Ignoring Asia

Nato Report: Pakistan Helps The Taliban

2012-02-01T21:42:00.005+09:00

Excerpts from Nato report on Taliban

"Reflections from detainees indicate that Pakistan's manipulation of Taliban senior leadership continues unabatedly."
"In the last year there has been unprecedented interest, even from GIRoA [Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan] members, in joining the the insurgent cause. Afghan civilians frequently prefer Taliban governance over GIRoA, usually as a result of government corruption, ethnic bias and lack of connection with local religious and tribal leaders. The effectiveness of Taliban governance allows for increased recruitment rates which, subsequently, bolsters their ability to replace losses."

'More confident'

"The Taliban leadership controls nearly all insurgent activity in Afghanistan. Outside groups such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and others must receive permission from Taliban leaders prior to conducting operations on Afghan territory. Despite public statements suggesting distance between the Taliban and international extremists, no formal split has yet occurred. However many with the Taliban appear prepared to enforce a separation from these groups should they receive orders from the Taliban central shura in Quetta, Pakistan."
"Because Sirajuddin [Haqqani] remains in hiding, his younger brother Badruddin co-ordinates all military operations for the Haqqani network. The group has become highly centralised around Badruddin and very little can occur with his knowledge or consent."
"Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters in Islamabad, Pakistan."

Pakistan 'knows everything'

"The Taliban leadership designated Kabul City a 'free area', in which any commander can conduct operations without prior co-ordination with local command."
"A senior al-Qaeda commander in Kunar province said: 'Pakistan knows everything. They control everything. I can't [expletive] on a tree in Kunar [province] without them watching. The Taliban are not Islam. The Taliban are Islamabad."
"The Taliban continue to openly raise the majority of their revenue through donations. Collectors travel door to door throughout Pakistan requesting donations, without disguising their Taliban affiliation."
Narcotics trade

"The narcotics trade provides funds to Taliban operations, though the nature of this process is widely misunderstood. The Taliban does not officially encourage nor discourage narcotics production, and it does not play a direct role in the farming, smuggling, refining or distribution process. However the Taliban regularly collects a percentage of zakat [donation] from any individual involved in any stage of narcotics production. This zakat may be collected in Afghanis, Pakistani rupees or frequently, raw opium or hashish."

Update

Pakistan denies 'intimate' Taliban links

Pakistan has rejected as "frivolous" a leaked NATO report which claims that the country's security services are helping the Taliban, and suggesting that the group believes it is poised to regain power.

The leaking of the report came as Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar visited Kabul on Wednesday for talks aimed at improving strained relations between the antagonistic neighbours.
Speaking after talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Khar told journalists the report should be disregarded.
"We can disregard this as a potentially strategic leak... This is old wine in an even older bottle," she said.
Khar's one-day diplomatic visit, scheduled before the report was leaked, was dubbed a "new co-operation phase" by Afghan officials.
But while allegations that Pakistan's security services are helping the Taliban have been repeatedly made, the timing of the report's leak, initially reported by the BBC and the UK's Times newspaper, appeared to place fresh strain on already fractured diplomatic ties.

It's quite easy to release a statement about Pakistan's involvement with the Taliban if there was any truth to it. Reality and history would disagree. Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence is the reason the Taliban exists.

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Supporting Terrorism?

Pakistan stands accused of allowing that support to continue. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly said Pakistan trains militants and sends them across the border. In May 2006, the British chief of staff for southern Afghanistan told the Guardian, "The thinking piece of the Taliban is out of Quetta in Pakistan. It's the major headquarters." Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in September 2006, then-president Pervez Musharraf responded to such accusations, saying, "It is the most ridiculous thought that the Taliban headquarters can be in Quetta." Nevertheless, experts generally suspect Pakistan still provides some support to the Taliban, though probably not to the extent it did in the past. "If they're giving them support, it's access back and forth [to Afghanistan] and the ability to find safe haven," says Kathy Gannon, who covered the region for decades for the Associated Press. Gannon adds that the Afghan Taliban needs Pakistan even less as a safe haven now "because [it has] gained control of more territory inside Afghanistan."

WikiLeaks and the ISI-Taliban nexus

Of all this information, the most troubling concerns the duplicitous double dealing by Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. While some of the intelligence seems wildly implausible (surely the ISI did not plot to poison Kabul-bound beer, an enormously complex operation with limited pay off since US troops are not allowed to drink alcohol in Afghanistan), the WikiLeaks documents show a continued relationship between the ISI and the Taliban. This is not surprising. In the 1990s, the ISI helped create the Taliban and Pakistani support was decisive to the Taliban's capture of Kabul in 1996. The US has known since 2001 that Pakistan did not break its ties with the Taliban as President Pervez Musharraf had promised President Bush. After all, Mullah Omar and his close associates have been in Pakistan since 2001 and it is not plausible that Pakistan did not know where any of them were.

Role of the Pakistani military

At first the Taliban numbered in the hundreds, and were badly equipped and low on munitions. Within months however 15,000 students arrived from the Madrassas in Pakistan. A Pakistani artillery attack on the border town of Spin Boldak allowed the Taliban to seize the town as well as the munitions dump in Pasha.^[57] According to Peter Tomsen between 1988 and 9/11 hundreds of Pakistani military and ISI officers, along with thousands of regular armed forces personnel had been involved in the fighting in Afghanistan.^[58]
Before September 2001, according to several international sources, 28,000-30,000 Pakistani nationals, 14,000-15,000 Afghan Taliban and 2,000-3,000 Al Qaeda militants were fighting against anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan as a roughly 45,000 strong military force.^[19]^[59]^[18]^[60] Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf – then as Chief of Army Staff – was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and Bin Laden against the forces of Massoud.^[19]^[54]^[61] Of the estimated 28,000 Pakistani nationals fighting in Afghanistan, 8,000 were militants recruited in madrassas filling regular Taliban ranks.^[18] A 1998 document by the U.S. State Department confirms that "20–40 percent of [regular] Taliban soldiers are Pakistani."^[54] The document further states that the parents of those Pakistani nationals "know nothing regarding their child's military involvement with the Taliban until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan."^[54] According to the U.S. State Department report and reports by Human Rights Watch, the other Pakistani nationals fighting in Afghanistan were regular Pakistani soldiers especially from the Frontier Corps but also from the army providing direct combat support.^[14]^[54]
From 1996 to 2001 the Al Qaeda of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri became a state within the Taliban state.^[62] Bin Laden sent Arab and Central Asian Al-Qaeda militants to join the fight against the United Front among them his Brigade 055.^[62]^[63]

Six In The Morning

2012-02-01T20:00:00.000+09:00

Wukan goes to the polls

Chinese village on course to elect new leadership after people-power rebellion ousts land-grabbing officials

Reuters
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 February 2012 04.40 GMT

Wukan residents have cast ballots that mark the start of grassroots rights being restored after violent confrontations during which the authorities were run out of town over land grabs.

The rebellion in 2011 against abuse of power and the illegal sale of hundreds of hectares of farmland in the coastal village has become a benchmark of rural defiance against the land grabs and corruption that blight villages nationwide.

About 4,000 eligible people in the southern Chinese village voted on Wednesday to select an independent election committee that will oversee forthcoming ballots, including one for the village committee on 1 March.

Israel sets up elite command unit to strike behind 'enemy' lines

Covert operations on rise amid concern that sanctions may not halt Iran nuclear programme

Israel has set up a specialist commando unit designed to carry out missions deep inside enemy territory amid growing consensus in government circles that military strikes must be contemplated if economic sanctions do not halt Iran's nuclear programme.

The "Depth Corps" has been organised with the aim of co-ordinating deep penetration operations in other countries at a time when the defence ministry acknowledges that the number of covert Israeli operations abroad has increased significantly in the last year.

Oligarch's Election Bid

Tycoon Prokhorov's Tentative Challenge to Putin

By Matthias Schepp

Some see Russian presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, one of the world's richest men, as a Kremlin puppet, even though he has supporters among the Moscow protesters and oligarchs tired of Vladimir Putin. But he is challenging Putin in the campaign by calling for more privatization and less government.

Before Mikhail Prokhorov leaves his mansion on the outskirts of Moscow to embark on his campaign, he has to walk past a black panther. The panther, made of heavy plastic, stands in the lobby, next to the door, like a guard dog.

With a net worth of $18 billion (€13.7 billion) Prokhorov, 46, who has been an oligarch for almost two decades, ranks 32^nd in the list of the world's richest people compiled by American magazine Forbes. This has brought him many enviers and some enemies in his native Russia, while in the West he is seen as a predatory capitalist.

AU unveils bold free trade plan

I-Net Bridge | 01 February, 2012 00:03

At the end of its 18th summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, yesterday, the AU said that the Continental Free Trade Area would strengthen intra-African trade and deepen market integration to "contribute significantly to sustainable economic growth, employment generation, poverty reduction, inflow of foreign direct investment, industrial development and better integration of the continent into the global economy".

The AU wants to create the free trade area in three steps.

The first would be to finalise the tripartite agreement in the East African Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, and the Southern African Development Community by 2014.

My Business: Egyptian mothers on the net

What makes an entrepreneur? BBC Arabic's Marwa Amer and Tom Santorelli spoke to Yasmine El-Mehairy about setting up Egypt's first website designed specifically for mothers.

When Yasmine El-Mehairy looked online for pregnancy advice for her sister-in-law in 2010, she was bombarded with conflicting opinions and what she thought were old wives' tales.

She identified a niche in the online market and the idea for SuperMama was born: A website offering tips and expert advice for mothers and mothers-to-be, the first of its kind in the Arab world.

At U.N., Pressure Is on Russia for Refusal to Condemn Syria

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

Published: January 31, 2012

UNITED NATIONS — The battle over Syria moved to the United Nations on Tuesday with Western powers and much of the Arab world confronting Russia and its allies in the Security Council over their refusal to condemn the Syrian government for its violent suppression of popular protests.

As top diplomats gathered in the Council chamber for the showdown, the drumbeat of violence continued without pause in Syria, where government forces used heavy weapons and tanks to push rebels back from strongholds near Damascus.

Dealing With The Euro Crisis

2012-01-31T22:29:00.000+09:00

As the the brains drain

Six In The Morning

2012-01-31T20:00:00.000+09:00

Western pressure on Syria grows ahead of UN debate

Western countries are preparing to push for a tough resolution at a UN Security Council meeting on the crisis in Syria.

The BBC 31 January 2012
Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi will be asking the Council to back the League's new plan calling on President Bashar al-Assad to resign.Western foreign ministers who back the Arab plan will try to overcome Russia's threat to veto any such resolution.The diplomacy follows a day of particularly heavy bloodshed, with more than 100 people killed across Syria.Activists say more than 40 civilians were among the dead in Monday's violence, but their claims cannot be independently verified as the the BBC and other international media are severely restricted inside Syria.

China tightens security at Tibetan monasteries
Officials try to prevent protests spreading from neighbouring communities into Chinese-ruled Tibet, including Lhasa

Associated Press in BeijingguardianTuesday 31 January 2012
A senior official in Chinese-ruled Tibet has ordered an increase in security at Buddhist monasteries and along key roads as the government tries to prevent protests spreading from neighbouring Tibetan communities.Inspecting security around the Tibetan capital of Lhasa this week, the city's Communist party secretary, Qi Zhala, warned officials and clerics at monasteries that they would be dismissed if any trouble arose and told police at a highway checkpoint to be alert for acts of sabotage.

Japan's population to fall by third in 50 years
Unprecedented threat to economy, healthcare and culture as numbers plummet by 41 million

David McNeill Author Tokyo Tuesday 31 January 2012
Japan's government yesterday released stark new evidence that the nation is on the brink of a demographic crisis, forecasting that its population will shrink by 30 per cent in the next half-century, while soaring life expectancy will further burden the state.Click here to see the 'Demographic timebomb - ageing Japan' graphicThe report estimates that by 2060 the number of people in the Asian powerhouse will have fallen from 128 million to about 87 million, of which almost 40 per cent will be 65 or older. The report by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research warns that by 2110 the number of Japanese could plummet to 42.9 million – a third of the current population – "if things remain unchanged".

European Politicians in Denial as Greece Unravels
Europe's politicians are losing touch with reality. Greece is broke, and yet Brussels wants to send the country billions in new loans, to which there is growing opposition within the coalition government in Berlin. Rescue efforts are hopelessly bogged down by bickering over who will ultimately step up.

By Sven Böll, Alexander Neubacher, Ralf Neukirch, Christian Reiermann, Christoph Schult and Anne Seith
Martial music booms from the loudspeakers as warlike images gallop across monitors. A short euro crisis film montage shows police officers being posted in front of the parliament building in Athens and the jostling of frantic reporters, then US investor George Soros uses grim words in an appeal to rescue the euro zone. "The alternative is just too terrible to contemplate," he says.Speaking in a panel that follows the short film, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has a gloomy expression.

Two killed in Senegal as anger mounts against Wade
Senegal readied for fresh protests Tuesday after security forces shot dead a 60-year-old woman and a teenager at a rally against President Abdoulaye Wade's controversial bid for a third term.

Sapa-AFP | 31 January, 2012 07:29
Tensions have escalated in the West African nation after the constitutional council gave Wade the green light to run in February 26 polls, prompting international calls for calm and condemnations of violence.Senegal, typically a beacon of democracy among troubled neighbours, was urged by Amnesty International to halt a clampdown on protesters after two people were shot dead by security forces in the northern city of Podor.

Mexico envoy in Venezuela kidnap drama
After being seized from upscale area of Caracas, ambassador and his wife are released in a slum before dawn.

Last Modified: 31 Jan 2012 01:35
Mexico's envoy to Caracas was seized overnight then freed in the latest high-profile kidnapping in Venezuela, where violent crime is routinely listed as citizens' top worry. In the style of "express" kidnappings that are rife in Venezuela, four armed men seized ambassador Carlos Pujalte and his wife in their car after a reception in the upscale Country Club zone of Caracas, diplomats and officials said.The kidnappers then released the couple in a slum before dawn on Monday."We're so happy he is safe, I've been up following the case all night," said a senior European diplomat, whose own security has been increased in recent months.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-30T20:00:00.000+09:00

US drones provoke outrage in Iraq

Officials say use of unarmed aircraft an affront to nation's soverignty

By ERIC SCHMITT and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
A month after the last American troops left Iraq, the State Department is operating a small fleet of surveillance drones here to help protect the United States Embassy and consulates, as well as American personnel. Senior Iraqi officials expressed outrage at the program, saying the unarmed aircraft are an affront to Iraqi sovereignty. The program was described by the department’s diplomatic security branch in a little-noticed section of its most recent annual report and outlined in broad terms in a two-page online prospectus for companies that might bid on a contract to manage the program. It foreshadows a possible expansion of unmanned drone operations into the diplomatic arm of the American government; until now they have been mainly the province of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Dalai Lama and west 'distorting Tibetan protests'
Exiled Tibetan leader is eager to stir up trouble so as to garner support from the west, according to China Daily

Reuters in Beijingguardian.co.uk, Monday 30 January 2012 06.28 GMT
The Tibetan government-in-exile has colluded with western governments to distort a recent string of police shootings in Tibetan areas of China in a bid to discredit the government, an official Chinese newspaper said on Monday.Protests by ethnic Tibetans, who accuse Chinese authorities of stifling their traditions and religious freedoms, have gathered pace in the mountainous frontiers of southwestern Sichuan province that border on Tibet proper since last Monday.

Extreme close-up: German film brings the spread of neo-Nazi gangs into focus

Berlin Monday 30 January 2012
For a film that has touched a raw nerve in Germany with its portrayal of neo-Nazi violence, the opening of Kriegerin, or Combat Girl, is deceptively benign: the camera pans to a 10-year-old girl on a lonely Baltic beach weighed down by a heavy load on her back."Can I stop now grandpa?" the girl asks the kindly looking pensioner who greets her with open arms. "Of course you can, my darling," he replies with a smile as he removes her rucksack. It proves to be full of wet sand. "You've done well, my little Kreigerin," he tells her.

Jailed Rwanda journalists launch Supreme Court appeal
Two Rwandan journalists imprisoned for insulting President Paul Kagame and denying genocide will appear before the country's Supreme Court on Monday to argue for their freedom.

Jan 30 2012 08:17
The fate of Agnès Uwimana and Saïdati Mukakibibi, who are supported by an international team of lawyers and British human rights groups, has become a test case for free speech in the Central African state.The ban on denial of the country's 1994 genocide, which claimed as many as 800 000 lives, is being exploited as a legal weapon to silence political opponents, it is alleged. Rwanda insists the law is no different to those in Europe outlawing denial of the Holocaust.

The toughest place to be a binman
Jakarta and the surrounding metropolitan areas are home to 28 million people, and the Indonesian city is struggling to cope with all the rubbish it generates. What's it like for the binmen?

By Eamonn Walsh BBC News 30 January 2012
Each day soon after sunrise, Imam Syaffi sets off with his hand-pulled cart to collect the rubbish from some of the more desirable residences in Jakarta.With his cheery cry of "Sampa!" (rubbish), he lets the residents in their gated homes know that he has arrived.The spacious houses and leafy streets of Guntur, close to the financial district are a stark contrast to the cramped conditions elsewhere in Jakarta where many millions live in poverty.

After Egypt, Tunisia, Libya overthrows, Arab upheaval begins to settle
Egypt quietly moves into another phase of voting, while the monarchs in Morocco and Jordan have stabilized their rule through reforms.

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer, Nicholas Seeley, Correspondent, Kristen Chick, Correspondent
Tumult. Tragedies. Victory. Exultation. That was 2011 in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, where longstanding dictators were swept away by popular revolts that are still reshaping the Arab world."We started the revolution, but we're still completing it," says Ahmed Salah of Cairo, who quit his job at a stock exchange last year to help unite revolutionary forces.Indeed, 2012 is the year of what comes next, of deep breaths after a furious sprint, of political strategizing, building on gains made, and repairing economies damaged by a year of almost unprecedented upheaval.

Arianna Huffington: Beyond Left and Right

2012-01-29T22:57:00.002+09:00

Arianna Huffington, the co-founder of The Huffington Post, the online home for hundreds of journalists and opinionated celebrities, is.She tells Al Jazeera: "I don't see American politcs as a left-right game. I think that in fact when we continue to see it as a left-right game we are having a much harder time laying out the choices for the American people. Caring for the middle class, caring for jobs, wanting to prioritise that - is that a left-wing position? Shouldn't everybody care about that?... I think we are using these terms in a way which has made this type of national conversation much, much harder to have and which really marginalises issues."Born in Greece, Arianna Huffington emigrated to the US where she married former US Congressman Michael Huffington. After their divorce she embarked on her own political career, running for the governorship of California in 2003.

Many on the American left seem to have little respect for Arianna Huffington or the Huffington Post. They it view as nothing more than a tabloid at best. Before deciding that she was a "liberal" Arianna Huffington frequently appeared on American television as a conservative commentator.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-29T20:00:00.000+09:00

On Sunday

Hundreds arrested at Occupy Oakland; protesters break into City Hall

By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services
Sgt. Christopher Bolton of the Oakland Police Department told msnbc.com that the number arrested was likely between 200 and 300. "We are still processing the arrests," he said. He was speaking after the release of a statement on the Oakland City website that put the number of arrests at 200. "That figure is probably on the low side and we don't have a confirmed total yet," said. Sgt Bolton. In the statement, released in a PDF file format, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said: "Once again, a violent splinter group of the Occupy Movement is engaging in violent actions against Oakland. The Bay Area Occupy Movement has got to stop using Oakland as their playground." The statement also said there were reports of damage to exhibits inside City Hall during the protest.

