The US and Libya have agreed to work together to resolve compensation claims from the Lockerbie bombing and other 1980s attacks blamed on Libyan agents.
Libya has already paid out $8m (£4m) to each Lockerbie victim's family but has not made final payments of $2m amid a dispute over America's obligations.
A US court ruling that Libya should pay billions of dollars to Americans killed by another bomb incensed the Libyans.
They are hoping for an all-in-one deal to cover that and the other attacks.
Puppet Masters
The rabid dogs of the US media have been out in force against Iran and Ahmadinejad in particular.
Ann Coulter, that bastion of good taste and rational thought, spewed a piece with the catchy title "If we could talk to the Animals", in which she praised Bush's Knesset speech last week, paints Ahmadinejad as McHitler and Barack Obama's comment that he would speak with Iran as appeasement.
The spleen with which she rants, devoid of any truth, and the depths to which she will stoop to push her War Whore agenda knows no limits. She even refers to Barack Obama as "B. Hussein Obama" - now that is really cheap, isn't it? But when you're selling the supreme crime against humanity (war of aggression), stooping so low is a matter of course.
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| For whose benefit is the US election farce being run? |
Ann Coulter, that bastion of good taste and rational thought, spewed a piece with the catchy title "If we could talk to the Animals", in which she praised Bush's Knesset speech last week, paints Ahmadinejad as McHitler and Barack Obama's comment that he would speak with Iran as appeasement.
The spleen with which she rants, devoid of any truth, and the depths to which she will stoop to push her War Whore agenda knows no limits. She even refers to Barack Obama as "B. Hussein Obama" - now that is really cheap, isn't it? But when you're selling the supreme crime against humanity (war of aggression), stooping so low is a matter of course.
The U.S. military command in Iraq continues to talk about an alleged pipeline of Iranian weapons to Iraqi Shiites opposing the U.S. occupation, implying that they have become dependent on Iran for indirect-fire weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
But U.S. officials have failed thus far to provide evidence that would support that claim, and a long-delayed U.S. military report on Iranian arms is unlikely to offer any data on what proportion of the weapons in the hands of Shiite fighters are from Iran and what proportion comes from purchases on the open market.
But U.S. officials have failed thus far to provide evidence that would support that claim, and a long-delayed U.S. military report on Iranian arms is unlikely to offer any data on what proportion of the weapons in the hands of Shiite fighters are from Iran and what proportion comes from purchases on the open market.
BEIJING - China on Wednesday denied that a Chinese ship carrying arms to Zimbabwe had managed to get its cargo to the landlocked African nation, saying the ship and the weapons were on their way back to China.
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A disturbing New York Times Op Ed piece from May 12th entitled "President Apostate?" by Edward N. Luttwak indicates that Barack Obama would be viewed in the Muslim world as an apostate, given he was born to a Muslim father but left the faith, a crime that under Muslim law, Luttwak states, is punishable by death. Luttwak keeps his commentary to what he perceives to be the diplomatic complications engendered by this situation were Obama to become president, however the implied threat of assassination is not without serious resonance.
Israel is fully satisfied with the results of the visit of George W. Bush, including policy on Iran's nuclear program, senior officials in Jerusalem said yesterday.
"In talks with the president of the United States during his visit it was made clear that Bush's statements on the subject of Iran's nuclear program are fully backed in practice," a senior official said.
"In talks with the president of the United States during his visit it was made clear that Bush's statements on the subject of Iran's nuclear program are fully backed in practice," a senior official said.
Comment: See also:
Israeli Army Radio: Bush's Iran attack in months
which was denied by the White House.
It seems that Bush made some serious promises in private while he was in Israel and now the Israelis are spilling the beans.
Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt - Israel and Egypt face the same threat from radical Islam, Israel's right-wing Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
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| Hosni Mubarak (R) talks to Benjamin Netanyahu |
First, we went after nonexistent nuclear weapons in Iraq, and now we are consumed with the possibility that Iran might develop nuclear weapons sometime in the future.
Hillary Clinton has declared that she would obliterate Iran if it ever attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon. But what nobody wants to talk about is the fact that Israel has had a secret nuclear weapons program for more than 30 years that has produced well over 200 nuclear bombs.
Hillary Clinton has declared that she would obliterate Iran if it ever attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon. But what nobody wants to talk about is the fact that Israel has had a secret nuclear weapons program for more than 30 years that has produced well over 200 nuclear bombs.
