Les dessous de l’information mondiale-Downside World News

It quoted Abdul-Aziz al-Uwaisheg, head of studies and economic integration at the Gulf Cooperation Council, as saying: “Saudi Arabia might have started a study to change the riyal’s exchange rate, but it probably does not want to officially announce these studies to avoid creating concern in markets until a final decision is made.”

The Gulf Cooperation Council is a group of six states preparing for monetary union as early as 2010.

According to al-Riyadh, Mr al-Uwaisheg added: “There is a clear divergence over this issue, but . . . there is a common desire . . . to revalue and shift to a currency basket.”

A currency basket would mean the riyal being pegged to a number of currencies, not only the dollar.

Mr Uwaisheg claimed later that he had been misquoted. Al-Riyadh stuck by its story, according to Reuters.

The council, made up of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait, will discuss a proposal to revalue their currencies when heads of state attend a summit in Doha, Qatar, next month. Five of the six peg their currencies against the dollar. This year Kuwait switched to a basket of currencies, including the dollar, euro, yen and sterling. Since the switch, Kuwait’s dinar has strengthened about 5 per cent against the dollar.

Inflation in Gulf states has reached record levels, as imports from Europe become more expensive because of the weakening dollar. Sultan Bin Nasser al-Suwaidi, Governor of the UAE Central Bank, said last week that the country may drop the dirham’s peg against the dollar in favour of a basket of currencies. Abdullah al-Attiyah, the Qatari Energy Minister, said last week that the dollar’s decline was a “concern” to OPEC members.

Some come from even further away. Recently, The New York Times newspaper featured a suspected militant from Siberia, who was detained at a highway checkpoint in Afghanistan dressed as a woman. Inside the pickup truck he was riding in was 450 kilograms of explosives. The 27-year old Russian denies accusations he is a foreign fighter, telling the newspaper he is a religious convert to Islam who studied at a mosque in Pakistan’s North Waziristan — a region known as a stronghold for the Taliban and al-Qaida.

What’s Old is New

Foreigners fighting in Afghanistan are not a new phenomenon. During the 1980s, Muslims from throughout the Middle East joined the Afghan Mujahedeen to fight Soviet forces occupying the country. Seth Jones of the RAND Corporation says that as in the past, the motivation for this new generation of foreign militants is holy war. “This is a fight, like Iraq in many ways. This is a fight against what these individuals consider to be a major jihad against an unwelcome Western foreign presence in Afghanistan. These are crusaders who are trying to destroy Islam, in their view. So this is about fighting a jihad against an unwelcome visitor,” says Jones.

A suspected Afghan foreign fighter, as reported by The New York Times
It is unknown how many foreigners may have joined the Taliban. Western officials cited anonymously by The New York Times estimate the Taliban can field up to ten-thousand fighters, but only some three-thousand are full-time insurgents. Of that number, about five-to-ten percent, or up to 300 combatants, are believed to be foreigners. Their presence in Taliban ranks has been picked up by NATO troops fighting the insurgency.

However, U.S. military officers say they do not believe there has been a sudden increase of foreign fighters. U.S. Army Brigadier General Rodney Anderson briefed reporters at the Pentagon recently. “We have, through communications monitoring, we have heard dialects that appear to be coming from outside the region. We have not gotten any specific information that would lead us to believe there is a large influx, or a significant influx, of foreign fighters,” says Anderson.

More Foreign Fighters?

But the rise in the number of suicide attacks may be one indication that more foreigners have joined the Taliban, since foreign militants are believed to be the ones carrying out these attacks. Alam Payind and other experts note that suicide bombings, beheadings and the placing of roadside bombs, or IEDs, were not tactics traditionally used by the Taliban. The impact and casualties caused by these attacks outweigh the relatively small number of foreign fighters believed to be in Afghanistan.

According to the RAND Corporation’s Seth Jones, “The Arabs, the Russians, the Chechens, the Central Asians that have been involved in the fighting, they bring, what I call, a force multiplier capability to the insurgency. And that is, as we’ve seen over the last few decades, the Mujahedeen and the local Afghan and Pakistani fighters do actually most of the combat, do most of the fighting on the front lines. What you see with these foreigners today is they provide increased ability to kill Afghan and NATO forces through suicide attacks. There are much more sophisticated improvised explosive device attacks, use of the Internet and other media activities. These foreigners increase the ability of local Taliban to fight and then conduct an information campaign.”

And because of that, the Taliban insurgency is a more effective fighting force, according to Afghan expert Alam Payind. “I don’t think that the Afghani Taliban are capable of sustaining this kind of surge as they are doing right now without the backing of al-Qaida and this foreign insurgent group. So without them, I don’t think the Taliban are sustainable,” says Payind.

