VIENNA (Reuters) – The United States, determined to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, is piling pressure on European firms to stop them doing business with Tehran, diplomats say.

In turn this is making it harder for Europe to offer Iran economic incentives to persuade it to abandon nuclear processes that could be used to build weapons.

“They’re being pressured by Washington. Major European companies are unwilling to deliver,” an EU diplomat said. “This means we really have no incentives to offer Iran at this point.”
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – The Sudanese air force bombed a town in western Sudan this week killing or wounding 100 people and forcing thousands to flee, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Friday.

An African Union (AU) source said earlier that Sudanese officials had prevented AU monitors from investigating the death and damage caused by the aerial bombing. The attack violated a shaky cease-fire with rebels which AU observers are monitoring.

U.N. spokeswoman Radhia Achouri quoted the AU as saying Sudan’s air force had bombed the town of Shangil Tobaya, near el-Fasher, capital of North Darfur, on Wednesday.

“(The African Union) said there are around 100 casualties. They are not talking about a specific death toll,” she told Reuters in Cairo by telephone from Khartoum.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan was “deeply disturbed” by the attack, his spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

“This is the latest in a series of grave cease-fire violations that have resulted in a large number of civilian casualties, the displacement of thousands of people, and severe access restrictions for relief workers,” Eckhard said.

“The secretary-general calls on the government of Sudan and the rebel movements in Darfur immediately to comply fully with their commitments under the cease-fire agreement and all relevant Security Council resolutions,” Eckhard said.

There have been close to 100 confirmed cease-fire violations since late last year.
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was barracked as a “traitor” yesterday at the World Social Forum.

The president, addressing a crowd 15,000 inside a sports stadium, called for economic justice for the world’s poor but was forced on the defensive by members of his own party demanding more radical social policies at home.

A group of about 200 repeatedly interrupted him during his one-hour speech in Porto Alegre, Brazil, during the forum held to discuss issues affecting developing countries.

The president has been widely criticised for his orthodox economic and social policies but he presented a strong defence of his first two years in office, saying Brazil had created millions of jobs since he came to power and was now a strong political voice for the elimination of poverty, from South America to Africa. “We need action by both rich and poor countries to eradicate poverty. It is important we construct another world. We need to be together,” he said.

As crowds outside the stadium called for urgent action to redistribute land and feed the hungry, Mr Da Silva said he would meet world leaders at Davos, Switzerland – the location of the World Economic Forum – to urge them to address poverty urgently.

He also tried to persuade the crowds that he was still radical. “For now I’m president of this country, but my roots are in social movements. I am a political militant,” he said, adding that he would eventually return to the Sao Paulo suburb where he used to live when he was head of the metalworkers’ union.

But Ertha Buys, a member of a Brazilian group lobbying for cheap housing for the poor, said: “There’s frustration out there because Lula is the first leftist president for Brazil and so far he’s only given profits to banks. We haven’t got anything.”
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

The elections were dominated by calls for a boycott, religious edicts prohibiting voting, accusations of foreign meddling and a dominating foreign superpower.

Much though it may sound like Iraq in 2005, it was also the state of the country from the 1920s to 1958.

Sunday’s vote has been painted as Iraq’s introduction to democracy, but elections were held under British control as well. Some older Iraqis may have even participated in the 1954 elections, considered relatively free by some historians.

The majority of Iraq’s previous parliamentary elections would not, however, have passed today’s western standards, and regardless of how fair the polls might have been, there was no hope for a true representative democracy in a country controlled by Britain.

“The historical memory [Iraqis] have of democracy is of weak governments that were beholden to the British,” said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

“Once there were elections, the British tried to get the governments that they would like … and that ended up completely destroying democracy in Iraq.”
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

CAIRO (Reuters) – President Bush sees Sunday’s election in Iraq as a beacon for freedom in the Middle East, but Arab reformers say the poll will set back their cause.