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Sunday it was prepared to cooperate with Britain in investigating the case of poisoned defector Alexander Litvinenko after London lifted its unfounded accusations.
Former Russian security service officer Litvinenko died of radioactive poisoning in London in November 2006. London accused Russia's security services of their complicity in Litvinenko's death.
"We are ready for cooperation and interaction with them [British security services] but the first step should be made by Britain. We expect them to apologize for unfounded accusations as we are absolutely uninvolved in what they accuse us," Viktor Komogorov, head of the FSB operative information and international relations service said.
Former Russian security service officer Litvinenko died of radioactive poisoning in London in November 2006. London accused Russia's security services of their complicity in Litvinenko's death.
"We are ready for cooperation and interaction with them [British security services] but the first step should be made by Britain. We expect them to apologize for unfounded accusations as we are absolutely uninvolved in what they accuse us," Viktor Komogorov, head of the FSB operative information and international relations service said.
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On April 9, 1948, members of the underground Jewish terrorist group, the Irgun, or IZL, led by Menachem Begin, who was to become the Israeli prime minister in 1977, entered the peaceful Arab village of Deir Yassin, massacred 250 men, women, children and the elderly, and stuffed many of the bodies down wells. There were also reports of rapes and mutilations. The Irgun was joined by the Jewish terrorist group, the Stern Gang, led by Yitzhak Shamir, who subsequently succeeded Begin as prime minister of Israel in the early '80s, and also by the Haganah, the militia under the control of David Ben Gurian. The Irgun, the Stern Gang and the Haganah later joined to form the Israeli Defense Force. Their tactics have not changed.
Comment: It is interesting to notice that Israeli historian Benny Morris - quoted in the article above as one of the sources revealing crimes against Palestinians - will not condemn Zionism in spite of his findings. The following fragment of an interview speaks volumes:
When ethnic cleansing is justifiedThat is Benny Morris. For him, the goal of establishing a "Jewish state" justified any atrocities against the Palestinians.
Benny Morris, for decades you have been researching the dark side of Zionism. You are an expert on the atrocities of 1948. In the end, do you in effect justify all this? Are you an advocate of the transfer of 1948?
There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands.
We are talking about the killing of thousands of people, the destruction of an entire society.
A society that aims to kill you forces you to destroy it. When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it's better to destroy.
There is something chilling about the quiet way in which you say that.
If you expected me to burst into tears, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I will not do that.
So when the commanders of Operation Dani are standing there and observing the long and terrible column of the 50,000 people expelled from Lod walking eastward, you stand there with them? You justify them?
I definitely understand them. I understand their motives. I don't think they felt any pangs of conscience, and in their place I wouldn't have felt pangs of conscience. Without that act, they would not have won the war and the state would not have come into being.
You do not condemn them morally?
No.
They perpetrated ethnic cleansing.
There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide - the annihilation of your people - I prefer ethnic cleansing.
And that was the situation in 1948?
That was the situation. That is what Zionism faced. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.
The term "to cleanse" is terrible.
I know it doesn't sound nice but that's the term they used at the time. I adopted it from all the 1948 documents in which I am immersed.
What you are saying is hard to listen to and hard to digest. You sound hard-hearted.
I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. From the moment the Yishuv [pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine] was attacked by the Palestinians and afterward by the Arab states, there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population. To uproot it in the course of war.
Remember another thing: the Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. Not thanks to its skills or its great virtues, but because it conquered and murdered and forced those it conquered to convert during many generations. But in the end the Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view, the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them.
And morally speaking, you have no problem with that deed?
That is correct. Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.
And in our case it effectively justifies a population transfer.
That's what emerges.
And you take that in stride? War crimes? Massacres? The burning fields and the devastated villages of the Nakba?
You have to put things in proportion. These are small war crimes. All told, if we take all the massacres and all the executions of 1948, we come to about 800 who were killed. In comparison to the massacres that were perpetrated in Bosnia, that's peanuts. In comparison to the massacres the Russians perpetrated against the Germans at Stalingrad, that's chicken feed. When you take into account that there was a bloody civil war here and that we lost an entire 1 percent of the population, you find that we behaved very well.
For the Nazis, the ideal of the greatness of the "Fatherland" and the "Germanic Race" justified the extermination of Jews and others. They probably also thought that it was 'unfortunate' for those others, but that they had no choice.
It seems that for some people learning the facts is not enough to develop real empathy and conscience.
Comment: See here for the original story claiming the delivery was completed via the DRC.