By Jason Szep BOSTON, Dec 10 (Reuters) – Standing on the deck of an oil tanker in Massachusetts Bay on Monday, Venezuelan energy officials kicked off the third year of a controversial program of delivering subsidized home-heating oil for the U.S. poor. A Houston unit of a state-owned company backed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a foe of the Bush administration, will supply oil at 40 percent below market prices
It has been over a week since the publications on the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran and a number of observations about ti can now be made with some confidence. First and foremost, this NIE is clearly the product of long and protracted negotiations between the UN intelligence community and the Administration. It appears that the office of the VP finally agreed to release this NIE as a way,
I have recently posted an interesting piece by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich entitled “Iran Intelligence Report: Another Psychological Warfare?“. This was not the first time I had read Soraya’s very interesting and insightful articles about Iran and this latest piece prompted me to contact Soraya and ask her for an interview. Soraya kindly agreed to my request and it is my real pleasure today to resume my “Saker interviews” series with a
Rory McCarthy for the Guardian Unlimited Senior Israeli officials warned today they were still considering the option of a military strike against Iran, despite a fresh US intelligence report that concluded Tehran was no longer developing nuclear weapons. Although Israel argues that it wants to see strong diplomatic pressure put on Iran, it is reluctant to rule out the threat of a unilateral military attack. Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defence
Press TV reports: Iran abandons dollar in oil dealsIran has completely stopped carrying out its oil deals in dollar following the OPEC proposal to trade crude in non-dollar currencies. “The dollar is no longer a reliable currency, considering its devaluation and the loss suffered by oil exporters,” said Iranian Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari. “Iran proposed in the last OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) summit that member states use a
(RIA Novosti) – Russia has no information on Iranian attempts to develop nuclear weapons before 2003, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday. His statement came following a Monday publication by the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stating that Tehran had halted weapons production in 2003, although it was continuing to enrich uranium. “We have no data that such work was conducted before 2003, although our American colleagues have claimed
After Jimmy Carter published his book Palestine – Peace not Apartheid, a heated debate took place in the media and the blogosphere on the applicability of the term “Apartheid” to the situation in Israel and the Occupied Territories. In the weeks preceding the Annapolis Conference several Israel politicians, including Olmert, reminded everybody that Israel was, in their own words, “a state of the Jews, for the Jews, and by the
By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich for Countercurrents.org ‘To subdue an enemy without fighting is the acme of skill…’ – Sun Tzu Under the current administration, it is increasingly difficult to know who the enemy is, but what is certain is that the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is a brilliantly executed psychological warfare by way of misinformation. This dastardly plan is so devious that even the anti-war groups are jubilant at its
The Empire’s (provisional) scorecard: one win, two losses The past couple of days have seen several very important developments for the future of the Empire: the Russian elections, the Venezuelan referendum, and the publication of the NIE. Because an Administration can only deal with a finite number of simultaneous crises, these seemingly unrelated events are probably very much linked to each other in the minds of the Neocons and they
By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied West Jerusalem for the Palestinian Information Center Seeking to perpetuate institutionalized racism and systematic discrimination against its non-Jewish citizens, the apartheid Israeli state has been incessantly trying to blackmail the weak and vulnerable Palestinian Authority (PA) into recognizing the Zionist state as “an exclusively Jewish state.” Some Israeli officials have used terms such as “a state of the Jews, for the Jews, and by the
This message of mine is to the peoples of the states allied to America in the invasion of Afghanistan and I mention specifically Europe. It isn’t hidden from you that the Afghans have tasted the two bitterest things for two decades at the hands of the Russians and their Communist agents, but they persevered, fought, and were resolute and victorious, by the Grace of Allah. And before their wounds had
For decades, efforts to bring about a two-state solution in historic Palestine have failed to provide justice and peace for the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish peoples, or to offer a genuine process leading towards them. The two-state solution ignores the physical and political realities on the ground, and presumes a false parity in power and moral claims between a colonized and occupied people on the one hand and a colonizing
Check out what Ehud Olmert just declared (according to Ha’aretz): If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished. The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us because they
Today Amy Goodman interviewed Naomi Wolf on Democracy Now. During the interview Amy and Naomi discussed Naomi’s latest book “The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot“
For more information on Neturei Karta International please see: http://www.nkusa.org/
The great Annapolis Peace Conference has resulted in exactly nothing. This is not the opinion of Hamas, or Hezbollah, but the opinion of Ghaith al-Omari, legal adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who, according to CNN, declared: The Israeli-Palestinian statement read by President Bush at the start of Tuesday’s peace summit in Annapolis, Maryland, amounted to a “public relations gimmick”. “The statement has a shelf life of two days,” he
Commentary taken from the blog “Lenin’s tomb”: Israel and Palestinians commit to peace trumpets The Guardian, with a sick-making portrait of Bush, Olmert and Abbas holding hands. How’s that commitment working so far? Well, let’s not forget that having launched a ‘civil war’ against Hamas and used Dahlan’s goons to foment war in Gaza on behalf of Israel, Mahmoud Abbas supports Israel’s war on the Gaza strip. There is no
From today’s Democracy Now headlines: Palestinian Professor Sentenced to 11 Years For Refusing to Testify: In Chicago, a federal court has sentenced a Palestinian-American activist to more than 11 years in prison for refusing to testify before a grand jury in 2003 about the activities of the Palestinian group Hamas. Abdelhaleem Ashqar defended his refusal to testify saying that he shouldn’t have to give testimony that would aid the Israeli
A friend of mine recently commented that using the “F” words was inappropriate when referring to the regimes in Washington or Ankara. He wrote “I think you overdo the “fascist” label (next US Prez and Turkey will not/isn’t anywhere near a fascist regime) too much too, but that would be good to have as a debate on your newly-directed blog I suppose“. I think that this is a crucial issue
Following Putin’s investiture as Russia’s next President after Boris Eltsin Russia underwent a dramatic transformation proving wrong those who had assumed that since Putin ‘had been picked by Eltsin’ the country would continue on its previous course. It is now obvious that the drunken Eltsin had not ‘picked’ anyone, but that powerful forces had imposed Putin as the successor to Elstin who was forced to announce his resignation on live
