…Nearly a year after Dr. Khan’s arrest, secrets of his nuclear black market continue to uncoil, revealing a vast global enterprise. But the inquiry has been hampered by discord between the Bush administration and the nuclear watchdog, and by Washington’s concern that if it pushes too hard for access to Dr. Khan, a national hero in Pakistan, it could destabilize an ally. As a result, much of the urgency has been sapped from the investigation, helping keep hidden the full dimensions of the activities of Dr. Khan and his associates.

There is no shortage of tantalizing leads. American intelligence officials and the I.A.E.A., working separately, are still untangling Dr. Khan’s travels in the years before his arrest. Investigators said he visited 18 countries, including Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, on what they believed were business trips, either to buy materials like uranium ore or sell atomic goods.

In Dubai, they have scoured one of the network’s front companies, finding traces of radioactive material as well as phone records showing contact with Saudi Arabia. Having tracked the network operations to Malaysia, Europe and the Middle East, investigators recently uncovered an outpost in South Africa, where they seized 11 crates of equipment for enriching uranium.

The breadth of the operation was particularly surprising to some American intelligence officials because they had had Dr. Khan under surveillance for nearly three decades, since he began assembling components for Pakistan’s bomb, but apparently missed crucial transactions with countries like Iran and North Korea.

In fact, officials were so confident they had accurately taken his measure, that twice – once in the late 1970’s and again in the 1980’s – the Central Intelligence Agency persuaded Dutch intelligence agents not to arrest Dr. Khan because they wanted to follow his trail, according to a senior European diplomat and a former Congressional official who had access to intelligence information. The C.I.A. declined to comment.

“We knew a lot,” said a nuclear intelligence official, “but we didn’t realize the size of his universe.”

President Bush boasts that the Khan network has been dismantled. But there is evidence that parts of it live on, as do investigations in Washington and Vienna, where the I.A.E.A. is based.

Cooperation between the United Nations atomic agency and the United States has trickled to a near halt, particularly as the Bush administration tries to unseat the I.A.E.A. director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, who did not support the White House’s prewar intelligence assessments on Iraq.
Full Article: nytimes.com

BUENOS AIRES, Dec. 23 – When the Argentine economy collapsed in December 2001, doomsday predictions abounded. Unless it adopted orthodox economic policies and quickly cut a deal with its foreign creditors, hyperinflation would surely follow, the peso would become worthless, investment and foreign reserves would vanish and any prospect of growth would be strangled.

But three years after Argentina declared a record debt default of more than $100 billion, the largest in history, the apocalypse has not arrived. Instead, the economy has grown by 8 percent for two consecutive years, exports have zoomed, the currency is stable, investors are gradually returning and unemployment has eased from record highs – all without a debt settlement or the standard measures required by the International Monetary Fund for its approval.

Argentina’s recovery has been undeniable, and it has been achieved at least in part by ignoring and even defying economic and political orthodoxy. Rather than moving to immediately satisfy bondholders, private banks and the I.M.F., as other developing countries have done in less severe crises, the Peronist-led government chose to stimulate internal consumption first and told creditors to get in line with everyone else.

“This is a remarkable historical event, one that challenges 25 years of failed policies,” said Mark Weisbrot, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal research group in Washington. “While other countries are just limping along, Argentina is experiencing very healthy growth with no sign that it is unsustainable, and they’ve done it without having to make any concessions to get foreign capital inflows.”
Full Article: nytimes.com

Gil Scott-Heron wrote “Work for Peace” in response to Desert Storm in 1991. Praying for peace is not enough. Feliz Navidad.

Back when Eisenhower was president
Golf courses were where most of his time was spent.
So I never paid much attention to what the President said
Because in general, I believed the President was politically dead,
But he always seemed to know how the muscles were going to be flexed:
He kept mumbling something about a military-industrial complex.

The military and monetary

The military and the monetary
Get together whenever they think it’s necessary
They have turned our brothers and sisters into mercenaries,
They are turning the planet into a cemetery.

The military and the monetary
Use the media as intermediaries.
They are determined to keep the citizens secondary
They make so many decisions that seem arbitrary.

We’ve been standing behind the ‘Commander-in-Chief’
Who was under a spotlight, shaking like a leaf
Because the ship of state had landed on an economic reef
So we knew he’d be bringing us messages of grief.

The military and the monetary
Were ‘Shielded’ by January and went ‘Storming’ into February.
They brought us pot-bellied generals as luminaries.
Two weeks ago I hadn’t heard of the sons of bitches
And then all of a sudden they were legendary.

They took the honor from the honorary
They took the dignitary from the dignitaries
They took the secrets from the secretaries,
But they left the ‘bitch’ in ‘obituary.’

