is a link between the ingestion of dietary supplements and the prevention of chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis. It also states that preventive health measures, including appropriate use of safe nutritional supplements, will limit the incidence of chronic diseases, and reduce long-term health care expenditures. 52 percent of Americans now identify themselves as regular users of dietary supplements.

October 13, 2007

The man who knew too much
He was the CIA's expert on Pakistan's nuclear secrets, but Rich Barlow was thrown out and disgraced when he blew the whistle on a US cover-up. Now he's to have his day in court. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report
Rich Barlow idles outside his silver trailer on a remote campsite in Montana - itinerant and unemployed, with only his hunting dogs and a borrowed computer for company. He dips into a pouch of American Spirit tobacco to roll another cigarette. It is hard to imagine that he was once a covert operative at the CIA, the recognised, much lauded expert in the trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). He prepared briefs for Dick Cheney, when Cheney was at the Pentagon, for the upper echelons of the CIA and even for the Oval Office. But when he uncovered a political scandal - a conspiracy to enable a rogue nation to get the nuclear bomb - he found himself a marked man.
Read article in The Guardian (UK)

October 13, 2007

Iraq War Is 'Nightmare' With No End, Sanchez Says
Retired Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, who led U.S. forces in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal, criticized American leaders for placing partisan gain at home above victory abroad and consigning America to a "nightmare with no end in sight." The White House, Congress and especially the State Department bear blame for a strategy that has shipped forces overseas without the political and economic backing crucial for victory, Sanchez said in a speech yesterday in Arlington, Virginia. "Who will demand accountability for the failure of our national political leaders involved in the management of this war?" Sanchez asked, according to a transcript of the speech to military reporters and editors. "In my profession, these types of leaders would immediately be relieved or court-martialed."
Read article at bloomberg.com

October 11, 2007

Al Gore's inconvenient judgment
Al Gore's award-winning climate change documentary was littered with nine inconvenient untruths, a judge ruled yesterday. An Inconvenient Truth won plaudits from the environmental lobby and an Oscar from the film industry but was found wanting when it was scrutinised in the High Court in London. Mr Justice Burton identified nine significant errors within the former presidential candidate's documentary as he assessed whether it should be shown to school children. He agreed that Mr Gore's film was "broadly accurate" in its presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change but said that some of the claims were wrong and had arisen in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration".
Read article in The Times (UK)

October 9, 2007

Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Torture Appeal
The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear an appeal filed on behalf of a German citizen of Lebanese descent who claims he was abducted by United States agents and then tortured by them while imprisoned in Afghanistan. Without comment, the justices let stand an appeals court ruling that the state secrets privilege, a judicially created doctrine that the Bush administration has invoked to win dismissal of lawsuits that touch on issues of national security, protected the government's actions from court review. In refusing to take up the case, the justices declined a chance to elaborate on the privilege for the first time in more than 50 years.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: Given that the Bush administration is now resorting to torture, secrecy and the protection of its actions from court review, the American people have more than enough evidence to demand, without delay, the immediate impeachment of its senior officials.

October 7, 2007

Gordon Brown 'will back air strikes on Iran'
Gordon Brown has agreed to support US air strikes against Iran if the Islamic republic orchestrates large-scale attacks by militants against British or American forces in Iraq, according to senior Pentagon officials.
Read article in the Sunday Telegraph (UK)

October 5, 2007

Drum beaters for Iran war should think again
In recent months there has been an audible increase in the drumming by those Americans most hell-bent on bombing Iran's nuclear weapons programme before the wee strange one can threaten Israel with annihilation. The Israeli airforce can destroy one site, as it did Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1982, but only the US can mount a sustained bombing campaign to suppress Iran's air defence systems before turning to as many as 2,000 targets. Vice-presidential adviser David Wurmser is now arguing for a two-for-the-price-of-one deal, whereby the US hits not just Iran but also Syria, in a "strategy" that is beginning to resemble the futile game of "whack a mole". Coordinated teams of spooky folk are currently circling western capitals, none too subtly removing non-belligerent options from the table. More stringent sanctions are quickly dismissed as too slow and porous.
Read Michael Burleigh's article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)

October 4, 2007

Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations
When the Justice Department publicly declared torture "abhorrent" in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations. But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales's arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

September 29, 2007

Iran says CIA is 'terrorist' agency
Iran's parliament has approved a nonbinding resolution to label the CIA and the US army as "terrorist organisations".
Read article at aljazeera.net

September 28, 2007

Protests at EU deadline for third-world trade pacts
Anti-poverty campaigners demonstrated in more than 40 countries yesterday to protest at the European Union's insistence on sealing new free trade pacts with the world's poorest countries this year. Peter Mandelson, the EU trade commissioner, warned yesterday that 77 of the world's poorest countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific would face "less generous tariff rates" in trade with the EU unless they completed negotiations on new "economic partnership agreements" (EPAs) with Brussels by the year's end.
Read article in The Guardian (UK)

September 27, 2007

Women's health group seeks ban on HPV immunization
Says studies haven't looked at long-term effects of the vaccine and booster shots
A Quebec women's health group is calling for a moratorium on a provincial program to immunize girls against the human papillomavirus that causes cervical cancer, warning the long-term effects of the Gardasil vaccine are not known. "We are concerned because there are potential dangers on many levels," said Lydya Assayag, director of the Réseau québécois d'action pour la santé des femmes. "We are dealing with a vaccine that was approved only in 2006. So, it's very recent. The clinical studies haven't looked at the long-term effects of the vaccine and the booster shots that have to be given four years or five years later."
Read article from The Gazette at canada.com

September 26, 2007

Pentagon Asks $190 Billion in 2008 Iraq War Spending
The Pentagon is requesting almost $190 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in fiscal year 2008, which would be the largest annual expenditure since the conflicts began.
Read article at bloomberg.com

September 23, 2007

Generals opposing Iraq war break with military tradition
The generals acted independently, coming in their own ways to the agonizing decision to defy military tradition and publicly criticize the Bush administration over its conduct of the war in Iraq. What might be called The Revolt of the Generals has rarely happened in the nation's history. In op-ed pieces, interviews and TV ads, more than 20 retired U.S. generals have broken ranks with the culture of salute and keep it in the family. Instead, they are criticizing the commander in chief and other top civilian leaders who led the nation into what the generals believe is a misbegotten and tragic war.
Read article at signonsandiego.com (USA)

September 22, 2007

Iran 'not headed for war with US'
Iran's president has denied his country is heading for war with the United States over its nuclear programme and says Iran has no need for nuclear weapons. "It's wrong to think that Iran and the US are walking towards war. Who says so? Why should we go to war? There is no war in the offing," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told CBS television. "You have to appreciate we don't need a nuclear bomb .. What need do we have for a bomb?" he added.
Read article at aljazeera.net (Qatar)

September 22, 2007

Fidel Castro warns on World Self-destruction
In a televised interview dressed in a tracksuit, Cuban President Fidel Castro warned about the possible self-destruction of the world, blaming that in a large part to US promotion of war, arms buildup and the right to use any type of weapons. In an interview broadcast on Cuban radio and television Friday, the Cuban leader asserted the US strongly supports the right to buy the world with dollars lacking gold reserves to back them up. That is why it sells weapons, and "has incited those religious wars with terrible consequences," he commented. Regarding that, Fidel Castro alerted on the dangers threatening the world as the result of the current US policy, which also supports the right to use any type of arms. The ideal solution, he pointed out, would be that the world does not fight to self-destroy, and called to preserve it through cooperation, as "everything points to devastation."
Read article in the Escambray Digital (Cuba)

September 20, 2007

Brussels rules OK
How the European Union is becoming the world's chief regulator
A VICTORY for consumers and the free market. That was how the European Commission presented this week's ruling by European judges in favour of its multi-million euro fine on Microsoft for bullying competitors. American observers had qualms. Would a French company have been pursued with such vigour? Explain again why a squabble among American high-technology firms ends up being decided in Brussels and Luxembourg (where Euro-judges sit)? One congressman muttered about sneaky protectionism and "zealous European Commission regulators". It certainly seemed zealous of the competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, to say that a "significant drop" in the software giant's market share was "what we'd like to see". More broadly, the ruling confirms that Brussels is becoming the world's regulatory capital.
Read article in The Economist (UK)
Comment: Through its effective control of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the European Union is also attempting to assume regulatory control over the global food supply and, by so doing, prevent people from accessing the levels of micronutrients that are necessary to achieve and maintain optimum health. To learn more about what Codex is, and how it affects you and your health, click here.