Apple hit by boycott call over worker abuses in China
US writers attack conditions at Foxconn plant and call for consumers to act

Paul Harris in New York The Observer, Sunday 29 January 2012
Apple, the computer giant whose sleek products have become a mainstay of modern life, is dealing with a public relations disaster and the threat of calls for a boycott of its iPhones and iPads.The company's public image took a dive after revelations about working conditions in the factories of some of its network of Chinese suppliers. The allegations, reported at length in the New York Times, build on previous concerns about abuses at firms that Apple uses to make its bestselling computers and phones. Now the dreaded word "boycott" has started to appear in media coverage of its activities.

Is Sarkozy about to throw in the towel?
France's leader addresses nation as speculation grows he may not run again

By John Lichfield Sunday 29 January 2012
President Nicolas Sarkozy will be fighting for his political life when he makes a live appearance on French TV tonight. Some senior figures within his own party fear that he has already lost all chance of winning the two-round presidential election in April and May. There is speculation – possibly rooted in wishful thinking – that Mr Sarkozy may soon be tempted to throw in the towel and allow another senior centre-right politician to run in his place.Sources within his centre-right party insist that the President will make no dramatic statements tonight. He will not say that he is pulling out of the race.

A Papua New Guinea wedding: Face paint, grass aprons and pigs
It's not every day you get a chance to visit Papua New Guinea, and even rarer to be invited to a highland wedding, where grass aprons are de rigeur and the bride's value is measured in pigs.

By Pauline Davies Papua New Guinea
It was a wedding I could not pass up - a traditional tribal ceremony in the remote southern highlands of Papua New Guinea and I was invited as family.Komya village was once home for Moses, the bridegroom. After being abandoned as a child and on the verge of starvation, he was taken in by an Australian couple and ended up in Melbourne.There he met Danielle - my niece. They were only 13 years old, but romance slowly blossomed and a decade later they decided to marry.

Nigeria pressured to end Boko Haram violence
Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram has killed hundreds in an onslaught of attacks that authorities have been unable to stop, prompting growing calls for talks to bring an end to the bloodshed.

MJ SMITH AND AMINU ABUBAKAR KANO, NIGERIA
The group has long had unclear aims and a structure that is difficult to define, but a number of patterns have emerged in violence attributed to Boko Haram, offering more pieces to a complex puzzle.Attacks blamed on the group took on a new dimension on January 20, when a siege of Nigeria's second-largest city of Kano saw coordinated bombings and shootings which killed at least 185 people.

Active 200-km fault found off Honshu's Kii Peninsula
Previous shifts caused magnitude 8.6 quake, huge tsunami: scientists

Kyodo Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012
An active fault around 200 km long that is believed to have been a source of huge quakes in the past has been found off Honshu's Kii Peninsula, according to researchers at the University of Tokyo.If the fault on the Nankai Trough moves, it could trigger a magnitude 8.0 earthquake, the researchers said, adding they have found a seabed cliff several hundred meters high that was created by the fault's past movements.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-28T20:00:00.000+09:00

Goldman Sachs ties enrich Romney

No other company but Bain so closely intertwined with candidate's public, private lives

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, PETER LATTMAN and KEVIN ROOSE
When Bain Capital sought to raise money in 1989 for a fast-growing office-supply company named Staples, Mitt Romney, Bain’s founder, called upon a trusted business partner: Goldman Sachs, whose bankers led the company’s initial public offering.When Mr. Romney became governor of Massachusetts, his blind trust gave Goldman much of his wealth to manage, a fortune now estimated to be as much as $250 million.And as Mr. Romney mounts his second bid for the presidency, Goldman is coming through again: Its employees have contributed at least $367,000 to his campaign, making the firm Mr. Romney’s largest single source of campaign money through the end of September.

Israel warns time is running out before it launches strike on Iran
Growing body of opinion suggests that Iranian response to an attack would be muted

Saturday 28 January 2012
Economic sanctions by the European Union and the United States can only be allowed a limited time period to prevent Iran from attempting to acquire a nuclear arsenal before a military strike must be contemplated, Israeli leaders have declared.The tough public stance from Tel Aviv comes amid conflicting reports on the readiness of the Israeli military establishment to carry out an attack on Iran.

Syria: claims of 'racial cleansing' as 14 family members are killed
Even by the numbing standards of Syria's uprising, the most brutal of the Arab Spring, the images are harrowing.

By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent
Their faces battered and bloodied, the four children are laid out on a bed. The camera hovers first over the corpse of a male toddler in a turquoise sleep suit and blue and pink socks. He is not yet of walking age; his legs are still bowed.A bib around his neck is splattered in blood and he is lying on the upstretched hand of his older sister, whose face is stained crimson. Beneath them on the sheet are the bodies of two more young children, a boy and a girl, both bearing horrific injuries.

Libya prisoners make new torture allegations
New evidence has emerged that supporters of the former Libyan leader, Col Gaddafi, have been tortured while in detention.

The BBC 28 January 2012
The BBC has been told by inmates at a jail in Misrata that they were beaten, whipped and given electric shocks.The head of the city's military council has dismissed the allegations.United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay has called on Libya's transitional government to take full control of all prisons.The allegations come exactly 100 days after Col Gaddafi's violent death at the hands of former rebels.

Army up his sleeve: Mugabe’s military strongmen likely to stay

RAY NDLOVU HARARE, ZIMBABWE
The two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) parties led by Morgan Tsvangirai and Welshman Ncube have now threatened to fight Mugabe "legally and politically" in a bid to block the reappointments, which observers believe will strengthen Mugabe's position ahead of elections expected this year.The terms of office of Zimbabwe Defence Forces Commander General Constantine Chiwenga and Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri expire at the end of this month. Coming to an end in February are the terms of office for the prisons services commissioner, retired Major General Paradzai Zimondi, air force commander Air Marshal Perence Shiri and Zimbabwe National Army commander Lieutenant General Philip Sibanda.

How Haiti is fighting poverty by killing cash
With many of Haiti's physical banks destroyed, Haitians are beginning to rely on their cell phones as 'mobile wallets.'

By Margo Conner, Global Envision /
In Haiti, cash is escaping from wallets and savings accounts are breaking free from brick-and-mortar banks.Two years after 2010’s devastating earthquake, mobile money has taken off in the island nation. While the country has seen setbacks in many areas and continues to struggle, one bright spot is the transformation of the country’s traditional banking sector.Physical banks were wiped away by the quake and subsequent hurricane, and a mobile banking network that uses cell phones has grown up in their place.

South Korea's Pop Wave

2012-01-27T22:54:00.001+09:00

South Korean pop music known as 'K-Pop', is flourishing around the world, finding new fans across Asia, Europe and the US.With attractive artists, catchy tunes and polished dance moves, K-Pop is the number one draw-card for tourists to South Korea and generates tens of millions of export dollars.But punishing schedules and contracts, plus links to prostitution and corruption have revealed a dark side to the industry.Meanwhile critics claim K-Pop is too manufactured to create mega-international stars or to sustain its future.101 East explores South Korea's K-Pop phenomenon and asks if it is a music revolution that is set to last.Korea's music and entertainment are not the exception when it comes to the abusive treatment of those involved. These people are treated at best like chattel and at worse as slaves. Lives so controlled that one might use a metaphor; seemingly free yet kept in solitary confinement. Conditions which exist in Japan and Taiwan as well.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-27T20:00:00.000+09:00

Jonathan urges Boko Haram to state demands

Nigerian president says government will engage in "dialogue" if the group identifies itself and lays down clear demands.

Last Modified: 27 Jan 2012
The Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, has challenged Boko Haram to identify itself and state clearly its demands as a basis for talks.The radical Islamist group killed more than 500 people last year and another 250 in the first weeks of 2012 in gun and bomb attacks in the West African country, according to Human Rights Watch."If they clearly identify themselves now and say this is the reason why we are resisting, this is the reason why we are confronting government or this is the reason why we destroy some innocent people and their properties ... then there will be a basis for dialogue," Jonathan said in an interview to Reuters at the presidential villa in the capital, Abuja,on Thursday.

Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt faces genocide trial
Judge links Rios Montt to deaths of 1,700 people as soldiers used rape and torture to rid country of leftist insurgents in 1980s

Reuters in Guatemala Cityguardian.co.uk, Friday 27 January 2012
Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt will face trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity as the Central American nation seeks to put a brutal 36-year civil war behind it.A judge found sufficient evidence that linked Rios Montt, who ruled during a particularly bloody period in 1982-83, to the killing of more than 1,700 indigenous people in a crackdown on insurgents."I believe that there is enough evidence in these charges," said Judge Carol Flores, who agreed with prosecutors that Rios Montt should answer for brutality under his rule.

Settlers who went too far - even for Netanyahu
Donald Macintyre ventures to the village which has provoked a legal crisis in Israel

Friday 27 January 2012
Itai Harel gazed across at the rocky wilderness of the Judaean Mountains and urged us to "look at all this wonderful, empty land all the way from Jerusalem, waiting for its sons to come to build and live in it". It was one of the few moments that Mr Harel, a 38-year-old social worker, turned lyrical in helping to explain why he, his wife and six children are living with 50 other families in a fenced outpost on a remote hilltop east of the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Sudan and South Sudan leaders bid to defuse oil dispute
The presidents of Sudan and South Sudan are to meet in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to discuss a dispute over transit fees for South Sudan's oil.

The BBC 27 January 2012
Since independence last July, South Sudan has been using Sudan's infrastructure to export its oil.However, last week South Sudan said it was suspending oil production, accusing Sudan of "stealing" its oil.Sudan says the south has not been paying transit fees and that it has taken the oil in lieu of payment.The summit will bring together South Sudanese president Salva Kiir and his Sudanese counterpart - and old enemy - Omar al-Bashir.

Iran Set to Turn Off Oil Supply to Europe
The European Union embargo on Iranian oil will only come into effect in six months, but the leadership in Tehran wants to act first: Exports to Europe are set to be halted immediately. It is a move which could mean added difficulties for struggling economies in southern Europe.

Spiegel
It's a move which has tit-for-tat written all over it, but one which could nonetheless have a serious impact: The Iranian government wants to present a bill to parliament this weekend calling for an immediate halt to oil deliveries to Europe. The move, with most reports citing the Iranian news agency Mehr, has come about in response to the EU agreement to impose sanctions against Iran, which were announced earlier this week.The sanctions banned any new contracts for buying oil from Iran, but allowed existing deals to continue until July in order to give countries time to find other sources. But that process is now at risk after the latest move from Tehran, a step the Iranian government had already threatened.

Court blocks 'Mein Kampf' excerpts from being published

By Christopher Cottrell, CNNJanuary 26, 2012
A civil courtin Munich has blocked a British publisher's plans to print excerpts of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in Germany later this month.The court ruled Wednesday that British publisher Peter McGee's plans to disseminate portions of the anti-Semitic manifesto in Germany were not protected by long-standing citation rights.Initially slated to hit the shelves in the Zeitungszeugen magazine in Germany on January 26, it would have been the first time that any parts of the book had been reprinted in a newspaper or magazine in that country since the end of World War II.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-26T20:00:00.000+09:00

World's giant trees are dying off rapidly, studies show

Ecological 'kings of the jungle' being toppled by forest fragmentation, severe drought and new pests and diseases

John Vidal, environment editor
The Guardian, Thursday 26 January 2012

The biggest trees in the world, known as the true ecological kings of the jungle, are dying off rapidly as roads, farms and settlements fragment forests and they come under prolonged attack from severe droughts and new pests and diseases.

Long-term studies in Amazonia, Africa and central America show that while these botanical behemoths may have adapted successfully to centuries of storms, pests and short-term climatic extremes, they are counterintuitively more vulnerable than other trees to today's threats.

Palestinians to walk away from peace talks

President Abbas blames Israeli settlements for failed bid to revive top-level negotiations

The Palestinians were last night preparing to walk away from talks with Israel aimed at reviving peace negotiations as international mediators frantically shuttled between Ramallah and Jerusalem in an attempt to keep the peace process alive.

Palestinian representatives believe that negotiations have run their course as a deadline for both sides to present proposals on borders and security expires today. Israel, which has criticised the deadline as "artificial," said talks should continue.

Prisoners being tortured in Libya, UN says
Human-rights chief Navi Pillay "extremely concerned" about detainees accused by fighters of being Gaddafi loyalists.

Last Modified: 26 Jan 2012 09:12

Detainees from Libya's war held by fighters continue to be subjected to torture despite efforts by the provisional government to address the issue, according to the UN human-rights chief.
Navi Pillay told the UN Security Council on Wednesday she was extremely concerned about thousands of prisoners, most of them accused of being loyalists of the toppled government of Muammar Gaddafi and many from sub-Saharan Africa.
"The lack of oversight by the central authorities creates an environment conducive to torture and ill-treatment," Pillay said.

"My staff have received alarming reports that this is happening in places of detention that they have visited."

PIP breast implant boss arrested in France

The owner of a French breast implant maker at the centre of a safety scare has been arrested in France.

Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) founder Jean-Claude Mas, 72, was held at his home southern France, police sources told reporters.
In 2010, France banned PIP implants made with the low-grade industrial silicone, amid fears they could rupture and leak.
An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 women in 65 countries were given implants.
In France, 30,000 women were advised to remove them.
Interpol
Mr Mas, who was arrested in Six-Fours-les-Plages, has been under investigation since he revealed in a police interview last year that PIP ordered employees to hide the unauthorised silicone when they visited its factory.

Kidnapped US aid contractor reportedly held by militants in Pakistan

Some five months after Warren Weinstein was kidnapped, the US aid contractor is reported to be in the custody of a Pakistani Al Qaeda affiliate, McClatchy Newspapers reports.

By Tom Hussain, McClatchy Newspapers

A kidnapped American aid contractor is alive and in good health, being held by a Pakistani Al Qaeda affiliate that's likely to use him as a bargaining chip, according to militants, security officials, and analysts.

Warren Weinstein, who was kidnapped in August from his home in Lahore, Pakistan, is in the custody of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants in North Waziristan, a ranking Pakistani militant told McClatchy. The militant said he'd seen Mr. Weinstein last month and at that point "his health was fine."

Australia's Gillard dragged away from Aboriginal protest

By msnbc.com staff and news services

CANBERRA -- Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was dragged away by security guards Thursday after she was trapped in a restaurant by rowdy protesters demonstrating for indigenous rights following a ceremony to mark Australia's national day.
Some 200 supporters of Aboriginal rights surrounded a Canberra restaurant and banged on its windows while Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott were inside officiating at an award ceremony.
The protesters were marching at the nearby Aboriginal Tent Embassy to mark 40 years since its establishment and rushed the restaurant in response to comments by Abbott earlier in the day, The Australian newspaper reported.

Help Kill 24 Iraqi Civilians Don't Go To Jail

2012-01-25T22:34:00.001+09:00

In 2005 a squad of U.S. Marines angry over the killing of another Marine entered the Iraqi city of Haditha and killed 24 innocent civilians mostly women and children shot at very close range. One has to wonder if the lives of those killed mean anything. Or, were they just seen as objects and not human because they were Iraqi?

The only US marine to face sentencing for the killing of two dozen unarmed Iraqis in one of the Iraq war's defining moments has been spared jail time after defending his squad's storming of the homes of Haditha as a necessary act "to keep the rest of my marines alive".
Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich's sentence ends a six-year prosecution for the 2005 attack. Eight Marines were initially charged; one was acquitted and six others had their cases dropped.
Wuterich, who admitted ordering his squad to "shoot first, ask questions later" after a roadside bomb killed a fellow Marine, ended his manslaughter trial by pleading guilty on Monday to a single count of negligent dereliction of duty.

The Haditha killings (also called the Haditha incident or the Haditha massacre) refers to the incident in which 24 Iraqi men, women and children were killed by a group of United States Marines on November 19, 2005 in Haditha, a city in the western Iraqi province of Al Anbar. At least 19 of those killed were civilians. It has been alleged that the killings were retribution for the attack on a convoy of Marines with an improvised explosive device that killed Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas.^[1]
An initial Marine Corps communique reported that 15 civilians were killed by the bomb's blast and eight insurgents were subsequently killed when the Marines returned fire against those attacking the convoy. However, other evidence uncovered by the media contradicted the Marines' account.^[2] A Time magazine reporter's questions prompted the United States military to open an investigation into the incident. The investigation claimed it found evidence that "supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot civilians, including unarmed men, women and children", according to an anonymous Pentagon official.^[3] On December 21, 2006, eight Marines from 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines were charged in connection with the incident.^[4]^[5] As of June 2008, charges against seven of the eight Marines had been dropped.^[6]

Six In The Morning

2012-01-25T20:00:00.000+09:00

Business booming for the dog smugglers of the Mekong

By Peter Shadbolt, CNNJanuary 25, 2012
Chinese New Year is a dangerous time for pet dogs in Thailand.Traditionally the time of peak demand for dog meat in Vietnam, the dog smugglers of the Mekong work deep into the night shipping thousands of animals -- sometimes dozens to a cage -- across the river border with Laos to be trucked on to the dinner tables of the nouveau riche in Hanoi."I'd say about 98% of them are domesticated -- a lot of them are stolen pets," says John Dalley of the Phuket-based Soi Dog Foundation. Soi is a Thai word meaning backstreet or alley."They've been trained and respond to commands, some of them are even still wearing collars," he says.

Fishing rules must cover EU vessels in foreign waters, campaigners say
WWF says reform of fishing policy must ensure that European vessels exploit stocks in international waters sustainably

Press Associationguardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 January 2012 06.00 GMT
New rules are needed to make sure all European fishing vessels fishing outside of EU waters operate in a sustainable way, campaigners urged on Wednesday.The current reform of the common fisheries policy, which governs the EU fleet, must make sure that vessels exploiting fish stocks as far away as the Indian Ocean and the southern Atlantic conform to the same standards as in Europe's waters.

We've been here before – and it suits Israel that we never forget 'Nuclear Iran'
The Ayatollah ordered the entire nuclear project to be closed down because it was the work of the devil

Robert Fisk Wednesday 25 January 2012
Turning round a story is one of the most difficult tasks in journalism – and rarely more so than in the case of Iran. Iran, the dark revolutionary Islamist menace. Shia Iran, protector and manipulator of World Terror, of Syria and Lebanon and Hamas and Hezbollah. Ahmadinejad, the Mad Caliph. And, of course, Nuclear Iran, preparing to destroy Israel in a mushroom cloud of anti-Semitic hatred, ready to close the Strait of Hormuz – the moment the West's (or Israel's) forces attack.

Erdogan Slams 'Racist' France Over Genocide Bill
The French Senate has passed a bill making the denial of genocide -- including the massacre of Armenians in 1915 -- a crime. The Turkish reaction has been furious. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced what he called a "racist and discriminatory" attitude towards Turkey.

Spiegel
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has slammed a controversial French bill, which makes denying that the 1915 massacre of Armenians was a genocide a crime, for its "racist and discriminatory" attitude towards Turkey. The Turkish prime minister also threatened to implement unspecified sanctions against France if the bill is signed into law, "step by step, with no retreat."Whilst Turkey recognizes the deaths of Armenians in 1915 during the break up of the Ottoman Empire, it refuses to accept they amounted to genocide -- contrary to the position of most historians. But with the French Senate having approved the bill on Monday, it now only needs the signature of President Nicolas Sarkozy to become law.