The Israelis intend to use precision laser bombs followed up by low-yield tactical nuclear bunker-buster bombs to hit Iran’s hardened underground facilities. The training exercise calls for the use of two Israeli Air Force squadrons to carry out the attack.
The London Sunday Times quoted one of its sources saying, “As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished.”

Israeli intelligence assessments conclude that conventional weapons won’t be enough to totally annihilate the three main targets, a uranium conversion plant near Isfahan, the heavy water reactor at Arak, and the Natanz facility that Ahmadinejad boasted now has 3,000 centrifuges online.

Israeli officials believe that destroying all three sites would delay Iran’s nuclear program for years and prevent the Jewish State from living in fear of sudden nuclear destruction from the east.

Noted Israel Insider, “Dr. Ephraim Sneh, the former deputy Israeli defense minister, said last month: “The time is approaching when Israel and the international community will have to decide whether to take military action against Iran.”

But he lamented that; “At the end of the day it is always down to the Jews to deal with the problem.”

The Insider also reported that the US “is believed to be backing away from military action in Iran, and the new US defense secretary, Robert Gates, has described a strike against Iranian targets as a “last resort”, leading Israelis to believe that it will be left to the IAF to strike.”

Moreover, the Insider said Israeli officials do not expect to get a green light from the US to use tactical nukes — the IAF intends to operate unilaterally as necessary.

If the IAF plans proceed to fruition, Israel will be the first nation to use a nuclear weapon against an enemy since the United States dropped “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945.

A number of US analysts believe that Israel leaked the story to the London Sunday Times deliberately as a message to Iran.

The Israeli Insider quoted one such analyst, who told them;

“In the cold war, we made it clear to the Russians that it was a virtual certainty that nukes would fly and fly early. Israel may be adopting the same tactics: ‘You produce a weapon; you die’.”

I don’t doubt that Israel wants Iran to know that it intends to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. Israel no doubt also wanted the world to know of its intentions in advance in order to gauge global reaction.

It is worth remembering that this story originated with the London Sunday Times, which is Great Britain’s answer to the New York Times as that nation’s newspaper of record — (except the London Times still has the international credibility once shared by the Gray Lady in New York).

The point is, this story is NOT some unsourced rumor picked up from an internet blog. It was the featured report in one of Great Britain’s oldest and most prestigious newspapers, read in capitals the world over.

And it reported that Israel was preparing for a first-use nuclear strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities! The world’s reaction was. . . it was . . well, ummm . . . I ran a Google news search on the keywords “Israel” “tactical” and “nuclear” to see.

There were TWO articles — one from YnetNews and the other from the Israel Insider. Both hyperlinked to the London Times report, but apart from that, there appears to be a deafening silence. No outraged editorials from the Saudis or Egyptians or from al-Jazeera. No protests in the streets.

In 1981, when Saddam was about to flip the switch that would bring his Osirek nuclear processing plant online, Israel began conducting training simulations that telegraphed their intention to destroy it.

The global reaction in 1981 was not unlike the reaction to the Times’ report. Even the Arabs remained silent, and in the decades since, there has been an unspoken acknowledgment that Israel did the world a favor.

It’s a scene being repeated monthly, as the Air Force’s sleek, boomerang-shaped planes regularly use Hawaii for target practice. The aim is to make sure pilots are trained and ready to act if needed. The Missouri-based bombers have been assigned to Guam to deter North Korea and fill gaps in the regional U.S. military presence created by deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

“There are very few potential adversaries in the world that don’t understand and respect what this bomber capability can bring,” said Col. Timothy Saffold, deputy commander of the 613th Air and Space Operations Center in Hawaii.

At a cost of about $1.2 billion each, the B-2 bomber is designed so that it doesn’t show up on radar, giving it a unique ability to penetrate an enemy’s defenses and go after heavily defended targets. The plane was first shown to the public in 1988 and became available for military operations in 1997.

The planes have been flying test runs over Hawaii and Alaska since the Pentagon began rotating bombers through Guam in 2004. But they only started dropping inert bombs on the Big Island’s Pohakuloa Training Area last month when the Air Force heightened the realism of the exercises.

In the past, the pilots only simulated dropping weapons over the islands. Now, the pilots can see whether the bombs they release land where they are supposed to.

The planes are equipped to drop “smart” bombs, or weapons guided to their targets by global positioning system technology. But they don’t use it in the Hawaii drills.

Instead, the airmen rely on gravity — and extensive data on wind speeds and elevation — to deliver their unarmed bombs to the right spot.

Maj. Brian Bogue, deputy chief of strategy plans at the 613th Air and Space Operations Center, said such methods were extremely accurate and there was little chance any bombs would stray off the Pohakuloa range.

Planners intentionally pick targets that are in the center of the range, Bogue said, adding two miles is the closest any of the bombs have come to the range boundary.