September 17, 2007

Calls grow for Bush war crimes trial
U.S. President George W. Bush will definitely be tried at an international tribunal, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said in a sermon at this week's Friday prayers in Tehran. The Mehr News Agency interviewed a number of political figures on Saturday and Sunday to learn their views on the issue. "World public opinion, even U.S. public opinion, is demanding that Bush be put on trial," Center for Contemporary Iranian History Chairman Abbas Salimi Namin said. "Of course, it seems somewhat difficult under the current circumstances, in which the Western states dominate international organizations, but it is most unlikely that the current state of affairs will last forever," he added. "The rising tide of protests against the White House and Bush and the opposition to the unilateral and warmongering approaches of the United States will change the situation over time," Salimi Namin noted.
Read article in the Tehran Times (Iran)

September 14, 2007

No Exit, No Strategy
This was the week in which Americans hoped they would get straight talk and clear thinking on Iraq. What they got was two exhausting days of Congressional testimony by the American military commander, hours of news conferences and interviews, clouds of cut-to-order statistics and a speech from the Oval Office - and none of it either straight or clear. The White House insisted that President Bush had consulted intensively with his generals and adapted to changing circumstances. But no amount of smoke could obscure the truth: Mr. Bush has no strategy to end his disastrous war and no strategy for containing the chaos he unleashed.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)

September 13, 2007

Disappointed Democrats Map Withdrawal Strategy
Senate Democratic leaders on Wednesday called the administration's plan to keep 130,000 or more troops in Iraq through mid-2008 unacceptable and promised to challenge the approach through legislation next week.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

September 13, 2007

Limited Pullout Is Middle Way on Iraq, Bush Will Say
When top Democratic leaders visited him at the White House this week, President Bush told them he wanted to "find common ground" on Iraq. But when the president said he planned to "start doing some redeployment," the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, cut him off. "No you're not, Mr. President," Ms. Pelosi interjected. "You're just going back to the presurge level."
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: The American people have been misled and outright lied to about the war in Iraq right from the start. Sadly, therefore, there are no signs that their President is about to do anything to change this.

September 11, 2007

Empty Calories
For months, President Bush has been promising an honest accounting of the situation in Iraq, a fresh look at the war strategy and a new plan for how to extricate the United States from the death spiral of the Iraqi civil war. The nation got none of that yesterday from the Congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. It got more excuses for delaying serious decisions for many more months, keeping the war going into 2008 and probably well beyond.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)

September 10, 2007

US surge has failed - Iraqi poll
About 70% of Iraqis believe security has deteriorated in the area covered by the US military "surge" of the past six months, an opinion poll suggests. The survey by the BBC, ABC News and NHK of more than 2,000 people across Iraq also suggests that nearly 60% see attacks on US-led forces as justified. This rises to 93% among Sunni Muslims compared to 50% for Shia.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

September 7, 2007

Judge Voids F.B.I. Tool Granted by Patriot Act
A federal judge yesterday struck down the parts of the recently revised USA Patriot Act that authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to use informal secret demands called national security letters to compel companies to provide customer records. The law allowed the F.B.I. not only to force communications companies, including telephone and Internet providers, to turn over the records without court authorization, but also to forbid the companies to tell the customers or anyone else what they had done.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

September 7, 2007

Most people 'want Iraq pull-out'
Most people across the world believe US-led forces should withdraw from Iraq within a year, a BBC poll suggests. Some 39% of people in 22 countries said troops should leave now, and 28% backed a gradual pull-out. Just 23% wanted them to stay until Iraq was safe. In the US, one-in-four supported an immediate withdrawal, while 32% wanted Iraq's security issues to be resolved before bringing the troops home. The BBC World Service commissioned the survey of 23,193 people.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

September 6, 2007

In Error, B-52 Flew Over U.S. With Nuclear-Armed Missiles
An Air Force B-52 bomber flew across the central United States last week with six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads that were mistakenly attached to the airplane's wing, defense officials said yesterday. The Stratofortress bomber, based at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, was transporting a dozen Advanced Cruise Missiles to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana on Aug. 30. But crews inadvertently loaded half of them with nuclear warheads attached.
Read article in the Washington Post (USA)
Comment: Given that we have been assured for decades that such an event could never happen, the apparent complete breakdown of the Air Force command and control over enough nuclear weapons to destroy several cities has to be viewed as deeply disturbing, at best.

September 5, 2007

Another Iraq Photo Op
Iraq is a long way to go for a photo op, but not for President Bush, who is pulling out all the stops to divert public attention from his failed Iraq policies and to keep Congress from demanding that he bring the troops home. As Americans and Iraqis continue to die – and Iraqi politicians refuse to reconcile – Mr. Bush stubbornly refuses to recognize that what both countries need is a responsible exit strategy for the United States, not more photo ops and disingenuous claims of success. With Congress launching a series of pivotal hearings this week, Mr. Bush's eight-hour stopover in Iraq on Sunday won him major play in the news media, including photos of smiling American military forces with their commander in chief. But the facts of the visit undermined his claims that his troop escalation is working and deserves more time and more lives to bear fruit.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)

September 5, 2007

Slovak PM slams U.S. for missile defense "adventure"
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico criticized the United States for bypassing NATO with a plan to deploy a missile defense system in central Europe, calling the project an adventure. Washington is negotiating with Slovakia's neighbors, Poland and the Czech Republic, on installing interceptor missiles and a radar base on their soil as a protection against attacks by what it calls rogue states, such as Iran or North Korea. Slovakia's leftist leader Fico said the United States should have discussed any such project with its partners in the NATO alliance.
Read article in the Washington Post (USA)

September 2, 2007

Fresh UK attack on US Iraq policy
A second key British general has criticised US post-war policy in Iraq. Maj Gen Tim Cross, who was the most senior UK officer involved in post-war planning, told the Sunday Mirror US policy was "fatally flawed".
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: Major General Cross' remarks came came after Gen Sir Mike Jackson, head of the British Army during the invasion, told the Daily Telegraph US policy was "intellectually bankrupt".