Chinese fire on Tibetan protest

Philip Wen, BeijingJanuary 25, 2012
TENSIONS have escalated in the sensitive Tibetan region of south-west China after security forces opened fire on ethnic Tibetan protesters, killing at least one and injuring more than 30 others on the first day of the Chinese New Year.The shootings happened in Luhuo, in the western reaches of Sichuan Province, near the Tibetan border. The dead man has been identified as 49-year-old Norpa Yonten, according to Free Tibet, a London-based advocacy group.

Struggling Nigeria weakened by violence
The assault bore the hallmarks of long-term planning: Cars loaded down with heavy explosives and driven by those willing to die

JON GAMBRELL KANO, NIGERIA
The coordinated attack in Nigeria's second largest city by the radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram has shown its metamorphosis from a group that sent out lone motorcycle-riding gunmen to one that deployed scores of killers who moved with military precision. Nigeria's ill-equipped police and military have been unable to confront this growing threat to peace in Africa's most populous nation."Nigeria has never seen anything like this before," said Elizabeth Donnelly, a London-based think tank Chatham House analyst. "It's something so diffuse, so amorphous. It's very nimble and really hard to understand and pin down."

For Syrian Government It's A 'Conspiracy'

2012-01-25T00:19:00.001+09:00

The world is 'Conspiring ' against Syria. You read it here first every government except two are working to over throw the government of Syria. It's the plot of the century of the millennium for all of known history. As the evil conspirators lurk in the shadows Syria's government using all the military force at their disposal to crush the coup of conspiracy. By killing more than 5,000 of its own citizens. For the record most conspiracies don't succeed because to many people know and they can't keep it a secret.

Syria attacks Arab League over 'conspiracy'

Foreign minister says league is implementing a foreign conspiracy, as Gulf states withdraw from observer mission.

Syria has accused the Arab League of implementing a foreign conspiracy against the country, after a new initiative by the organisation called for President Bashar al-Assad to step down to end the bloodshed there.
Gulf Arab states said earlier they had decided to withdraw their observers from the Arab League mission to Syria, saying that the much-criticised initiative had failed to stop the bloodshed.
The new plan envisioned the "peaceful departure of the Syrian regime" and resembled the arrangement in Yemen, where Gulf states convinced Ali Abdullah Saleh, the outgoing president, to delegate power and leave the country, Qatar's prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, said.
Walid al-Muallem, Syria's foreign minister, told a news conference on Tuesday that the latest Arab proposal was a violation of his country's sovereignty, and attacked the league for its efforts to take its plan to the UN.
Muallem said the league was "implementing the conspiracy they have agreed to abroad against Syria."
"At this point in the conspiracy ... it's a provocation to bring the matter into international circles," he said.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-24T20:00:00.000+09:00

A Maritime Disaster that Was Waiting to Happen'

The Costa Concordia disaster, which has claimed at least 13 lives, has shocked the world. But maritime experts say such a catastrophe was just a matter of time.

SPIEGEL Staff
On the Tuscan island of Giglio, the night sky is clear and the stars are out. Three men are sitting among the cacti and lemon trees near the cliffs behind the harbor. When the weather is nice, couples come here at sunset to make out.It's Thursday night of last week. Seven days have now passed since the Costa Concordia ran aground off the coast of Italy.The moon is shining as the men stare at the wreckage of the capsized cruise ship, not far from the harbor entrance. Two of the men are local Italians from the island, who have spent the last few days in a desperate struggle, and who have saved many lives in the process. They are comforting the third man, an Indian from Mumbai, who is still hoping for a miracle.

Turkish fury likely over French bill on Armenian genocide

RUADHÁN Mac CORMAIC in Paris
FRANCE IS bracing itself for a major diplomatic stand-off with Turkey after senators in Paris approved a draft law to make it illegal to deny that the mass killing of Armenians during the first World War was genocide.The National Assembly, France’s lower house, voted overwhelmingly in December for the genocide-denial bill, prompting Ankara to freeze political and economic ties and temporarily recall its ambassador.Hundreds of Turks and Armenians protested outside the senate building during yesterday’s debate on the bill, which would mean anyone denying the deaths amounted to genocide could face a one-year jail term and a fine of €45,000.

Egypt's winds of change remain to be seen
They stood in a moment of silent unity, honouring the revolutionary martyrs who helped make this historic dream a reality.

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - Jan 24 2012 07:42
And then the cracks began to appear. The first ultra-conservative Salafist MP to go off script was Mamdouh Ismail, who added "... if not in contradiction with God's doctrine" to his oath of office and others quickly followed suit. Liberals hit back by tacking on their own spontaneous post scripts, promising to serve the nation "in accordance with the demands of the revolution".

Foodistan: India-Pakistan chefs fight for taste buds
It's being billed as an "epic battle" between India and Pakistan.

By Geeta Pandey BBC News, Delhi
Many sported bright yellow "No to military trials" armbands, an emblem of fierce opposition to the ruling generals and refused to join a bout of collective applause for the army council that still maintains an iron grip on the country's levers of power.But instead of being fought on the battleground, it's being fought in the kitchen.The armies comprise eight professional chefs from each country, fighting to conquer the taste buds of judges.This is Foodistan - a new show that begins on Indian television channel NDTV Good Times on Monday night.The programme-makers say it's a cook-off between "highly talented chefs from Asia's two most culturally rich countries".

Sheikhs fall in love with renminbi
Middle East

By M K Bhadrakumar
China and Qatar have been taking virtually opposite positions apropos events in Libya and Syria. Yet, they do not seem to be deterred by this little difference and are bonding in a big way in economic cooperation to mutual benefit.Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who visited Doha last week, disclosed at a press conference on Friday: a) China proposes to invest in the manufacturing of ''downstream oil products, which are most urgently needed by Qatar''; b) China and Qatar signed an agreement to jointly build a refinery in Taizhou, Zheijiang, in China; c) Chinese companies propose to participate in infrastructure projects in Qatar; and d) China and Qatar are discussing a "long-term, stable and comprehensive cooperative partnership" in natural gas.

Sumatran elephant upgraded to critically endangered status
Species has lost half its population and 69% of its habitat through deforestation in the past 25 years

Jonathan Wattsguardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 January 2012 06.00 GMT
The Sumatran elephant has been placed on the list of critically endangered species after losing half of its population in a single generation, prompting calls from conservation groups for emergency measures to halt the destruction of its habitat.Deforestation is seen as the primary reason for the collapse in numbers in Indonesia, which until recently was seen alongside India and Sri Lanka as one of the last great refuges for elephants in Asia. The animal is now at risk of becoming extinct within decades.

Cell 36: Palestinian Children Locked In Solitary Comfinement In Israel

2012-01-23T22:00:00.000+09:00

Harriet Sherwood, Mat Heywood and Mustafa Khaliliguardian.co.uk,Monday 23 January 2012

Cell 36 in Al Jalame prison, northern Israel, is one of a handful of cells where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. Mohammad Shabrawi from Tulkarm, in the West Bank, was arrested last January, aged 16, and Ezz ad-Deen Ali Qadi from Ramallah, who was 17 when arrested, talk about their experiences

Six In The Morning

2012-01-23T20:00:00.000+09:00

Syria rejects Arab League peace plan, brands it a 'conspiracy'

Foreign ministers had called on President Bashar Assad to hand over to a deputy, set up a new unity government

msnbc.com news services
Syria rejected on Monday a request by Arab League foreign ministers that President Bashar Assad hand over power to a deputy and set up a new unity government, saying the plan was part of a "conspiracy against Syria.""Syria rejects the decisions of the Arab League ministerial council ... and considers them a violation of its national sovereignty and a flagrant interference in its internal affairs," state news agency SANA quoted an official source as saying. Arab foreign ministers called on Assad on Sunday to hand over to a deputy and set up a new unity government, as a prelude to early parliamentary and presidential elections.

The real North Korea by Kim's forsaken son
When Kim Jong-il's presumed heir was shunned, his life changed forever. David McNeill sifts exclusive extracts from a new book that explains why he believes his half-brother's fledgling reign is doomed

Monday 23 January 2012
Every family has its black sheep but few families are as shrouded in myth as the reclusive Kim regime of North Korea. Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son of the recently deceased dictator Kim Jong-il, famously left the family fold and apparently spends much of his time in the Chinese gambling resort of Macau. Until this month, he was known mainly for a bizarre clandestine attempt to visit Tokyo Disneyland in 2001. He used a fake passport and Chinese alias that translates as "fat bear" – a stunt that reportedly embarrassed his father and ended any chance he had of becoming leader.

Britain, US and France send warships through Strait of Hormuz
Britain, America and France delivered a pointed signal to Iran, sending six warships led by a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier through the highly sensitive waters of the Strait of Hormuz.

By David Blair, Chief Foreign Correspondent6:00AM GMT 23 Jan 2012
This deployment defied explicit Iranian threats to close the waterway. It coincided with an escalation in the West's confrontation with Iran over the country's nuclear ambitions.European Union foreign ministers are today expected to announce an embargo on Iranian oil exports, amounting to the most significant package of sanctions yet agreed. They are also likely to impose a partial freeze on assets held by the Iranian Central Bank in the EU.

Treblinka: Revealing the hidden graves of the Holocaust
Any doubts about the existence of mass graves at the Treblinka death camp in Poland are being laid to rest by the first survey of the site using tools that see below the ground, writes forensic archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls.

The BBC 23 January 2012
When the Nazis left Treblinka in 1943 they thought they had destroyed it. They had knocked down the buildings and levelled the earth. They had built a farmhouse and installed a Ukrainian "farmer". They had planted trees, and - contemporary reports suggest - lupins.But if they thought they had removed all evidence of their crime, they hadn't. For a forensic archaeologist, there is a vast amount to study.

Egypt's new parliament to hold first session
Islamist-dominated lower house will meet on Monday days after completing first election since fall of Hosni Mubarak.

Last Modified: 23 Jan 2012 08:04
Just days after finishing a historic election that put Islamists in the legislative driving seat, Egypt's lower house of parliament on Monday will sit for the first time since former president Hosni Mubarak was deposed nearly one year ago.The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party, which took roughly 43 per cent of the People's Assembly, has vowed to guide Egypt through the transition from military to civilian rule while upholding personal liberties.The Brotherhood has also promised not to ally with the ultra-conservative Nour Party, which largely represents Egypt's fundamentalist Salafi community and came in second, winning around 21 per cent of available seats.The rise of the Islamists marks a sea change from the Mubarak era, when parliament was a compliant body dominated by a supermajority of his National Democratic Party (NDP).

Salman Rushdie slams Rajasthan government
Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot says threat was real

Sunny Sebastian
The eminent author Salman Rushdie has said he is “outraged and very angry” over information that Rajasthan authorities fabricated a threat to his life in order to keep him away from the Jaipur Literature Festival. “I have investigated [the issue],” he wrote on his Twitter feed in response to a story published by The Hindu on Sunday, “and believe I was indeed lied to.”

Six In The Morning

2012-01-22T20:00:00.000+09:00

On Sunday

Gingrich wins South Carolina primary

Former US house speaker raises the possibility of a lengthy campaign by beating the Republicans' favourite, Romney.

Last Modified: 22 Jan 2012 07:30
Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, took roughly 40 per cent of the vote. His victory means that three different candidates have won the first three contests in the state-by-state Republican primary, reflecting a party electorate that has yet to make up its mind.Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, won the Iowa caucuses on January 3, and Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, won the New Hampshire primary on January 10.Speaking at a late-night victory rally in Greenville on Saturday, Gingrich complimented his rivals before laying into Obama, whom he called a "radical" who would transform the United States into a European-style socialist state.

Beijing releases pollution data after public pressure
But figures on dangerous smog particles rated as PM2.5 conflict with higher measurements by others, observers say

Associated Pressguardian.co.uk, Sunday 22 January 2012 04.44 GMT
Environmental authorities in Beijing, China's notoriously smoggy capital, have started releasing more detailed pollution data in response to public pressure.But one expert said measurements from the first day were low compared with data US officials have been collecting for years.The initial measurements were low on a day where blue sky was visible. After a week of smog the skies over the city were being cleared by a north wind.

Thousands of women could be at risk from 'silent Thalidomide'
A drug intended to prevent miscarriage is blamed for causing cancer in the daughters – and possibly even granddaughters – of women who took it decades ago.

By Sarah Morrison and Jaymi McCann Sunday 22 January 2012
Tens of thousands of British families are to be asked if they are victims of a drug given to pregnant women which can cause fatal illness in the second, and possibly even third, generations. Some women given the drug in this country have already obtained compensation in America.Diethylstilboestrol (DES), a drug given to women for 30 years up to 1973, has been found to cause a rare form of vaginal and cervical cancer in some of the daughters of the women who took it, as well as fertility problems. Compensation of an estimated $1.5bn has been paid out in the US. There is even a suspicion that DES – known as the "silent Thalidomide" – can affect the grandchildren of those who took it.

Writers' protest runs foul of Indian law

Jason BurkeJanuary 22, 2012
JAIPUR: Organisers of India's biggest literary festival have said they fear for the future of the event after several high-profile writers read excerpts from Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses in support of the author. The novel is banned in India.Rushdie was scheduled to appear at the festival in Jaipur in north-west India but said on Friday he was pulling out after a warning that hitmen had been sent to ''eliminate'' him by a Mumbai crime boss.

For activists, Egypt revolution still on a year later
Activists behind the uprising which ousted Hosni Mubarak are up in arms over grandiose plans by Egypt's military rulers to celebrate the first anniversary of the revolution, insisting it is still a work in progress.

Sapa-AFP | 22 January, 2012 11:45
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has fireworks displays and other celebrations lined up for January 25 to mark one year since the launch of the revolt that forced president Mubarak to step down after three decades in power.But activists say the journey to democratic rule is far from over and have called for nationwide street protests on Wednesday to keep pushing for change.

A Point of View: The tyranny of unwelcome noise
Honking horns. Household appliances that beep. Other people's music. Should we turn down the volume, or get better at concentrating in a noisy world, asks historian Lisa Jardine.

The BBC
I had an MRI scan this week, which set me thinking about unwelcome noise.There was plenty of opportunity to do so, as anyone who has had such a scan will know. Lying prone in a claustrophobic opaque tunnel, with instructions not to move a muscle, everything is driven out of one's mind by the insistent, repetitive, loud banging and cyclical shrill throbbing sounds produced by the machine's electromagnetic coil."The scanner is noisy," the instructions the NHS sends you with your appointment notification warn.

Republicans Newt Gingrich and Their Love Of Morals and Ethicss

2012-01-22T15:12:00.001+09:00

With the South Carolina Presidential Primary now complete and Newt Gingrich the declared winner one has to question the supposed moral and ethical superiority of America's Republican party and its voters. Here's a political party which consistently promotes these issues yet fails to abide by them.

Newt Gingrich is the former Speaker of the House of Representatives his term in office didn't end with the Democratic party regaining control of the lower chamber after an election. Mr. Gingrich's speaker-ship was felled by his unethical behavior.

Ethics violations and penalty

Eighty-four ethics charges were filed against Gingrich during his term as speaker. After extensive investigation and negotiation by the House Ethics Committee, Gingrich was penalized $300,000 by a 395–28 House vote. It was the first time in history a speaker was disciplined for ethical wrongdoing.^[65]
In January 1997, Gingrich said "I did not manage the effort intensely enough to thoroughly direct or review information being submitted to the committee on my behalf. In my name and over my signature, inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable statements were given to the committee, but I did not intend to mislead the committee."^[66] Most of the charges were dropped, in one case because there was no evidence that Gingrich was still violating, as of the time of the investigation, the rule that he was found to have violated in the past.^[67] The one charge not dropped was a charge of claiming tax-exempt status for a college course run for political purposes. In addition, the House Ethics Committee concluded that inaccurate information supplied to investigators represented "intentional or ... reckless" disregard of House rules.^[68]
Special Counsel James M. Cole concluded that Gingrich violated federal tax law and had lied to the ethics panel in an effort to force the committee to dismiss the complaint against him. The full committee panel did not agree whether tax law had been violated and left that issue up to the IRS.^[68] In 1999, the IRS cleared the organizations connected with the "Renewing American Civilization" courses under investigation for possible tax violations.^[69]

^{He was so disliked by the members of his party that they brought the ethics charges against him following the rebuke by the House there was an attempt to remove him from office which failed allowing him to remain Speaker until his resignation following the 1998 mid-term elections. Further Mr. Gingrich believed that then President Bill Clinton should be impeached and removed office after having lied about an affair he j}
^{had with a White House intern yet at that same time he was having an affair with his current wife who was one of his staff members. People like Newt Gingrich love to ex-pause their love for morality and ethics even though they lack them themselves.}

Murder In Tehran

2012-01-21T22:32:00.000+09:00

On January 11, the fourth Iranian nuclear scientist in two years was blown up by a magnetic bomb attached to his car door. And while the media did not reveal Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan's assassin, they did reveal their own agendas and double standards.Iranian media instantly pointed the finger at Israel. As ever, the Israelis neither confirmed nor denied. Over in the US and the UK, mainstream media outlets used his death as yet another beat in the drum roll for war against the Islamic Republic.In this week's News Divide, we look at what the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist says about the news media and their own agendas. Quick hits from Listening Post Newsbytes: Thousands of websites go offline to protest against proposed anti-piracy legislation; the Indian government backs a court order that could have implications for leading Internet companies; the trial of a prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist comes to an end but the sentence is little comfort for supporters; and Pakistan's poor record on investigating murder cases involving journalists just got worse.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-21T20:00:00.000+09:00

Must-see Chinese TV becoming a snooze

New censorship rules are driving viewers away from the hours-long New Year's Gala, long a staple of the Chinese holiday.

By Barbara Demick and John Lee, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Beijing—It is the television show that everybody watches and everybody loves to hate.On Sunday night, the eve of the Chinese New Year, a billion people could tune in for a ritual that is as deeply ingrained in the holiday tradition as watching the Rose Parade is for Americans.The show is CCTV's annual New Year's Gala, a five-hour pastiche of dancing, singing, comedy, magic tricks, propaganda and kitsch. CCTV claims that more than 90% of the Chinese population watches the show (more on that claim later), making it by far the most popular in China and one of the most watched television programs in the world.

Amazon setting up first 'fulfilment centre' in India
Giant warehouse in Mumbai signals that company is serious about expansion into Indian market

Reutersguardian.co.uk, Saturday 21 January 2012 00.29 GMT
Amazon is setting up its first "fulfilment centre" in India as the world's largest internet retailer tries to break into the world's second most populous nation.Fulfilment centres are giant warehouses that help Amazon and other online retailers store products, ship them and handle returns quickly.The fulfilment centre is based in Mumbai, the biggest city in the country, according to job listings on Amazon's Indian careers website.

EU's toughest sanctions yet put Iran on final warning over nuclear programme
Embargoes on oil and banking will hit ailing EU countries dependent on trade with Tehran

Saturday 21 January 2012
The toughest sanctions yet imposed on Iran will be unveiled by the European Union on Monday amid warnings it could be the last chance to resolve the nuclear stand-off before military strikes are considered.The punitive measures will include embargoes on oil, the country's central bank and financial institutions, with the aim of driving the Tehran regime to the negotiating table as it faces its revenue lifeblood being choked off.

Arctic Canada caught on 1919 silent film
One of the world's early documentaries featured unique footage of the lives of Arctic fur trappers in 1919.

By Chris Nikkel Documentary maker
In July 1919, the RMS Nascopie departed Montreal. It carried supplies bound for Arctic fur trade posts.But the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) ice-breaker had extra cargo on its annual trip. A film crew is on board.The ship headed north. As they travelled, a cameraman filmed the Nascopie crashing through ice floes.When the ship anchored, he went overboard, trudging across the ice with a tripod cradled in his arms. A second camera rolled from the deck, recording it all.

