2005: Investigator Says Syria Was Behind Lebanon Assassination

The German prosecutor conducting the United Nations investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon said today that fresh evidence reinforced his earlier judgment that Syria's intelligence services were behind the killing and that Syrian officials were obstructing his investigation.

2009: Four Lebanese generals 'to be handed to UN for Rafik Hariri tribunal'

Four army generals held in Lebanon over the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri could be handed over within weeks to the special tribunal in The Hague that will put them on trial, the court registrar said today.

2011: UN court indicts four Hezbollah members over Hariri car bomb

Lebanon's senior prosecutor has received criminal indictments for four members of the Shia militant group Hezbollah, who are accused of assassinating the country's former prime minister Rafiq Hariri in a car bomb attack six years ago.

2015: …

Obviously they can't make up their mind on who killed Hariri – Syria, some Lebanese generals, Hizbullah or whoever it will be convenient to indict during the next decade. The purpose of the UN kangaroo (or potato) court is not to find the Hariri murder or to do justice. It is a political instrument in the hands of the USraeli-Saudi alliance.

But let's step back and take today's indictment of Hizbullah members as an opportunity to again look at the person of Rafik Hariri. He was not the "good guy" the "western" media constructed but a neoliberal robber baron who defrauded the people of Lebanon.

From the 2005 BBC economic obituary of Hariri:

Cont. reading: The Hariri Indictment

In November 2010 Britain and France signed a new defense cooperation pact. Under the umbrella of the agreement a week long common air force exercise was announced in January 2011:

The French Air Force has organized a large-scale, weeklong exercise with the British Royal Air Force – which is expected to send over Tornado fighters, aerial tankers and AWACS aircraft – as part of the enhanced cooperation agreed between the two countries, an Air Force spokesman here said Jan. 13.

The exercise, dubbed Southern Mistral, will be held March 21-25 in France, the spokesman, Maj. Eric Trihoreau, said.

The scenario for Southern Mistral was:

SOUTHLAND : Dictatorship responsible for an attack against France's national interests.

FRANCE : Makes the decision to show its determination to SOUTHLAND (under United Nations Security council resolution n°3003).

UNITED-KINGDOM : Allied country as determined in the bilateral agreement. The United Kingdom supports France through the deployment of its air assets.

On March 20 the U.K., France and the U.S. started to bomb Libya. Southern Mistral was superseded by a real war:

Due to the current international events, exercise Southern Mistral has been suspended.

There is a long history of announced military exercises as cover for starting a shooting war. As we learn from the U.S. Amry War College pamphlet Deception 101:

Cover is the use of an apparently nonthreatening activity to disguise preparation for or initiation of a hostile act. A common example is the use of a training exercise to hide preparations for an attack. […] In recent years, both the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the Falklands War of 1982 were launched under the cover of training exercises similar to exercises which had occurred before.

The war on Libya, first planned as Southern Mistral, is not going well. France is now arming the Berber in the Djebel Nefoussa mountain range. Even this didn't proceed as planned and it guarantees a prolonged civil war – here Berber against Arabs – even if Gaddhafi were to step aside:

The drops, all at night and totaling perhaps 36 tons, included mostly light weapons and ammunition, he said. [The leader of the military council in the western town of Rujban] complained that rebels from the neighboring city of Zintan had taken all the weapons and were not sharing them with fighters in other areas. […] The colonel said an intermediary told him on Wednesday that the French government was upset that the weapons were not being properly distributed.

This, like the very first bombing by the French immediately after the UNSC resolution 1973 was signed, is another unilateral French step which will lead to more strife within NATO. NATO had earlier ruled out arming the rebels. In a bit of balancing justice the rebels in the east managed to blow up their ammunition storage facility.

But back to military exercises and deception. What are we to think of this one?