Yeah they had some smart bombs,
But they had some dumb ones as well,
Scared the hell outta CNN in that Baghdad Hotel.

The military and the monetary

The military and monetary
Get together whenever they think it’s necessary,
War in the desert sure could seem scary
But they beamed out the war to all of their subsidiaries
Tried making ‘so damn insane’ a worthy adversary.

Keeping all the citizens secondary
Scaring old folks into coronaries
Making us wonder if all of this was really, truly necessary.

We’ve got to work for peace.
We’ve got to work for peace.
If we all believed in peace we would have peace.
The only thing wrong with peace
Is that you can’t make no money from it.

The military and the monetary
Get together whenever they think it’s necessary
They have turned our brothers and sisters into mercenaries
They are turning parts of the planet into a cemetery.

We hounded the Ayatollah religiously
Bombed Libya and killed Qadafi’s son hideously.
We turned our backs on our allies, the Panamanians
Watched Ollie North sell guns to the Iranians
Witnessed Gorbachev slaughtering Lithuanians
So we better warn the Amish, they may bomb the Pennsylvanians.

We’ve got to work for peace.
Peace ain’t coming this way.
We’ve got to work for peace.

Peace is not merely the absence of war,
It is the absence of the rumors of war and the threats of war
And the preparation for war.
Peace is not merely the absence of war
We will have all touched the power of peace within ourselves.
Because we will have all come to peace within our selves.

Peace ain’t gonna be easy.
Peace ain’t gonna be free.
We’ve got to work for peace.

from the album Spirits’ (1994)

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqis reacted with anger, frustration and resentment Friday after many returned to Falluja to discover their homes in rubble and their livelihoods ruined following last month’s U.S. offensive.

“I saw the city and al-Andalus destroyed,” said Ali Mahmood, 35, referring to the district of the city he returned to briefly Thursday but now plans to leave after seeing the mess.

“My house is completely destroyed. There is nothing left for me to stay for,” the teacher said, adding that he would rather live in the tented camp outside Falluja that has been his family’s home for the past two months.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on a suprise pre-Christmas visit to Iraq, visited troops at a base near Falluja Friday but made no mention of the city’s rebuilding.

Marine Lieutenant General John Sattler told Rumsfeld how intense the fighting had been in the city, where much of the combat was house-to-house and even hand-to-hand.

“You come through the door and it’s who wants it most, and it was us,” Sattler said, praising the resolve of his men.

Conservative estimates say several hundred buildings were partly or completely destroyed by the U.S. assault, which began on Nov. 8 and involved bombardment by U.S. planes, tanks and artillery. Rebels also blew up many homes in booby-trap blasts.

The offensive, designed to uproot insurgents from what had become a guerrilla bastion, was declared a success more than a month ago, but fighting continued in several districts. U.S. planes bombed a western neighborhood overnight, residents said.

An Iraqi Health Ministry official said his greatest concern was the resentment Falluja’s people were likely to feel when they saw how much damage had been done to their homes.

That was certainly the case Friday. While those who fled were at pains to say they had nothing to do with the rebels who made Falluja their stronghold, many of them have since become angry and militant as a result of the offensive.

“Would Allah want us to return to a city that animals can’t live in?” said Yasser Satar as he saw his destroyed home.

“Even animals who have no human sense and feelings can not live here,” he said, crying.

“What do they want from Falluja? This is the crime of the century. They want to destroy Islam and Muslims. But our anger and resistance will increase.”

…Asked Satar: “Is this freedom and democracy that they brought to Fallujah?”
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia successfully test-fired a mobile version of the intercontinental Topol-M ballistic missile on Friday in the last of four test-firings before its deployment next year, Interfax news agency reported.

Known as Russia’s most sophisticated nuclear missile, it can be fitted with a single or multiple warheads and hit targets more than 10,000 km (6,200 miles) away.
Full Article: nytimes/reuters.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) – Thousands of pilgrims and a new Palestinian leadership celebrated Christmas in the town of Jesus’s birth Saturday with prayers for peace after the death of Yasser Arafat.

But Israeli restrictions on Palestinians entering Bethlehem and a barrier Israel is building in the West Bank cast a shadow over the celebrations.

At midnight mass, moderate leader Mahmoud Abbas filled the seat that had been left empty for Arafat for three Christmases past because Israel had stopped him traveling to the West Bank town — accusing him of fomenting bloodshed, a charge he denied.

Welcoming Arafat’s successors, the Latin Patriarch for the Holy Land, a Palestinian, urged all parties to end violence.

“It has lasted too long,” Michel Sabbah, Pope John Paul’s representative, told the Church of the Nativity gathering.

“It is time for Palestine and Israel to defeat the evil of violence and give birth to a society of brothers and sisters in which nobody is subject to another, nobody is occupied by another and nobody threatens the security of another.”