Hungarian PM backs down in dispute with European Union
The Irish Times - Saturday, January 21, 2012

DANIEL McLAUGHLIN
HUNGARIAN PRIME minister Viktor Orban has backed down from a possible court battle with the European Union and pledged to alter laws that have jeopardised Budapest’s bid to secure vital financial aid.His climbdown yesterday came as neighbouring Romania braced for an eighth night of protests against the government and its austerity measures, and Croats prepared to vote whether to join the EU at a time of economic uncertainty and political tension between members.

Curfew in Nigeria's Kano after deadly blasts
Immigration office and police stations come under attack in the largest city in country's mainly Muslim north.

Last Modified: 21 Jan 2012 05:55
The Nigerian city of Kano is under curfew after multiple explosions and gunfire in the area targeted an immigration office and several police stations.A witness told Al Jazeera that he had seen at least seven dead bodies, including five immigration officers and two civilians, following Friday's blasts. Authorities have not confirmed reports of casualties.An AFP news agency journalist heard what sounded to be about 20 explosions coming from two neighbourhoods in the city, the largest in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north. Smoke could also been seen coming from the areas.Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the attack, the Associated Press news agency reported.Ahmad Idris, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Abuja, said reports suggested at least eight police stations were targeted in addition to the zonal police headquarters.

Censorship In The World's Largest Democracy

2012-01-21T00:51:00.002+09:00

Online restrictions in India continue to tighten, with even Facebook and Google facing the prospect of being blocked.

Jillian York is director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.

San Francisco, California - In the world's largest democracy, something is brewing that could have grave implications for freedom of expression. On January 12, in response to a private lawsuit, a Delhi High Court judge, Justice Suresh Kait, told lawyers for the Indian offices of Facebook and Google that, unless they develop the capability to regulate "offensive and objectionable" material on their sites, the Indian government would block their websites, "like China [does]".
The complaint, filed by Vinay Rai, a magazine editor, was filed under laws banning the sale of obscene books and objects, as well as one pertaining to criminal conspiracy. It demands that the companies - as well as companies providing similar services, such as Yahoo - screen content before it appears on their sites.
In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Rai explained that the evidence he submitted to the court included content offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians. "My intention is to ensure that the sentiments of any religion or community are not hurt," he told the Journal.

"Unlike books and paintings, online expression cannot easily be hidden from view."

India Toxic Trade

2012-01-20T22:10:00.003+09:00

Is India investing in a future health crisis by importing asbestos from Canada?

More than 50 countries have banned asbestos products but India cannot get enough. It imports the mineral from Canada, risking a future health crisis.

Asbestos products have a deadly reputation.

Inhaling asbestos fibres can lead to a slow and painful death.

But in India, asbestos illness is under-diagnosed and mostly unrecognised.

And with the proliferation of factories making asbestos products, India is on the cusp of a devastating health crisis.

Workers have little safety equipment and if they contract a respiratory disease or cancer, few are paid compensation.

However, India cannot get enough of the product and it is a first-world nation that is supplying it.

Canada will not use asbestos itself but it is selling it by the shipload to India.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-20T20:00:00.000+09:00

Afghanistan’s Soldiers Step Up Killings of Allied Forces

By MATTHEW ROSENBERGPublished: January 20, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — American and other coalition forces here are being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train, in attacks motivated by deep-seated animosity between the supposedly allied forces, according to American and Afghan officers and a classified coalition report obtained by The New York Times. A decade into the war in Afghanistan, the report makes clear that these killings have become the most visible symptom of a far deeper ailment plaguing the war effort: the contempt each side holds for the other, never mind the Taliban.

Cuban dissident dies in jail after hunger strike
Death of Wilmar Villar Mendoza, jailed in November for crimes against the state, blamed on mistreatment by Cuban government

Reuters in Havanaguardian.co.uk, Friday 20 January 2012
A 31-year-old jailed dissident, Wilmar Villar Mendoza, died on Thursday in eastern Cuba from the effects of a 56-day hunger strike and what fellow opposition activists believe was mistreatment by the Cuban government, according to a human rights activist.Villar launched his hunger strike shortly after he was arrested in November, put on trial and sentenced to four years in prison for crimes including disobedience, resistance and crimes against the state, said Elizardo Sanchez of the Cuban Commission of Human Rights.

Dreams turn to reality for surrealist film director
The Czech film director, Jan Svankmajer discusses a troubled childhood and the inspiration for his new film.

Emily Jupp Friday 20 January 2012
Dreams are "undoubtedly one of the most substantial sources of inspiration," says the Czech film director, producer and animator, Jan Svankmajer, discussing his new film, Surviving Life.The plot follows a man who meets and falls in love with a woman in his dreams. The dreams compel him to try to uncover their meaning and in his obsession with his dream world he begins to spend more time away from his real life.The story evolved from Svankmajer's own dream, "after waking up I concluded that it was like the beginning of a film, bearing a mystery, and so I wrote the rest of it.

Costa Concordia disaster: Crew urged 'return to cabins'
A video has emerged showing the crew of the Costa Concordia reassuring passengers nothing was wrong, after the cruise ship had begun taking in water.

The BBC 20 January 2012
In the amateur footage, a crew member says "everything is under control" and asks passengers to go to their cabins.It is thought the delay in deciding to abandon the ship may have cost lives. At least 11 people died.Rescue workers have suspended their search once again after the ship shifted in choppy waters on Friday.The boat's movements have twice before hampered the work of rescuers, with the search suspended almost all day on Wednesday.The ship may have only moved by a metre or as little as a few centimetres, but officials fear it could suddenly slip into much deeper water, says the BBC's Alan Johnston at the scene.

Women Take Power in Brazilian Government
Brazil's new president, Dilma Rousseff, has quickly stepped out of the shadow of her charismatic predecessor Lula. After one year in office, she is more popular than any former president was at this stage.

By Jens Glüsing in Brasília
The epicenter of Brazilian power can be found on the fourth floor of the Palacio do Planalto in Brasília, the nation's capital. Liveried waiters elegantly carry trays of coffee through the hallways of the presidential palace, high-ranking officials wait in anterooms and air-conditioning units hum in the offices.Planning Minister Miriam Belchior rushes past on her way to visit Chief of Staff Gleisi Hoffmann, with whom she will discuss a multi-billion-real investment program to combat poverty. On the way she is greeted by Ideli Salvatti, the woman who manages the government's relations with Congress. Two floors down, Press Secretary Helena Chagas is talking on the phone. In the front office, several women are reviewing the day's newspapers.

Nigeria's Christmas massacre 'mastermind' escapes
The man thought to have masterminded an attack on a Nigerian church that killed 37 people on Christmas Day has escaped from police custody, still wearing handcuffs, less than a day after his arrest.

MONICA MARK LAGOS, NIGERIA
Kabir Sokoto, an influential businessperson and alleged gunrunner, was a huge catch for authorities investigating the church bombing just outside the capital, Abuja. A radical Islamist group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attack.Sokoto was detained after unexpectedly turning up at the Abuja home of the governor of Borno, a state in the north plagued by Boko Haram attacks. The following day, Sokoto fled while being escorted by five armed police officers to search his nearby flat.

Julian Assange: The Rolling Stone Interview

2012-01-19T22:26:00.001+09:00

An excerpt: Read the entire interview here

And they're going after Manning, who is facing a life sentence, to get him to say that you're a spy?
To be another chess piece on the board in the attack on us. The U.S. government is trying to redefine what have been long-accepted journalistic methods. If the Pentagon is to have its way, it will be the end of national-security journalism in the United States.
How so?
They're trying to interpret the Espionage Act to say that any two-way communication with a source is a collaboration with a source, and is therefore a conspiracy to commit espionage where classified information is involved. The Pentagon, in fact, issued a public demand to us that we not only destroy everything we had ever published or were ever going to publish in relation to the U.S. government, but that we also stop "soliciting" information from U.S. government employees. The Espionage Act itself does not mention solicitation, but they're trying to create a new legal precedent that includes a journalist simply asking a source to communicate information. A few years ago, for example, the CIA destroyed its waterboarding interrogation videos. In the Manning hearing, prosecutors described how we had a most-wanted list, which included those interrogation videos if they still existed.

Bill Keller, the former editor of the Times, wrote a widely read and lengthy piece that attacked you personally. In it, he says four or five times that "WikiLeaks is a source, they are not a partner."
Keller was trying to save his own skin from the espionage investigation in two ways. First, on a legal technicality, by claiming that there was no collaboration, only a passive relationship between journalist and source. And second, by distancing themselves from us by attacking me personally, using all the standard tabloid character-assassination attacks. Many journalists at the Times have approached me to say how embarrassed they were at the lowering of the tone by doing that. Keller also came out and said how pleased the White House was with them that they had not run WikiLeaks material the White House had asked them not to. It is one thing to do that, and it's another thing to proudly proclaim it. Why did Keller feel the need to tell the world how pleased the White House was with him? For the same reason he felt the need to describe how dirty my socks were. It is not to convey the facts – rather, it is to convey a political alignment. You heard this explicitly: Keller said, "Julian Assange may or may not be a journalist, but he's not my kind of journalist." My immediate reaction is, "Thank God I'm not Bill Keller's type of journalist."

The publishing mindset at WikiLeaks, it's fair to say, is radically different than that of the mainstream press. Where a newspaper that received 500,000 documents might release 20, you released all of them.
Cablegate is 3,000 volumes of material. It is the greatest intellectual treasure to have entered into the public record in modern times. The Times released just over 100 cables. There are over 251,000 cables in Cablegate. So our approach is quite different to that of the Times. The Times in its security arrangements was only concerned with preventing The Washington Post from finding out what it was doing. But it told the U.S. government every single cable that it wanted to publish.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-19T20:00:00.000+09:00

In wake of Web blackout, SOPA/PIPA support weakens

By Suzanne Choney
As websites from Wikipedia to Wired went dark Wednesday to protest anti-piracy bills, some co-sponsors of the legislation in Congress said they're withdrawing their support for the bills.Pulling out were: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), who was a co-sponsor of the Protect IP Act in the Senate, as well as Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Roy Blunt (R-Missouri), John Boozman (R-Arkansas) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), according to the AP; and Reps. Lee Terry (R-Nebraska), Ben Quayle (R-Arizona) and Rep. Rick Larsen, (D-Washington), who said they had been in support of a similar measure in the House, the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Pakistani prime minister faces supreme court accused of contempt
Yusuf Raza Gilani summoned for refusing to pursue corruption charges against the president, Asif Ali Zardari

Associated Pressguardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 January 2012 06.29 GMT
* A contempt case against the Pakistani prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, has been adjourned by the country's supreme court after a hearing that took place amid tight security in Islamabad, the capital.The court has threatened Gilani with contempt for failing to pursue corruption accusations against the president, Asif Ali Zardari, and other officials. The case against Gilani will resume in February.

It's hip to be E=mc²: Can the worlds of art and fashion help to make the lab cool?
Samuel Muston meets the publishers, artists and companies putting the 'fun' into fundamental science.

Thursday 19 January 2012
Chris Hatherill is sitting in the office he shares with graphic designers, textile artists and painters in east London. Slight, speaking in a quiet Canadian accent and with thin-rimmed steel glasses he looks like the fashion, music and tech journalist for Dazed & Confused and Vice that he is.Or, rather, the fashion, music and tech journalist he used to be. Only the conical flasks, filling in for vases, on the curled desk in front of him and the illustration of a Russian space rocket on the wall behind, are clues that his preoccupation is no longer Raf Simons' winter collection or new bands from New York.

Will North Korea change under Kim Jong-un?
North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong-un, has been in place for the month since the death of his father was announced.

By Lucy Williamson BBC News, Seoul
In that time, the country's tightly-controlled media machine has lavished him with praise, calling him a "genius" and a "brilliant" military strategist. Its political structure has also garlanded him with formal titles every bit as extravagant.But amid all the titles and the propaganda, what can we learn about North Korea's future direction under its new leader?In the weeks since Kim Jong-un has been in power, most telling is the way he remains overshadowed by his late father and grandfather.

Report: Aid dithering doomed tens of thousands in E Africa
The deaths of tens of thousands of people during the drought in east Africa could have been avoided if the international community, donor governments and humanitarian agencies had responded earlier

SIMON TISDALL LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - Jan 18 2012 09:11
Figures compiled by the UK's department for international development (DfID) suggest that between 50 000 and 100 000 people, more than half of them children under five, died in the 2011 Horn of Africa crisis that affected Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.The US government estimates separately that more than 29 000 children under five died in the space of 90 days from May to July last year. The accompanying destruction of livelihoods, livestock and local market systems affected 13-million people overall. Hundreds of thousands remain at continuing risk of malnutrition.

The myth of an "isolated' Iran
THE ROVING EYE

By Pepe Escobar
Introduction by Tom Engelhardt These days, with a crisis atmosphere growing in the Persian Gulf, a little history lesson about the United States and Iran might be just what the doctor ordered. Here, then, are a few high- (or low-) lights from their relationship over the last half-century-plus:Summer 1953: The Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence hatch a plot for a coup that overthrows a democratically elected government in Iran intent on nationalizing that country's oil industry. In its place, they put an autocrat, the young Shah of Iran, and his soon-to-be feared secret police

Writer Yu Jie Describes 'Inhumane Treatment

2012-01-19T15:38:00.001+09:00

Speaking in Washington, Yu Jie said he was harassed by police, then abducted and severely beaten.
Mr Yu, 38, wrote "China's Best Actor: Wen Jiabao", a controversial book that scrutinised the premier. The book was banned in mainland China.
Mr Yu arrived in the US on 11 January to live with his wife and son.
On Wednesday he appeared at a press conference and also released a statement - published on the rights group Human Rights in China website - describing persecution at the hands of state police.

Exposing CPC Tyranny and Running to the Free World: My Statement on Leaving China

Yu Jie

January 18, 2012

[English Translation by Human Rights in China]

In the afternoon of January 11, 2012 in the Beijing airport, my family of three boarded a plane bound for the United States. We were escorted from our home to the boarding gate by five state security officers who then demanded to take a photo with me, after which they stalked off.
The choice to leave China was a difficult one for me to make. It also took a very long time.
Since I published Fire and Ice (火与冰) in 1998 when I was still in university, I have been closely watched by the Central Propaganda Department and police. After receiving an M.A. from Peking University in 2000, I was unable to find a job due to governmental interference and had to make a living as a “not-free writer.” During the Jiang Zemin era [1989-2002], I had been able to publish some of my works in China—there was still a certain space for free speech in China. After Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao took power in 2004, I was totally blocked. Since that time, no media in mainland China would print a single word by me, and articles by others which mentioned my name would be deleted. Though I was physically in China, I became an “exile at heart” and a “non-existent person” in the public space.

After more than an hour, we arrived at some secret location. One of the state security officers wedged my head under his armpit and dragged me into a room. They ordered me to sit on a chair and not move—if I did, they'd beat me. I was wearing the black hood the entire time, so breathing was very difficult.
At around 10 p.m., they removed the black hood. Just as I was taking a breath, several of the plainclothes officials came at me again and began beating me in the head and the face without explanation. They stripped off all my clothes and pushed me, naked, to the ground, and kicked me maniacally. They also had a camera and were taking pictures as I was being beaten, saying with glee that they would post the naked photos online.

IN SOLIDARITY

2012-01-18T23:43:00.001+09:00

PAINT IT BLACKPa

ack

Six In The Morning

2012-01-18T20:00:00.000+09:00

Wikipedia goes dark on piracy bill protest day

Wikipedia's English home page says, in part, "Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia."

By Suzanne Choney
Any student burning the midnight oil Tuesday may have been disappointed as what has become a primary research tool, Wikipedia, blacked out its Web pages as part of a global protest against anti-piracy legislation making its way through Congress."Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!," warned Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on Twitter, and with that, one of the most heavily visited websites began a 24-hour "blackout."

Greek rescue blocked by hedge fund greed
Financiers who bought 'distressed' Greek debt insist on making vast profits from the crisis

Ben Chu Wednesday 18 January 2012
A group of hedge funds is threatening to block a last-ditch attempt to save Greece from defaulting on its huge debt pile, unless they are guaranteed a significant payout.There will be a final attempt today – when a group representing Greece's private sector bondholders meets senior ministers in Athens – to negotiate a writedown of the value of the country's debt ahead of a crucial bond repayment deadline next month.

'Anglo-American Interests' and the Currency War Myth
The Germans love a good conspiracy theory. The latest is about the evil American rating agencies that want to destroy the wonderful euro. It is a viewpoint shared even in the highest political circles. But that doesn't make it any less absurd.

A Commentary by Stefan Kaiser
When such political adversaries as European parliamentarian Elmar Brok, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, and German Left Party bigwig Gregor Gysi agree on something, skepticism is warranted. Particularly if the two use almost exactly the same words.We find ourselves, said Brok, after rating agency Standard & Poor's recently downgraded the credit rating of nine euro-zone countries late last week, in a conflict akin to a "currency war." The agencies, he went on, are pursuing "Anglo-American political interests."Gysi took things a tiny step further. For him, the "war" against the "European people" has already begun.

Kim Jong-un doomed, says his brother
Kim Jong-nam, eldest son of Kim Jong-il, describes succession as 'a joke' in new book and predicts regime will collapse

Jonathan Watts and Tania Branigan in BeijingJanuary 18, 2012 - 7:46AM
The eldest son of North Korea's late leader Kim Jong-il has predicted the regime would soon fail, with or without reforms, according to a new book that the author says is based on emails and interviews with Kim Jong-nam.The book says that Kim Jong-nam - who has never met the new leader, his half-brother Kim Jong-un - described the dynastic succession as "a joke to the outside world", and said even his father had originally opposed the hereditary transfer of power.

How China is advancing its military reach
As the US shifts its focus to Asia, Alexander Neill, head of the Asia Security Programme at the Royal United Services Institute, sets out the Chinese military advances challenging the regional balance.

At the Pentagon recently, US President Barack Obama announced deep cuts to the US military and set out a shift in attention towards the Asia-Pacific region, in a thinly-veiled message to China.Despite a narrative of peaceful intent, China's leaders have struggled to reassure the US over the direction of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Both countries admit that their military dialogue falls well behind other aspects of the relationship.So the shift has brought renewed scrutiny of the PLA's latest capabilities against US dominance in the Pacific.

Arab artists flourishing as uprisings embolden a generation
Innovative and edgy work attracts attention around the world – and record prices at auction

David BattyThe Guardian, Wednesday 18 January 2012
At first glance the stones look unremarkable. Nothing about them suggests a reason for their inclusion in a contemporary art exhibition. But these stones were thrown by Egyptian military police at pro-democracy campaigners in Tahrir Square, and are indicative of how the Arab uprisings have emboldened a generation of artists across the region.Ashraf Foda's work will go on show in Frankfurt later this month. "The perception of Arab art has changed," said Reedah El-Saie, of London's Modern Islamic and Contemporary Art gallery, which represents Foda. "Before the uprisings people either saw it as exotic and innocuous or steeped in the Islamic tradition; artists were wary of showing work that might be seen as too political.

The MPAA Discovers Comedy: Statement On Internet Blackoout

2012-01-18T11:17:00.000+09:00

MPPA writes better parody than the experts

The Motion Picture Association of America has recently employed a team of comedy writers in crafting its press release concerning tomorrows Blackout by prominent websites which include Wikipedia.

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals. It is our hope that the White House and the Congress will call on those who intend to stage this “blackout” to stop the hyperbole and PR stunts and engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy.”

