Is there a person anywhere in the world who still thinks there is an ounce of sanity in the Bush administration? If so, let that person read John Bolton's orders to Syria in the January 24 online edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Bolton is Bush's unconfirmed ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, a neoconservative warmonger, has managed to get the UN Security Council on January 23 to instruct Syria to disband and disarm the Lebanese militias. Bolton says, "I hope in Damascus they read it very carefully and then comply."
How is Syria to meet this demand?
Last year Syria complied with US demands to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. As Syria has no military presence in Lebanon, it could not disarm a local police force, much less the Shia militias that defeated the Israeli army and drove it out of Lebanon and that have representatives in the Lebanese parliament.
Puppet Masters
US President George W. Bush will not accept a nuclear Iran, John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said Monday.
Bolton, speaking from New York via video hook-up to the Interdisciplinary Center's Herzliya Conference, said that Bush was determined to pursue the issue through peaceful and diplomatic means, "but has made clear that a nuclear Iran is not acceptable."
According to Bolton, Bush worries that a nuclear-equipped Iran under its current leadership could well engage in a nuclear holocaust, "and that is just not something he is going to accept."
Bolton, speaking from New York via video hook-up to the Interdisciplinary Center's Herzliya Conference, said that Bush was determined to pursue the issue through peaceful and diplomatic means, "but has made clear that a nuclear Iran is not acceptable."
According to Bolton, Bush worries that a nuclear-equipped Iran under its current leadership could well engage in a nuclear holocaust, "and that is just not something he is going to accept."
With the French people beginning to question the billions being spent on nuclear weapons, President Jacques Chirac has taken a page out of George W. Bush's book, rewriting French military doctrine and threatening terrorists with nukes. In this ironic article from Iran's State-controlled Tehran Times, the Iranian regime charges France with being Washington's 'client State' and making the 'unthinkable' quite possible.
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Here's the transcript of the show:
We know that the majority of your people want this war to end and based on the substance of the polls, which indicate Americans do not want to fight Muslims on Muslim land, nor do they want Muslims to fight them on their land, we do not mind offering a long-term truce based on just conditions that we will stand by ... a truce that offers security and stability and the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan that war has destroyed ... And there is nothing wrong with this solution except that it deprives the influential people and warlords in America from hundreds of billions of dollars - those who supported [President George W] Bush's election campaign with billions of dollars. - Osama bin Laden on tape, January 18Just a slow, composed, husky voice out of a telephone line recorded on a scratched tape (not digital; a mere cassette). No video. Just a voice - capable of sending the markets into a tailspin and the networks into hysteria, spiking the oil bourses in London and New York, resetting the global agenda, unleashing armies of US intelligence analysts scrambling to confirm if the voice is real or fake.
You had totally vanished from the face of the Earth for more than a year. You are the most wanted man in the world. You re-enter the global stage just with your voice, a mere whisper. The simplicity of it. What politician would not dream of such power?
Osama bin Laden, master media manipulator turned global politician, is back. Talk about astonishing timing.
Comment: Clever analysis. Too bad it is based on the assumption that the voice is really Bin Laden.
ABUJA (Reuters) - Militants behind attacks aimed at disrupting Nigeria's oil exports said they will target all producers in the country, in a message singling out U.S.-based Chevron.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which has caused major disruption at Royal Dutch Shell and kidnapped four foreign oil workers, said it has also attacked installations run by France's Total and Italy's Agip, a unit of ENI.
"We have decided not to limit our attacks to Shell oil as our ultimate aim is to prevent Nigeria from exporting oil," the militant group said in an email statement to Reuters.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which has caused major disruption at Royal Dutch Shell and kidnapped four foreign oil workers, said it has also attacked installations run by France's Total and Italy's Agip, a unit of ENI.
"We have decided not to limit our attacks to Shell oil as our ultimate aim is to prevent Nigeria from exporting oil," the militant group said in an email statement to Reuters.
DAMASCUS, Syria Syria asserted Thursday that Iran has a right to atomic technology and said U.S. and European objections to Tehran's nuclear ambitions are not persuasive.
President Bashar Assad of Syria, a long-time Iranian ally facing criticism from the same parties, said he backs Iran's moves toward nuclear power and wants to strengthen ties.
"We support Iran regarding its right to peaceful nuclear technology," Assad said at a news conference with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the start of two days of meetings.
"It is the right of Iran and any other state to own nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Countries that object to that have not provided a convincing or logical reason."
President Bashar Assad of Syria, a long-time Iranian ally facing criticism from the same parties, said he backs Iran's moves toward nuclear power and wants to strengthen ties.
"We support Iran regarding its right to peaceful nuclear technology," Assad said at a news conference with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the start of two days of meetings.
"It is the right of Iran and any other state to own nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Countries that object to that have not provided a convincing or logical reason."
The German Intelligence Agency (BND) provided German passports to agents of the Israeli secret intelligence service, or MOSSAD, to facilitate operations the Middle East, reporters alleged.
The allegations raised by a former BND official found their way into the German newspaper Koelner Stadtanzieger and the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post, and imply that MOSSAD agents are disguising themselves as German citizens in order to perform their "sensitive" tasks in the Middle East.
The allegations raised by a former BND official found their way into the German newspaper Koelner Stadtanzieger and the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post, and imply that MOSSAD agents are disguising themselves as German citizens in order to perform their "sensitive" tasks in the Middle East.
In an riveting display of modern technological efficency that undoubtedly thrilled the editors of Popular Mechanics magazine, last Friday, by way of a Predator Drone aircraft, the CIA fired missiles at a group of houses in a village on Pakistan's north Western border with Afghanistan. Eighteen Pakistani villagers, including women and children, were either blown to pieces, burned to death or crushed as their homes collapsed on top of them as they slept in their beds.
The official reason for the attack, as reported in the mainstream media, was to rid the world of a few more Islamic terrorists who, as White house Spokesman Scott McClelland reminded us, "continue to seek to do harm to the American people". Somehow, the murder of those eighteen Pakistani villagers means that American's are now tangibly safer.
The official reason for the attack, as reported in the mainstream media, was to rid the world of a few more Islamic terrorists who, as White house Spokesman Scott McClelland reminded us, "continue to seek to do harm to the American people". Somehow, the murder of those eighteen Pakistani villagers means that American's are now tangibly safer.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has allowed CNN to resume operating in the country after the American cable news network apologised for mistakenly quoting him saying Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons, state radio reported.
During CNN's live translation of a press conference by Ahmadinejad Saturday, the president was quoted as saying that "we believe all nations are allowed to have nuclear weapons" and that the West should not "deprive us to have nuclear weapons".
The president was, however, using a Farsi word that meant "technology" and not "weapons".
During CNN's live translation of a press conference by Ahmadinejad Saturday, the president was quoted as saying that "we believe all nations are allowed to have nuclear weapons" and that the West should not "deprive us to have nuclear weapons".
The president was, however, using a Farsi word that meant "technology" and not "weapons".
Comment: Never mind that it is Bush and Gang that have created the new Nuclear Brinksmanship. As Cindy Sheehan says: "Get Israel out of Palestine and America out of Iraq and you'll stop the terrorism."