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China, Russia to veto force against Iran

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn’t Fit

sent by Dave Muller (southnews)

[no source cited] – May 17, 2006

China, Russia to veto force against Iran

RUSSIA and China will not vote for the use of force in resolving the
Iranian nuclear dispute.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said yesterday after meeting with
Chinese officials in Beijing that dialogue was needed to resolve the
stand-off with Tehran.

"Russia and China will not vote for the use of force in resolving this
issue," Mr Lavrov said. "China and Russia agree the Iranian nuclear
issue should be resolved through dialogue."

Western governments have urged Iran to give up nuclear development,
which they fear is aimed at producing weapons.

The U.S. earlier sought a UN Security Council resolution to declare the
program a threat to world peace and subject Iran to sanctions or even
military action if it is not halted. Beijing and Moscow hold veto power
in the Security Council.

In the latest diplomatic initiative, the European Union offered Iran
economic incentives to stop enriching uranium. But the Iranian president
has rejected that.

The Russian-Chinese announcement came as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
said the international community must take "very urgent steps" to deal
with the dual problems of North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Mr Annan, speaking ahead of a meeting with South Korean President Roh
Moo-hyun in Seoul last night, urged all parties to stalled six-nation –
the U.S., North Korea, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea – talks on
North Korea’s programs to resume them, saying human rights and other
topics should not be allowed to block the discussions.

"The nuclear issue is by far the most important and should be given a
separate category and priority as compared with human rights and other
activities," Mr Annan said.

He also urged Iran to work with European countries to settle the dispute
about the country’s nuclear plans.

"Until recently we were focused on North Korea. Today we also have
Iran," he said. "The international community has to take very urgent
steps to deal with these issues."

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Afgh: UN Mine Agency Car Attacked by Taliban

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn’t Fit

Reuters – May 17, 2006
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid…

Suicide attack on car of U.N. Afghan mine agency

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A suicide attacker in Afghanistan rammed a
car packed with explosives into a vehicle of a U.N. mine-clearing agency on
Wednesday, killing himself and wounding the agency driver, police said.

The attack, the latest in a string of suicide and roadside bomb blasts
blamed on the Taliban, occurred on the road between the main southern town
of Kandahar and its airport.

"The suicide attacker killed himself but thank God, no one else got killed,"
provincial police chief Abdul Malik told Reuters. The driver was slightly
wounded, he said.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, claimed responsibility. The
insurgents have intensified their campaign against foreign forces, the
government and anyone deemed to be supporting it.

The vehicle attacked, which belonged to the U.N. Mine Action Center for
Afghanistan, was severely damaged and caught fire. It was the second attack
on a U.N. vehicle in Afghanistan in a week.

A driver for the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and a doctor working for a
German aid agency were killed, and a UNICEF staffer seriously wounded, in a
rocket-propelled grenade attack in the western province of Herat on Friday.

The Taliban were ousted by U.S.-led forces in late 2001 after refusing to
hand over Osama bin Laden, architect of the September 11 attacks on the
United States.

But nearly five years later, violence in some parts of the country is the
worst it has been since the end of Taliban rule. More than 500 people, many
of them militants, have been killed this year.

© Reuters 2006.

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Europeans knew of CIA Rendition flights: US officials

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn’t Fit

[For ONCE, the USA might actually be telling the truth on this. It's
impossible to believe that the intelligence services of the EU countries
who are acting so innocent now were really in the dark. It smacks of the
cattle cars rattling toward the Nazi camps that absolutely no one seemed
to notice. -NY Transfer]

Reuters – May 17, 2006
http://today.reuters.com/misc/PrinterFriendlyPopup.aspx?type=topNews&…

Europeans knew of CIA flights: US officials

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) – A wave of CIA flights that secretly
transferred terrorist suspects across Europe could only have been carried
out with the knowledge of host nations, EU investigators on Wednesday quoted
U.S. officials as saying.

Up to 50 people were moved across the continent to jails in third countries
where they faced torture and other abuses, officials from a European
Parliament probe into the flights, known as renditions, told a news
conference.