In shutting down "their own websites" in protest over a proposed law that could lead to U.S. government censorship of any website that is deemed dangerous to or part of a so called criminal enterprise can be blocked similar to what the Chinese government does with its Great Fire Wall.

This sentence gives one an idea of just how far down the hole of bad comedy the MPAA has thrown its self.

It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today.

Given that the right to protest is still guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution one has to wonder if the MPPA has taken to abusing drugs in its effort to promote its inner Dictator

Six In The Mornig

2012-01-17T20:00:00.000+09:00

'Ecological timebomb' fears over cruise ship

Italian officials fear environmental crisis as rescuers search for 29 people still missing after Mediterranean sinking.

Last Modified: 17 Jan 2012
Rescue workers are continuing to search for 29 people missing since a cruise ship partially sank after hitting rocks off the coast of an Italian island, as officials voiced concerns that the possible break-up of the stricken could trigger an environmental disaster.The Costa Concordia ran aground on rocks off the island of Giglio on Sunday, threatening to plunge the giant vessel and an estimated 2,400 tonnes of diesel fuel below the Mediterranean waters of the surrounding nature reserve.Giglio mayor Sergio Ortelli said that the ship was an "ecological timebomb" amid concerns that the vessel could start leaking oil into the sea, prompting an environmental crisis.Six people are so far confirmed dead as a result of the accident. Most of the 4,200 passengers and crew survived, despite hours of chaos as some were rescued from the ship and others boarded lifeboats or swam to shore.

Chinese dissident Zhu Yufu charged with subversion
Zhu, 60, faces charges over online poem in which he urged people to gather to defend their freedoms

Reuters in Beijingguardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 January 2012
Chinese authorities have indicted veteran dissident Zhu Yufu on subversion charges for writing a poem urging people to gather to defend their freedoms, his lawyer said. He is the latest activist to face such charges.Zhu, 60, from the eastern city of Hangzhou, was arrested last April for "inciting subversion of state power". No trial date has been set, his lawyer, Li Dunyong, said on Tuesday."The main reason for the indictment was a poem he had written calling for people to gather. He had written the poem around the same time there was chaos [in the Middle East]," Li said. "He believes in freedom of expression."

Poverty is main culprit as 19 die in slum tragedy
Building collapse highlights rental laws which have left Beirut's poorest tenants living in danger

Robert Fisk Tuesday 17 January 2012
Usually it's Cairo, this time it was Beirut, but it was a familiar story.At least 19 – possibly 30 – dead, an old 1920s Lebanese apartment block in a semi-slum, equally old rents, so the survivors said, cheap for the poor tenants; one Egyptian among the dead, four Lebanese including a 14-year-old girl, along with Sudanese, Filipinos and Jordanians. It had been raining for almost a week in Beirut and, during a weekend storm, one of the tenants heard the snap of concrete. He thought it was thunder.

'Speculation Is an Important Cause of High Prices'
In a SPIEGEL interview, José Graziano da Silva, 62, the new head of the United Nations aid organization FAO, discusses his plans to combat hunger as well as his efforts to limit speculation and the impact it has on dramatically fluctuating food prices

SPIEGEL: Mr. da Silva, as the new head of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), you have made it your chief goal to eradicate hunger in the world. Isn't this an extremely ambitious objective, in light of skyrocketing food prices, a continually growing world population and ongoing economic crises?Da Silva: My plan is ambitious. But you can only motivate people with big objectives. This is precisely what we have to achieve -- to mobilize all parts of society and the international community in the fight against hunger. The FAO or a government alone cannot eradicate hunger on earth.

Soldiers deployed as Nigeria fuel strike ends
Labour unions ended a crippling nationwide strike on Monday in Nigeria after the country's president partially restored subsidies that keep gasoline prices low

JON GAMBRELL LAGOS, NIGERIA - Jan 17 2012 08:18
Union leaders claimed a victory for labour, saying this would allow its leaders to guide the country's policy on fuel subsidies in the future. But the newly agreed price of about $2.27 a gallon (60 cents a litre) is still more expensive than the previous price of $1.70 per gallon (45 cents per litre), putting additional economic strain on those living in a nation where most earn less than $2 a day and few see the rewards of being a major oil exporter.And to force the compromise and stop popular protests, President Goodluck Jonathan ordered soldiers to take over security in the country's major cities, something unseen since the nation abandoned military rule for an uneasy democracy in 1999. The move raises new questions about freedom of speech in a nation where government power still appears absolute.

Fake malaria drugs could 'put millions at risk'
Fake and poor quality anti-malarial drugs are threatening efforts to control the disease in Africa and could put millions of lives at risk, scientists say.

The BBC 17 January 2012
The counterfeit medicines could harm patients and promote drug resistance among malaria parasites, warns the study, funded by the Wellcome Trust.Malaria is believed to kill about 800,000 people a year.Some of the fake tablets are said to have originated in China.The researchers, from the Wellcome Trust-Mahosot Hospital-Oxford University Tropical Medicine Research Collaboration, published their work in the Malaria Journal.

Ten Reasons U.S. Is No Longer The Land Of The Free

2012-01-16T23:45:00.002+09:00

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

While the U.S. is issuing reports critical of the human rights abuses perpetrated by nations around the world the rights of America's citizens are being thrown into the trash.

The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

One must question how much power is necessary for a country to be secure?

Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree.

The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.

Assassination of U.S. citizens

President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism. Last year, he approved the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi and another citizen under this claimed inherent authority. Last month, administration officials affirmed that power, stating that the president can order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. (Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.)

Several weeks after the attack which Anwar al-Awalqi his 16 year old son was killed in a drone strike along with several others.

Indefinite detention

Under the law signed last month, terrorism suspects are to be held by the military; the president also has the authority to indefinitely detain citizens accused of terrorism. While the administration claims that this provision only codified existing law, experts widely contest this view, and the administration has opposed efforts to challenge such authority in federal courts. The government continues to claim the right to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion. (China recently codified a more limited detention law for its citizens, while countries such as Cambodia have been singled out by the United States for “prolonged detention.”)

Guantanamo Bay was the experiment this new authoritarian law is the inevitable consequence of a government living in fear of its own people.

Arbitrary justice

The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal, a system that has been ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections. Bush claimed this authority in 2001, and Obama has continued the practice. (Egypt and China have been denounced for maintaining separate military justice systems for selected defendants, including civilians.)

Warrantless searches

The president may now order warrantless surveillance, including a new capability to force companies and organizations to turn over information on citizens’ finances, communications and associations. Bush acquired this sweeping power under the Patriot Act in 2001, and in 2011, Obama extended the power, including searches of everything from business documents to library records. The government can use“national security letters” to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens — and order them not to reveal the disclosure to the affected party. (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan operate under laws that allow the government to engage in widespread discretionary surveillance.)

The rest can be read here

Six In The Morning

2012-01-16T20:00:00.000+09:00

Huntsman to drop out of presidential race, endorse Romney

By NBC's Jo Ling Kent and Domenico Montanaro
Jon Huntsman will drop his presidential bid and endorse Mitt Romney, according to campaign sources."He doesn't want to stand in the way of the person who is going to be the nominee," a campaign source said.Huntsman will make the announcement during a speech in Myrtle Beach, S.C., tomorrow at 11 a.m. ET, spokesman Tim Miller said. Huntsman, who earlier today was endorsed by The State (the largest newspaper in South Carolina), had vowed to stay in the race despite his third-place showing in New Hampshire. He boasted in a speech on primary night Tuesday that he had a "ticket to ride" and that it was "on to South Carolina."

Nigeria restores fuel subsidy to quell nationwide protests
President Goodluck Jonathan says government will lower oil cost to about $2.75 a gallon after series of strikes paralyses country

Associated Press in Lagosguardian.co.uk, Monday 16 January 2012
Nigeria's president has announced the government will subsidise fuel prices to immediately reduce the price to about $2.75 (£1.80) a gallon amid a crippling nationwide strike over the removal of the oil subsidy.President Goodluck Jonathan also claimed provocateurs have hijacked the protests and demonstrations, which have seen tens of thousands march in cities across the country. Jonathan offered no other details on his claim, but his address on the state-run Nigerian Television Authority showed how worried his government had become by the demonstrations.

Captain 'made serious errors'

irishtimes.com - Last Updated: Monday, January 16, 2012, 07:05
A sixth body has reportedly been found as Italian rescue workers searched the half-submerged hulk of a stricken cruise ship for 15 people still missing today, more than 48 hours after it capsized, killing at least five and injuring more than 60.The captain of the 114,500-tonne Costa Concordia was arrested on Saturday, accused of manslaughter and abandoning his ship before all of the more than 4,200 passengers and crew had been evacuated off the west coast of Italy.

Army brass knew WikiLeaks accused had serious issues
A court martial recommendation for the US soldier accused of giving documents to WikiLeaks has raised questions about the accountability of his superiors

Paul McGeoughJanuary 16, 2012
A FORMAL recommendation that Bradley Manning face a court martial has sharpened demands that others also be held accountable for a mountain of classified diplomatic cables being dumped to WikiLeaks almost two years ago.Apart from a refusal by two junior officers to give evidence at Manning's recent pretrial hearing on the grounds they might incriminate themselves, the Pentagon's investigation appears almost entirely centred on what Manning, 24, might have done.

Alien hunters: What if ET ever phones our home?
For decades we've been sending signals - both deliberate and accidental - into space, and listening out for alien civilisations' broadcasts. But what is the plan if one day we were to hear something?

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News
If we ever detect signs of intelligent alien life, the people likely to be on the receiving end of a cosmic signal are the scientists of Seti, aka Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.This loose band of a couple of dozen researchers around the world doggedly listens to the cosmos in the hopes of catching alien communications. It's often in the face of scant funding and even ridicule.They watch signals coming from the world's largest radio telescopes, looking for anything unusual, or even the flashes of laser "lighthouses" designed to catch our attention.

Pakistan PM faces contempt of court notice
Supreme court issues notice over inaction in graft case, as government faces legal and political challenges.

Last Modified: 16 Jan 2012 08:21
Pakistan's Supreme Court has issued a contempt of court notice against Yousuf Raza Gilani, the country's prime minister, for not complying with orders related to reopening corruption cases.Gilani has been summoned to appear before the court on January 19.Maulvi Anwar-ul-Haque, the country's attorney general, told a seven-member larger bench of the country's apex court on Monday that he had received no direction from the government in regard to a demand that information be provided on whether the government was intending to act on pursuing a corruption case in Swiss courts.The case in the Swiss courts alleges that Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's current president, among others, was involved in graft.Monday marked the court’s deadline to Gilani’s government for reopening the stalled graft probe against President Zardari. Gilani's government has contended that the president has immunity under the constitution.

Super PAC's A New Media Weapon

2012-01-15T23:10:00.001+09:00

It is election year in the US and in the run-up to the vote, Republican candidates are head-to-head in the race to become their party's nominee. This campaign however, has seen the emergence of a new media strategy in the form of the Super PAC (Political Action Committee). Super PACs are funded by American individuals, corporations and unions, who are legally allowed to donate as much money as they want to supposedly independent organisations but which are linked to a particular candidate. These Super PACs then unleash a slew of political TV ads that are not designed to support their candidate but rather take down the opposition. And so far they seem to be working.

Citizens United ruling

In 2010, the landmark case filed by Citizens United changed the rules regarding corporate campaign expenditures. This ruling made it legal for corporations and unions to spend from their general treasuries to finance independent expenditures. Direct corporate and union contributions to federal campaigns, however are still prohibited.[3] Thus corporations or unions seeking to contribute to federal candidate campaigns must still rely on traditional PACs for that purpose. However, they may spend money independently of campaigns without forming a PAC.

Super PACs

The 2010 election marked the rise of a new political committee, dubbed "super PACs," and officially known as "independent-expenditure only committees," which can raise unlimited sums from corporations, unions and other groups, as well as individuals.[5] The super PACs were made possible by two judicial decisions. The first was the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission which held that government may not prohibit unions and corporations from making independent expenditures about politics. Soon after, in Speechnow.org v. FEC, the Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that contributions to groups that only make independent expenditures could not be limited.[6] Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidates or political parties. They are required to disclose their donors, just like traditional PACs.[7] However many exploit a technicality in the filing requirements in order to postpone disclosure until well after the elections they participate in.[8]Even absent a formal connection to a campaign, Super PACs openly support particular candidacies. In the primary season before the 2012 presidential campaign, for example, the Restore Our Future Super PAC benefited Republican Mitt Romney while attacking rival Newt Gingrich.[9] In the same election, the pro-Gingrich Winning Our Future Super PAC attacked Romney.[10] Each Super PAC was run by former employees of the candidate it supported, and each attracted money from that candidate's associates.[9][10]The status of super PACs in Montana is in dispute. The Montana Supreme Court in Western Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Attorney General of Montana (Dec, 2011) upheld that state's law prohibiting corporate spending in political races. Directly addressing the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, it concluded that "Montana has a compelling interest to impose the challenged rationally-tailored statutory restrictions" to prohibit "independent political expenditures by a corporation related to a candidate."[11] The plaintiffs (since renamed American Tradition Partnership) have announced plans to appeal the decision

Super PACS are living up to their early billing as potential game-changers in the 2012 elections.Free to flood a campaign with as much money as they can, these souped-up political action committees have already had an impact on the Republican presidential contest.Newt Gingrich saw his sudden surge in Iowa squashed when super PAC allies of Mitt Romney spent millions on negative ads against the former speaker of the House of Representatives. Gingrich finished fourth in both the Iowa caucuses and in the New Hampshire primary.But a $5 million pledge from a Las Vegas casino mogul and friend of Gingrich to a super PAC run by his supporters could help him make a stand in South Carolina's Republican primary on Jan. 21.That PAC, Winning Our Future, intends to spend $3.4 million on an ad campaign attacking Romney's role in eliminating jobs when the private investment group he once led - Bain Capital - bought and sold companies. Gingrich backers hope that will hit home in a state where unemployment is nearly 10 percent.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-15T20:00:00.000+09:00

On Sunday

Programming prodigy passes away at 16: Hear her philosophy of life

By Todd Bishop
Arfa Karim Randhawa, the computer programming prodigy who became the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional at 9 years old, has passed away at the age of 16, according to reports out of her native Pakistan this weekend.She had been in the hospital for nearly a month after reportedly suffering an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest. Two weeks ago her outlook appeared to improve. In recent weeks, Microsoft had stepped in to help provide expert medical care.

Sunday's Headlines:

Honeymooning couple rescued from submerged ship Costa Concordia

Tension at new high as Iran vows to punish West

Kabul's wheels of change

No end in sight for Nigeria fuel strike

U.S. troops need better training on laws of war, experts say

Honeymooning couple rescued from submerged ship Costa Concordia
South Korean couple were found in a cabin two decks above the water line by rescuers who were banging on doors

Staff and agenciesguardian.co.uk, Sunday 15 January 2012
A honeymooning couple have been rescued from the submerged Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia more than 24 hours after it ran aground off the coast of Tuscany.The South Korean newlyweds were found by rescuers in a cabin two decks above the water line of the Mediterranean. It is understood the pair, who are 29 years old, are in good condition.

Tension at new high as Iran vows to punish West
Tehran threatens to close Straits of Hormuz if US enforces an embargo

Sunday 15 January 2012
They buried a young scientist called Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan in Tehran on Friday. And if the hazardous carousel of attacks, embargoes and official threats does not slow down soon, there could be other bodies and hopes wrapped in a sheet and put into the ground. Many more young men, peace in the Straits of Hormuz and beyond, and supplies of oil at an affordable price could all be as dead as the assassinated Roshan if the crisis over Iran's nuclear project ratchets up further.

Kabul's wheels of change
An Australian is helping Afghans change their lives through the power of skateboarding, writes Jackie Dent.

January 15, 2012
HANIFA glides down the slanted ramp, her bright red-and-green traditional garb sparkling as she whizzes across the smooth floor. A little girl with bright-pink knee-pads follows her move, a determined look on her face. Nearby, Fazila has her hand extended, rolling another little girl backwards and forwards on a mini-ramp. The air in the expansive indoor skate park is cool and smells of fresh timber.Two years ago, Hanifa, 14, and Fazila, 16, were eking out a living selling chewing gum in the streets of Kabul to support their families. Now, the pair are paid instructors at Skateistan, what is thought to be the world's first co-educational skateboarding school - a spacious facility with two classrooms, a climbing wall, an array of ramps and walls plastered with colourful children's drawings.

No end in sight for Nigeria fuel strike
Nigeria's government and labour unions failed to end a paralysing nationwide strike over high petrol costs, potentially sparking an oil production shutdown in a nation vital to US oil supplies.

BASHIR ADIGUN ABUJA, NIGERIA - Jan 15 2012 07:45
It was not immediately clear early on Sunday whether a major oil workers' union had gone ahead with its threat to have its members walk off their jobs starting at midnight in an effort to halt oil production. But the fact labour unions left quickly from their meeting with the government and no one announced when talks would resume raised concerns the impasse would see Nigeria go through more days of disruptive strikes.Nigeria, which produces 2.4 million barrels of oil a day, is the fifth-largest oil exporter to the United States. Any disruption to oil production could roil the oil futures market at a time traders remain concerned about world supply.

U.S. troops need better training on laws of war, experts say
Commanders must do a better job of translating the rules for modern circumstances, experts say. A court-martial over the killing of civilians in Haditha, Iraq, highlights the issue.

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times
The court-martial of Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich at Camp Pendleton for his role in two dozen civilian deaths in the Iraqi village of Haditha has highlighted a legal peril for modern military personnel: determining who is the enemy.Troops these days fight in tense, foreign enclaves where terrorists wear no uniforms and take cover among women and children. They are on a mission to engage the enemy but are expected to hold their fire against civilians, a sacred tenet of international law.

Mossad Agents Posed As C.I.A In Pakistan Operation

2012-01-15T03:00:00.000+09:00

Magazine report claims Israeli spies used fake US spy identities to work with Pakistani fighters targeting Iran.

Agents with Israel's spy agency, Mossad, have posed as CIA agents in operations to recruit members of the Pakistani group Jundallah, according to a report in US-based Foreign Policy magazine.Using US dollars and passports, the agents passed themselves off as members of the US Central Intelligence Agency in the operations, according to memos from 2007 and 2008, said the report which was published on Friday.It is unclear whether the recruitment programme is ongoing."Israel has done this before. I know of a report very widely accepted in the US of Israeli Mossad agents in the United States, actually recruiting American Muslims," Mark Perry, who authored the report, told Al Jazeera."I think that there is a general conspiracy theory that we work very closely with Israel, that we're willing to forgive [Israel] ... I don't think that's the case here.

The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah -- a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization. Jundallah, according to the U.S. government and published reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children.
False Flag

Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives -- what is commonly referred to as a "false flag" operation.

Grandma's Tattoos

2012-01-14T21:49:00.001+09:00

This film is about a granddaughters quest to discover the meaning of the tattoos on her grandmothers hands and hoe she got them. What's reveled is that the tattoos relate to World War I and the Armenian genocide in ten's of thousands where killed by Turkish forces during the breakup of the Ottoman empire.