August 29, 2007

Congressman: Stock Market Will Eventually Collapse
Ron Paul says martial law provisions in place to deal with economic discord
Texas Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul says that attempts to rescue an ailing stock market last week, during which the Fed pumped in billions in liquidity, were merely a stop gap measure - and that an economic collapse is all but inevitable. "They think that they can control it but eventually they can't, as powerful as they are eventually the markets are more powerful," the Congressman told the Alex Jones Show yesterday. "The dollar can't be kept in check because eventually it will come unwound," he added.
Read article at prisonplanet.com

August 29, 2007

Miliband: We will decide when UK troops leave Iraq
The Bush administration will not have a veto over the Government's plans to pull Britain's troops out of Iraq, ministers have made clear. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said decisions about troop withdrawals would be taken independently in the "British national interest" and stressed the situation facing British forces in Basra was "very different" to the one facing their American counterparts in Baghdad. Downing Street backed his stance as Gordon Brown came under fire from critics of the war for refusing to set a timetable for Britain's exit from Iraq. The Prime Minister will make a detailed statement in October on the future of the 5,500 troops deployed in Iraq.
Read article in The Independent (UK)

August 28, 2007

How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves
A cabal of intellectuals and elitists hijacked the economic debate, and now we are dealing with the catastrophic effect
For the first time the UK's consumer debt exceeds the total of its gross national product: a new report shows that we owe £1.35 trillion. Inspectors in the United States have discovered that 77,000 road bridges are in the same perilous state as the one which collapsed into the Mississippi. Two years after Hurricane Katrina struck, 120,000 people from New Orleans are still living in trailer homes and temporary lodgings. As runaway climate change approaches, governments refuse to take the necessary action. Booming inequality threatens to create the most divided societies the world has seen since before the first world war. Now a financial crisis caused by unregulated lending could turf hundreds of thousands out of their homes and trigger a cascade of economic troubles. These problems appear unrelated, but they all have something in common. They arise in large part from a meeting that took place 60 years ago in a Swiss spa resort. It laid the foundations for a philosophy of government that is responsible for many, perhaps most, of our contemporary crises.
Read George Monbiot's article in the Guardian (UK)

August 28, 2007

Gonzales' resignation unlikely to quell White House critics
The president shed a huge liability Monday when his attorney general and longtime consigliere Al Gonzales finally quit. But after months of withering attacks over the firings of prosecutors, secret wiretaps and questionable testimony about those and other controversies, the departure may merely embolden White House critics as they push congressional investigations and get ready to fight over Mr. Bush's next choice to lead the Justice Department.
"This resignation is not the end of the story," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow the facts where they lead, into the White House."
Read article in The Dallas Morning News (USA)

August 24, 2007

White House Shell Game
The Bush administration's obsession with secrecy took another absurd turn this week. The administration is claiming that the White House Office of Administration is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, even though there are some compelling reasons to think it is. Like the fact that the office has its own FOIA officer. And it responded to 65 FOIA requests last year. And the White House's own Web site, as of yesterday, insisted the office is covered by FOIA. The administration's logic-free claim about the Office of Administration follows fast on the heels of Vice President Dick Cheney's laughable claim that he was immune to an open-government law because his office supposedly was not an executive agency.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: Government transparency is vital to a democracy. The American people cannot monitor their elected officials, and ensure that they act in the public interest, if government is allowed to operate under a veil of secrecy.

August 23, 2007

Role of Telecom Firms in Wiretaps Is Confirmed
The Bush administration has confirmed for the first time that American telecommunications companies played a crucial role in the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program after asserting for more than a year that any role played by them was a "state secret."
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: Further disturbing evidence of the increasingly close relationship between Big Government and Big Business.

August 17, 2007

Russia restores Soviet-era strategic bomber patrols – Putin
President Vladimir Putin said Russia permanently resumed Friday long-distance patrol flights of strategic bombers, which were suspended in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. "I made a decision to restore flights of Russian strategic bombers on a permanent basis, and at 00:00 today, August 17, 14 strategic bombers, support aircraft and aerial tankers were deployed. Combat duty has begun, involving 20 aircraft."
Read article at RIA Novosti (Russia)

August 17, 2007

Computer program reveals FBI, CIA edited Wikipedia entries
A new scanning program has revealed that the FBI and CIA have been editing Wikipedia entries on topics ranging from the Iraq war to Guantanamo. WikiScanner, developed by CalTech graduate student Virgil Griffith, has traced editorial changes made to the online encyclopedia to FBI and CIA computers, including the removal of satellite imagery of the Guantanamo prison camp on the island of Cuba, where the United States has detained suspected terrorists since 2002, and redactions of articles on the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The program revealed that the CIA edited entries about its former director, William Colby, altering details of his career, and that a graphic on casualties in Iraq was manipulated to downplay the figures.
Read article at RIA Novosti (Russia)

August 12, 2007

US doles out millions for street cameras
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Homeland Security is funneling millions of dollars to local governments nationwide for purchasing high-tech video camera networks, accelerating the rise of a "surveillance society" in which the sense of freedom that stems from being anonymous in public will be lost, privacy rights advocates warn.
Read article in The Boston Globe (USA)

August 10, 2007

UN accepts UK's request to expand role in Iraq
The United Nations today approved a British and American resolution to play a greater role in bringing peace to wartorn Iraq than at any time since 2003.
Read article in The Times (UK)
Comment: With its decision made on June 8, 2004 to authorize a US-led military occupation, the UN Security Council retrospectively approved the illegal Iraq War. In doing so, it destroyed its own code of international law, the UN Charter and thereby, the very basis for the UN's existence. As such, the approval of this resolution only further cements the final erosion of its credibility, thus heralding the ultimate demise of its role as servant to the people of the world.

August 10, 2007

Air Force Flexes Its Muscles with Exercise Over Pacific
Russian bombers have flown to the Pacific island of Guam for the first time since the Cold War during an Air Force exercise intended to show the nation's resurgent military power, a top general said Thursday. Air Force Major General Pavel Androsov said two Tu-95 bombers reached Guam, home to a large U.S. military base, as part of an exercise this week. Their crews smiled at pilots of U.S. fighters scrambled to intercept them, he said at a news conference.
"Whenever we saw U.S. planes during our flights over the ocean, we greeted them," Androsov said. "On Wednesday, we renewed the tradition when our young pilots flew by Guam in two planes. We exchanged smiles with our counterparts, who flew up from a U.S. carrier and returned home."
Read article in the Moscow Times (Russia)

August 8, 2007

US uneasy as Britain plans for early Iraq withdrawal
Americans would prefer UK troops to remain in position as long as they do
The Bush administration is becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of an imminent British withdrawal from southern Iraq and would prefer UK troops to remain for another year or two.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)

August 6, 2007

Weapons Given to Iraq Are Missing
GAO Estimates 30% of Arms Are Unaccounted For
The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq. The author of the report from the Government Accountability Office says U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops.
Read article in the Washington Post (USA)

August 6, 2007

Bush Signs Law to Widen Reach for Wiretapping
President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government's authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants. Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government's ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States. They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

August 6, 2007

Chavez blames U.S. for blocking Venezuela's Mercosur bid
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday accused the United States of undermining the country's efforts to join the South American trade bloc Mercosur.
Read article at mercopress.com (Uruguay)

August 5, 2007

Energy Bill Adopted by House Requires Utilities to Use Renewable Power Sources
The House passed a wide-ranging energy bill on Saturday that will require most utilities to produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar power.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: President Bush has vowed to veto the bill.

August 3, 2007

Iraq violence: Monitoring the surge
An extra 30,000 US troops have been deployed in Iraq, mainly in and around the capital Baghdad, since the launch of the security drive, or "surge", in February. The BBC World Service is monitoring its effects, week by week, by looking at casualty figures, the pressure on hospitals and quality of life for ordinary civilians.
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: During the seven-day period from 26 July to 1 August there were 482 violent deaths across Iraq – a rise of nearly 70 people on last week's total. Looking back over the whole of July, Iraqi officials say more than 1,600 civilians were killed – this figure is higher than the number of deaths for February this year, when the US surge began.

