By Yerach Gover, PhD
wish to start by trying to distinguish between different concepts of modern nationalism and to speculate on how Zionism has established its own trend. How is it that we have gotten to the catastrophe that we are facing today?

As we know, “political emancipation” was conceived by the emerging bourgeois classes in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century and began to be applied practically after the French Revolution. The new bourgeoisie demanded the abolition of monarchy and feudalism while it established bourgeois citizenship and state. Following other Renaissance principles, however, the new bourgeois nation-state was also secularized. This new structure of the state provided, at least nominally, greater participation in terms of class, ethnic, and religious minorities in civil affairs. One could say that on the whole, and specifically in Western Europe, a somewhat greater sense of democratic representation was achieved.

Nevertheless, colonialism at the turn of the twentieth century was at its height, with Great Britain as the world’s biggest power. Orientalism, the ideology of colonialism as defined by Edward Said, rationalized colonial domination through “an attitude that posits the Orient as a constellation of traits, assigning generalized values to real or imaginary differences, largely to the advantage of the West and the disadvantage of the East, so as to justify the former’s privileges and aggressions”-while at the same time maintaining a “flexible superiority,” which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relations with the Oriental, but without the Westerner ever losing the relative upper hand (Said, Orientalism, 1978).
axisoflogic.com

WARRI, Nigeria, Jan. 25 (Reuters) — Villagers fled Nigeria’s lawless delta on Wednesday amid fears of military reprisals after a wave of attacks on foreign oil companies by ethnic Ijaw militiamen.

The army deployed more troops to major installations, and oil companies tightened security around offices a day after heavily armed men stormed the headquarters of the Italian oil firm Agip, robbing a bank on the premises and killing eight policemen and a civilian.

“There are soldiers everywhere, and I don’t want my three girls in the firing line,” said Return Powei, who lives in the remote village of Ogbotobo. “Our youths run into the forest when they hear the soldiers are coming. Everyone is moving out of Ogbotobo.”

It was not clear if the attack on Agip, a unit of ENI of Italy, was the work of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, whose five-week campaign of sabotage and kidnapping has contributed to an increase in oil prices.

The group said it would make Royal Dutch Shell suffer unless it paid $1.5 billion to delta villages in compensation for decades of oil pollution, which is one of its demands for releasing four foreign hostages.

The government has set up a committee to negotiate the release of four oil workers kidnapped Jan. 11.
http://www.nytimes.com

MOSCOW, Jan. 25 — Saboteurs who bombed two natural gas pipelines high in the Caucasus Mountains this week, by one estimate sending a gas fireball nearly 600 feet into the sky, paralyzed Georgia and sent a message straight to Western Europe, which depends on Russian natural gas.

The Russian authorities are calling the strike a terrorist attack, suggesting that groups in or near the rebellious Chechnya region are aiming attacks at the country’s energy distribution system.

That would be bad news for Western Europe, which gets a quarter of its natural gas from Russia. European leaders were already jittery after supplies were disrupted twice this month, once during a Russian dispute with Ukraine — ostensibly over prices — and later when extremely low temperatures caused demand in Russia to surge.

Georgian officials, upset over what they contended were unexplained delays in fixing the sabotaged pipeline, cautioned that Europe should look at their unheated capital, Tbilisi, before becoming more reliant on Russia.
nytimes.com

Whose natural gas is flowing through those pipelines?

Georgia Suffers Another Setback to Providing Energy
MOSCOW, Jan. 26 – Energy shortages struck Georgia anew today as a wind storm toppled a major power transmission line and Russia’s gas monopoly failed to restore natural gas flow to the country following the acts of sabotage last weekend, energy officials said.

The latest problem appeared at about 1 a.m., when high winds severed a high-voltage transmission line that carries electricity between east and west Georgia, plunging the snow-covered capital, Tbilisi, into blackness.

Volcano next.

Iran Welcomes Russia’s Offer to Enrich Uranium Jointly; Details Remain
MOSCOW, Jan. 25 — Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said here on Wednesday that he welcomed a Russian proposal to defuse the confrontation between Iran and the West over its nuclear programs by establishing a joint venture to enrich uranium in Russia. But he indicated that no agreement had been reached and that significant details remained to be negotiated.