It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides,[13][14]:177[15] as scholars point to the organized manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians,[16] and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust.[17] The word genocide[18] was coined in order to describe these events.[19][20]The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day when Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople.[21][22] Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace.[23] The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of the Armenian genocide.The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies the word genocide is an accurate description of the events.[24] In recent years, it has faced repeated calls to accept the events as genocide. To date, twenty countries have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this view.[25][26][27][28]

Massacres

Mass burnings

Eitan Belkind was a Nili member, who infiltrated the Ottoman army as an official. He was assigned to the headquarters of Kamal Pasha. He claims to have witnessed the burning of 5,000 Armenians.[45]:181,183Lt. Hasan Maruf, of the Ottoman army, describes how a population of a village were taken all together, and then burned.[46] The Commander of the Third Army Vehib's 12-page affidavit, which was dated 5 December 1918, was presented in the Trabzon trial series (March 29, 1919) included in the Key Indictment,[47] reporting such a mass burning of the population of an entire village near Mush.[48] that in Bitlis, Mus and Sassoun, "The shortest method for disposing of the women and children concentrated in the various camps was to burn them." And also that "Turkish prisoners who had apparently witnessed some of these scenes were horrified and maddened at the remembering the sight. They told the Russians that the stench of the burning human flesh permeated the air for many days after."

Six In The Morning

2012-01-14T20:00:00.000+09:00

Supernova traced to collision of white dwarf stars

Two scientists studying a Type 1a supernova may have pinned down the cause of such massive stellar explosions, they report in the journal Nature.

By Amina Khan, Los Angeles TimesJanuary 14, 2012
Type 1a supernovae, exploding stars that can outshine entire galaxies, were instrumental to the Nobel Prize-winning discovery that a mysterious "dark energy" is fueling the expansion of the universe. But astronomers haven't been able to pin down what causes these massive stellar explosions.Now, after studying a Type 1a supernova in a nearby galaxy, two researchers say that they must be the result of a collision between two white dwarf stars. They made their case this week in the journal Nature.Pinning down the origins of these so-called standard candles, which can be used to help determine the brightness of other objects, may aid scientists in sharpening their understanding of the nature of dark energy.

Greek bankruptcy threat looms as debt restructuring talks break down
Athens warns of dire consequences for Greece and rest of Europe if deal with private-sector creditors is not reached soon

Helena Smith in AthensThe Guardian, Saturday 14 January 2012
The unexpected breakdown of crucial talks between Greece and its private-sector creditors took the country a step closer to bankruptcy on Friday.Officials in Athens warned of dire consequences for "Greece and the Greek people, Europe and Europeans" if the long-overdue debt restructuring deal were not sealed soon. The breakdown was attributed to disagreement over interest payments on the new bonds.

Afghan boy suicide bombers tell how they are brainwashed into believing they will survive
Child suicide bombers say they were told by their handlers that the "bombs would not kill us, only the Americans would die".

By Ben Farmer, Kandahar
The mission was as simple as touching two wires together, the little boy was promised. The resulting blast would obliterate the American infidels – but God would spare him from the flame and shrapnel. Abdul Samat would be unharmed and free to run back to the men who had fitted his bomb vest.Blindfolded and rigged with his explosive payload, the boy, who was about 13, was driven to his target in the Afghan city of Kandahar, after being plucked from the streets of Quetta in neighbouring Pakistan. Minutes before he was due to execute the attack, however, Abdul realised the lies of his recruiters seeking to turn him into a human bomb.

Army holds fire in hope court will axe government

Ben DohertyJanuary 14, 2012
MILITARY sources have ruled out an army-led coup in Pakistan but there is a growing sense in the country that an activist Supreme Court, hostile to the government, could bring down the civilian leadership.''There will be no coup,'' a senior military officer told the Herald on condition of anonymity. ''The hype is there, but that kind of move will not happen now. Not now.''

Union threatens oil production shutdown in Nigeria
A major union threatened to stop the beating heart of Nigeria's economy - crude oil production - as part of a nationwide strike and protests gripping Africa's most populous nation.

Sapa-AP | 13 January, 2012 09:18
World oil prices climbed Thursday on the news. Nigeria is the fifth-largest oil exporter to the U.S., and a shutdown would force American refineries to replace 630,000 barrels per day of crude.The union's ability to enforce a shutdown, beginning Sunday, across the swamps of Nigeria's southern delta to its massive offshore oil fields, remains in question. But the threat of a strike caused jitters on global oil markets as traders worldwide worried about supply.Nigeria has been paralyzed by a strike that began Monday after President Goodluck Jonathan's government abandoned subsidies that kept gasoline prices low.

Iran has pay back in mind
Middle East

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Despite a strong pitch by Iran, the United Nations has failed to condemn the latest assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, thus sending a bad signal about the UN's determination to fight global terrorism and to condemn all acts of terrorism even-handedly. Instead of a swift and decisive response to the letter by Iran's ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the 15 members of the UN Security Council and the president of the UN General Assembly, requesting the UN's condemnation of the terror of scientist Mostafa Rahimi Roshan and his driver in Tehran this week, the only reaction so far has been by Ban's spokesperson promising "to study" the request.

Anwar Ibrahim: After The Trial

2012-01-14T10:50:00.000+09:00

As the Malaysian opposition leader gets acquitted of sodomy, will his coalition mount its strongest political challenge?

Anwar Ibrahim, the Malaysian opposition leader, has been unexpectedly cleared of sodomy charges.Government critics believe the trial was politically motivated to stem the growing popularity of an opposition alliance which Anwar led to unprecedented success in the 2008 general election.Many expected a guilty verdict to end the 64-year-old’s political career, as it would have prevented him from contesting in the general election expected to be held this year.This is the second time Anwar has faced charges for sodomy, a criminal offence in Malaysia. The first time, it was overturned by the country's Federal Court in 2004 after he had served six years in jail for corruption.With the acquittal boosting the opposition ahead of the polls, 101 East asks what impact will this have on Malaysia’s political landscape?

iPhone 4S China Release Sparks Scuffles And Eggings

2012-01-13T22:14:00.001+09:00

Question for Siri: What to do when you have egg on your face?
It’s a question Apple officials in China must be asking themselves today after fighting outside a Beijing store forced the company to close its stores nationwide, leaving hordes of outraged Chinese out in the proverbial cold.
Outside one store in Beijing’s Sanlitun entertainment district, Chinese buyers had been lining up outside of Apple stores around China since yesterday in anticipation of the official launch of Apple’s new iPhone 4S. By 1 a.m. Friday, the line had devolved into a thrall of people gathered around the front of the store.

But then the Pro-Wrestling started:

Between 4 and 5 a.m., scuffles broke out in the line, first between groups of rival scalpers and then later between scalpers and police. Perhaps fearful of a repeat of the violence that occurred at the same Beijing store just eight months prior at the release of the iPad 2, the store remained closed past the pre-announced 7 a.m. time.

Finally an Apple representative with a megaphone came out at 7:15 a.m. and announced the store would not open for iPhone 4S sales without any additional explanation.

Apple Statement

Apple later released a statement stating that “to ensure the safety of our customers and employees, iPhone 4S will not be available in our retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being.”

To bad that Apple doesn't treat those who assemble the iPhone and the iPad as important employee's.

People have always admired Apple Corp saying not only do they develop new and innovative products they also have shown social responsibility. So has many lust after the lasted i-phone or the i-pad 2 they never stop to think about where and who manufactures the lasted must have electronic toy. Does anyone remember the suicides which took place at the Foxcon corporations Apple manufacturing plants in China last year? Of course not as what is most important; people so stressed out over working conditions that they see no other way or being a trend setter. Being a trend setter always wins. Once again Foxcon is in the news over working conditions at its plants.

The investigation gives a detailed picture of life for the 500,000 workers at the Shenzhen and Chengdu factories owned by Foxconn, which produces millions of Apple products each year. The report accuses Foxconn of treating workers "inhumanely, like machines".

Among the allegations made by workers interviewed by the NGOs – the Centre for Research on Multinational Companies and Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom) – are claims that:

■ Excessive overtime is routine, despite a legal limit of 36 hours a month. One payslip, seen by the Observer, indicated that the worker had performed 98 hours of overtime in a month.

■ Workers attempting to meet the huge demand for the first iPad were sometimes pressured to take only one day off in 13.

■ In some factories badly performing workers are required to be publicly humiliated in front of colleagues.

■ Crowded workers' dormitories can sleep up to 24 and are subject to strict rules. One worker told the NGO investigators that he was forced to sign a "confession letter" after illicitly using a hairdryer. In the letter he wrote: "It is my fault. I will never blow my hair inside my room. I have done something wrong. I will never do it again."

■ In the wake of a spate of suicides at Foxconn factories last summer, workers were asked to sign a statement promising not to kill themselves and pledging to "treasure their lives".

Six In The Morning

2012-01-13T20:00:00.000+09:00

US sends top Iran leader warning on Hormuz threat

Officials say closing the strait is a 'red line' that would provoke response

By ELISABETH BUMILLER, ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
The Obama administration is relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a “red line” that would provoke an American response, according to United States government officials.The officials declined to describe the unusual contact between the two governments, and whether there had been an Iranian reply. Senior Obama administration officials have said publicly that Iran would cross a “red line” if it made good on recent threats to close the strait, a strategically crucial waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, where 16 million barrels of oil — about a fifth of the world’s daily oil trade — flow through every day.

Burma releases political prisoners
Student leader Min Ko Naing among political prisoners set free as pardons are granted to more than 600 detainees

Jason Burke in Delhiguardian.co.uk, Friday 13 January 2012
Authorities in Burma have released prominent dissidents under an amnesty that is the latest step towards wholesale reform in the country.Prominent political prisoners were let out of Burmese jails on Friday, their relatives confirmed, under a government pledge to release more than 600 people.The release of political prisoners, who could number as many as 1,700, is a pre-condition for ending Burma's isolation by the international community.

West plans new hi-tech crackdown on Somali pirate gangs
Satellite pictures reveal areas transformed by ransom riches

DANIEL HOWDEN FRIDAY 13 JANUARY 2012
A modern-day treasure map of pirate strongholds in Somalia may hold the key to solving the maritime crisis off the Horn of Africa. Experts using satellite images of the main cities and ports in Somalia's most active pirate havens have traced the money trail from the multimillion-pound ransoms earned from captured ships.The results suggest that while cash is trickling down from pirate gangs to the wider economy, comparatively little of it is benefiting the coastal areas used by the pirates to launch attacks on international shipping.

Alaskan Indian woodcarver revives extinct totem art
World renowned artist David Boxley and his son are carving a Tsimshian Alaskan Indian totem pole for a prominent American museum. With no skilled artists alive to instruct him in the traditional craft, Boxley had to learn on his own.

The BBC 13 January 2012
The Tsimshian tell a myth.A young boy was walking along a beach when he came across an eagle entangled in a fish net. He freed the eagle and it flew away.The boy grew up to become the chief of his village, which was struck by a famine.As he walked along the same beach wondering what to do, a salmon fell out of the sky and landed at his feet. He looked up and saw the eagle he had rescued years before.

Nike supplier to pay $US1 million to short-changed workers

January 13, 2012 - 9:41AM
An Indonesian factory producing Nike shoes will shell out $US1 million ($972,000) in unpaid overtime wages to thousands of employees, Nike says."An agreement was reached between the factory and the local union and $US1,002,830 will be reimbursed to workers for back wages in accordance with Indonesian labor law," Nike said in a statement.

In Haiti, cautious hope around effort to find families new homes
The 16/6 program in Haiti helps families who have lived in tents since the 2010 earthquake move to proper shelter as they wait for their former homes to be rebuilt.

By Giordano Cossu, Contributor / January 12, 2012
For nearly two years, some 2,000 families lived crammed together in a makeshift camp called Maïs Gaté on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Set up spontaneously in the wake of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, it was an unforgiving stretch of land, barren, rendering the insides of tents unbearable through much of the year.Now, only burned logs, some toothbrushes, and broken toys bear testament to two years of uncertainty and desperation for thousands of displaced Haitians. On Jan. 12, the two-year anniversary of the earthquake, almost everyone had gone:

Is The American Dream Fading

2012-01-12T21:42:00.001+09:00

More Americans have fallen into poverty in the last few years during some of the worst economic times since the Great Depression.

"The words 'the poor' becomes a code for black or people of colour and so you say like Newt Gingrich [is] saying: 'I'd rather have white people get a paychecque than food stamps'."
- Barbara Ehrenreich, a columnist

According to the latest figures by the United States Census Bureau, a large and growing number of Americans are poor. These figures suggest that one in three Americans are living in poverty, or what is sometimes called "near poverty".

And these numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class.

On taking office in 2009, Barack Obama, the US president, described the state of the US economy as "a disaster for America's working families".

As the US begins a presidential election year, the economy - and how to fix it - is on the minds of most voters. But taxation and spending policies are the subject of a bitter partisan divide in Washington.

And a few months ago, the Occupy Wall Street movement began in New York and spread around the world. The protesters' slogan "We are the 99 per cent" refers to the growing income and wealth inequality in the US between the wealthiest one per cent and the rest of the population.

"Poverty in this country [the US] right now is colour-coded and the danger with that is it sends the wrong message about what's happening with regard to poverty in this country. The numbers of the poor are growing exponentially; the new poor in this country now are the former middle class. The reality is there are more white Americans in poverty than there are black Americans in poverty in terms of sheer numbers. There are more white Americans in poverty than there are brown Americans in poverty or red Americans or yellow Americans."
- Tavis Smiley, a chat show host

More than 13 million Americans are unemployed, although there have been some improvements recently. And many others, who are in work, have been forced to take pay cuts or a reduction in working hours.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-12T20:00:00.000+09:00

Mitt Romney, Bain Capital and the gospel of ‘creative destruction’

By Jia Lynn Yang, Thursday, January 12
Mitt Romney’s rivals this week intensified their attacks over business failures that happened on his watch at the investment firm Bain Capital. But even the successes touted by Romney’s campaign involved some painful decisions and layoffs.Both the successes and the failures reveal the candidate’s faith in “creative destruction,” the notion that the new must relentlessly replace the old so that companies and the economy can become more efficient.The concept is gospel to many businesspeople. But its intersection with politics has created what may be a recurring line of attack against Romney’s record.

EU on verge of abandoning hope for a viable Palestinian state
Israel's foreign ministry denied that Israeli settlers were taking water resources from the West Bank

DONALD MACINTYRE JERUSALEM THURSDAY 12 JANUARY 2012
The Palestinian presence in the largest part of the occupied West Bank – has been, "continuously undermined" by Israel in ways that are "closing the window" on a two-state solution, according to an internal EU report seen by The Independent.The report, approved by top Brussels officials, argues that EU support, including for a wide range of building projects, is now needed to protect the rights of "ever more isolated" Palestinians in "Area C", a sector that includes all 124 Jewish settlements – illegal in international law – and which is under direct Israeli control. It comprises 62 per cent of the West Bank, including the "most fertile and resource rich land".

Burma government 'signs ceasefire with Karen rebels'
Burma's government has signed a ceasefire deal with Karen rebels, a government official told the BBC.

12 January 2012
The agreement came at talks between officials and the Karen National Union in Hpa-an, the capital of eastern Karen state.Both sides agreed to a ceasefire, to open communication offices and to allow passage through each other's territories, the official said.The Karen have fought for greater autonomy for more than 60 years.Prior to this deal, it was the only major group that had not reached a peace agreement.

World's tiniest frogs found in New Guinea

January 12, 2012 - 11:10AM
With voices hardly louder than an insect's buzz, the tiniest frogs ever discovered are smaller than a coin and hop about the rainforest of the tropical island of Papua New Guinea, US scientists say.Not only are Paedophryne amauensis and Paedophryne swiftorum the smallest frogs known, they are also the smallest vertebrates, said the report in the science journal PLoS ONE.The little land frog Paedophryne amauensis comes in at 7.7 millimetres. The Paedophryne swiftorum measures a bit over eight millimetres.

Obama edges toward regime change
Middle East

By Barbara Slavin
WASHINGTON - The Barack Obama administration is increasingly giving the impression that it supports a policy of regime change against Iran - a policy that could backfire and convince Iran to build nuclear weapons. Senior United States officials have suggested recently that mounting economic sanctions were meant to "tighten the noose" around the Iranian government. The Washington Post on Tuesday quoted an unnamed senior US intelligence official as saying that the goal of sanctions was regime collapse.

Generic top-level domain sale begins on web
New suffixes like .Pepsi and .London will be possible as an alternative to the usual .com, .net and handful of others

Staff and agenciesguardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 January 2012 06.23 GMT
A revamp of the web begins on Thursday to allow companies, organisations and individuals who can come up with $185,000 to buy specific words that will replace .com, .net and the other usual suffixes on their website addresses.The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) will start accepting applications for "top-level domains" such as .Pepsi or .London rather than just the traditional .com and .net .

U.S. Marines To Probe 'Abuse Video'

2012-01-12T16:11:00.001+09:00

The US Marine Corps has said it will investigate a video posted on the internet which appears to show US soldiers in Afghanistan urinating on corpses.In a statement issued on Wednesday after the footage came to light, the corps said the matter would be fully investigated."While we have not yet verified the origin or authenticity of this video, the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the marines in our corps," the statement said.The video, which was first posted on the Live Leak website, shows four men in military uniforms urinating on three bloodied bodies on the ground, apparently aware that they were being filmed.One of them jokes: "Have a nice day, buddy." The other makes a lewd joke about a shower."Regardless of the circumstances or who is in the video, this is... egregious, disgusting behavior, unacceptable for anyone in uniform," said John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman. "It turned my stomach," he said.

It would seem that a much of frothing at the mouth America conservatives have gotten their nickers not in a twist but a rather painful wedgie about a presentation given a Florida high school meant to teach religious tolerance.

A coalition of right-wing groups are up in arms over a presentation made last fall at Tampa’s Steinbrenner High School by Hassan Shibly of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (known as CAIR).

Shibly says the presentation in question was one of many he has made in an effort to teach students about tolerance and clear up common misconceptions about the Muslim faith.

The press release just brings the hate:
CAIR and their spokesman, such as Hassan Shibly, who regularly advocate for these groups and Sharia Law, are working to subvert American law, loyalty to America, American values, and our American heritage, and they have no place in our public schools.

Allowing CAIR access to our children is tantamount to advocating overturning the Constitution in favor of Sharia Law. This causes our school children to question their loyalty and patriotism.

We are assuming that giving CAIR entre’ into the Hillsborough schools was done without knowledge of who CAIR is. We trust you agree that this organization should not have access to our children, furthermore, that we can no longer tolerate the political correctness or ignorance which has allowed this injustice to be perpetrated on our children.

And one then 'wonders' where American's get their ideas for the hatred of Muslims which then leads to the incident shown in the video. Sadly right wing groups in America aren't the only ones promoting this kind of behavior politicians and the media also help to instill the hate.

A Decade Of Guantanamo

2012-01-11T21:58:00.001+09:00

Few places have done more to conjure up anti-American sentiments, but has Guantanamo aided intelligence gathering?

It has been 10 years since the first detainees were brought to Guantanamo Bay, the US military base in Cuba.

"Guantanamo's single most important distinguishing feature is indefinite military imprisonment without fair process, which remains as true today as it was in 2002. It was set up as a legal blackhole. The majority of the nearly 800 early detainees were never captured anywhere near a battlefield, they were sold for a bounty from places like Pakistan."
- Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer representing several current Guantanamo detainees

Despite repeated calls for its closure, it has become a permanent fixture, at least for the foreseeable future, of US national security policy.

Few places do more to conjure up anti-American sentiments than the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, chosen by George Bush, the former US president, as a place to detain and interrogate those the US accuses of terrorism following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The 10th anniversary will be marked by demonstrations in London and Washington, while some of the 171 prisoners still in detention there plan to mark the day with sit-ins, banners and a hunger strike.

The centre is controversial because most of the detainees have been held without charge indefinitely.

Out of 779 detainees, only six have been convicted. Most have been released after years in detention.