"All the people we met (in the United States) suggested or confirmed that
the program of renditions in Europe could not have been carried out without
the knowledge and support of the governments," said Carlos Coelho, a
Portuguese member of the European Parliament commission probing the flights.

"Officials from the State Department told us, in more diplomatic terms, that
the United States had never violated the sovereignty of European Union
member states.

"Others admitted the European governments’ involvement more directly," said
Coelho of meetings during the commission’s trip to the United States from
May 8 to 12.

Fellow investigator Claudio Fava of Italy said 30 to 50 people had been
handed over by the United States since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the
United States and the launch of the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

"We also have confirmation from a reliable source within the CIA that the
sequestration of Abu Omar in Milan could not have happened without the
knowledge of the Italian intelligence services," Fava said.

Italian and German prosecutors are investigating the case of Omar, an
Egyptian man they believe was snatched on a Milan street by a team of CIA
agents in February 2003 and flown via Germany to Egypt, where he later said
he was tortured.

A German national, Khaled el-Masri, is suing the former head of the CIA over
his alleged rendition from Macedonia to Afghanistan, where he says the
United States held him in jail for months as a terrorist suspect in 2004.
German prosecutors are also probing that case.

Sweden’s parliamentary ombudsman has criticized the security services over
the expulsion of two Egyptian terrorism suspects who were handed over to
U.S. agents and flown home aboard a U.S. government-leased plane in 2001.

Dick Marty, a Swiss investigator from the Council of Europe human rights
watchdog which is separately probing the renditions, has branded the
transfers as "outsourcing of torture".

© Reuters 2006.

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Iran Says EU is Offering "Candy for Gold"

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn’t Fit

[Iran took one look at the EU's "sweetener" and told them to suck it
off their own thumb. They don't need the EU's light-water reactor, and
the EU does need Iran's oil. -NYTr]

Al Jazeera – May 17, 2006
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/773F2935-C4FC-4B3C-9FE6-78C8AD…

Iran says EU offer like ‘candy for gold’

Iran’s president has dismissed a EU offer of a light-water reactor in return
for giving up enriching uranium.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad likened the offer to accepting candy in payment for
gold.

"They say we want to give Iranians incentives, but they think they are
dealing with a four-year-old, telling him they will give him candies or
walnuts and take gold from him in return," he told a crowd in the central
city of Arak on Wenesday.

In the speech, broadcast live on the state television, he said the EU should
not "force governments and nations who are signatories to the atomic
Non-Proliferation Treaty to pull out of it".

Britain, France and Germany plan to offer the light-water reactor as part of
a package of incentives to Iran in return for the freezing of its uranium
enrichment programme, diplomats have said.

Token offer

Nuclear experts believe it is more difficult to use the light-water reactor
to develop nuclear weapons than a heavy-water plant.

Iran says it is enriching uranium as part of a civilian nuclear programme to
satisfy the country’s energy needs.

However, the US and EU accuse Tehran of using this programme to cover up its
pursuit of nuclear weapons.

EU diplomats said on Tuesday that they would be surprised if Iran accepted
the offer, but would take rejection as a confirmation of their suspicions
regarding Tehran’s nuclear aspirations.

The EU trio first proposed offering Iran light-water technology in 2005
after two years of negotiations. At the time, the Iranians said the offer
lacked specific incentives.

Diplomats said the new offer would be more specific, partly because they
were now confident of full US support.

The offer is being made, they said, to demonstrate to Russia and China, the
most sceptical members of the UN security council, that they were not
depriving Iran of the opportunity of a civilian programme.

Meeting delayed

Also on Wednesday, a high-level meeting on Iran has been postponed while the
United States lobbies other UN Security Council permanent members to harden
proposed penalties if Tehran does not give up uranium enrichment, diplomats
said.

The London meeting of senior representatives from the five permanent council
members and Germany was to have been on Friday.

But diplomats told The Associated Press that it had been moved to Tuesday or
Wednesday to allow more time for phone discussions on incentives and
penalties to be offered to Tehran, a diplomat said, demanding anonymity
because of the confidential nature of the information.