Further, as inert weapons, none of the bombs contain explosives, so there’s no danger of one going off.

During their November training mission to Hawaii, the bombers flew some 18 hours roundtrip. Ohio Air National Guard tankers refueled the planes in mid-air twice along the way.

During the last refueling session before the bombers headed back to Guam, a B-2 traveling some 400 miles per hour gently eased up to a KC-135 tanker 26,500 feet above the Pacific Ocean.

When the bomber was just 20 feet away, the tanker attached its boom to the B-2 and started sending 35,000 gallons of gas into the bomber’s tank.

On the way back from Pohakuloa, the bombers launched a simulated attack on Pearl Harbor to practice targeting naval assets. Part of their mission was to use their stealth capabilities to sneak past their make-believe adversary’s radar and take out its defenses.

“This particular mission covers the full spectrum of what we can do,” said Maj. Tim Hale, one of the pilots in the exercise.

The B-2 bombers assigned to Guam also fly to Alaska for similar training exercises at the Yukon range. Their permanent home is Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, where all 21 of the Air Force’s B-2 bombers are based.

The U.S. military started rotating bombers — including B-1 and B-52 planes as well as the stealth variety — to Guam in March 2004.

The move compensated for U.S. forces diverted to fight in the Middle East. And it came as North Korea increasingly upped the ante in the years-long standoff over its development of nuclear weapons.

In April 2003, North Korea told the U.S. it had nuclear weapons and might test them, export them or use them. Several months later it declared it reprocessed 8,000 spent fuel rods from a nuclear reactor. Such a move, if true, would yield enough plutonium for a couple of nuclear bombs.

Bruce Bechtol, a professor at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Va., said North Korea refers to the Guam bomber deployments in its propaganda, indicating it felt their presence.

Pyongyang realizes the U.S. would use the planes to respond if the North attacked South Korea, said Bechtol, who is an expert on air power on the Korean peninsula. The isolated totalitarian state is also well aware of planes and forces the U.S. has amassed in Japan that could be used against it, he said.

Here it is:

The reason that I am writing today is to inform you of something rather unsettling. Last weekend, we had a Europe-wide faculty meeting at our headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany. At that meeting, we were told that the U of MD military education contracts will be expanding soon to Iraq, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Djibouti, and other locations in the Middle East and Africa. This comes as no surprise.

What is startling is that the U.S. military has also asked us to prepare a bid for educational programs in IRAN and SYRIA (and, oddly enough, France — where we have had no presence since NATO was expelled in 1967 — probably a function of the new conservative government there). We will be bidding on an education contract to these locations at the end of November.

“This is a truly ominous development. The U of MD overseas program follows the military around the world — thus clearly the contingencies for an occupation of several Middle Eastern countries is not only being contemplated, but actually set up.

In a letter to President George W. Bush, up to 190 members of the House of Representatives have warned that the technology could harm US forces in the region if it fell into the ‘wrong hands’.

The warning come as President Bush has decided to send a proposed $20 billion arms package for Saudi Arabia to Congress over the next few weeks.

The lawmakers said any sale of Joint Direct Attack Munitions technology to Riyadh must come with guarantees backed by conditions notified to Congress.

“Bush Administration should not reward the Saudis repeated efforts to frustrate US goals in the region and in the global war on terror. Rather than providing them with billions of dollars in military equipment, it is time that the Bush administration holds Saudi Arabia accountable for its actions,” said US congressman, Mike Ferguson.

The lawmakers said Saudi groups export Wahabi extremist ideology throughout the world.

“What we know of the Saudis is that we depend on their oil and they in turn use our oil money and fund the terrorists who are killing us around the planet. Why would we reward the Saudis for this kind of behavior?” said Representative Shelley Berkley.

Representative Anthony Weiner said that Riyadh was not even Washington’s ally in Iraq where foreign fighters that are coming to the battle field are Saudi citizens.

In their letter which was coordinated by Republican Congressman Mark Kirk and Democrat Christopher Carney, the congressmen also called for US consultations with its key ally, Israel, over the sale, saying it could undermine Israel’s superiority in the region.

The Saudi arms package is part of a huge weapons sale to US allies in the Middle East and Persian Gulf regions. The package which was announced in July was supposed to counter Al-Qaeda, Lebanon s Hezbollah, Iran and Syria. It included 13 billion dollars of arms for Egypt and at least 20 billion dollars for other Persian Gulf allies.

But, Tel Aviv objected to the plan, saying the advanced weaponry would erode its military advantage over its regional rivals. One month later, Washington singed a deal with Israel to boost its military aid to 30 billion dollars over the next decade.

This was welcome news for Israel whose Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said “In addition to the huge increase of the security aid to Israel, this was a renewed, explicit and detailed commitment to keep Israel s advantage over the Arab States.”