August 1, 2007

UN resolution on bigger Iraq role
The US and the UK have circulated a new draft resolution to United Nations Security Council members proposing a bigger role for the UN in Iraq.
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: With its decision made on June 8, 2004 to authorize a US-led military occupation, the UN Security Council retrospectively approved the illegal Iraq War. In doing so, it destroyed its own code of international law, the UN Charter and thereby, the very basis for the UN's existence. As such, the passing of this resolution would only further cement the final erosion of its credibility, thus heralding the ultimate demise of its role as servant to the people of the world.

August 1, 2007

Gates Philanthropy in Stem Cell Transplant for Damaged Heart
Dr. Lilian Joensen exposes the Gates Foundation's betrayal of public trust in Argentina.
Read press release on the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) website (UK)

July 30, 2007

Bush and Brown vow co-operation
US President George W Bush and UK PM Gordon Brown have held their first formal talks, renewing pledges to fight terrorism and seek progress in Iraq. Mr Brown said both nations had duties and responsibilities in Iraq, and that he would seek military advice before announcing any changes in policy. The pair met at Camp David, near Washington, amid widespread interest about whether they could work together. The talks also focused on Afghanistan, Darfur, world trade and climate change.
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: Significantly, perhaps, in referring to their meetings, Mr Brown described them as full and frank, which is normal diplomatic code for an argument.

July 29, 2007

British prime minister holds talks with Bush
President George W. Bush, whose relationship with Tony Blair when he was prime minister of Britain was unparalleled in closeness and reliability, on Sunday night began two days of meetings with Blair's successor, Gordon Brown. The selection of Brown, who took office in late June, has injected a dose of unpredictability into Bush's most important trans-Atlantic partnership. The meetings, the first of Brown's tenure as prime minister, hold challenges for both men.
Read article in the International Herald Tribune

July 27, 2007

Gorbachev says British leadership panders to the United States
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev accused the United Kingdom's government of creating problems for itself by trying to please only the United States at the expense of other partners.
Read article at RIA Novosti (Russia)

July 26, 2007

Russia offers NATO strategic missile defense partnership –official
Russia is offering to engage NATO in a strategic partnership to counter possible missile threats, a senior Foreign Ministry official said Thursday. As an alternative to U.S. plans to deploy elements of a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland, Russia has proposed the joint use of a radar station that Russia leases from Azerbaijan. Later, Russia also offered the joint use of a missile early warning system it is building in the south of the country. "We are offering strategic partnership – an international system to neutralize missile threats, said Anatoly Antonov, director of the Foreign Ministry Security and Disarmament Department.
Read article at RIA Novosti (Russia)

July 26, 2007

Enrichment is like breathing for Iran: Larijani
Iran has issued its strongest signal to date that it will defy UN demands for a suspension of uranium enrichment threatening to respond to any further sanctions and accusing the Americans of "running away" from negotiations to end the crisis over the Iranian nuclear program. Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told The Independent and The Guardian that uranium enrichment was "like breathing" for his country, and that Iran would not halt the spinning centrifuges at its main enrichment plant in Natanz, even if the Bush administration offered security guarantees.
Read article in the Tehran Times (Iran)
Comment: Larijani insisted that Iran had no intention of building a nuclear bomb, even though it had now installed enough uranium-enriching centrifuges to make one. He added that if Iran produced a single bomb "what is it good for? If we attack Israeli with one bomb, America would attack us with thousands of bombs. It's suicide."

July 26, 2007

Transgenic Plum Gets USDA Non-regulated Status Based on False Claims of Safety
USDA deregulates its own transgenic plum despite overwhelming public objection
The United States Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA/APHIS) has recently granted non-regulatory status to a transgenic plum resistant to plum poxvirus after receiving 1 725 comments from state farm bureaus, organic growers, growers associations, consumer groups, agriculture support industries, academic professionals and individuals, with respondents against the petition (1 708) outnumbering those in favour by a factor of 100 to 1.
Read article on the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) website (UK)

July 26, 2007

Defying the Imperial Presidency
The House Judiciary Committee did its duty yesterday, voting to cite Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, and Joshua Bolten, the White House chief of staff, for contempt. The Bush administration has been acting lawlessly in refusing to hand over information that Congress needs to carry out its responsibility to oversee the executive branch and investigate its actions when needed. If the White House continues its obstruction, Congress should use all of the contempt powers at its disposal.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: Ms. Miers refused to show up – citing executive privilege – when she was subpoenaed to testify about the administration's possibly illegal purge of nine United States attorneys. Mr. Bolten – also citing executive privilege – has refused to provide Congress with documents it requested in the attorney purge investigation.

July 26, 2007

House Resolution Rejects Permanent Bases in Iraq
The House voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to bar permanent United States military installations in Iraq as lawmakers readied for yet another clash over a Democratic demand to withdraw combat troops from the conflict. By a vote of 399 to 24, the House adopted a resolution that would limit federal spending intended "to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq or to exercise United States economic control of the oil resources of Iraq."
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

July 22, 2007

Globalisation backlash in rich nations
A popular backlash against globalisation and the leaders of the world's largest companies is sweeping all rich countries, an FT/Harris poll shows. Large majorities of people in the US and in Europe want higher taxation for the rich and even pay caps for corporate executives to counter what they believe are unjustified rewards and the negative effects of globalisation. Viewing globalisation as an overwhelmingly negative force, citizens of rich countries are looking to governments to cushion the blows they perceive have come from the liberalisation of their economies to trade with emerging countries.
Read article in the Financial Times (UK)

July 20, 2007

White House preparing to stage new September 11 – Reagan official
A former Reagan official has issued a public warning that the Bush administration is preparing to orchestrate a staged terrorist attack in the United States, transform the country into a dictatorship and launch a war with Iran within a year.
Read article at RIA Novosti (Russia)

July 16, 2007

Power Without Limits
The Bush administration, which has been pushing presidential power to new extremes, is reportedly developing an even more dangerous new theory of executive privilege. It says that if Congress holds White House officials in contempt for withholding important evidence in the United States attorney scandal, the Justice Department simply will not pursue the charges. This stance tears at the fabric of the Constitution and upends the rule of law.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)

July 16, 2007

Polish leader defends antimissile plan
In the face of fierce Russian opposition to the planned U.S. antimissile facilities, the visiting Polish president insisted Monday that the program was "really a defense instrument" that would in no way threaten Russia. "It is aimed at defense of our democracies against the countries who might have or already do have nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction," said President Lech Kaczynski, as he and President George W. Bush responded to questions from reporters following a meeting. Bush said that the program, which calls for installation of 10 interceptors in Poland and radar facilities in the Czech Republic, would protect not just the United States but much of Europe from threats that "may emanate from parts of the world where leaders don't particularly care for our way of life and are in the process of trying to develop serious weapons of mass destruction," presumably meaning Iran.
Read article in the International Herald Tribune

July 12, 2007

House votes 223-201 to begin Iraq pullout within 120 days
The House, buoyed by a White House report showing mixed results toward progress in Iraq, defied President Bush by calling Thursday for a troop withdrawal starting within 120 days.
Read article in the Kansas City Star (USA)
Comment: This was the sixth time this year that the House has voted against President Bush's Iraq policy. Nevertheless, Tony Fratto, a spokesman for President Bush, said later that the president would veto the bill if it reached his desk.