Arab human rights activists say the Iraqi election is deeply flawed and will give democracy a bad name. They say violence and the prospect of a Sunni Arab boycott will undermine the poll. Many Arabs, already suspicious of U.S. intentions in Iraq, are also dismissing the vote’s credibility because of the presence of the 150,000 U.S. troops there.

“The influence of the elections for us as democrats is disastrous,” Syrian human rights activist Haytham Manna told Reuters from Paris. “When you marginalize wide sections of society from the political process … this is not democracy.”

“With this example, all the Arab extremists will say to us: ‘You democrats, go to hell, because you haven’t been able to solve our problems with your democracy and elections’,” said Manna, who left Syria in 1978 as a political exile.
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

MOSUL, Iraq, Jan. 27 – Snipers are taking up positions across Mosul. The concrete barriers around the voting sites are up. The actual polling stations are being opened, replacing the decoys set up to deceive the insurgents.

An election will be held Sunday in this violence-racked city of 1.6 million, but it remains an open question here – as in so many other Sunni Arab cities where the insurgent presence is strong – whether enough people will brave the dangers to vote in significant numbers.

“Mosul is a hot spot,” said Salem Isa, the head of security for Nineveh Province. “We have special security plans and will try to take all the possible steps to get them to the boxes peacefully.”

It will not be easy. Even handling election materials is considered so dangerous that ballots and ballot boxes will be distributed to the 80 polling centers by armored American military convoys. “The military has to do it because of the security situation,” said Khaled Kazar, the head of the elections commission here. “No one would ever volunteer to move this stuff.”
Full Article: nytimes.com

I suppose the point of this horrible farce is to assail us with images of the Iraqi people risking life and limb to embrace the democratic process. Since they are not ‘us,’ subjecting them to unacceptable risk does not factor into anyone’s thinking. PM Allawi, aka ‘Saddam-lite’ seems unconcerned, so it’s full speed ahead for this ‘imperfect election,’ in which people will not know where to vote until election day, or indeed even who they will be voting for. It seems like no matter how slipshod, reckless, or deadly, the point is just to VOTE dammit, as this unwieldy vehicle careens from point a to b so the US can crow for a few days about this historic and inspiring occasion and the victory of freedom and so on and so forth. I have no doubt at all that, given a choice, humans choose political freedom. But this election really has nothing to do with that.

Washington’s Ballots (and Bullets)–Iraq’s Non-Election
By Robert Jensen and Pat Youngblood

Predictably, the U.S. news media are full of discussion and debate about this weekend’s election in Iraq. Unfortunately, virtually all the commentary misses a simple point: There will be no “election” on Jan. 30 in Iraq, if that term is meant to suggest an even remotely democratic process.

Many Iraqis casting votes will be understandably grateful for the opportunity. But the conditions under which those votes will be cast — as well as the larger context — bear more similarity to a slowly unfolding hostage tragedy than an exercise in democracy. We refer not to the hostages taken by various armed factions in Iraq, but the way in which U.S. policymakers are holding the entire Iraqi population hostage to U.S. designs for domination of the region.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

We’ve Been Taken Over By a Cult

By Seymour Hersh
Editors’ Note: This is a transcript of remarks by Seymour Hersh at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York.

About what’s going on in terms of the President is that as virtuous as I feel, you know, at The New Yorker, writing an alternative history more or less of what’s been going on in the last three years, George Bush feels just as virtuous in what he is doing. He is absolutely committed — I don’t know whether he thinks he’s doing God’s will or what his father didn’t do, or whether it’s some mandate from — you know, I just don’t know, but George Bush thinks this is the right thing. He is going to continue doing what he has been doing in Iraq. He’s going to expand it, I think, if he can. I think that the number of body bags that come back will make no difference to him. The body bags are rolling in. It makes no difference to him, because he will see it as a price he has to pay to put America where he thinks it should be. So, he’s inured in a very strange way to people like me, to the politicians, most of them who are too cowardly anyway to do much. So, the day-to-day anxiety that all of us have, and believe me, though he got 58 million votes, many of people who voted for him weren’t voting for continued warfare, but I think that’s what we’re going to have.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

by Sidney BlumenthalThe most penetrating critique of the realism informing President Bush’s second inaugural address, a trumpet call of imperial ambition, was made one month before it was delivered, by Lt Gen James Helmly, chief of the US Army Reserve.
In an internal memorandum, he described “the Army Reserve’s inability under current policies, procedures and practices … to meet mission requirements associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. The Army Reserve is additionally in grave danger of being unable to meet other operational requirements and is rapidly degenerating into a broken force”.