Commander, United States Fleet Forces hosted the first of two Main Planning Conferences June 24, for Exercise Bold Alligator 2012, scheduled to take during January and February 2012.
…
Bold Alligator 2012 will be a large-scale multinational naval amphibious exercise conducted by United States Fleet Forces (USFF) and Marine Forces Command (MFC) that will focus upon the planning and execution of a brigade-sized amphibious assault from a seabase in a medium threat environment. The underlying scenario of this exercise is designed to emphasize the Navy/Marine Corps capabilities in undeveloped and immature theaters of operations.

As the Marines' hymn goes:

From the Halls of Montezuma,
To the shores of Tripoli; …

January and February 2012 may be a little late for invading Libya with ground troops. Then again, who knows how long that war will take?

Mixing up payloads and delivery means is a propaganda ploy. The absurdity of doing so becomes clear with a few find & replace clicks.

William Hague on bikes and nuclear stuff:

LONDON (AP) — Iran has conducted covert tests of electric bicycles in addition to a 10-day program of public bike trials, Britain alleged on Wednesday.

Foreign Secretary William Hague told the House of Commons that there had been secret experiments with bicycles that would be able to deliver a nuclear weapon, but did not specify precisely when the tests had taken place.

Iran has "been carrying out covert electric bicycles tests and new model launches, including testing bicycles capable of delivering a nuclear payload," Hague said.

Britain believes Tehran has conducted at least three secret tests of medium-range electric bicycles since October, amid an apparent escalation of its nuclear program and scrutiny from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran is currently displaying its bicycle hardware in a series of trial races in an apparent show of openness, and on Tuesday launched 14 bicycles in public tests.

However, the U.K. believes that the covert bicycle tests show Iran's leaders are seeking to avoid scrutiny over the real extent of their mobility programs.

"On the back of the recent IAEA report and the unanswered questions about its nuclear program, they only serve to undermine further Iran's claims that its nuclear program is entirely for civilian use," said a Foreign Office spokesman, on customary condition of anonymity in line with policy.

An IAEA report last month listed "high-voltage firing and instrumentation for explosives testing over long distances and possibly underground" as one of seven "areas of concern" that Iran may be conducting clandestine nuclear weapons work.

Hague also said Britain was concerned over Tehran's decision to increase its capacity to enrich uranium to a higher level at the Fordo site near the holy city of Qom in central Iran.

"It has announced that it intends to triple its capacity to produce 20 percent enriched uranium. These are enrichment levels far greater that is needed for peaceful nuclear energy," Hague said.

So what have electric bicycles to do with atomic bombs? Nothing apparently. But a bike could of course be used to deliver a nuclear weapon, especially an electric bicycle with a long range. That is why one has to watch carefully for secret electric bicycle trials.

Hague by the way isn't well informed on nuclear issues. He claims that 20% enriched uranium has no peaceful use. There are at least 39 research reactors around the world which need  this kind of fuel. All are for peaceful purposes and most of them, like the one in Iran which is running out of fuel, are under IAEA control.

Today, on the eve of a conference on security transition at the Hotel Intercontinental in Kabul, a six plus hours long attack on the hotel by a few Taliban occurred. It again demonstrated the lack of Afghan and international forces capabilities to provide security within Kabul. But reading the news will not necessarily give that impression.

WaPo: Landmark Kabul hotel attacked by Taliban suicide bombers

In recent weeks, Taliban insurgents and suicide bombers have staged several attacks in Kabul after a long lull.

Reuters: Police search Kabul hotel after Taliban attack kills 9

There have been insurgent attacks at a hotel, guesthouse and a supermarket in Kabul over the past year, although the capital has been relatively quiet compared with the rest of the country.

Either these journalists have no access to any archives or they do not use them. On a second thought they may be involved in willful deception of their readers.

Despite very high security around high profile targets, lots of security forces in the city and a ring of steel around it, attacks in Kabul are frequent, have high visibility and are mostly successful (see below for examples).

As the International Crisis Group said in a recent report:

Despite efforts to combat the insurgency in the south, stability in the centre has steadily eroded. Yet, with nearly one fifth of the population residing in Kabul and its surrounding provinces, the Afghan heartland is pivotal to the planned transition from international troops to Afghan forces at the end of 2014.