"There is a significant difference between the conduct of operations at Guantanamo and the larger debate about how the US has conducted the war on terror ... it's very common to [talk] about detention facilities and [discuss] renditions, what the CIA did and the different kinds of policies. Guantanamo is a detention facility run by the Pentagon and is not outside the rule of law."
- James Carafano from the Heritage Foundation

And there have been allegations of the torture and inhumane treatment of some of the detainees.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-11T20:00:00.000+09:00

Ex-observer: Syria mission 'a farce'

Arab League monitor calls situation a "humanitarian disaster" as UN hears of heightened crackdown since mission began.

Last Modified: 11 Jan 2012 08:36
A former Arab League observer to Syria has decried the organisation's monitoring mission to the country as a "farce", as the UN Security Council heard that security forces had stepped up its killing of protesters after the arrival of the observers.Anwar Malek, an Algerian Arab League observer who was part of the monitoring team, told Al Jazeera that he resigned because of what he saw, and said that the mission was falling apart."What I saw was a humanitarian disaster. The regime is not just committing one war crime, but a series of crimes against its people," he said."The snipers are everywhere shooting at civilians. People are being kidnapped. Prisoners are being tortured and none were released."

Robert Fisk: Assad faces his people's hatred – but as their anger grows, his excuses are still just the same

Wednesday 11 January 2012
It was theAssad Speech of the Year. There was an international conspiracy against Syria. True. Arab states opposed to Syria were under "outside pressure". True, up to a point. Nobody could deny the seriousness of these plots. True. After all, the Syrian government itself registers 2,000 dead soldiers, while the UN estimates civilian dead at 5,000. And when Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan warned that the violence in Syria was "heading towards a sectarian, religious war", there were few supporters of President Assad who would disagree with him.

Maverick billionaire sets out to rattle mobile phone rivals
The Irish Times - Wednesday, January 11, 2012

RUADHÁN MAC CORMAIC in Paris
BEING A buccaneering billionaire with a history of investing in sex shops and a business manner reminiscent of Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary doesn’t sound like the surest route to the hearts of the French people.But as Xavier Niel was applauded off stage yesterday after an announcement that he hopes will reshape the country’s mobile phone market, even politicians on the left of the Socialist Party were singing his praises.At a packed Apple-style launch event in Paris, the 44-year-old telecoms entrepreneur – whose company Iliad recently won France’s fourth mobile phone licence – unveiled a price package that could halve the cost of having a mobile phone in what is one of Europe’s most expensive mobile markets. For just €19.99 a month, and without having to sign a contract, new customers would have “unlimited” calls and texts to 40 countries, Niel said.

Iran and the West Rediscover Oil as Weapon
The Escalation

By Alexander Jung and Bernhard Zand
Surprisingly enough, supertankers don't burn very well. Although the crude oil they transport is highly flammable, there is not enough oxygen in their tanks to create an explosive mixture.On average, 14 of these giant tankers pass through the Strait of Hormuz, located between Iran and Oman, every day. If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually ordered his forces to fire missiles at one of these tankers, quite a bit of firepower would be needed to set off a Hollywood-style inferno.But the verbal attacks from Tehran are more than sufficient to set the global markets ablaze.

Eight killed as ethnic violence, fuel chaos haunt Nigeria
Gunmen killed eight people in northern Nigeria on Tuesday and a mob torched an Islamic school in the south, as a fuel strike and growing religious tension rattled Africa's oil-rich giant.

AMINU ABUBAKAR KANO, NIGERIA - Jan 11 2012 06:50
Amid the sectarian and social turmoil, Nobel Literature Prize laureate Wole Soyinka, one of the country's most respected voices, warned that the continent's most populous nation was heading toward civil war.A two-day old general strike has paralysed the country and sent President Goodluck Jonathan's government -- already battling a spate of bloody attacks by the Islamist sect Boko Haram -- into crisis mode.Analysts said the tension in the country that is Africa's top oil producer contributed to rising world oil prices.

Iran keeps issuing threats, US keeps saving Iranian sailors
As Iran has been promoting its naval prowess and ability to shut the Straits of Hormuz, US naval assets have been busy rescuing Iranian sailors.

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer
The information warriors at the Pentagon probably can't believe their luck.Iran has spent much of the past month crowing about how it could shut down the Strait of Hormuz -- a choke-point for vast quantities of seaborne oil for nearly 40 percent of the world -- and said it was "warning" the US to keep its ships out of the Persian Gulf. The US, as a far greater naval power, with a naval base in Bahrain, and an interest in keeping sea lanes open, brushed off the Iranian threat.

Tortured Guantanamo Bay Prisoner Seeks Release Of Secret Videos

2012-01-10T22:35:00.001+09:00

A new lawsuit seeks to force the U.S. government to make public “extremely disturbing” videotapes of a Saudi national whose abuse at the Guantanamo Bay prison has been called “torture” by a former Bush administration official.
The suit, filed in New York federal court on Monday, comes 10 years after the first prisoners in the United States’ global war on terror arrived at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba. The prison, within a U.S. Navy base, was considered by Bush administration lawyers outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.

The prison was meant to house "the worst of the worst" terrorist except that almost all of those held have been released without ever being charged or tried for the crimes they were alleged to have committed.

Harsh interrogation techniques

In their lawsuit filed Monday, Lawrence Lustberg and Sandra Babcock seek to shed light on the treatment of their client Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was captured in Afghanistan during the hunt for Osama bin Laden in 2001 and was whisked to Guantanamo Bay, where government investigators later identified him as a man who had planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
The case of Qahtani first came to light in 2005 when Time magazine published secret log files from Guantanamo that detailed harsh interrogation techniques on the Saudi suspect.
In February 2008, he was charged with war crimes and murder, but on May 11 of that same year those charges were dropped. The reasons at the time were not made public.

Then light was shed upon why the charges were never brought.

In 2009, a Bush administration official revealed the reason to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post:
"We tortured Qahtani," Susan J. Crawford said. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

John Yoo the former member of the Bush administration's Department of Justice who co-authored the now infamous Torture Memos which sought to give legal justification for the torture of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay Cuba as the base was considered outside of U.S. legal jurisdiction.

Part I

Part one, in which the text and history of the U.S. torture statute (18 U.S.C. 2340-2340A) is examined, mainly addresses Bybee's interpretation of the definition of torture, including the definition of severe physical and mental pain or suffering.

In the first section, the memorandum reminds the reader that the statute requires specific intent (the convention only requires general intent, but the specific intent language is found in the U.S. ratification reservation), and in citing case law precedent states that specific intent means that "the infliction of [severe] pain must be the defendant's precise objective" and reminds the reader that general intent only requires intent of the actions which would be reasonably likely to result in a violation of the statute.^[3] The article then concludes that, "even if the defendant knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent," but makes no attempt to explain how one can act knowing that a result is certain without intending the outcome, and instead claims that a jury would likely act contrary to law (out of misunderstanding) by finding such an individual guilty regardless.

The second section is key to the definition given by this memo of torture, yet provides the least precedent or legal reasoning of the memo sections. The memo admits difficulty in finding and clear definition for the "severe pain or suffering" required by the torture statute (which is also required by the convention). After examining the definition provided in various dictionaries, it concludes that "pain" is synonymous with "suffering" ("it is difficult to conceive of such suffering that would not involve severe physical pain"), and it selects among the many definitions and proposes that severe pain must be difficult to endure (some definitions quoted in the memo define severe pain as "inflicting discomfort"). In searching for a reference to the term in other U.S. statutes and law, it quotes from a health care law which defines "emergency condition," but merely mentions "severe pain" in passing. That statutory subsection, 8 U.S.C. section 1395w-22(d)(3)(B), defines an emergency condition as a condition "manifesting itself by acute symptoms of sufficient severity (including severe pain) such that [one]... could reasonably expect the absence of immediate medical attention to result in placing the health of the individual... in serious jeopardy, serious impairment to bodily functions, or serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part." The memorandum then concludes that severe pain necessarily be pain associated with "death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions," and does not explain the possibility left open in that statute of severe pain existing without the existence of those characteristics (and vice-versa), or the fact that the statute only loosely associates the concepts with "severe pain" as opposed to defining the term. Furthermore, even though this section spends considerable effort interpreting such terms as "or," it totally ignores parenthetical language directly relevant to the meaning of "severe pain," which states, "severe physical or mental pain or suffering(other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions)." The memo then consumes copious space to find the most strict definition of mental pain and prolonged mental harm, which is nonetheless already defined by the statute. It concludes that "prolonged" must be a duration of months or even years. It also erroneously states that the statute requires long-term mental harm to accompany mental or physical pain.

These memos not only violated U.S. law but were also in contravention of the Geneva Convention which sets the legal frame work for the treatment of prisoners of war but also violated the UN Convention on Human Rights. Both of which the U.S. is a signatory.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-10T20:00:00.000+09:00

Gulf currents aided breakdown of oil after BP spill, study says
Rather than moving steadily away from the wellhead, oil-laced water often circled back, returning hydrocarbon-consuming bacteria to the plume repeatedly, authors say.

By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
The geography and water circulation patterns of the northern Gulf of Mexico promoted the breakdown of oil and gas spewing from a busted wellhead during the BP oil disaster, according to a new study.Using computer models and Navy data on gulf currents, the authors concluded that rather than moving away from the deep-sea wellhead in a linear fashion, oil-laced water often looped back, returning hydrocarbon-munching bacterial blooms to the rising oil plume for repeated feasts.

The US schools with their own police
More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor. Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour?

Chris McGrealguardian.co.uk
The charge on the police docket was "disrupting class". But that's not how 12-year-old Sarah Bustamantes saw her arrest for spraying two bursts of perfume on her neck in class because other children were bullying her with taunts of "you smell"."I'm weird. Other kids don't like me," said Sarah, who has been diagnosed with attention-deficit and bipolar disorders and who is conscious of being overweight. "They were saying a lot of rude things to me. Just picking on me. So I sprayed myself with perfume. Then they said: 'Put that away, that's the most terrible smell I've ever smelled.' Then the teacher called the police."

Sexism and the state of Israel
Driven by a theology that refuses to grant women equal rights, ultraorthodox Jews have begun to flex their misogynist muscles.

CATRINA STEWART TUESDAY 10 JANUARY 2012
As dusk falls in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem's most pious neighbourhood, black-clad and hatted Jewish men hurry home along the narrow streets lined by medieval-style houses where lights burn dimly in darkened windows.Less than half a mile away, young Israelis mix in bustling bars in central Jerusalem, anathema to this religious ultraorthodox community that has tried its hardest to hide itself away from the temptations of secular life, and ensure a rigorous separation between men and women.

North Korea announces prisoner amnesty
North Korea says it will grant an amnesty for prisoners to mark the birthdays of two late leaders.

The BBC 10 January 2012
State news agency KCNA said that the amnesty would begin from 1 February, in honour of Kim Jong-il, who died last month, and his father Kim Il-sung.No information was given as to how many prisoners would be released or who.Amnesty International estimates as many as 200,000 people are being held in political prison camps around the country.KCNA said that the amnesty embodied the "noble, benevolent and all-embracing politics of President Kim Il-sung and leader Kim Jong-il".

Protests peaceful in C’River, Imo, Oyo, Osun, flops in Enugu, aborted in Bayelsa

TUESDAY, 10 JANUARY 2012 00:00 BY OUR REPORTERS
THE strike embarked upon yesterday by the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) over fuel subsidy removal was peaceful in Cross River, Imo State while it was aborted in Bayelsa State. Early in the morning, business activities went on as usual in Calabar as the markets opened while commercial drivers plied the roads. Also , petrol stations, government offices were open, while banks however did not do business with their customers.

The war dance is in full swing
Middle East

By Victor Kotsev
If the most recent wave of escalations in the Middle East is a bluff, it is a very convincing one. Russian analysts speculate that a military intervention against either Syria or Iran (or both) could start by the end of the month; the latter is still hard to imagine, but the time frame seems to correspond to the nature of the developments and the rate at which they are being announced. Barring a full-scale war in the Middle East in the next few weeks, we could think of what is happening on both sides as a modern version of a war dance, a dress rehearsal for a showdown and a spectacle for domestic consumption, for the enemy and for the international community alike.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-09T20:00:00.000+09:00

In Yemen's political crisis, children pay the highest price

By Sudarsan Raghavan, Monday, January 9
ADEN, Yemen — Nazha Mohammed was pale and silent in her mother’s arms, on the edge of listlessness. At 2 months old, she was one of the youngest children inside a high school where several hundred Yemenis have sought refuge from conflict.“There’s no milk for her,” explained her father, Mohammed Yahya.Yemen’s populist uprising and the political crisis that followed have pushed the country to the brink of a humanitarian emergency, according to the United Nations and aid agencies. And children have been hit especially hard.

Pervez Musharraf announces return to Pakistan
Former military ruler faces arrest over charges relating to Benazir Bhutto assassination in 2008

Associated Press in Karachiguardian.co.uk, Monday 9 January 2012
Pervez Musharraf has announced he will return later this month to Pakistan where state prosecutors have said they will detain the former military ruler over Benazir Bhutto's assassination.Musharraf told several thousand supporters in Karachi by telephone on Sunday he would return between 27 and 30 January to prepare for elections. In apparent reference to the charges against him, he said: "I am coming to Pakistan but there are attempts to scare me off. There are baseless cases against me but we will face those cases in court."

The Gaza Music School: A composition in defiance and harmony
It was damaged by an Israeli bomb – but the Gaza Music School is quickly becoming a symbol of resilience

DONALD MACINTYRE MONDAY 09 JANUARY 2012
It is late afternoon and in a room darkening by the minute because of an all-too-familiar power cut, Shaden Shabwan, just 10 and a study in concentration, plays a Czech folk tune on an upright Yamaha piano as her teacher wills her to avoid mistakes. It is test day for piano students at the Gaza Music School, where Shaden is in her second year. Across the corridor, her classmate Abdel Aziz Sharek, also 10, is just as focused. Accompanied on ouds and tabla, he dexterously picks out a mesmerising classical longa on the qanun, the zither-like instrument that has been central to Arab music for a millennium or more. Abdel Aziz takes his regular studies as seriously as he evidently does the music. "I want to be a doctor," he explains. "But I will keep playing. I will be in a band at the same time."

Carbon emissions 'will defer Ice Age'
Human emissions of carbon dioxide will defer the next Ice Age, say scientists.

By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News
The last Ice Age ended about 11,500 years ago, and when the next one should begin has not been entirely clear.Researchers used data on the Earth's orbit and other things to find the historical warm interglacial period that looks most like the current one.In the journal Nature Geoscience, they write that the next Ice Age would begin within 1,500 years - but emissions have been so high that it will not.

Fuel subsidy removal: Abuja under heavy security

Written by Olawale Rasheed, Soji-Eze Fagbemi and Clement Idoko, AbujaMonday, 09 January 2012
AGAINST the directive of the Nigeria Police Command, FCT, that protesters would not be allowed in the city centres, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), on Sunday, directed Abuja residents to gather as early as 8.00 a.m. today at the Berger Junction for the take-off of the protest.The FCT Commissioner of Police, Mike Zuokumor, had stated while briefing journalists on Saturday that protesters should go to the car park of the National Stadium and not venture to move around the city centres.

Taiwan's Project Diving Dragon resurfaces
Greater China

By Jens Kastner
TAIPEI - Recurring reports that countries other than the United States are helping Taiwan build diesel-electric submarines domestically go back a decade. According to various articles, it's either the Western Europeans, Russians or Indians who are clandestinely concocting a submarine plan with the Taiwanese. While the notion that any country able to build subs would choose to so profoundly snub China appears unlikely, the question arises as to why these rumors persist.

American Sentenced In Iran For Spying

2012-01-09T17:02:00.000+09:00

Iran sentences US man to death for spying

28-year-old Arizona-born man was visiting his grandmothers in Iran when arrested, according to his father

msnbc.com news services

Iran's Revolutionary Court sentenced an American to death for spying for the CIA, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Monday.

"Amir Mirza Hekmati was sentenced to death ... for cooperating with the hostile country (the United States) and spying for the CIA," Fars said, without giving a source.

"The court found him Corrupt on Earth," it added.

Last month Fars reported that the prosecution had applied for capital punishment because the suspect "admitted that he received training in the United States and planned to imply that Iran was involved in terrorist activities in foreign countries" after returning to the U.S.

Kim Jon-un Vowed 'Real War' If Rocket Shot Down

2012-01-08T23:04:00.001+09:00

That's right Kim Jong-un vowed real war if Japan which had deployed patriot missiles in Northern Japan to shoot down any debris which fell on Japanese territory. A rocket which North Korea claimed to be deploying a satellite in to orbit to develop its'peaceful 'space program.' You know that space program which will soon send a man to the moon.

North Korea's young leader vowed in 2009 to wage war if the country's enemies shot down a rocket, footage aired on state television showed Sunday in the first official word of his role in military operations before his father's death.
The documentary is the second in a week seeking to highlight Kim Jong Un's experience in leading North Korea's 1.2 million-strong militaryand was aimed at showing that he was in charge of the armed forces long before his father, former leader Kim Jong Il, died of a heart attack last month.

The decider

"I had decided to wage a real war if the enemies shot down" the rocket, Kim Jong Un was quoted as saying. A voice-over described Kim Jong Il as saying his son was in charge of the military's anti-rocket interception operations at the time.

Clank Clank I'm a Tank

The video also showed Kim Jong Un navigating a tank, observing fighter jets and firing exercises, and posing for photographs with soldiers. He is shown seated in the tank's cockpit and speaking to officers with the hatch cover open. He later drove it on a snow-covered road as his father watched from a reviewing stand.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-08T20:00:00.000+09:00

On Sunday

Blacks in New Orleans cry foul over French Quarter curfew
The City Council says stricter rules are meant to protect kids, but critics accuse members of wanting to keep low-income blacks out of sight of tourists.

By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Atlanta— From a distance, it seemed like common sense: an ordinance meant to keep children away from an open-air night-life zone with more than 350 places to buy booze, an abundance of strip joints and a 300-year-old reputation for iniquity.But last week, as the New Orleans City Council approved a strict curfew for youths 16 and younger in the French Quarter, it sparked an incendiary debate that laid bare some of the tensions over race and police priorities that the Louisiana city — which suffers from the nation's highest per capita murder rate — is struggling to resolve as it navigates its post-Hurricane Katrina future.

Syria unrest: Arab League to discuss observer mission
Foreign ministers from the Arab League are due to meet to debate the initial findings of their mission in Syria and to discuss whether to ask for UN help.

The BBC 8 January 2012
An observer mission sent by the League to assess a peace plan has been criticised as toothless, as violence continued despite its presence.At least 27 people died across the country on Saturday, activists said.The clashes came as thousands joined a state-organised funeral for victims of a bomb blast on Friday in Damascus.At least 26 people died in that attack, some of them members of the security forces.

Cambodia's lost temple, reclaimed from the jungle after 800 years
Experts use 3D imaging to undo ravages of time and thieves at the haunting Banteay Chhmar site

DENIS D GRAY BANTEAY CHHMAR, CAMBODIA SUNDAY 08 JANUARY 2012
The haunting monastic complex is so entwined in jungle vines and mystery that it could be the set of an Indiana Jones film. But it is not. It is one of the great historic treasures of south-east Asia, and is slowly awakening after eight centuries of isolated slumber.The dramatic towers, bas-reliefs and dark chambers of Cambodia's Banteay Chhmar make it a far more atmospheric place than its famous twin at Angkor Wat. What drove Jayavarman VII, regarded as the greatest king of the Angkorian Empire, to erect this vast Buddhist temple about 105 miles (170km) from his capital in Angkor, and in one of the most desolate and driest places in Cambodia, remains one of its many unsolved riddles.