July 9, 2007

Blair aides 'had Iraq war doubts'
Tony Blair's closest aides had "severe moments of doubt" about the invasion of Iraq , according to the diaries of his former media chief Alastair Campbell.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

July 8, 2007

The Road Home
It is time for the United States to leave Iraq , without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)

July 5, 2007

NATO expansion relapse into Cold War - FM Lavrov
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday that NATO's further expansion eastward was reminiscent of the Cold War standoff between the Soviet Union and the West. "We do not think NATO's expansion is necessary, and believe the policy is a relapse into the Cold War," Lavrov told a news conference following talks with his Finnish counterpart.
Read article at RIA Novosti (Russia)

July 4, 2007

Russia to Respond to US Missile Shield in Europe – Deputy PM
Russia has an adequate response to the deployment of U.S. anti-missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic , First Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov told reporters on Wednesday. Moscow will take steps to ensure its security if Washington turns down its offer of cooperation on missile defense, Sergey Ivanov told the press on Wednesday. “We are already taking these measures. An asymmetrical and effective response has been found,” the deputy prime minister said without specifying what that response involves.
Read article at kommersant.com (Russia)

July 3, 2007

Putin surprises on missile shield
Meeting with Bush in Maine, he signaled cooperation, though a core dispute remained.
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin offered an expanded counterproposal to U.S. missile-defense plans yesterday, challenging President Bush to build a regional European missile shield that could include a sophisticated new radar facility on Russian soil. Putin's proposal went far beyond the cooperation he first suggested in Germany last month and surprised Bush as the two leaders wrapped up two days of informal meetings at the president's family compound. Bush welcomed the plan, and his advisers said Putin's suggestions convinced them that he was serious about working together, not just posturing, as they initially suspected. But the two sides remained at odds over the core issue - whether Bush would deploy antimissile facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic over the objections of Putin, who sees them as a threat to Russian security.
Read article in the Philadelphia Inquirer (USA)

Putin offers Bush to play "one and the same game"
Russian President Vladimir Putin's two-day stay at the Bush family home in Kennebunkport , Maine , was more fruitful than the press and political analysts expected. They thought the two presidents would mainly discuss ways to maintain good relations between the United States and Russia after they step down. They thought Putin and President Bush would at best prevent them from going sour and restart a constructive dialogue. But the two presidents have done something more important. They peered into the common future of their countries.
Read article at RIA Novosti (Russia)

July 1, 2007

Europeans see US as threat to peace
Europeans consistently regard the US as the biggest threat to world stability, a new poll reveals on Monday. A survey carried out in June by Harris Research for the Financial Times shows that 32 per cent of respondents in five European countries regard the US as a bigger threat than any other state. In the US itself, North Korea and Iran are seen as the biggest risks. However, the youngest US respondents share the Europeans’ view that theirs is the biggest threat, with 35 per cent of American 16- to 24-year-olds identifying it as the chief danger to stability.
Read article in the Financial Times (UK)

Abuse of Executive Privilege
After six years of kowtowing to the White House, Congress is finally challenging President Bush’s campaign to trample all legal and constitutional restraints on his power. Congressional committees have issued subpoenas for documents and witnesses in two major cases and have asked for the first — and likely not the last — criminal investigation of an executive branch official who might have lied to Congress.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)

June 29, 2007

UN closes Iraq WMD inspectorate
The UN Security Council has voted to close down the weapons inspections programme set up to monitor former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's arsenal. The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (Unmovic) was set up in 1999 to check Iraq no longer had any weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Its inspectors permanently quit Iraq just before the US invasion in 2003. The US cited the presence of WMDs in Iraq as justification for its invasion though no such weapons were ever found.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

Food safety agencies to sign cooperation agreement
In a ground-breaking move to improve food safety, the European Food Safety Authority and the US Food and Drug Administration will team up to share scientific information. The two entities will sign an agreement on 2 July in Brussels to co-ordinate their research efforts into food safety issues.
Read article at foodnavigator-usa.com
Comment: The signing of this cooperation agreement is not merely about food safety and is closely related to the recent signing of the Transatlantic Economic Integration Agreement and the planned US-EU single market. Rather than consumers, the key beneficiaries of these agreements will be some of the world’s richest and most powerful corporations - including the pharmaceutical industry.

June 27, 2007

Files on Illegal Spying Show C.I.A. Skeletons From Cold War
Long-secret documents released Tuesday provide new details about how the Central Intelligence Agency illegally spied on Americans decades ago, including trying to bug a Las Vegas hotel room for evidence of infidelity and tracking down an expert lock-picker for a Watergate conspirator. Known inside the agency as the “family jewels,” the 702 pages of documents catalog domestic wiretapping operations, failed assassination plots, mind-control experiments and spying on journalists from the early years of the C.I.A. The papers provide evidence of paranoia and occasional incompetence as the agency began a string of illegal spying operations in the 1960s and 1970s, often to hunt links between Communist governments and the domestic protests that roiled the nation in that period. Yet the long-awaited documents leave out a great deal. Large sections are censored, showing that the C.I.A. still cannot bring itself to expose all the skeletons in its closet. And many activities about overseas operations disclosed years ago by journalists, Congressional investigators and a presidential commission — which led to reforms of the nation’s intelligence agencies — are not detailed in the papers.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

June 25, 2007

BIS warns of Great Depression dangers from credit spree
The Bank for International Settlements, the world's most prestigious financial body, has warned that years of loose monetary policy has fuelled a dangerous credit bubble, leaving the global economy more vulnerable to another 1930s-style slump than generally understood. "Virtually nobody foresaw the Great Depression of the 1930s, or the crises which affected Japan and southeast Asia in the early and late 1990s. In fact, each downturn was preceded by a period of non-inflationary growth exuberant enough to lead many commentators to suggest that a 'new era' had arrived", said the bank. The BIS, the ultimate bank of central bankers, pointed to a confluence a worrying signs, citing mass issuance of new-fangled credit instruments, soaring levels of household debt, extreme appetite for risk shown by investors, and entrenched imbalances in the world currency system.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)

June 22, 2007

The Big Profits in Biowarfare Research
Corporate America's Deadliest Secret
A number of major pharmaceutical corporations and biotech firms are concealing the nature of the biological warfare research work they are doing for the U.S. government. Since their funding comes from the National Institutes of Health, the recipients are obligated under NIH guidelines to make their activities public. Not disclosing their ops raises the suspicion they may be engaged in forbidden kinds of germ warfare research. According to the Sunshine Project, a nonprofit arms control watchdog operating out of Austin, Texas, among corporations holding back information about their activities are: Abbott Laboratories, BASF Plant Science, Bristol-Myers Squibb, DuPont Central Research and Development, Eli Lilly Corp., Embrex, GlaxoSmithKline, Hoffman-LaRoche, Merck & Co., Monsanto, Pfizer Inc., Schering-Plough Research Institute, and Syngenta Corp. of Switzerland.
Read article at counterpunch.org

Cuba Says EU Has No Moral Authority to Judge
Havana, Jun 22 (Prensa Latina) Cuba praised as a "necessary rectification" the European Union invitation for a complete and open political dialogue on Friday, but warned it does not recognize its moral authority to judge or advise it. A declaration from the Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry (MINREX) on conclusions of the EU's Foreign Relations Council about the island, published today, states that the European Union has the responsibility to rectify mistakes committed in its policy against Havana . According to the MINREX text, "only a dialogue between sovereigns and equals will be possible, without conditions and pending threats", when the denominated common position and the 2003 sanctions are eliminated. The EU Foreign Relations Council recently approved the document, "Conclusions on Cuba", in which it omitted reference to the common position and sanctions it tried to apply "unfair and rashly
Read article in the Escambray Digital (Cuba)