Scholar Gilles Dorronsoro in his latest Carnegie paper explains what happened.

The U.S. surge troops mostly went to the south to attack irrelevant countrysides like Marjah. Meanwhile the troops in the east, especially in the Pech valley, gave up several blocking outposts. This opened the land route from the tribal areas of Pakistan towards Kabul. The surrounding districts of the city are now in the hands of the shadow Taliban government.

Having given up its outposts in and around the Pech valley the military is now launching large air assaults into the region to regain some control. It hopes that the Afghan army will be able to hold any regained territory there. That is unlikely to be the case. The Soviets during their occupation of Afghanistan unsuccessfully used the same tactic.

Kabul will not be overrun. But the frequent and high profile attacks there undermine whatever little legitimacy and support the Afghan state and the occupation has left.

It follows an incomplete list of recent high profile attacks in Kabul:

Cont. reading: No Lull In Attacks In Kabul

Headlines the Washington Post: Iran test-fires missiles, shows secret silos.

What please is secret when it is officially and publicly announced? These silos are just as "secret" as the "secret" enrichment site near Qom which was announced by Iran to IAEA only to be called "secret" after that happened. From the WaPo piece:

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is conducting a 10-day series of missile tests, including the firing of medium-range missiles at targets at sea, and it has revealed a previously secret network of underground missile silos, Iranian state media reported Tuesday.

That "previously secret network of underground missile silos" is known to anyone interested in the issue at least since those silos appeared in publicly available satellite pictures in 2008.

Missile silos near Tabriz, Iran – Google maps satellite view

In the middle are two sliding roof silos each with an associated concrete pad which is the base for erecting the missile from a truck to lower it into the silo. The two structures on the top and at the bottom are exhaust channels which let the fumes out when a missile is fired. Another pair of such silos is a few hundred meters north west to this one.

Besides the Tabriz silo site there is at least one other well known one in Iran near Khorramabad.

Given today's satellite imaging and ground penetrating radar technology it is nearly impossible to build a secret missile silo facility. Missile sites like the Iranian ones, or the little reported on Saudi Al Sulayyil base with those liquid fuel Chinese CSS-2 missiles which were recently upgraded to solid fuel variants, are never really "secret".

Calling them such is just hype.

The editors of the New York Times insist on a renewed round of euro bashing. They say about the debt crisis:

The constructive way out would be to restructure excessive debt, recapitalize affected banks and relax austerity enough to let debtor countries — Greece, Ireland and Portugal are most at risk — grow their way back to solvency.

But if that is the way forward, something I could even agree to, why isn't the U.S. applying these methods. It's banks are in no better shape than the European ones and its debt position isn't a happy one either.

Then there is this nonsensical claim about NATO:

Americans are weary of war — and fear of weakening NATO no longer deters politicians, as the fight over the Libya campaign has made clear. We don’t know how much longer voters here will support an alliance in which the United States shoulders 75 percent of the military spending and a much higher percentage of the fighting.

The 75 percent number is false. Gates used that recently to bash European NATO members. But it is simply wrong and repeating it doesn't make it right. According to the well regarded SIPRI Military Expenditure Database NATO countries other than the United States in 2010 spent $318 billion on military issues while the U.S. spent $698 billion. That is 68% of the total not 75%.

And that of course leaves out the little fact that NATO is not a global association but has a limited area of responsibility while the U.S. spending is for a global network of bases and influence. The North Atlantic Treaty article 6 limits the collective selfdefense to:

the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France, on the territory of or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer …

These limits of the NATO area were inserted into the treaty on behalf of the United States which wanted to avoid to fight for attacks on European colonies outside of the defined area. Falklands anyone?

If one has to compare the spending for NATO's purpose by the U.S. versus other NATO countries one will have to subtract some big numbers from the U.S. budget. The permanent U.S. aircraft carrier group in Japan has nothing to do with NATO spending. Nor do the U.S. bases in South Korea, around the Middle East, Africa or South America. Nothing the U.S. spends in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, South Atlantic or Arabian Sea is relevant for NATO.