Meanwhile, critics argue that additional weapons sales to Israel will only favor Washington’s hawkish policies and never serve the cause of peace.

They say the already-unstable Middle East has been getting further destabilized by Tel Aviv. Critics believe this US-proposed plan for Israel is nothing but fueling tension in the Middle East.

An Iraqi police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information, said the blasts were caused by mortars that landed in the Green Zone. U.S. military and embassy officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The heavily fortified area, which houses the U.S. Embassy and thousands of American troops and contractors, along with the Iraqi government’s headquarters, has frequently been hit by rockets or mortars. But the attacks have tapered off amid a lull of violence in the capital and surrounding areas.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/22/africa/ME-GEN-Iraq-Green-Zone.php

The idea of defining the country as exclusively white and democratic at the same time was never accepted by the international community. It was considered blatant racism.

Any attempt to understand the rationale behind what is essentially a case of blatant violation of fundamental human rights, what Jimmy Carter, Desmund Tutu, John Dugard and many others call apartheid, is faced with accusations of anti-Semitism, a weapon used to silence voices calling for justice in the Middle East. The possibility of having peace with justice is far from realization what with the hermetic medieval siege imposed on 1.3 million already impoverished population of Gaza, and the slicing of the already sliced West Bank. The impossibility of the realization of the national dream of one third of the Palestinian People has brought forward the embarrassing question of the rights of the remaining two thirds, namely the dispossessed refuges living in miserable camps in other countries, some of which treat them like animals, and the third-class citizens of Israel.

What is the Palestinian cause if not the right of return of the refugees, those inside and outside Palestine? Is there a slight possibility of having ‘peace’ in the Middle East without resolving this question? If, as the Geneva Initiative signatories claim, there is a way of finding a ‘just solution’ that does not include their return, does that guarantee a just comprehensive peace? Is that not a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? But ideology has its own way, especially when it is powerful, one that represents the interests of racial supremacists. The Whites of apartheid South Africa defined the institutions of the country as democratic—albeit white democracy, i.e. by and for whites only. Native Africans never recognized the ‘white nature’ of that country. The idea of defining the country as exclusively white and democratic at the same time was never accepted by the international community. It was considered blatant racism. Unlike Palestinians, Black Africans are considered human beings, and therefore, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies to them.

The US is pressing China for an explanation and to reconsider its decision, she added. But the Chinese Foreign Ministry has declined to make an immediate comment.

Observers view the unusual event as a twist in relations strained by disputes over Iran’s nuclear program as well as discontentment over trade, US plans to sell Taiwan a missile system and a meeting has been scheduled between President Bush and Dalai Lama last month.

Beijing’s move also coincides with “airspace controls” on Wednesday which Xinhua news agency said affected the air travel plans of 7,000 people in south and east China. The controls were introduced for “unspecified reasons”.

Hong Kong has been a regular port of call for US sailors on “R & R” (rest and recuperation) since the Vietnam War and experts say it is the first time a ship has been turned away from Hong Kong waters.

MHE/FH/PA

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=32095§ionid=351020404

Negroponte s’est aussi entretenu par téléphone à trois reprises avec le dirigeant de l’opposition Benazir Bhutto, et a rencontré le général Ashfaq Kiyani, le sous-commandant en chef de l’Armée – ce qui permet au Washington Post de voir là un signe que les Etats-Unis cherchent un dirigeant pour remplacer Musharraf.

« Ils veulent désintégrer l’Etat pakistanais, » a averti, hier, Lyndon LaRouche. « Les britanniques tentent de le faire, et les américains suivent comme des idiots. »

« Il n’y a pas de possibilité de remettre le Pakistan en ordre en ayant recours aux ressources internes sur place, » élabora LaRouche. « Parce que le Pakistan dépendait des revenus issus de la production par le Bangladesh de biens à base de coton ; la sécession du Bangladesh signifiait la fin de ce jeu. Le pays est essentiellement un pays estropié. Cette situation vient d’une combinaison d’éléments britanniques et autres. »

« Donc, ce que nous devons faire dans ces cas là, c’est commencer par se calmer, sans quoi nous ne ferons qu’empirer la situation. Est-ce que vous voulez un Etat impuissant et débordé de plus sur les bras ? On parle de mettre un terme au terrorisme, et pourtant on crée des Etats instables. Que pensent-ils qu’ils sont en train de faire ? »

« Nous devrions simplement nous débarrasser de Dick Cheney, et nous aurions un problème de moins. » LaRouche fit une proposition : « Au lieu de virer Musharraf, pourquoi ne virons-nous pas Cheney ? Avant de virer Musharraf, virons d’abord Cheney. Montrons leurs comment est-ce que nous nous y prenons ! Et si cela dérange Nancy Pelosi, elle peut prendre une retraite tranquille pour faciliter son inconfort. »