June 18, 2007

Lords to look at legality of Iraq war
· Bereaved mothers win right to have appeal heard
· Petition drafted by two leading human rights QCs
Britain 's highest court is to hear a case which could force the government to hold an independent inquiry into the way the attorney general reached his conclusion that the war in Iraq would be lawful. The law lords have agreed to hear an appeal by the mothers of two soldiers killed in Iraq, who argue that the government violated their sons' right to life by rushing into war on inadequate legal grounds. "The legality of the war on Iraq - the most important question of law of our generation - remains unresolved by any court or other independent and authoritative body in the United Kingdom ," begins the petition which persuaded the judges to let the appeal go ahead.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)

June 14, 2007

Violence Rising in Much of Iraq, Pentagon Says
Violence increased throughout much of Iraq in recent months, despite a security crackdown in Baghdad that at least temporarily reduced sectarian killings there, according to a quarterly assessment of security conditions issued Wednesday by the Pentagon.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

June 11, 2007

In Iraq, U.S. envisions fewer troops, longer stay
Major reduction could begin by late 2008
U.S. military officials here are increasingly envisioning a "post-occupation" troop presence in Iraq that neither maintains current levels nor leads to a complete pullout, but aims for a smaller, longer-term force that would remain in the country for years. This goal, according to recent interviews with more than 20 U.S. military officers and other officials here including senior commanders, strategists and analysts, remains in the early planning stages. It is based on officials' assessment that a sharp drawdown of troops is likely to begin by the middle of next year, with roughly two-thirds of the current force of 150,000 moving out by late 2008 or early 2009.
Read article at tennessean.com (USA)

June 9, 2007

Russia urges U.S. to shelve missile plans, look for alternatives
Russia 's foreign minister said Saturday the U.S. should put on hold moves to deploy a missile shield in Europe pending talks on Moscow 's recent offer to jointly use a radar in Azerbaijan . President Putin reiterated Friday at a news conference following the G8 summit in Germany that the U.S. missile defense plans are directed against a nonexistent threat, and would jeopardize Russia's national security. "The sharing of data from this [Azerbaijan] facility will enable the United States to abandon plans to deploy missile defense elements in Europe, as well as plans to deploy space based components," Sergei Lavrov said. He said the U.S. plans would undermine UN efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem. "Nobody has proved that the Iranian nuclear program has a military component," Sergei Lavrov said. "Missile shield deployment in Europe may hamper [the UN] efforts and cast doubt over Iran's desire to cooperate."
Read article at RIA Novosti (Russia)

June 7, 2007

U.S. Death Toll In Iraq Tops 3,500
23 Deaths In First Six Days Of June, Almost Double That Of June 2006
Another U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq , the military said Thursday, pushing the four-year death toll for American forces to 3,501, according to an Associated Press tally. The count includes 23 deaths in the first six days of June, an average of about four per day.
Read article at CBS News (USA)

June 5, 2007

Bush to Putin: 'Vladimir, you shouldn't fear a missile defense system'
Russia is not an enemy of the United States and shouldn't fear a proposed missile defense system designed to thwart a possible nuclear attack from Iran , U.S. President George W. Bush said Tuesday. "Russia is not the enemy," Bush said after meeting with Czech leaders in a visit en route to the G-8 summit in Germany. He said he would take a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that "we can work together on common threats." The Kremlin is bitterly opposed to the missile shield, and Putin has warned that Russia could take "retaliatory steps" if Washington insists on building it.
Read article at PRAVDA On-Line (Russia)

June 3, 2007

Dick Cheney Rules
Americans are accustomed to Vice President Dick Cheney’s waiting out a terrorist threat in a “secure undisclosed location.” Now it seems that Mr. Cheney wears the cloak of invisibility in secure disclosed locations. The Associated Press reported that Mr. Cheney’s office ordered the Secret Service last September to destroy all records of visitors to the official vice presidential mansion — right after The Washington Post sued for access to the logs. That move was made in secret, naturally. It came out only because of another lawsuit, filed by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington , seeking the names of conservative religious figures who visited the vice president’s residence. This disdain for accountability is distressing, but not surprising. Mr. Cheney has had it on display from his first days in office, when he refused to name the energy-industry executives who met with him behind closed doors to draft an energy policy.
Read article editorial in the New York Times (USA)

June 1, 2007

US food companies increase sales to Cuba
Cuba has agreed to buy $118 million worth of US food products, and ongoing negotiations between the American companies and  Havana  could bring the total to around $150 million. The products sold by US food producers in Havana included pork, corn and soybeans, according to reports by the Associated Press. Executives from 114 food companies from 25 US states were in the Cuban capital this week to try to increase their sales of goods to the country. Rice, wheat, corn, soy products, peas, eggs, chicken and pork were all among the goods that the companies would like to sell to Cuba in greater quantities. The business leaders were accompanied by a group of US congressmen and women interested in opening up agricultural trade between the two countries.
Read article at nutraingredients-usa.com

Putin: US imperialists start new round of arms race
Russia 's recent tests of new ballistic missiles can be interpreted as a direct response to the deployment of the US missile system in Europe , and the development of new military bases on the continent, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday. At a news conference after meeting with the Greek president in Kremlin, Putin spoke about the cooperation between the two countries and condemned US missile defense systems in Europe. "We are not the initiators of this new round of the arms race ," Putin told a joint Kremlin news conference. "There is no need to fear Russia's actions, they are not aggressive... They are aimed at maintaining balance in the world order, and are extremely important for maintaining peace and security globally," Putin said. The president suggested recently that Moscow might suspend its obligations under the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty if talks with NATO countries on its implementation show no visible progress.
Read article at PRAVDA On-Line (Russia)

May 31, 2007

Kano govt sues Pfizer, demands for $2 billion - For using 200 children to test drugs
THE Kano State government has sued drug maker, Pfizer, for its alleged role in the deaths of children who received an unapproved drug during a meningitis epidemic in 1996, court papers showed on Wednesday. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug maker, said in a statement that the allegations were untrue and it acted ethically. The attorney general of Kano State filed five claims for damages totalling $2.075 billion before a state high court. The defendants are Pfizer, its Nigerian subsidiary and seven individuals who worked for the companies in 1996. “The plaintiff contends that prior to the treatment by the first defendant (Pfizer), the children treated... which children number 200, did not have the medical conditions or disorders which they suffered after being treated,” the suit said.
Read article in the Nigerian Tribune

May 29, 2007

Venezuelans protest as TV station shuts
Venezuelan police fired tear gas and plastic bullets Monday into a crowd of thousands protesting a decision by President Hugo Chavez that forced a television station critical of his leftist government off the air. Police fired toward the crowd of up to 5,000 protesters from a raised highway, and protesters fled amid clouds of tear gas. They later regrouped in Caracas` Plaza Brion chanting "freedom!" Some tossed rocks and bottles at police, prompting authorities to scatter demonstrators by firing more gas. It was the largest of several protests that broke out across Caracas hours after Radio Caracas Television ceased broadcasting at midnight Sunday and was replaced with a new state-funded channel. Chavez had refused to renew RCTV`s broadcast license, accusing it of "subversive" activities and of backing a 2002 coup against him.
Read article at mercopress.com (Uruguay)