Subtracting the cost for those from the actual U.S. defense spending one will end up with a much smaller relevant U.S. share of total NATO spending. It is likely to come in around some 30+% of the total.

As for the share of fighting – where please is the U.S. fighting for European interests?

Starting from Greece a flotilla of some 10 ships is ready to protest against and break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

The Netanyahoo government its trying to prevent that by all available means. It sabotages the ships, distributes fake videos defaming the flotilla, it threatens journalists and spreads lies about the protesters intent. Pseudo-NGO's and lobbyist put pressure on the Greek government to hold ships back.

Like the first flotilla this one may well again end up with Israeli soldiers killing unarmed protesters. The U.S. government is obviously fine with that (as long as the bribes from the Israel lobby arrive).

Is there any government more vile than the Israeli one?

Afghanistan: Obama orders withdrawal of 33,000 troops

I still find the recent announcement of U.S. troop reductions in Afghanistan quite dubious. As Gareth Porter points out they way the announcement was made gives the military a lot of leeway to still drag the conflict out for many years to come.

But following Obama's announcement of U.S. troop reductions in Afghanistan, there is a rush to the exits by the allies who were pressed into service there.

France to pull out troops from Kabul

President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on Friday that “several hundred” French troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan before the end of 2011.

Belgium to cut in half its Afghan contingent

BRUSSELS – Belgium's defense minister is proposing to withdraw half of the nation's 580 troops from Afghanistan by next year.

Germany to cut troops to Afghanistan

Germany said it would cut its troops presence in Afghanistan this year and praised US President Barack Obama for 'firming up' plans for withdrawing forces.

Defence plans for Afghan troop cuts

AUSTRALIA'S military planners are preparing for a possible reduction in Australian troop numbers in Afghanistan in response to the drawdown announced this week by US President Barack Obama.

Poland to reduce its Afghan force: PM

Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he was glad to hear U.S. President Barack Obama's declaration on the reduction of American forces in Afghanistan, and had asked the Polish defense minister to prepare a similar plan for Polish troops serving in that country.

While I believe that everyone else will try to get their troops out of Afghanistan as soon as possible, I am not sure yet that a U.S. exit is for real.

Few seem to remember that U.S. troop reductions were also announced back in 2005:

The announcement – representing the first major reduction in U.S. troop strength there since late last year – launches what is expected to be a gradual decline in troop levels that will also include reductions in U.S. forces in Iraq.
…
The reduction would bring U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan to about 16,500.

"It’s a good thing – it’s progress," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a small group of reporters Tuesday.

There even was a reduction of U.S. troops Afghanistan in 2004:

Troop levels in Afghanistan peaked at 20,300 in April 2004, dropped to about 16,500 by the end of last year, and then increased to about 20,000, earlier this year.

As those pull outs of troops in 2004 and 2005/6 turned out to be fake, what is there to ensure us that Obama's announcement is for real?

Indeed I can think of several scenarios that could lead to another troop increase in the area. A coup in Pakistan, some strife with Iran, a Tet like offense by the Taliban or even a combination of those could all lead to a deployment of more, not less U.S. troops.

A UN human rights investigator, Amnesty International and the International Crisis Group have dispeled the propaganda against Libya's Gaddhafi. There was no mass rape, no foreign mercenaries were found and the claims of massive military attacks against civilians were false.

But the propaganda continues. The Wall Street Journal talked with Africom, the U.S. military organization concerned with subjugating the 50 states of Africa to a U.S. dictate, and was told about some new intelligence about Libya.

New U.S. intelligence shows Col. Moammar Gadhafi is "seriously considering" fleeing Tripoli for a more secure location outside the capital, according to U.S. officials, raising the prospect that the Libyan leader's hold on power is increasingly fragile.

It seems the "days not weeks" Obama illusion is still operational. Gaddhafi will of course not leave Tripoli. Why should he?