Abbas, who wants an end to fighting and to resume peace talks with Israel, is expected to win a presidential poll on Jan. 9 to pick a successor to Arafat.

Amid the incense and prayers, the silver-haired Abbas in his gray business suit cut a profile far removed from ex-guerrilla Arafat, who favored olive uniforms and a checkred headdress. Abbas, like Arafat and most Palestinians, is a Muslim.
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

All this praying for peace is pretty much unbearable at this point. Now that Arafat’s dead, it’s all gravy. The gray business suit apparently makes all the difference. I like that first run-on sentence, “Thousands of pilgrims and a new Palestinian leadership celebrated Christmas in the town of Jesus’s birth Saturday with prayers for peace after the death of Yasser Arafat.” Christ and anti-Christ?

Israeli Whistleblower Vanunu Freed Without Charge
nytimes/reuters

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was freed on Saturday after being detained trying to get into the Palestinian town of Bethlehem for Christmas in defiance of restrictions, police said.

Police said Vanunu, a convert to Christianity from Judaism, had defied travel restrictions imposed after his release in April from an 18-year prison term for treason. He was detained for questioning on Thursday.

Vanunu was ordered to post bail of 50,000 shekelsand to remain at his lodgings at Saint George’s Anglican cathedral in Jerusalem for the next five days.

“We are not planning to charge him,” a police spokeswoman said .

Vanunu’s revelations to a British newspaper led experts to conclude that Israel had between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons.

Under restrictions imposed after his release from jail, he is banned from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Vanunu is also forbidden to speak to journalists. Six weeks ago he was arrested for breaking this restriction, but released after a few hours.
They’re picky about who they let in to the party.

NEW DELHI, Dec. 23 – After weeks of deliberations, Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, announced his new cabinet on Thursday night, offering a lineup largely free of wartime commanders and heavy on technocrats.

…On the whole, said Barnett Rubin, the director of studies at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, it is a “clean” cabinet, free of members accused of drug trafficking or serious human rights violations.

It is largely a technocratic group, dominated by Pashtuns – members of the country’s largest ethnic group – from eastern Afghanistan who have American connections but no political following. Mr. Karzai’s first cabinet was largely composed of factional leaders representing the country’s different political and ethnic groupings. Many had been powerful and popular commanders but lacked the education and skills for their portfolios.

The current cabinet is ethnically balanced in terms of pure arithmetic, Mr. Rubin noted, but not in terms of the balance of power, which rests with Western-oriented Pashtuns like Mr. Karzai, who now hold the critical posts of interior, defense, finance, and urban and rural development.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Well, more like replacing one set of ‘warlords’ with another of a more dangerous, 21st century sort. So now that Iraq is in tatters, Afghanistan will become the new showplace for free-market fundamentalism. The banality of evil: so slick and smooth and ‘clean’ you’d gladly marry your daughter off to it.

MOSUL, Iraq, Dec. 24 – On Tuesday, Sgt. Michael S. Posner was standing in the middle of a crowded dining hall at Forward Operating Base Marez, holding a cheeseburger and fries on a lunch tray and looking for his friends, when a huge force blew him off his feet.

The rows of tables and chairs shattered into a chaos of debris and blood. Screams tore through the room. The air turned dusky with the gray aftermath of smoke and dust, out of which the faces of the living and the dead slowly emerged.

On Friday, Sergeant Posner, 34, from Farmingville, N.Y., was one of hundreds of service members who went to the base’s movie theater to honor two of the 14 American soldiers killed in the attack. In pairs, they filed past a now-familiar battlefield monument: the dead men’s helmets and dog tags slung on their M-16’s, propped up between their combat boots.

The mourners touched the helmets, sobbed, bowed their heads.

…One of the soldiers who died in the explosion had lived in Brooklyn for three years before enlisting in the Army. The soldier, Staff Sgt. Julian S. Melo, 47, was assigned to a Stryker Brigade Combat Team based at Fort Lewis, Wash.

He “loved being in the military,” said his wife, Norma Melo, in an interview Friday night from their home in Spanaway, Wash.

She said Sergeant Melo would have been proud to die serving his country. “He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way,” she said. “He was there with friends, and he didn’t die alone.”
Full Article: nytimes

Everybody should read Graham Greene’s The Quiet American for a portrait of that American ‘innocence’ which allows them to bomb civilians and decimate countries, and then gather together in these ceremonies of sentiment to mourn their own dead without irony…American ‘innocence’ is the most frighteningly destructive force in the world.

by Thomas L. Friedman

There has been so much violence in Iraq that it’s become hard to distinguish one senseless act from another. But there was a picture that ran on the front page of this newspaper on Monday that really got to me. It showed several Iraqi gunmen, in broad daylight and without masks, murdering two Iraqi election workers. The murder scene was a busy street in the heart of Baghdad. The two election workers had been dragged from their car into the middle of the street. They looked young, the sort of young people you’d see doing election canvassing in America or Ukraine or El Salvador.