May 28, 2007

U.S. and Iranian Officials Meet in Baghdad, but Talks Yield No Breakthroughs
The United States and Iran held rare face-to-face talks in Baghdad on Monday, adhering to an agenda that focused strictly on the war in Iraq and on ways the two bitter adversaries could help improve conditions here. The meeting between Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker of the United States and Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qumi of Iran — held in the offices of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki — produced no agreements nor a promise of a follow-up meeting between the nations, participants said. But Mr. Crocker said at a news conference afterward that the meeting “proceeded positively” and was “businesslike.” Both sides, he said, articulated a common desire to help stabilize Iraq.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

May 27, 2007

Iran protests US meddling
The Iranian foreign ministry has summoned the Swiss envoy to protest against Washington 's interventions in the country's internal affairs. Swiss envoy to Iran, Philippe Welti, who represents US interests in Iran, was summoned on Sunday by the Foreign Ministry Director for Americas Department, to be handed Tehran's strong protest at the illegal activities of some US-backed intelligence networks inside Iran. Islamic Republic of Iran has recently disbanded several spy rings, run by the United States, in western, southwestern and central Iran. The Iranian official said the US is bent on organizing acts of hostility and espionage against Iran's national interests.
Read article at PRESS TV (Iran)

May 24, 2007

Congress Passes War Funds Bill, Ending Impasse
Congress voted Thursday to meet President Bush’s demand for almost $100 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through September, providing a momentary truce in a bitter struggle over war policy. Even before the House and the Senate acted, Mr. Bush welcomed the legislation, which does not set the timetable sought by Democrats for withdrawing troops but requires the Iraqi government to meet a series of benchmarks as a condition of receiving further American reconstruction aid. The measure also calls for reports from Mr. Bush in July and September about how his strategy is unfolding in Iraq and requires independent assessments of the performance of the Iraqi government by Sept. 1 and the abilities of Iraqi military forces within 120 days.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

Poll Shows View of Iraq War Is Most Negative Since Start
Americans now view the war in Iraq more negatively than at any time since the invasion more than four years ago, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Sixty-one percent of Americans say the United States should have stayed out of Iraq and 76 percent say things are going badly there, including 47 percent who say things are going very badly, the poll found.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

May 23, 2007

U.S. Working To Sabotage Iran Nuke Program
CBS: Iranian Efforts To Enrich Uranium Are Progressing Despite Covert Efforts To Disrupt Program
CBS News has learned that Iran is continuing to make progress on its expanded efforts to enrich uranium — in spite of covert efforts by U.S. and other allied intelligence agencies to actively sabotage the country's nuclear program. "Industrial sabotage is a way to stop the program, without military action, without fingerprints on the operation, and really, it is ideal, if it works," says Mark Fitzpatrick, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Non-Proliferation and now Senior Fellow in Non-Proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Sources in several countries involved told CBS News that the intelligence operatives involved include former Russian nuclear scientists and Iranians living abroad. Operatives have sold Iran components with flaws that are difficult to detect, making them unstable or unusable.
Read article at CBS News (USA)

Fidel Castro Releases Statement Saying Health Is Better
A statement signed by Fidel Castro sought to reassure Cubans Wednesday that the 80-year-old leader was recovering well from difficult surgery, saying his weight was stable and he was eating solid foods after months of intravenous feeding. In the most detailed assessment of Castro's health since shortly after he fell ill almost 10 months ago, the statement said: "It wasn't just one operation, but various. Initially it wasn't successful and that had a bearing on my prolonged recuperation." The message, sent by e-mail to foreign journalists and expected to be published in state newspapers Thursday, did not say when Castro might appear in public again or retake Cuba's presidency.
Read article at foxnews.com

May 22, 2007

Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran
The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.
Read article at ABC News (USA)

May 19, 2007

Carter: Bush 'worst in history' in international relations
Former President Jimmy Carter says President George W. Bush's administration is "the worst in history" in international relations, taking aim at the White House's policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy. The criticism, which a biographer says is unprecedented for the 39th president, also took aim at Bush's environmental policies and the administration's "quite disturbing" faith-based initiative funding. "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," the Nobel Peace Prize winner told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper's Saturday editions.
Read article in the International Herald Tribune

May 17, 2007

War-torn Iraq 'facing collapse'
Iraq faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation, UK foreign policy think tank Chatham House says. Its report says the Iraqi government is now largely powerless and irrelevant in many parts of the country. It warns there is not one war but many local civil wars, and urges a major change in US and British strategy, such as consulting Iraq's neighbours more.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

May 15, 2007

US to go ahead with missile plans
The US will not allow Russia to stop it from deploying anti-missile defences in Europe, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said. "I don't think anyone expects the United States to permit a veto on American security interests," she said after meeting President Vladimir Putin. Her comments come after she and the Russian president agreed to tone down their rhetoric in public exchanges. Russia's foreign minister said they had resolved to focus on concrete issues.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

May 11, 2007

Iraq leader says troops must stay
US and British troops will need to stay another one or two years in Iraq , the Iraqi president has said. Jalal Talabani was addressing students during a visit to Cambridge University . Asked when the UK and US should leave, he said: "I think in one or two years we will be able to recruit our own army forces and say goodbye to our friends."
Read article at BBC News (UK)

Narcotic Maker Guilty of Deceit Over Marketing
The company that makes the painkiller OxyContin and three of its current and former executives pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court here to criminal charges that it had misled doctors and patients when it claimed the drug was less likely to be abused than traditional narcotics. The company, Purdue Pharma, agreed to pay $600 million in fines and other payments to resolve the criminal charge of “misbranding” the product, one of the largest amounts ever paid by a drug company in such a case. The three executives, including its president and its top lawyer, also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of misbranding the drug. Together, they agreed to pay $34.5 million in fines.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

May 10, 2007

Bush Changes Continuity Plan
Administration, Not DHS, Would Run Shadow Government
President Bush issued a formal national security directive yesterday ordering agencies to prepare contingency plans for a surprise, "decapitating" attack on the federal government, and assigned responsibility for coordinating such plans to the White House. The prospect of a nuclear bomb being detonated in Washington without warning, whether smuggled in by terrorists or a foreign government, has been cited by many security analysts as a rising concern since the Sept. 11, 2001 , attacks. The order makes explicit that the focus of federal worst-case planning involves a covert nuclear attack against the nation's capital, in contrast with Cold War assumptions that a long-range strike would be preceded by a notice of minutes or hours as missiles were fueled and launched.
Read article in the Washington Post (USA)

Putin's pointed US-Nazi allusion
President Putin lashed out at US unilateralism saying the US is driving the world in the same direction that Germany 's Third Reich did. Putin made the remarks on Wednesday while attending a special ceremony to mark the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany with soldiers bearing hammer-and-sickle banners through the Red Square, AFP reported.
Read article at presstv.ir (Iran)

Livingstone: Iraq Will Ruin Blair's Legacy
TONY Blair will be remembered as a failure because of the disastrous war in Iraq , London mayor Ken Livingstone said today. Mr Livingstone claimed the war had created "a whole new generation of terrorists” and the Government had failed in the last 10 years because it failed to bring peace.
Read article in the Daily Express (UK)

May 8, 2007

Uruguayan opposition questions the Mercosur Parliament
Members from the Uruguayan opposition claim that Uruguay ’s participation in the Mercosur Parliament, inaugurated this Monday in Montevideo , is unconstitutional and are appealing before the Supreme Court. “The unconstitutional demand is not based in animosity towards the Mercosur Parliament but on the fact that the Uruguayan legal process has been ignored in so far as Uruguay’s participation is concerned”, said Leonardo Guzman, a former minister of Education and Culture. “The debate therefore is not if it’s convenient or not to expand Mercosur”, he added but “that the Uruguayan constitution has been abused since this would be the first time amendments are introduced without the approval of the electorate”.
Read article at mercopress.com (Uruguay)