“Our attitude to the proposal is positive,” Mr. Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said after meeting with his Russian counterpart, Igor S. Ivanov, Russian news agencies reported. “We tried to bring the positions of the two sides closer.”

US senators yesterday accused President Bush of stonewalling a congressional inquiry into the government response last year to Hurricane Katrina, despite earlier promises to cooperate.

The senators said the White House had failed to make key officials available to the inquiry or turn over documents on internal government communications in the days before and immediately after the storm hit New Orleans and the Gulf coast on August 29.

One document leaked this week showed the White House situation room was warned the same day that Katrina would “likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching”. On September 1, however, President Bush told reporters: “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”
guardian.co.uk

US ambassador to Peru James Curtis Struble Wednesday said Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez “is meddling a lot in other countries’ affairs.”

“He should let presidents take care of their countries, and the best thing for the region is Chávez taking care of managing his country,” Curtis said when asked about recent diplomatic tensions between Venezuela and Peru.

Tensions emerged following Chávez’ public expression of support for Peruvian nationalist presidential candidate Ollanta Humala and criticisms against Peruvian conservative presidential hopeful Lourdes Flores.

Curtis added that Chávez “feels resentment against all the countries that want to make their own decisions regarding their future, particularly political choices,” Efe reported.

“While South America has an interest in improving its ties, most leaders have chosen an integration different from Chávez’ proposal,” he asserted.

“Venezuela is a concern for the United States because it is a member of the community of the Americas, where all have signed the Democratic Charter, except for Cuba.”

“We want to strengthen democracies, rather than witness the return of authoritarianism to this continent.”

Meanwhile, Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo stated: “Verbal conflicts with Chávez are over.”
eluniversal.com

Palestinian PM and cabinet resign
The Palestinian prime minister and cabinet today resigned following what appeared to be a dramatic election win for Hamas.
Results are not due until this evening, but a senior official for Fatah – the formerly dominant force in Palestinian politics – conceded that the party had lost its majority in parliament.

Fatah later rejected participation in a coalition with Hamas – a move that will make peacemaking in the region more difficult.

“Let Hamas alone bear its responsibilities, if it can,” Ziyad Abu Ein, a Fatah official, told Reuters.

Polls had predicted a Hamas-Fatah coalition as the most likely outcome of the vote, but officials from both parties give Hamas between 70 and 75 MPs in the 132-seat parliament as constituency results came in.

As he announced his resignation, the prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, said the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, would have to ask Hamas to form the next government. “This is the choice of the people. It should be respected,” he said.

Great headline, guys. As the losers, they are obliged to resign.

US Orders Syria To Do the Impossible
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.

After three years and unimaginable expense, the superpower American military has proved that it cannot disarm the recently formed Iraqi militias. Yet, the idiot Bolton thinks puny Syria can disarm the Lebanese militias that defeated the brutal Israeli army!

Bolton: Bush won’t tolerate nuclear Iran
…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.”

US military ‘at breaking point’
The US military has become dangerously overstretched because of the scale of its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, two reports have warned.

One, by former officials in the Clinton administration, said the pressure of repeated deployments was very corrosive and could have long-term effects.

The second, ordered by the Pentagon and yet to be released, reportedly calls the army “stretched to breaking point”.

The US defence secretary dismissed the claims as out of date or misdirected.

Audit Describes Misuse of Funds in Iraq Projects
01/25/06 “New York Times” — — A new audit of American financial practices in Iraq has uncovered irregularities including millions of reconstruction dollars stuffed casually into footlockers and filing cabinets, an American soldier in the Philippines who gambled away cash belonging to Iraq, and three Iraqis who plunged to their deaths in a rebuilt hospital elevator that had been improperly certified as safe.

The audit, released yesterday by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, expands on its previous findings of fraud, incompetence and confusion as the American occupation poured money into training and rebuilding programs in 2003 and 2004. The audit uncovers problems in an area that includes half the land mass in Iraq, with new findings in the southern and central provinces of Anbar, Karbala, Najaf, Wasit, Babil, and Qadisiya. The special inspector reports to the secretary of defense and the secretary of state.

Agents from the inspector general’s office found that the living and working quarters of American occupation officials were awash in shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills, colloquially known as bricks.