But the WSJ story also carries an official voice which, and this is a first, finally acknowledges the utter stupidity of this whole war:

Cont. reading: First Thoughts On Aftermath Of War On Libya Sighted

After 17 years of working with Reuters, mostly in Thailand, Andrew MacGregor Marshall quit. Reuters had copies of the Wikileaks documents and some three thousand of those were about Thailand. It did not dare to publish them as they contained a lot of information that could be interpreted as being negative about the king and the royal court. Thailand has severe Lèse Majesté laws. In Thailand anyone can accuse anyone of derogative talk about the king and the royal court and the result can be up to 15 years of prison. Reuters feared for its work and staff in Thailand.

Before he left Reuters Andrew MacGregor Marshall copied all relevant Wikileaks papers on Thailand and he is now publishing them on his own at his Zenjounalist blog and at Thaicables.

But he does a lot more than that. He sets those cables into detailed and lucid political and historic context in a four part Thaistory: "Thailand's Moment Of Truth – A Secret History Of 21st Century Siam". Part one, about 100 pages long, is now available for free. It is a good, at times even amusing, and easy read.

We once had a reader here, John Francis Lee, who lives in Thailand. In 2007 I posted a piece by him, A Thailand "Write Up", which included this fawning part:

Cont. reading: The Thaileaks

That's me right now. I'll have to clean up my desk a bit and hope to be back tomorrow.

What is keeping you busy?

Please use as open thread.

Yves at Naked Capitalism presents this today as her antidote du jour.

bigger

As a commentator there remarks:

The chicks on the left would be finance, insurance, and real estate. The bird on the right, the government. And the cricket? You and me, baby.

Quite fitting.

In the NYRB Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School, reviews seven books on psychiatry and the use of psychotropic drugs. The two part article, The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why? and The Illusions of Psychiatry, are currently available for free. Both are recommended reading.

I am especially concerned about children and teens taking psychoactive drugs. No, that does not mean that I mind when fifteen year old teens drink a beer or smoke a joint. But I am very suspicious when I am told by parents that their child has this or that disorder that gets fixed by taking some chemical mixture which has unknown effect-chains in the body and especially in the brain.

Being hyperactive and/or inattentive is part of being a child. It is normal. It can be ´cured just by increasing outdoor activities. Being partly depressive is practically the definition of a teen in puberty. These are not illnesses but important and necessary parts of growing up. Taking psychotropics daily, often with serious side effects, will not heal such illnesses but cause damage.

The first part of the article demonstrates that there is huge increase in the numbers of people who are diagnosed with some mental disorder and get prescribed one or more psychotropic drugs. It shows how this increase is not a real increase in mentally ill people, but an increase in the definitions of what is considered mentally ill. These definitions are made up and marketed by people with an interest to increase the number of patients and drug sales, doctors and the drug industry.

The way drugs get approved for this or that mental disorders is also troublesome. Notice also how the state is again willingly asleep at the wheel:

For obvious reasons, drug companies make very sure that their positive studies are published in medical journals and doctors know about them, while the negative ones often languish unseen within the FDA, which regards them as proprietary and therefore confidential. This practice greatly biases the medical literature, medical education, and treatment decisions.

If a new drug is introduced for this or that illness, all studies about that drug should be publicly available. Today a new drug may have one industry paid study with positive results and nine negative ones. Only the positive one gets published and no one except the industry and the FDA knows about the others.

The incentives on the doctor's side favor drug prescription over other successful and less harm causing therapies:

Cont. reading: Is Psychiatry Itself A Mental Disorder?

(Updated on June 20)

If a story of a pirated ships near Somalia ever makes it into a movie, this is the one that would make for the most incredible and excellent action script. It involves a ten month long crew ordeal, ever increasing ransom demands, arrested mercenaries and a fight between two hostile navies which both want to appear as savior of the pirated crew.

The Ship

The MV Suez was captured by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden on August 2 2010. It was freed a week ago after a quite dramatic story but its ordeal did not end there. It still had to nearly create an international military conflict and more sad sea drama.

