In These New Times

A new paradigm for a post-imperial world

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SWP: fellow-travellers of British imperialism

Posted by seumasach on June 26, 2008

 

Zimbabwe: Mugabe cracks down on opposition.(Socialist Worker)

 

 The SWP has adopted openly pro-imperialist politics over Zimbabwe. Under the veneer of supporting worker’s power they are helping to hand Zimbabwe back to the imperialist in London and Washington. Our message on this issue is simple;

Hands off Zimbabwe! Defend Zimbabwe’s sovereignty!

 

(Posted with our own commentaries)

Ken Olende looks at the current crisis and what the opposition can do

The situation in Zimbabwe continued to deteriorate as Socialist Worker went to press.

 

[Support for the opposition is assumed both by the author and in the reader. The situation in the world is deteriorating; is it all Mugabe’s fault?]

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“Moderate” Sunni religious leader to the occupation: “Get out

Posted by seumasach on June 26, 2008

THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 2008

(Missing Links)

There was elation in the long-war community in April 2007 when it was announced that an association of Sunni religious scholars was being set up to challenge the authority of the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI), led by Harith al-Dhari, because this was regarded as a repudiation by Sunnis of the resistance-oriented AMSI. Included within the new “mainstream” group was a fatwa-issuing team, and it was headed by one Abdul Malik alSaadi, a highly-regarded Sunni scholar. 

This morning we learn that Sheikh alSaadi has issued a fatwa that bars anyone from signing any agreement in any sphere of activity with the occupation until such time as there has been a total withdrawal of their military forces from Iraq. Haq News Agency says the fatwa “absolutely bars the formation of any agreement in any sphere with the occupation, unless after their complete withdrawal from Iraq and their giving back of complete and real sovereignty to the state….And after their withdrawal, this [agreements] will be permitted economically, not with respect to security”. The fatwa is based on Islamic history, the principle being that since the time of the Prophet it has not been permitted for Islamic governments to form agreements with powers that are occupying their territory militarily, but that non-security agreements are permitted with non-Islamic entities otherwise. 

There is also this:

“Those who govern Iraq at the present time, although they have lost sovereignty, still most of them are members of Islamic parties, and it is incumbent on them to follow the Islamic word, particularly since it is now clear to them what was the game of the occupation or the waging of war against Iraq under the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, or the toppling of the former regime, which did not do one-hundredth of what the occupation has done to the people of Iraq”.

Which means that the position of the Sunni religious authorities, both AMSI and the “mainstream” is essentially the same as that of the Sadr trend, namely that no agreement is permissible until the foreign forces withdraw from Iraq completely, and full sovereignty is restored to the country.

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US/NATO crisis in Afghanistan generates greater pressure on Pakistan

Posted by seumasach on June 26, 2008

 

James Cogan(WSWS)

26th June, 2008

 

NATO forces and the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai were compelled to launch a major operation last week to dislodge hundreds of anti-occupation fighters who had seized control of villages in the Arghandab valley, just 16 kilometres to the northwest of Kandahar city. Some of the 1,000-plus prisoners who were freed during the assault on the Sarposa prison in Kandahar on June 13 may have been involved. They reportedly linked up with insurgents who had recently crossed into Afghanistan from safe-havens inside Pakistan.

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Russia joins the war in Afghanistan

Posted by seumasach on June 26, 2008

The minutea of the diplomatic manouvering outlined below are well worth following: at some point, these processes will crystalise in a shift away from NATO influence and towards a greater role for regional powers in stabilising the Afghan situation.

By M K Bhadrakumar (Asia Times)

Moscow is staging an extraordinary comeback on the Afghan chessboard after a gap of two decades following the Soviet Union’s nine-year adventure that ended in the withdrawal of its last troops from Afghanistan 1989. In a curious reversal of history, this is possible only with the acquiescence of the United States. Moscow is taking advantage of the deterioration of the war in Afghanistan and the implications for regional security could be far-reaching. 

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Zimbabwe at War

Posted by seumasach on June 25, 2008

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

By Stephen Gowans(What’s Left)

This is a war between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries; between nationalists and quislings; between Zimbabwean patriots and the US and Britain.

Should an election be carried out when a country is under sanctions and it is has been made clear to the electorate that the sanctions will be lifted only if the opposition party is elected? Should a political party which is the creation of, and is funded by, hostile foreign forces, and whose program is to unlatch the door from within to provide free entry to foreign powers to establish a neo-colonial rule, be allowed to freely operate? Should the leaders of an opposition movement that takes money from hostile foreign powers and who have made plain their intention to unseat the government by any means available, be charged with treason? These are the questions that now face (have long faced) the embattled government of Zimbabwe, and which it has answered in its own way, and which other governments, at other times, and have answered in theirs.