Burma's opposition prepares for the unexpected after Aung San Suu Kyi agrees to contest elections
At the cobwebbed headquarters of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, party workers are feverishly preparing for an election many thought they would never see – Burma's first in 22 years.

By Dean Nelson in Rangoon
Party veterans are dusting down old contacts books under the gaze of yellowing propaganda portraits of Suu Kyi's father, Burma's independence leader General Aung San, and more recent pictures of the graceful and iconic opposition leader herself.Farmers, relatives of political prisoners, old ladies with powdered cheeks, and students are serving noodles, collecting pamphlets, and discussing strategy.There are stalls selling T-shirts, mugs, notebooks bearing the gentle face of one of the world's most revered political leaders.

Men of steel revive the heart of Gotham
The ironworkers of New York are proud of their rich history and their role in rebuilding an icon, writes Andrew Purcell.

January 8, 2012
On a windy day, One World Trade Centre sways from side to side, as all unfinished skyscrapers do. Standing on the corrugated steel deck that will be the 88th floor, I find the lateral movement disconcerting, the feeling more like seasickness than vertigo, until you look down. The view can stop and unsteady you, this high above Manhattan.The only two men permitted to work without safety harnesses are Michael O'Reilly and Tommy Hickey, both from Irish-American families that built New York in the glory days of steel.

ANC centenary draws praise from African leaders
African leaders on Saturday hailed the ANC in centenary celebrations for the continent's oldest liberation movement which inspired regional struggles for freedom.

JUSTINE GERARDY BLOEMFONTEIN, SOUTH AFRICA - Jan 08 2012 06:57
African drums and the ritual slaughter of a bull featured in the second day of celebrations commemorating 100 years of the ANC before a gala dinner attended by more than a dozen African leaders and former leaders."When we talk about [the] ANC, it is part of Africa, in particular Southern Africa," said Mozambican President Armando Guebuza at the dinner which ran into the early hours of Sunday.

In Pakistan Being A Journalist Can Be Deadly

2012-01-08T16:07:00.003+09:00

In the most dangerous place on Earth to be a journalist, the media's problems are reflections of the state's incapacity.

In 2011, Pakistan was, for the second year running, the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), seven journalists were killed in the country as a direct result of their profession - most of those were killed in targeted attacks (rather than indiscriminate bomb blasts) for having reported on particular topics.

A further four were also killed, though the US-based media rights watchdog was not able to establish a confirmed link between the victim’s reporting and their deaths, bringing the total death toll up to 11 (a number similar to that cited by the media rights group Reporters Without Borders).

To put those numbers in perspective, consider this: in each of Iraq and Libya (both active war zones during the past year), five journalists were killed in 2011, while in Afghanistan (another active war zone) and largely lawless Somalia, the death toll was two in each.

"There was a time when the red line used to be anything to do with the army," says Mohammad Malick, the Islamabad editor for The News, one of the country’s largest English daily newspapers. "Even if you [talked] about national security, it was taken to be akin to questioning the army's patriotism. [But] I think now instead of removing the red lines, everybody has added their own. If you write about the MQM's [a Sindh-based political party] alleged criminal activities, you're accused of being ethnically motivated. If you write about any other [similar] topic, again you are either accused of being parochial, you're accused of fanning provincialism. So everybody is hiding behind some ethnic blanket, some cultural barrier."

In May of 2011 Saleem Shahzad the South Asia bureau chief for the Asia Times on Line was killed after publishing articles linking the Pakistani navy with Al Qaeda.

Shahzad was reported missing after he failed to show up for a televised panel discussion in Islamabad. He was scheduled to discuss his recent article for Asia Times Onlinein which he reported that Al-Qaeda, having infiltrated the Pakistani navy, was behind a 17-hour siege at a naval base in Karachi on May 22. He said the attack came after the military or security officials refused to release a group of naval officials suspected of being linked to militant groups. The attack, coming soon after the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden on May 2, was deeply embarrassing to the Pakistani military. Earlier in May, three navy buses carrying recruits had been blown up via remote control devices in Karachi, the large port city where the navy is headquartered.
Shahzad's death also came a few days after the release of his book, Inside the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Blackwater Settles With The Families of Those Killed In Fallujah

2012-01-07T22:38:00.000+09:00

In 2004 four employees of Blackwater security were killed in an ambush in while escorting a convoy of lorries passing through the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

The US private security company formerly known as Blackwater has agreed to settle a wrongful death legal case with the families of four of its contractors killed in a gruesome 2004 ambush that was a defining moment of the Iraq war for the American public.
The families reached a confidential settlement with Academi, as Blackwater is now known, agreeing to the dismissal of their case before the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit based in Richmond, Virginia.
An administrator for the estates of the four dead contractors sued Blackwater in 2005 after they were beaten, burned and executed by Iraqi fighters while escorting a supply convoy in Fallujah.
Two of the charred bodies were strung from a bridge over the Euphrates River.
Images of the events disturbed many Americans at one of the low points for the US during the Iraqi occupation.
Blackwater, which changed its name to Xe Services and then to Academi, came to symbolise the US policy of hiring private contractors to perform work previously handled by the military.

Blackwater killings: 'US at fault'

Private security company, now known as Xe Services, says responsibilty for 2007 Iraq killings lies with US government.

The security company formerly known as Blackwater has told a US federal judge that the US government, and not the company itself, should be held accountable for a 2007 shooting by its contractors that killed 17 Iraqis in Nisour Square in Baghdad.

Lawyers for the company, now known as Xe Services, argued in court on Thursday that Blackwater contractors were essentially acting as employees of the US government because they were providing security to State Department personnel.

The North Carolina-based company and several of its contractors are seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit that was filed on behalf of three people killed in the shooting: Ali Kinani, Abrahem Abed Al Mafraje and Mahde Sahab Naser Shamake. The lawsuit accuses the parties of wrongful death and negligence, and seeks punitive damages.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-07T20:00:00.000+09:00

Michelle Obama and the evolution of a first lady
First struggle, then turnaround and greater fulfillment, author says in new book

By JODI KANTOR
Michelle Obama was privately fuming, not only at the president’s team, but also at her husband.In the days after the Democrats lost Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat in January 2010, Barack Obama was even-keeled as usual in meetings, refusing to dwell on the failure or lash out at his staff. The first lady, however, could not fathom how the White House had allowed the crucial seat, needed to help pass the president’s health care legislation and the rest of his agenda, to slip away, several current and former aides said.

Tibetans set fire to themselves in China to demand return of Dalai Lama
Self-immolations in Sichuan province come days before talks between Britain and China covering human rights

Jonathan Watts in BeijingThe Guardian, Saturday 7 January 2012
A Tibetan burned himself to death and another was taken away by the authorities on Friday as the number of self-immolation protests against China's rule rose to 14 since March, exile groups said .The two cases near Kirti Monastery in Aba, Sichuan Province, come days before Britain and China meet for a human rights dialogue.Citing eye witnesses, Free Tibet said a lay protester called for the return of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, before setting himself alight. The flames were extinguished by soldiers and he was taken away.

Curtain comes down on liberal Hungary
An economic disaster may be averted, but as Tony Paterson reports, a cultural crisis looms large in Budapest

TONY PATERSON SATURDAY 07 JANUARY 2012
In the centre of Budapest yesterday, the number 26 stood picked out in big red letters above the magnificent blue and gold Art Nouveau facade of the city's renowned New Theatre, where Schiller's Don Carlos is on its final run.The number is the liberals' last stand.It tells passers-by just how many days the New Theatre's leftist director, Istvan Marta, has left before he is forcibly evicted on the orders of Hungary's new conservative nationalist government

The Revolution Returns to Egypt
One year after the Arab Spring, SPIEGEL correspondent Alexander Smoltczyk set out on a journey through the Maghreb to assess the changes the region has undergone. On the third and final leg of his journey through North Africa, he ends in Cairo, where the revolution is still underway.

On Dec. 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a young man in rural Tunisia, poured gasoline on himself -- and ignited an entire region. One by one, the people of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya toppled their rulers. One year after Bouazizi's self-immolation, much has changed in the Maghreb. But a lot has remained the same. In places where secular rulers prevailed for decades, Islamists are now trying to seize the reins of power. And many people there are just as poor and hopeless as they were before the revolutions.

Fashionistas flaunt RG Mugabe
Zimbabwe's swag merchants love their Giorgio Armani, Paul Smith and Hugo Boss. Now they are also buying their RG Mugabe.

JASON MOYO
A group of young businesspeople are doing good business selling a clothing line whose label is President Robert Mugabe's signature. On the day we meet at their office, a man has just bought a full kit -- the RG Mugabe golf shirt, the RG Mugabe T-shirt and the cap.The young woman at reception is in a bust-hugging black top, with "RG Mugabe" in silver studs running across her chest. Inside the offices of Yedu Nesu, the company behind the House of Gushungo clothing label, there is R&B on the television and, on the desk, the latest edition of the Harvard Business Review.

Eating Christmas trees at the 'world's best restaurant'
Rene Redzepi is the Willy Wonka of food science, conducting gastronomic experiments so popular that customers fly round the world to eat at his £150-a-head Copenhagen restaurant.

By Stephen SackurBBC News, Copenhagen
If you have just thrown out your Christmas tree, may I make a suggestion? Next year don't dump it, burn it or shred it - just eat it.Believe me, the needles from your average Christmas fir can be delicious.How do I know? Well I am just back from from the most extraordinary gastronomic journey of my life - the citrusy tang of freeze dried Christmas tree was just one of the surprises along the way.

China: Unnatural Selection

2012-01-07T13:42:00.001+09:00

Thirty years after China introduced its one-child policy, there are growing calls to scrap the controversial system as the nation faces new social dilemmas.

In pictures: China's birth control

Today, China's fertility rate is below the replacement level, providing fewer workers to support a rapidly growing elderly population.

And with a cultural preference for boys, China faces an alarming gender imbalance with projections of 30 million more men than women by 2020.

Officials have also been accused of excessively enforcing the policy, with forced abortions, discrimination and even confiscating children.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-06T20:00:00.000+09:00

Culture
Art and design
Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei given hope of tax reprieve

Chinese artist says officials have told him they are re-examining the charge that he owes millions to the state

Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 January 2012 05.40 GMT

The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has said Beijing tax authorities are reviewing their ruling that he pay a multimillion dollar penalty for alleged tax evasion.

The internationally acclaimed conceptual artist said officials told him of the decision on Wednesday by telephone. They said the review would be completed within two months. Ai said he was hopeful the case would be handled earnestly and transparently.

Press gangs of New York

If you think British tabloids are cut-throat, look at the Big Apple's. As Colin Myler, ex-News of the World editor, flies in to run his former boss's arch rival title, a new chapter is about to be written...

The smell of blood was in the nostrils of the New York media pack even before Colin Myler had stepped off his flight from London yesterday on his return to the Big Apple. "Let the New York Newspaper Wars Begin," wrote blogger Kristina Chew, as Myler, the final editor of the defunct News of the World, prepared to start his new job on Tuesday at the helm of the 93-year-old New York Daily News. Only five years ago, he was producing the paper's deadly rival, the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post. His former Post colleagues opened hostilities yesterday by describing his appointment as "a new round of turmoil" for the paper they deride as the "Snooze".

Inside North Korea: The day Kim Jong-il gave me a Rolex

6 January 2012 Last updated at 00:55 GMT

As part of North Korea's propaganda machine, Jang Jin-sung spent his career writing eulogies of Kim Jong-il, before growing disillusioned and fleeing to South Korea in 2004. Here he describes life as a member of the North Korean elite.

I wrote poems for the regime under a pen name, pretending I was a grass-roots poet from the South. I wrote epic poems glorifying Kim Jong-il, which were published in the main newspaper in the North.

I met Kim Jong-il twice. The first time, in 1999, I was overwhelmed and full of emotion. But at the same time I thought the image I had received of him - through brainwashing - was very different to how he appeared in person.

Monitors to stay in Syria despite 'mistakes'

Arab League observers to continue mission as Qatar's prime minister says that "mistakes" have been made.

Last Modified: 06 Jan 2012 09:12

Arab League peace monitors will stay in Syria to check on the government's compliance with a promise to end 10 months of violence against pro-democracy protesters, Arab government sources said, despite criticism from Qatar's prime minister that they had made "mistakes".

The league's special committee on Syria is due to meet in Egypt on Sunday to debate the initial findings of the mission, which has been criticised by Syrian activists who question its ability to assess the violence on the ground.

Anti-government protesters are planning a day of action on Friday, calling for the UN to step in after what they say is the failure of the league's mission.

Over 3000 killed in South Sudan massacre: local official

Sapa-AFP | 06 January, 2012 10:26

"There have been mass killings, a massacre," said Joshua Konyi, commissioner for Pibor county in Jonglei state.

"We have been out counting the bodies, and we calculate so far that 2,182 women and children were killed and 959 men died."

United Nations and South Sudanese army officials have yet to confirm the death tolls and the claims from the remote region could not be independently verified.

Ex-head of NATO's 2nd largest army accused of 'forming and directing a terrorist group'

Retired Turkish general is highest-ranking officer to face trial in the so-called Ergenekon case

msnbc.com news services

A former military chief was jailed Friday, accused of leading a terrorist organization and plotting to bring down Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, his lawyer said.

Gen. Ilker Basbug was arrested and placed in a prison near Istanbul overnight after seven hours of questioning by prosecutors investigating allegations that the military funded dozens of websites aimed at discrediting the Islamic-rooted government in 2009.

King Cobra And The Dragon

2012-01-06T15:36:00.001+09:00

on poor working conditions in Chinese-owned businesses and made Sino-Zambian relations a major issue in the following year's pres China's increasing engagement with Africa has become a subject of great controversy. The country's commercial interests in Africa have been called a new form of colonialism by some in the West, but many Africans say that China is a better partner than Europe or the US. But what is the reality in the African nations with the longest standing links to China?People and Power sent Sino-French academic Solange Chatelard and filmmaker Scott Corben to Zambia during the presidential elections in September 2011 to investigate whether Africa has entered a new era of colonialism with
Chinese firms maltreating workers and devouring the continent's natural resources.
Thousands of Chinese have settled in Zambia and opened businesses, but relations have not always run smoothly.
In 2005, an accident in an explosives factory at the Chinese-owned Chambishi mine caused the deaths of dozens of Zambian workers. The incident focused Zambian minds on poor working conditions in Chinese-owned businesses and made Sino-Zambian relations a major issue in the following year's presidential election.
The People and Power team spoke to a mineworker at the cemetery where the victims of 2005 were buried. He told them that working conditions were still poor and that those who spoke out often lost their jobs. idential election.

The People and Power team spoke to a mineworker at the cemetery where the victims of 2005 were buried. He told them that working conditions were still poor and that those who spoke out often lost their jobs.

Six In The Morning

2012-01-05T20:00:00.000+09:00

Ousted Spanish government plotted to derail EU fishing reforms

Leaked document seen by the Guardian reveals former socialist government's plans, while new administration will face pressure from Fish Fight campaign and EU fisheries commissioner

Fiona Harvey and Stephen Burgen
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 January 2012 08.00 GMT

With the incoming Spanish government yet to show its hand over the EU's proposed fishing reforms, a leaked document has shown that the previous administration was planning to derail the plans.

As Europe's biggest fishing industry, Spain could hold the key to the success or failure of the reforms, which would prevent fishermen discarding edible fish at sea.

But according to a secret government document seen by the Guardian, Spain's previous administration was plotting a last-ditch attempt to bring down the reforms, and allow Spanish fishermen to continue throwing away edible fish as they have been doing so for decades

Libya's leader warns of civil war after Tripoli gun battles

Fighting between rival militias leaves seven dead as head of interim government pleas for calm

The head of Libya's interim government warned yesterday that the country could descend into civil war after rival militias fought gun battles in the centre of the capital, Tripoli, leaving a trail of dead and injured.

Mustafa Abdul Jalil spoke of the dangers posed by continuous lawlessness of private armies while the draft regulations for the first parliamentary elections scheduled for later this year were being published.

Immediate executions follow 15 death sentences in China

The Irish Times - Thursday, January 5, 2012

CLIFFORD COONAN in Beijing

ON THURSDAY morning last week, a court in the city of Changsha held a mass sentencing in the gymnasium of Hunan University, with 15 people condemned to death for a range of serious crimes, including a man who bombed a tax office in the city.

The criminals were all taken from the university to the execution grounds and executed immediately after sentencing, an extraordinary series of pictures on the Chinese Netease service shows.

While the reports do not specify how they died, with such a large number of condemned, it is most likely they were shot.

North Korea military has an edge over South, but wouldn't win a war, study finds

A South Korean think tank gave North Korea the edge in the early days of any war with the South because of its numbers and offensive position.

By Jeremy Laurence, Reuters /

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA

North Korea's military strategy is superior to the defensive posture of its affluent neighbor to the South, an independent think-tank said on Wednesday, giving Pyongyang the edge in the early days of any war on the divided peninsula.

The Seoul-based Korea Economic Research Institute said in a report that in 2011 North Korea operated a 1.02-million-strong army and a record number of tanks, warships and air defense artillery. Total military personnel strength is 1.2 million.

"The depressing reality is it would not be entirely wrong to say North Korea's military strength is stronger," the institute said.

In new strategy, Panetta plans even smaller army

Defense secretary will unveil plan to cut billions from defense budget

By THOM SHANKER and ELISABETH BUMILLER

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has concluded that the Army has to shrink even below current targets, dropping to 490,000 soldiers over the next decade, but that the United States should not cut any of its 11 aircraft carriers, according to Pentagon officials and military analysts briefed on the secretary’s budget proposals.

Mr. Panetta is to disclose the strategy guiding hundreds of billions of dollars in Pentagon budget cuts during an unusual Defense Department news conference on Thursday, when President Obama is to appear in the Pentagon briefing room and make remarks ahead of those by Mr. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mr. Obama has never before briefed reporters at the Pentagon, and administration officials said they did not know of any president who had.

Paws 'Dogcam' aids search-and-rescue with canine tech

5 January 2012

The first thing you remember is that the floor was trembling and the ceiling cracked - could it have been an earthquake?

You look around and see things from your house in unusual places. Floorboards are strewn about you and your bed is at ninety degrees, trapping your legs.

Suddenly the friendly face of a dog weaves through the rubble and licks your face. It barks, then a human voice asks if you are OK.

This is not a hallucination, Narnia, or your first taste of the afterlife.

Balochistan: Pakistan's Other War

2012-01-05T09:04:00.001+09:00

In the rugged mountains of southwest Pakistan lies the country's largest province of Balochistan. Far from the bustling cities of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, this remote region has been the battleground for a 60-year-long insurgency by the Baloch ethnic minority.

"The Baloch people now live in a state of war. Every day, they face injustice. The army and intelligence agents kidnap our young, and we know nothing about them for years. The Baloch people live in a state of war. We will not accept any offers until we regain control over this land. They burn down our homes and then ask us for peace? We are not stupid."
- Baloch Khan, Baloch rebel leader

The ongoing conflict is often called Pakistan's dirty war, because of the rising numbers of people who have disappeared or have been killed on both sides.

But the uprising against Pakistan's government has received little attention worldwide, in part because most eyes have been focused on the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in other areas of Pakistan.

Bordering Iran and Afghanistan, Balochistan remains notorious for cross-border smuggling and has more recently been infiltrated by former members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives. Few outsiders gain access or permission to travel in the region.