MV SUEZ was travelling in the Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC) when attacked. Immediately after the first report a helicopter was directed to the ship but pirates had already taken over the command of the vessel.

The MV SUEZ, deadweight 17,300 tonnes with a crew of 23 (Egypt, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India Nationalities), is a Panama flagged merchant vessel with a cargo of cement bags. EU NAVFOR is monitoring the situation.

Later reports vary between 22 and 28 crew member, six Indians, eleven to thirteen Egyptians, four Pakistanis and one to four Sri Lankan.

The MV Suez, IMO 8218720, is a multi-purpose/heavy lift cargo ship which was build in the East German Warnow shipyard in 1984. The ships ownership has changed quite often. It sailed earlier as Torm Texas, Industrial Champion, Cte Cinta, Amsterdam, Nedlloyd Amsterdam, Sevastaki (pic), Evi (pic), Eastern Moon and Rahim (pic).

IMO 8218720 in 2008 as Rahim – Photo by Peter Wearing

This ship is owned and operated by an Egyptian company, Red Sea Navigation, but flagged in Panama.

MV Suez was on her way from Pakistan to Eritrea. She is old, much abused and has likely only scrap value. The cement cargo is not really valuable either. Who would pay a six or seven figure to free such a ship and its crew?

The Egyptian ship owners, Abdel Meguid Matar and Mohamed Sobhi, would not. They would not even put up the crew's pay to support their families. At the end of August 2010 Egyptian family members of the crew sued the owners to pay the demanded ransom, $1 million, and some went into hunger strike. But month after month passed without any success.

Somali news source Ahram Online reported Dec. 15 that pirates turned down a ransom payment of $500,000 for the release of the MV Suez because the offer “came too late,” according to the ship’s engineer.

The pirates then increased their ransom demand to $1.1 million.

The Political Issue

As month after month went by and the cases of the MV Suez sailors and their families grew -via the local media- into interior political issues in India as well as in Pakistan.

The Indian government tried to apply pressure on the owner via the Egyptian government. When another deadline was set by the pirates to March 11 2011 and went by without any payment, the interior political pressure increased:

The families and relatives of the abducted sailors, who have lost all hopes, are going to hold a protest rally in New Delhi Thursday against the "silence of the government" on the matter. The protestors will march from Jantar Mantar to the Parliament House.

At the same time, the opposition parties led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are putting pressure on the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government to deal with the issue in a serious manner.

But the Indian government still showed no urgency to solve the problem.

In Pakistan someone acted. Late in February the Pakistani human rights advocate Ansar Barney made phone contact with the pirates and started his own negotiations. He is a former minister and a UN Expert Adviser on human rights. When the ransom deadline had passed without the ship owner paying, Barney was said to meet the shipowner in Egypt to discuss a combined ransom payment.

The Ansar Barney Welfare Trust, a humanitarian NGO, started to collect the demanded $1.1 million to free the sailors. An Indian national living in Dubai was reported to be willing to contribute $500,000.

At the end of April the Indian government established an Inter-Ministerial-Group to handle the cases of the then 46 Indians in the captivity of Somali pirates. Local political pressure continued to build.

In Pakistan the governor of Sindh province and a Citizen-Police-Liaison Committee got involved with Barney on the issue. Together they flew to Dubai for negotiations on the issue.

Somewhere along the Egyptian owners of the ship became furious about the court cases by the families of the Egyptian crew members on board of the MV Suez. The owners backtracked on a promise to pay some share of the ransom they had earlier agreed to.

Also somewhere along the ransom demand seems to have been again increased from the earlier reported $500,000 and $1.1 million to $2.1 million.

Freeing The Ship

In May the money Ansar Barney had collected by then was to be transferred to the pirates in a secret mission by the British mercenary company Salama Fikira. On May 24 a Cessna Citation business jet flew with the ransom money from the Seychelles to Mogadishu, Somalia. There it met a Cessna Caravan single engine plane which came from Nairobi, Kenia and was modified for the actual money drops onto the pirated ships. The planes flew under cover of an UN humanitarian evacuation mission and were supposedly coordinated with Somali authorities.