These “dysfunctional” policies are producing a crisis “more acute and hurtful”, as the Reserve’s ability to mobilise troops is “eroding daily”.

The US force in Iraq of about 150,000 troops is composed of a “volunteer” army that came into being with the end of military conscription during the Vietnam war. More than 40% are National Guard and Reserves, most having completed second tours of duty and being sent out again.

The force level has been maintained by the Pentagon only by “stop-loss” orders that coerce soldiers to remain in service after their contractual enlistment expires – a back-door draft.

Re-enlistment is collapsing, by 30% last year. The Pentagon justified this de facto conscription by telling Congress that it is merely a short-term solution that would not be necessary as Iraq quickly stabilises and an Iraqi security force fills the vacuum. But this week the Pentagon announced that the US force level would remain unchanged through 2006.

“I don’t know where these troops are coming from. It’s mystifying,” Representative Ellen Tauscher, a ranking Democrat on the House armed services committee, told me. “There’s no policy to deal with the fact we have a military in extremis.”
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

by John Vidal
Global food companies are aggravating poverty in developing countries by dominating markets, buying up seed firms and forcing down prices for staple goods including tea, coffee, milk, bananas and wheat, according to a report to be launched today.
As 50,000 people marched through Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, to mark the opening of the annual World Social Forum on developing country issues, the report from ActionAid was set to highlight how power in the world food industry has become concentrated in a few hands.

The report will say that 30 companies now account for a third of the world’s processed food; five companies control 75% of the international grain trade; and six companies manage 75% of the global pesticide market.

It finds that two companies dominate sales of half the world’s bananas, three trade 85% of the world’s tea, and one, Wal-mart, now controls 40% of Mexico’s retail food sector. It also found that Monsanto controls 91% of the global GM seed market.

Household names including Nestlé, Monsanto, Unilever, Tesco, Wal-mart, Bayer and Cargill are all said to have expanded hugely in size, power and influence in the past decade directly because of the trade liberalisation policies being advanced by the US, Britain and other G8 countries whose leaders are meeting this week in Davos.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Tapestry artist reveals ancestors of US president as murderous bunch

by Angelique Chrisafis
It is perhaps not the best omen for US foreign affairs. Local historians in Wexford have discovered that George Bush is a descendant of Strongbow, the power-hungry warlord who led the Norman invasion of Ireland thus heralding 800 years of mutual misery. With a long line of Scots Irish presidents including Woodrow Wilson, the Irish are normally quick to claim US leaders as their own. But, despite President Bush’s large Ulster Scots vote in the American Bible belt, Ireland had let his family escape the genealogical microscope.
But now Ann Griffin Bernstorff, an artist working on a tapestry to commemorate Ireland’s Norman heritage, has discovered what she claims is the Bushs’ missing Irish link.

Ms Griffin Bernstorff was researching Strongbow’s son-in-law, William Marshal, when she discovered the connection. A descendant of Marshal married Anne Marbury Hutchinson, a famous 16th century religious dissenter who had already been linked to Mr Bush.

“It is one of those bizarre developments,” she said. “We traced the Bush genealogy through a Republican source in Chicago and found it was correct. People here are absolutely shocked. I’m not sure what the wider reaction will be, Bush has not been seen as a great friend of the Irish.”

Indeed, when Mr Bush visited a County Clare castle last year, radio talk-show hosts asked: “Is this the most hated American ever to set foot on Irish soil?”
Full Article: guardian.co.uk