May 7, 2007

European MPs recommend “supranationality” to advance integration
A delegation of European MPs visiting Uruguay for the opening of the Mercosur Parliament called on the regional block not to fear “supranationality” which is needed to advance integration. Socialist Portuguese MEP and president of the visiting delegation Sergio Sousa Pinto said that for “Mercosur integration to be successful…the group will have to move to a supranational phase”. “Economic integration and political integration are closely linked, because there are issues that can only be solved in the framework of a political integration negotiation”, said Sousa Pintos.
Read article at mercopress.com (Uruguay)

West says it is open to more flexibility with Iran
The world's big powers have signalled they are willing to adopt a more flexible approach in the dispute over Iran 's nuclear programme as soon as Tehran has sat down at the negotiating table. The gesture comes ahead of an expected meeting this week between Ali Larijani, Iran's top security official, and Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, in an attempt to restart the diplomaticprocess. Speaking to the Financial Times, officials from the UK, the US and the EU insisted that Iran had to suspend uranium enrichment, which can produce nuclear fuel and weapons grade material, before formal talks could begin. They added that once Iran had taken such a step, they were willing to consider more options.
Read article in the Financial Times (UK)

May 6, 2007

Mercosur Parliament formally opens in Montevideo
The Mercosur Parliament will hold its first formal session this Monday in Montevideo when 72 elected representatives, 18 for each founding member of the group, convenes in Uruguay ’s Legislative Palace to discuss regional policies. The Parliament is scheduled to meet once a month in Montevideo , its definitive seat, and members are basically honorary, they will only be paid return tickets to Montevideo and a per diem. Venezuela, the fifth member of Mercosur is also scheduled to send delegates but they will not be entitled to vote until the process of incorporation of Caracas to the group is fully accomplished.
Read article at mercopress.com (Uruguay)
Comment: The five country members of Mercosur are Argentina , Brazil , Paraguay , Uruguay and Venezuela . The Parliament will only play an advisory role until 2010 when the first elections for direct representation will be called. Click here to visit the Mercosur website (content in Spanish and Portuguese languages only).

May 4, 2007

Clinton Proposes Vote to Reverse Authorizing War
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed Thursday that Congress repeal the authority it gave President Bush in 2002 to invade Iraq , injecting presidential politics into the Congressional debate over financing the war. Mrs. Clinton’s proposal brings her full circle on Iraq — she supported the war measure five years ago — and it sharpens her own political positioning at a time when Democrats are vying to confront the White House. “It is time to reverse the failed policies of President Bush and to end this war as soon as possible,” Mrs. Clinton said as she joined Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, in calling for a vote to end the authority as of Oct. 11, the fifth anniversary of the original vote.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

May 3, 2007

US claims unity with EU despite doubts
The US insisted yesterday that the world's big powers remained united on Iran's nuclear programme, in spite of signs of a potential US-European rift over whether to make new concessions to Tehran . Nicholas Burns, US undersecretary of state, said the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, were agreed Iran should not carry out any uranium enrichment, which can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons-grade material. But diplomats said Germ-any and Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, were more willing than Washington to compromise, specifically over permitting Iran, which was using more than 1,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium, a limited form of enrichment.
Read article in the Financial Times (UK)

An Exit Strategy for Guantánamo
The five-year-old military prison at Guantánamo Bay , with its indefinite detention rules, lack of judicial review and insufficiently regulated interrogation techniques, is an ugly stain on this country’s long tradition of respect for the rule of law and an endless propaganda bonanza for America ’s enemies. Yet it is clear that despite the good advice of friendly foreign leaders, members of Congress and even his own cabinet officials, President Bush has no intention of closing the facility unless Congress forces him to do so. This week, Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation aimed at doing just that. Her bill would shut down the Guantánamo prison and transfer the 385 or so people still held there to more conventional, and accountable, detention facilities, either for trial in the United States or repatriation to their home countries, with assurances that they would not be tortured or otherwise mistreated.
Read editorial in the New York Times

May 2, 2007

Spying on Americans
For more than five years, President Bush authorized government spying on phone calls and e-mail to and from the United States without warrants. He rejected offers from Congress to update the electronic eavesdropping law, and stonewalled every attempt to investigate his spying program. Suddenly, Mr. Bush is in a hurry. He has submitted a bill that would enact enormous, and enormously dangerous, changes to the 1978 law on eavesdropping. It would undermine the fundamental constitutional principle — over which there can be no negotiation or compromise — that the government must seek an individual warrant before spying on an American or someone living here legally.
Read editorial in the New York Times

May 1, 2007

Venezuela: 20% Minimum Salary Raise, Withdrawal from World Bank and IMF
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced yesterday that the country’s minimum wage would be raised by 20%, to $286 per month, and that Venezuela would withdraw its membership from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Also, Chavez said that by 2010 the Venezuelan work week will be lowered from 44 to 36 hours.
Read article at venezuelanalysis.com

US April death toll surpasses 100
Five United States soldiers were killed in Iraq on the weekend, raising the number of American troops killed this month to over 100, and making April one of the deadliest of the war for U.S. forces. The toll could increase the pressure on U.S. President George W. Bush, who is fighting a plan by Democrats to set a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq.
Read article in the Jamaica Gleaner

April 30, 2007

US and EU agree 'single market'
The United States and the European Union have signed up to a new transatlantic economic partnership at a summit in Washington . The pact is designed to boost trade and investment by harmonising regulatory standards, laying the basis for a US-EU single market.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

April 29, 2007

Fidel Castro published article to criticize US biofuels policies
Ending eight months of silence, ailing Cuban President Fidel Castro published an article in Cuban state media Thursday criticizing US environmental policies. The article published in the Cuban Communist Party Daily Granma was the first attempt by Castro, who is recuperating from intestinal surgery, to comment on international issues since he was taken ill in July 2006. Since the announcement of the temporary delegation of powers to his younger brother Raul July 31, Fidel Castro has only been seen in half a dozen videos and several pictures, the last ones published in March with Colombian Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez. "More than 3 billion people in the world condemned to premature death by hunger and thirst," read the headline in Castro`s article, which claimed that US President George W Bush`s support for using crops to produce ethanol for automobiles in rich nations could deplete food stocks in developing countries.
Read article at mercopress.com (Uruguay)

U.S. and European Union to emphasize cooperation at White House summit
Unable to agree on major issues like global trade and climate change, the leaders of the United States and the European Union look to highlight smaller signs of improving ties when they meet Monday at the White House. Expectations are modest for the annual US-European Union summit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso will get President George W. Bush's support for a proposal to boost trans-Atlantic commerce by eliminating some bureaucratic hurdles. They also will sign an agreement to open up trans-Atlantic air routes. "People have been searching hard for issues that don't involve Iraq or the war on terror," said Julianne Smith, director of the European program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
Read article in the International Herald Tribune

April 26, 2007

War Bill Passes House, Requiring an Iraq Pullout
The House on Wednesday narrowly approved a $124 billion war spending bill that would require American troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq by Oct. 1, setting the stage for the first veto fight between President Bush and majority Democrats. Only hours after Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, told lawmakers he needed more time to gauge the effectiveness of a troop buildup there, the House voted 218 to 208 to pass a measure that sought the removal of most combat forces by next spring. Mr. Bush has said unequivocally and repeatedly tha