But when the mercenaries landed in Somalia on to transfer the money between the planes for delivery to the MV Suez and another ship, the MV Yuan Xiang, they were held up and the money was seized by Somali security forces at the Mogadishu airport. The six men transfer team, 3 Brits, 2 Kenyan and 1 American were arrested.

This was a surprise as money transfers like this one are routine and are usually coordinated with the government (which likely takes a share) and the airport guards are supposed to protect the transfer missions.

Another pirate deadline on June 1 was moved to June 11 because no other plane could be found to drop the money to the pirated ship. In phone calls the crew now claimed that the pirates started to torture them.

Despite the money reportedly still being in the hands of the Somali government, not the pirates, the ship was finally set free:

Cont. reading: The Liberation Of The MV Suez And Its Bitter End – An Incredible Pirate Story

Two snippets taken from one newspaper – spot the difference:

KABUL, Afghanistan — […] Three men wearing camouflage fatigues that are frequently worn by Afghan soldiers stormed a police station near the presidential palace, with one of them detonating an explosives vest just outside the gates as two others rushed inside and began firing, an Interior Ministry statement said.

The crackle of gunfire echoed through the usually bustling streets for about two hours before security forces killed the two remaining attackers. Insurgents killed three police officers, one intelligence agent and five civilians in the attack, according to the ministry statement.

—

New Delhi (AP) – Moslem rebels killed five Kabul policemen and wounded 11 others during a two hour battle this week after the rebels slipped into the Soviet-guarded city, a reliable Afghan source reported yesterday.

One rebel was killed during the Tuesday night engagement in the Wazirabad district of Kabul and the others escaped, leaving the body behind, the source said.

The only real difference here are 31 years in which little changed. The second quote is from the Palm Beach Post, June 14 1980: Rebels Kill Five Policemen in Kabul. The first quote is also from the Palm Beach Post. But it is the June 19 2011 edition: Afghan leader confirms peace talks; Kabul attacked.

After the sure to come retreat of "western" troops from Afghanistan someone will write a book about all the parallels of the Soviet war and the U.S. war there. The opening sentence of that book could itself be a historic repeat. It might reuse the opening sentences from Marx' Eighteenth Brumaire:

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

In Fukushima Daiichi the wreaked reactors and fuel pools still need cooling and will continue to need it for many month. Cooling is currently done with water which leaks after running through the 'hot' areas. The immense amount (110,000 metric tons) of contaminated water is a huge problem. Each hour additional 25 tons of water are added. Some water decontamination equipment was set up over the last weeks but it has yet to work properly:

Cont. reading: Fukushima Update – June 18

Do not visit the country. Report from Washington or Beirut.

Start with a thesis you have no way to verify. Use it as headline. For example:

Pressure on Syria’s Assad intensifies as protests persist

1a. Report of big demonstrations everywhere and of the government shooting demonstrators sourced solely to a shadowy anonymous group which claims to have organized them.

1b. Claim that the Syrian government "is not abandoning its strategy of relying on force to quell the dissent".

2a. Report of a big and peaceful demonstration in Hama where no one was shot.

2b. Ignore your claim in 1b and claim that this is a sign that the government has "given up trying to assert control".

3a. Report of various unsourced and likely false rumors.

3b. Claim that the various unsourced and likely false rumors "give the government jitters".

3c. Quote someone from the Israel Lobby(!) in Washington(!) saying that the various unsourced and likely false rumors have the Syrian government "definitely panicking".

4a. Report of a government concession which was obviously not a government concession.

4b. Have an opposition activist in Beirut(!) dismiss the government concession which was obviously not a government concession as being obviously not a government concession.

5a. Report that the Syrian leader is to make a televised address to the nation.

5b. Claim that this is a sign of his "absence".