One official kept $2 million in a bathroom safe, another more than half a million dollars in an unlocked footlocker. One contractor received more than $100,000 to completely refurbish an Olympic pool but only polished the pumps; even so, local American officials certified the work as completed. More than 2,000 contracts ranging in value from a few thousand dollars to more than half a million, some $88 million in all, were examined by agents from the inspector general’s office. The report says that in some cases the agents found clear indications of potential fraud and that investigations into those cases are continuing.

TBILISI, Georgia, Jan. 23 – Azerbaijan and Russia partly restored the flow of natural gas to Georgia on Monday, using an alternate pipeline to begin easing an energy shortage that developed after saboteurs blew up two Russian pipelines and an electricity transmission line on Sunday. In spite of the renewed flow of gas, much of it sent from Russia through Azerbaijan while technicians worked to repair the machinery, Georgia experienced a day with little heat and scattered electrical blackouts.
nytimes.com

‘We say maybe’: Gazprom set to pounce on UK gas market
Gazprom is considering a takeover bid for Centrica, the Russian state-controlled gas giant has admitted.

Its deputy chairman, Alexander Medvedev, said last week that it wanted to supply a fifth of the UK’s gas within a decade.

Currency market wary of Iran
ion to withdraw investments from Europe to shield them from U.N. sanctions has unearthed an array of risks for currency investors to consider.

Iran’s reserves and investments are probably too small to rock the $1.9 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market.

Still, the dollar could feel a sting, analysts said, if the move by Iran influences other major crude exporters or further inflame the geopolitical standoff between Western nations and the world’s fourth largest oil exporter over its nuclear ambitions.

“I don’t think it is possible for Iran to take money out of both the United States and Europe,” said Michael Woolfolk, senior currency strategist with Bank of New York. “There are just not sufficiently deep or liquid markets to place these sums of money,” he added.

The move by Iran to transfer its assets is to preempt a potential asset freeze by the United Nations Security Council after Iran refused to relent to Western pressure to curb a nuclear program.

During the Iranian revolution in 1979 the U.S. government froze Iran’s U.S. assets, the status of which remains in dispute.

If the asset transfer by Iran, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is the start of a move by Middle East oil producers to redirect revenues generated from oil sales, financial markets would indeed be affected.

“What we are concerned about is that going forward they may decide to remove petrodollars and redirect them elsewhere. If they do, it is negative for the bond market and ultimately for the U.S. dollar,” Woolfolk said.

Iran in 2005 had foreign exchange reserves of $40 billion, according to the U.S. central intelligence agency’s “World Factbook,” and analysts say the country raises annual oil revenues of around $40 billion to $45 billion.

The Cochabamba water revolt – which began exactly six years ago this month – will end this morning when Bechtel, one of the world’s most powerful corporations, formally abandons its legal effort to take $50 million from the Bolivian people. Bechtel made that demand before a secretive trade court operated by the World Bank, the same institution that coerced Bolivia to privatize the water to begin with. Faced with protests, barrages of e-mails, visits to their homes, and years of damaging press, Bechtel executives finally decided to surrender, walking away with a token payment equal to thirty cents. That retreat sets a huge global precedent.
ww4report.com

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – Venezuela’s vice president derided Sen. John McCain for suggesting that “wackos” run the South American country, saying Monday that the United States should focus on its own problems.

Jose Vicente Rangel was responding to McCain’s statement on Sunday that America must explore alternative energy sources to avoid depending on Iran or “wackos” in Venezuela – apparently a reference to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

“It looks like they have nothing else to do in the United States,” Rangel said, adding that the Americans have “so many problems, 40 million poor people, 30 million drug users, and an American senator is paying attention to us. He can go to hell.”
wkrc.com

Chavez says end is near for U.S. “empire”
La Paz, Jan 23 (EFE).- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said here Monday that what he describes as the U.S. empire is nearing its end.

“The empire has entered the phase of desperation, like a vampire who sees dawn approaching and realizes that he still has not sucked enough blood,” the outspoken leftist said in a long speech after receiving an honorary degree from San Andres University in La Paz.

ANNAPOLIS — Democratic lawmakers, who have long pushed to restore voting rights to Maryland felons, say racial politics and election-year considerations make this the year they open the polls to every ex-convict.

“This law seriously disenfranchises a large number of African-Americans,” said Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat who is gathering sponsors for a voting-rights restoration bill she plans to submit.
washtimes.com