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Zimbabwe election: South Africa not attending crisis summit

Posted by seumasach on June 25, 2008

Is Mugabe the new Bin-Laden, the ultimate incarnation of evil, the anti-Christ himself.?Given the intensity of the media campaign against him you could be forgiven for thinking so. Not a word about the West’s economic war against Zimbabwe; not a word about how the Brits reneged on the Lancaster House agreement; not a word about how the West manipulates and funds the opposition and those bodies such as NGOs which it styles as “civil society”. And all this from people who think they can just waltz into African countries and take what they want. Obviously they think Africa is a soft touch, at least compared to the Middle East where the waltz is proving more of a dance of death for London and Washington’s vain pretensions to world domination.

And perhaps this is the key to what is happening: after Iraq and Lebanon they need a war they can win and what would be a “damned little sideshow” in the Great War on Terror comes to dominate our lives daily hate sessions at 6 and 10 pm. Meantime Bin-Laden’s alleged comrades enjoy mere house arrest. As in Orwell’s 1984 things are getting messy and we need daily briefings as to who the enemie du jour precisely is.

But with the changing of the guard in London and Washington and Sarkozy, Europe’s leading neo-con madman, preaching to the Israelis about sharing Jerusalem with the Palestinians, it does seem that the war in terror is beginning to wind down to be replaced by a return to the doctrine of the City on the Hill whereby our influence follows from our sheer moral righteousness plus our global networks of subversion( the Soros, Brzezinski school). In other words, pure fantasy. Whether it can go as far as an actual invasion of Zimbabwe,by reviving the notion of the Heart of Darkness, they are constructing, at the very least, a diversion from the mess they are in in Iraq where the military leadership has already attempted, on its own initiative, to extricate itself.

Whatever the motivation behing this campaign may be, now is the moment to defend the sovereignty of Zimbabwe and counter the endless stream of lies. We particularly recommend Stephen Gowan’s blog What’s Left for in-depth analysis of the imperialist campaign against Mugabe.

Allegra Stratton(Guardian)

25th June, 2008

Attempts to mount regional pressure on Mugabe to call off Friday’s presidential election were hampered today when it emerged the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, would not be attending an emergency meeting of African leaders.

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House demands action on mobile phone masts

Posted by seumasach on June 25, 2008

Cyprus Mail

IMMEDIATE measures must be taken in order to protect the public, and especially children, from the electromagnetic radiation of mobile telephone masts, the Chairman of the House Health Committee said yesterday.

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Wall Street Writes the Obituaries for U.S. Banks

Posted by seumasach on June 25, 2008


PRESS RELEASE(EIR)



June 23, 2008 (EIRNS)—While Wall Street and other media don’t want to admit the reality of the systemic financial collapse, the many obituaries for U.S. banks that fill their pages make it hard to miss. Things have become tough in the “post Bear Stearns” environment, the Wall Street Journal complains today.

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Obama Is A True Democratic Expansionist

Posted by seumasach on June 25, 2008

By John Pilger(New Statesman)
12th June,

2008

Truly exciting and historic moments have been fabricated around US presidential campaigns for as long as I can recall, generating bullshit on a grand scale

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EU looks to closer ties with Russia under Medvedev – Solana

Posted by seumasach on June 25, 2008

“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;

Who rules the Heartland commands the world-island;

Who rules the world-island controls the world.”

This is the Mackinder doctrine, the foundation of Anglo-American supremacy: the inexorable convergence of Russia and Europe sounds the death-knell of that supremacy.

Click here for an earlier Novosti article on this question.

BRUSSELS, June 25 (RIA Novosti) – The European Union is seeking closer ties with Russia under President Dmitry Medvedev, the EU foreign policy supremo said in an interview published on Wednesday.

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The Weapon of Mass Destruction Is Cancer

Posted by seumasach on June 25, 2008

R.B, Stuart

Huffington Post

June 24, 2008

In March, 2003 my sister, Army Captain Chaplain Fran E. Stuart was deployed to Iraq with the rest of her battalion, from Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, the 101st Airborne. The uncharted desert would not only hold uncertainty for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, but if she survived during her one-year deployment, she would return to the U. S. forever changed.

Although the changes that would occur two years to the day from her return home were changes she never could have fathomed. Not only had the desert sand, gun blasts and heat penetrated the armor of her psyche, but a carcinogen did too. It made a home in her body, mixed between the Anthrax Vaccine, depleted uranium, crude oil smog, and contaminated water dished up with every meal. It would, in two years, become part of the wrapping around her inner organs like an Octopus, gathering its fuel from her central abdomen. The volleyball size tumor would become the pregnancy she never had — and the birth of cancer she’d never forget.

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