6. Quote the meaningless blustering of two anonymous U.S. officials in Washington(!).

7a. Report of reports about Turkish government intervention intentions which the Turkish government has thoroughly dismissed as utter nonsense.

7b. Claim that the opposition would like the reported Turkish government intervention intentions which the Turkish government has thoroughly dismissed as utter nonsense.

7c. Quote an opposition activist in London(!) saying that the reported Turkish government intervention intentions which the Turkish government has thoroughly dismissed as nonsense is a "nightmare for the Syrian regime".

7d. Claim that the "nightmare" is the explanation for an unrelated Syrian government operation against a small armed local rebellion.

8a. Repeat your reporting of various unsourced and likely false rumors.

8b. Quote an opposition activist in Ohio(!) with some theory about the meaning of the various unsourced and likely false rumors.

(Do NOT report of armed government opposition. Do NOT report that the demonstrations this Friday were smaller than last Friday. Do NOT report that the shadowy anonymous group's website is registered and run in Germany by a German with a phone number in Berlin as contact information. Do NOT report that the group seems inactive as the last daily update on that site was eight days ago. )

Rinse and repeat next Friday.

In a piece about a much discussed satirical article that appeared on an Iranian website and was misinterpreted in “western” media, the Arms Control Wonk Jeffery Lewis writes:

Then there is the issue of Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant. For some reason, Sy [Hersh] doesn’t mention Iran’s effort to construct a covert facility enrichment site near Qom (the so-called Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant).

Hersh, in his recent piece, does not mention the “covert” site because the site was NOT covert or secret at all.

As Iranian news agencies announced on September 24/25 2009:

Cont. reading: The Not Secret Iranian Nuclear Site

Sometimes I just don't feel right to write.

Open thread …

There is another boring anti-Iran OpEd in the New York Times by Ray Takeyh and Suzanne Maloney. As usual it mangles the facts, gives a false diagnosis of the situation and comes up with the wrong policy prescription. "Iran wants nukes, the government there is divided, there is no one to talk to, thus more sanctions (and biw let's bomb Iran)."

I will not bother to discuss it in detail but want to mark two issues if only to set the record straight.

The authors write:

[Ahmedinejad's] fall from grace has been fierce and fast. […] The most devastating blow came in May from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who publicly repudiated his hand-picked protégé in a clash over presidential powers.

While there was one of the regular tussles in the Iranian power structures during April and early May since the end of that month the situation has decidedly changed and it is not what the op-ed authors say:

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a public endorsement of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday as he looked to resolve a months-long rift among the country's conservative power elites.

"While there are weaknesses and problems … the composition of the executive branch is good and appropriate, and the government is working. The government and parliament must help each other," Ayatollah Khamenei said in an address to parliament members, later shown on state television.

But a united Iran does not fit the narrative the op-ed authors want to tell, they therefore just ignore the real situation.

Then there is this outright lie:

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s interest in dialogue was not motivated by any appreciation of American civilization or an impulse to reconcile. Rather, the provocative president saw talks as a means of boosting his stature at home and abroad while touting his vision of a strong nuclear-armed Iran.

Sure – like he touted in an interview in October 2005:

"Our religion prohibits us from having nuclear arms and our religious leader has prohibited it from the point of view of religious law. It's a closed road," the Khaleej Times quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

or when he touted at the UN summit on April 29 2009:

Allow me, as the elected President of the Iranian people, to outline the other main elements of my country’s initiative regarding the nuclear issue:

1. The Islamic Republic of Iran reiterates its previously and repeatedly declared position that in accordance with our religious principles, pursuit of nuclear weapons is prohibited. …

or in May 4 2010 at a UN NPT conference:

… the great Iranian nation, does not need the atomic bomb for its advancement and does not regard it as a means for its grandeur and pride.

or in that Larry King interview on September 22 2010

"We are not seeking the bomb. We have no interest in it. And we do not think that it is useful."

Yes, Ahmedinejad is certainly touting a lot and consistently – AGAINST an Iran with nuclear weapons.

And while we are at it – congrats to Iran for launching its second satellite.