One was kneeling with his arms behind his back, waiting to be shot in the head. Another was lying on his side. The gunman had either just pumped a bullet into him or was about to. I first saw the picture on the Internet, and I did something I’ve never done before – I blew it up so it covered my whole screen. I wanted to look at it more closely. You don’t often get to see the face of pure evil.

There is much to dislike about this war in Iraq, but there is no denying the stakes. And that picture really framed them: this is a war between some people in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world who – for the first time ever in their region – are trying to organize an election to choose their own leaders and write their own constitution versus all the forces arrayed against them.

Do not be fooled into thinking that the Iraqi gunmen in this picture are really defending their country and have no alternative. The Sunni-Baathist minority that ruled Iraq for so many years has been invited, indeed begged, to join in this election and to share in the design and wealth of post-Saddam Iraq.

As the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum so rightly pointed out to me, “These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age.” They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves. It’s time we called them by their real names.

However this war started, however badly it has been managed, however much you wish we were not there, do not kid yourself that this is not what it is about: people who want to hold a free and fair election to determine their own future, opposed by a virulent nihilistic minority that wants to prevent that. That is all that the insurgents stand for.

Indeed, they haven’t even bothered to tell us otherwise. They have counted on the fact that the Bush administration is so hated around the world that any opponents will be seen as having justice on their side. Well, they do not. They are murdering Iraqis every day for the sole purpose of preventing them from exercising that thing so many on the political left and so many Europeans have demanded for the Palestinians: “the right of self-determination.”

What is terrifying is that the noble sacrifice of our soldiers, while never in vain, may not be enough. We may actually lose in Iraq.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Well well. Friedman finally lets it all hang out. It’s kind of hard to be an imperialist or colonialist without an empire or any territory. Read this editorial, and you couldn’t tell that a large number of Iraqis are resisting an occupation. Civil wars are bloody and horrifying things, with plenty of evil to be found on all sides. Friedman is engaging in the favorite imperial activity of unequivocally defining people and their activities out of existence. Just those darned natives acting up again. This is a classic. WHO is ‘organizing an election’? WHO is responsible for that Constutution? The sad fact is that every single death in Iraq IS absolutely in vain, furthering neither humanity nor democracy nor any of those fine things we like to say we uphold. It’s always been pretty clear, for all his liberalist pretense, where Friedman’s loyalties lie. He makes an impicit claim here to speak on behalf of humanity and basic morality and good over evil. He speaks for none of these. Whether he needs to think so or not.

by Roger Burbach
President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina is locked in a standoff with the International Monetary Fund on the third anniversary of a popular uprising. Just before Christmas, 2001 protesters surged through the streets of Buenos Aires demanding that the entire political class and its international financial backers be tossed out. The IMF along with private banks like the Bank of Boston and Citibank were denounced for their role in the country’s economic crisis. In less than two weeks the country had five presidents.

Argentina became a caldron of social ferment. In neighborhoods and municipalities, ‘popular assemblies’ emerged to debate issues and to protect local interests. Some assemblies have urged people not to pay their property taxes and instead to turn the revenue over to neighborhood hospitals.

The assemblies also discuss international issues. According to assembly organizer, Lidia Pertieria: ‘One of the rallying cries coming from our communities is “no more foreign loans”. New loans only mean more swindling and robbery by our government officials.’

The piquetereos, or picketers, are the most persistent and intransigent of the protesters. Comprised of the underclass that is suffering the brunt of the country’s unemployment rate that has officially reached as high as 20 per cent, they pour into the streets, blocking traffic, demanding jobs, government help for their families, and land to grow their own food.

Kirchner became president in May, 2003. At his inauguration he strongly criticized the neo-liberal economic policies of his predecessors, blaming their slavish adherence to the IMF’s rigid structural adjustment policies for the country’s dire economic conditions. He also demanded that privatization contracts for public utilities imposed on the country be renegotiated, and declared it is the responsibility of the state to ‘introduce equality where the market excludes and abandons’.

Kirchner and the IMF have fought fiercely over the terms of new loans and the repayment of the country’s international debt. In an agreement with the IMF last year, he insisted that no more than three per cent of the budget would be used to pay down the debt. The poor and unemployed had to be a priority – as well as public investment. The IMF reluctantly agreed to these terms. Since then the Argentine economy has bounced back and is on track to post an 8 per cent growth rate in 2004. Now the Fund wants to increase the country’s debt repayments, citing increased growth as a reason to siphon more money from the economy.
Full Article: zmag.org