World Anti-militarism Newswire Archive

With the world now one full year off the Peak Oil and Gas cliff (according to work of geologists such as Kenneth Deffeyes), it is no surprise to see geostrategic tensions superheating quickly in several key oil and gas regions, as the world’s superpowers and multinational energy giants (supported by their nation’s militaries and intelligence agencies) intensify their combat over remaining energy supplies.

The alleged ringleader of a much vaunted plot to blow up multiple transatlantic airliners using liquid explosives has been cleared of terrorism charges and of being a member of any terrorist group, rendering August's terror scare another hyped creation of government scare mongering.

Regarding your article 9/12 incidents at cronulla beach I think you were able to capture main points and problems people face in today's age of "fair and balanced" media... sad thing is that 90% of Australians will never benefit from it...

Controversial September 11th documentary exposing inconsistencies and contradictions in the 9/11 Commission Report erupts onto New Zealand television. This recent national airing of "In Plane Site" on New Zealand television represents a historic turning point in the global collective consciousness regarding the terrorist attacks of September 11.

I was going to write a piece about yesterdays synchronized global orgasm for peace but see little point wasting my time writing original articles for Indymedia only to have the gatekeepers to open publishing remove them (  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/12/358704.html,
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/12/358696.html). Maybe when the IMC admin team get their act together I might post a proper write up but in the meantime here is a shameless collection cut and paste from various other reports on the event.

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, today told the press that he considers Al Qaeda to be even greater than Hitlers Nazis in terms of threat to civilian life. Although Sir Ian admitted that he had no intelligence, relating to a specific attack, he warning of possible outrages this Christmas saying that the threat was "unparalled and growing".

Earlier this month, London's Olympia hosted the first Counter Terror World exhibition, at which companies and countries from around the world "shared with each other lessons learned in the war on terror." The official website of the exhibition ( http://www.counterterrorworld.com) has been taken down and now re-directs to  http://www.isnrlondon.com. So the information that the site provided (list of exhibitors etc.) is not available on the web any more. Therefore, we reproduce some of that info below.

Girlfriends and wives of gang members in Pereira, one of Colombia's most violent cities, have called a 'sex ban' in a bid to get their men to give up the gun. The idea of 'strike of crossed legs', which is backed by the mayor of Pereira, came from a meeting of wives and girlfriends over the progress of a disarmament scheme.

Hundreds of Palestinians gathered outside the Parliament Building in Gaza to protest the ongoing violence and infighting, which was initiated after President Abbas called for new presidential and parliamentary elections.  http://www.imemc.org/content/view/23330/1/

Copyleft artwork by Brazilian cartoonist Latuff.

Protestors march toward Wall street Thursday, Dec. 21, 2006 in New York. Several hundred people demonstrated near Wall Street on Thursday to protest the shooting of an unarmed black man by police officers in Queens. The march in Manhattan's financial district was the latest in a series of protests over the death of Sean Bell, who was killed last month by a fusillade of police bullets as he left a Queens nightclub hours before he was to be married.

As America faces the most calamitous military misadventure in its history, the administration offers unqualified slogans rather than detailed plans to remedy the horror it created in Iraq. The American mass media is now buzzing with the sound of nothing meaningful. The Bush administration has resorted to contextually meaningless slogans in its efforts to dupe an increasingly sceptical public. The latest inane slogans saturating the airwaves are “win” and “way forward”. Only adolescents and the daft invest meaning in unqualified slogans – shall we test the latest two slogans and attempt to determine the ruse behind the deception?

[There is] no doubt whatsoever of the CIA's involvement and the complicity of the Australian goverment and that view is shared by us and by our counterparts in Indonesia.

The remarks delivered by President Bush at a year-end press conference Wednesday, combined with a series of military and political developments, point inexorably to a major escalation of the US war in Iraq in the coming year.

Bush revealed little new in his encounter with the press corps, dismissing as “hypothetical” all questions on the reported turn by his administration to a new military offensive in Iraq based on a “surge” of up to 40,000 more US combat troops in the country.

The president claimed he was still weighing various recommendations from military, diplomatic and Iraqi sources—as well as those of the much-trumpeted but already marginalized Iraq Study Group—before presenting a new policy in a speech that is expected sometime in early January.

[attached]

A report issued by the Pentagon Monday confirms the disastrous state of the American project for the conquest of Iraq and transformation of the oil-rich country into a semi-colony of the United States.

The armed resistance to the US occupation continues to swell, with both insurgent attacks on US forces and American casualties growing at a double-digit rate. According to the quarterly report, mandated by Congress, the number of attacks carried out by insurgents has risen by 22 percent over the past three months, while US casualties have risen 32 percent.

Prime Minister Tony Blair’s tour of the Middle East has been used to back a constitutional putsch by President Mahmoud Abbas that threatens a Palestinian civil war, to trial plans for a massive increase in troop numbers in Iraq and to pave the way for hostile action against Iran.

January 11, 2007 -- Citizens to target illegal Detention Centre

The world today is in no doubt as to the criminal status of the illegal detention centre of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The past three years have not only witnessed unprecedented assaults on the founding principles of the USA by the Bush regime, but also on international law and convention. The government of the USA is clearly rogue, a fact in which its officials delight. The contempt the neo-cons display for their own citizens is only exceeded by the extreme disdain they exhibit toward the international community. Each day that Guantanamo Bay remains operational is a day of unspeakable psychological horror, torture and injustice.

An Arabic website, run by Syrian dissident journalist Nizar Nayouf, has exclusively published the cover page of a confidential report by the British embassy in Beirut, of which a copy was sent (or leaked) to someone in the NATO, on the assassination of Lebanese minister Pierre Gemayel. It suggests that the assassination, along with that of Samir Qassir, Gebran Twani and George Hawi earlier, were carried out by Lebanese militants affiliated with Druze leader Walid Junblat and Christian leader Samir Geagea, and not by the Syrian government or its Lebanese agents. Both groups, the reports further reveals, have been receiving military training by Ameriacn (and possibly Israeli) trainers in Jordan since November 2005. Furthermore, the report's sources think "the killers' motive" must be seen in light of an "agreement between the Sunni leader Sa'd Hariri and ex-president Amin Gemayel to nominate the latter's son, Pierre Gemayel, to succeed president Emil Lahoud next year. The report summarises that the crime was committed "mostly for regaining the initiative by the 14 March alliance and protecting PM Fouad Saniora's govermant from collapse."

See the full article in Arabic:
 http://syriatruth.org/Al-Hakikah/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13

an interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal

Khaled Meshaal is the political leader of the Palestinian Hamas movement, which earlier this year came to power with a large majority in the free and democratic election in Palestine. In summer 2006 the Israeli Minister of Justice Haim Ramon publicly confirmed his government’s order to kill Khaled Meshaal. In 1997 in the Jordanian capital Amman Meshaal survived a assassination attempt by Israel’s secret service Mossad by a narrow margin. Currently the leading Hamas politician lives in Syrian asylum in Damascus under strong security.