World Analysis Newswire Archive

One hour radio show from Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone titled: The Destruction of Palestine, Part One.

A weekly 30 minute review of news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio. With times and freqs for listening at home. 2 files- broadcast and slow-modem streaming. Free to rebroadcast. Netherlands, Cuba, China, and Russia.

The Group of 8 summit of industrialized nations, due to begin today in the German holiday resort of Heiligendamm, is dominated by extreme tensions, expressed both openly and indirectly. There has been no comparable summit in terms of the conflicts between the major powers since the launching of the annual meeting of world leaders 32 years ago.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair had hoped that the G8 summit to be held in Heiligendamm, Germany, in June would provide a booster shot to the campaign hailing his supposed “legacy” before leaving office. He is to stand down as British prime minister in June.

Jean Bricmont’s Humanitarian Imperialism is a book that, to use the overwrought (but in this case true) rhetoric of book blurbs, should be read by anyone concerned with rebuilding the left, stopping the Iraq war, or with the future of humanity in general. The subject of his book is the human rights ideology which insists that the US/the West is morally obligated to military intervene to protect the political and civil rights of various peoples around the world. He argues that this line of thought has been absorbed by most of the left in Europe (and, we would add, in the US), and that it helps account for the listlessness of the struggle against the Iraq occupation. Not a timid writer, Bricmont expends no energy deconstructing the discourse of human rights, or expounding on its intellectual genealogy. Instead, he focuses directly on the argument itself, and its multiple variants (such as the use of dubious historical backdrops, including the failure of the left to be sufficiently critical of Stalin, and the example of World War II). He further keeps things simply by avoiding philosophical questions of cultural relativism, instead simply trying to answer whether the military interventionist strategy in fact promotes the human rights it claims to. One wonders how the many defenders of humanitarian imperialism would respond to the arguments laid out in the book. Of course, they will simply ignore it, or perhaps slander the author (defender of Saddam/Stalin, etc.).

Nine of ten candidates for the Republican presidential nomination explicitly or tacitly supported a US attack on Iran using nuclear weapons, in response to a question at Tuesday night’s nationally televised debate in New Hampshire.

See :  http://www.kawther.info/K20070606B.html

for the screen capture images.

Unsubtly titled "The Case for Bombing Iran: I hope and pray that President Bush will do it,", Norman Podhoretz's op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal is a work of eloquently simplistic and hysterical propaganda, truly a model of the genre. I recommend it as a seminal document of the Bush era, prior to what may well be its crowning disaster. It's lengthy but worth reading closely as a concentrated statement of the argument we will probably hear in ever shriller pitch in the coming months.

The neocons think that by bombing Iran the US will provoke Iran to arm the Shiite militias in Iraq with armor-piercing rocket propelled grenades and with surface to air missiles and unleash the militias against US troops. These weapons would neutralize US tanks and helicopter gunships and destroy the US military edge, leaving divided and isolated US forces subject to being cut off from supplies and retreat routes. With America on the verge of losing most of its troops in Iraq, the cry would go up to “save the troops” by nuking Iran.

From mission statement to mission accomplished, the slam dunk cakewalks continue. But from Baghdad to Beirut, the forgery looks the same.

Unlike Iraq, there is no “weapons of mass destruction threat” to facilitate toppling the Syrian regime. This time, a United Nations Tribunal could provide the means, deploying Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri's murder as the weapon. But like the US show trial to convict Saddam Hussein, the show trial to convict Syria for Hariri's murder, built by the United Nation's International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC), has a history of problems.

SYDNEY-- A comment by Catholic Archbishop George Pell directed at Catholic Premier, Morris Iemma and other Catholic politicians, is clearly an attempt by the church to interfere with matters of State. Is this a case of an insular Cardinal pining for the good ol’ days when the Holy Roman Empire ruled Europe with a corrupt iron cross or is it a case of blatant religious hypocrisy? Perhaps the Cardinal’s comments, relating to stem cell issues, constitute a clear case of criminal blackmail – legal advocates may find a prime target in Cardinal Pell. A legal action could be interpreted as the State clearly delineating a distinction between matters of church and matters of State – Cardinals may discover they can’t have their cake and eat it with impunity!

In other words, we can assume Fatah al-Islam, linked to the Shin Bet compromised PFLP through the splinter group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian-General Command, is yet another covert operation, designed to go up against Hezbollah, never mind the futility of such an operation. It appears to be a collaborative black op intelligence effort between the Israelis, the Saudis, and the neocons—with the cooperation of the Senora government in Lebanon—all interested in taking down Hezbollah a peg or two, especially considering the disturbing fact the Islamic organization is now capable of fending off Israeli predation.

Let me light a lantern in a bell tower for my fellow Americans. You must awake. There are PR armies of the night with shiny media kits and Dick-Cheneyfied “intelligence” reports quietly at work right now, building momentum for a strike on Iran and a vast broadening of this too costly—and let’s just say it—too crazy war on terror.

Black Bloc at the anti-G8 manifestation in Rostock, 2nd June

The case against CrossRail hole plot Bill has always been that it is a crassly conceived project. That it is being sued as a giant Trojan horse by Bog Business and contractors to loot £billions from the UK public under cover of improving transport in London. The hundreds of inaccuracies , fabrications, contradictions as still contained in the promotional assertions and plugs for CrossRail, have been exposed over the past 3 years plus by the Khoodeelaar! campaign. But newer lies are being told. Today's r plug for Crossrail , posted on the Guardian web site allegedly as a report on the Blair party's deputy leadership contenders is the latest, and the most drastic act of lying Crassly for Crossrail

Brian has lived in London’s Parliament Square for 6 years – nearly 2,200 days and nights of eating, sleeping, and talking to passers-by opposite the so-called `Mother of all Parliaments`. Here are 20 photos of the day on which he clocked up 6 years of his magnificent protest.

A similar event to the ¨Live 8¨ concert which took place in the run-up to the G8 in 2005 is to take place in Rostock on Thursday 7th June 2007. Undoubtedly the message will be the same: ¨wearing a white arm band and attending a rock concert will liberate the third world from poverty as well as making you feel good about yourself¨.

The truth is out there......... in Istanbul this weekend.

Millions of people are deeply disturbed by the current state of society. They are vehemently opposed to the policies of the ruling elites all over the world and are seeking ways to resist them. They face, however, a contradiction. Experience shows that protest, even if it embraces masses of people, is not sufficient to resolve the great problems of war, repression and social reaction.

A view from the outside is far more revealing than the myopia offered from within. We are all apt to overlook the elephant for its trunk or ears when we are drawn too near a subject/object. In such a distorted world teacup ‘storms’ appear as hurricanes; the loss of perspective is the precursor to the loss of FREEDOM as the scope narrows, so our consciousness. Few in Oz seem to be aware that the opposition Labor party no longer has an ideological platform, the values of the traditional Australian Labor Party have been jettisoned for short-term gain, opportunism and expediency!