Agencies

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Iran turns tables on EU ‘incentives’

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn’t Fit

AP via Al Jazeera – May 17, 2006
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E379C03F-6759-4080-9189-8C4C4E…

Iran turns tables on EU ‘incentives’

Iran has dismissed an EU offer of a advanced nuclear reactor in return for
giving up its uranium enrichment programme, instead offering trade
concessions to Europe if it stops opposing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, heaped scorn on the offer in a
nationally televised speech on Wednesday.

"They say they want to offer us incentives," he said. "We tell them: Keep
the incentives as a gift for yourself. We have no hope of anything good from
you."

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, joined the
counter-attack, mockingly offering the Europeans trade concessions if they
dropped their opposition to its nuclear programme.

"We are prepared to offer economic incentives to Europe in return for
recognising our right [to enrich uranium]," state radio quoted him as
saying.

Lower risk

The EU is drawing up a package of trade and technological incentives –
including a light-water reactor – for Iran to stop enriching uranium.

The West fears the enriched uranium could be diverted to build a nuclear
weapon but Tehran says it only wants to generate energy.

A light-water reactor is considered less likely to be misused for nuclear
proliferation than is a heavy-water facility.

Ahmadinejad issued his retort to the EU in the city of Arak, the site of a
heavy-water reactor that is scheduled for completion by early 2009.

Such facilities produce plutonium as a by-product, which can be used to
build nuclear weapons.

Broken trust

The president said Tehran had put its trust in the European Union in 2003
and suspended its nuclear activities as a confidence-building measure.

The deal called for guarantees that Iran’s nuclear programme was only
intended to building reactors for electricity generation and not to develop
weapons.

Iran agreed to the request, but negotiations collapsed in August 2005 when
the Europeans said the best guarantee was for Iran to permanently give up
its uranium enrichment programme.

Iran responded by resuming reprocessing activities at its uranium conversion
facility in Isfahan.

"We won’t be bitten twice," Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday.

In his speech on television, he said Iran would continue enrichment and
scolded the Europeans for doing the work of the Americans.

"We recommend that you not sacrifice your interests for the sake of others,"
he said.

AP

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Germany illegally jailing political writers again
Dateline Thursday, May 12, 2006

As a European reporters pressure Washington to come clean on any
possible "secret prisons" America may have in Europe, many people are
wondering if the EU government itself has any "secret prisons"?

A political writer named Germar Rudolf was recently imprisoned in
Germany on charges he wrote a book claiming a smaller number of Jews may
have died in WWII, less than the official 6 million figure. Germar is
actually pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli.

Germar is now being held in a prison in Germany, in solitary confinement
23 hours a day for his non-violent, non-racist writings.  No one even
knows where this prison is located in Europe. The address listed on his
website is a post office box

http://germarrudolf.com/support/help_germar.php
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.stuttg…

http://germarrudolf.com/index.html

Please contact the German embassy and demand Germany stop jailing
non-violent writers who are non-racist, pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli.
http://www.germany.info/relaunch/index.html

If Germany wants to jail people who write books that claim violence and
war is good, then fine. But Germany should not jail writers who promote
peace and respect for all cultures.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm
Speaking Truth To Power
A Time to Break Silence

By Rev. Martin Luther King

By 1967,
King had become the country’s
most prominent opponent of
the Vietnam War,
and a staunch critic
of overall U.S. foreign policy,

which he deemed militaristic.

In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered
at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 —
a year to the day before he was murdered —
King called the United States
"the greatest purveyor of
violence in the world today."

Time magazine called the speech
"demagogic slander that sounded
like a script for Radio Hanoi,"

and the Washington Post declared that
King had "diminished his usefulness to
his cause, his country, his people."

Audio mp3 of Address

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4078.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6435.htm
Elite Propaganda

The Myth of the Liberal Media
The Propaganda Model of News
Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky
demolish one of the central
tenets of our political culture,
the idea of the "liberal media."

Instead, utilizing a systematic model
based on massive empirical research,
they reveal the manner in which the
news media are so subordinated to
corporate and conservative interests
that their function can only be
described as that of
"elite propaganda."

AFP
Édition du lundi 15 mai 2006

Winnipeg — Les ministres et délégués des pays de la Francophonie se
sont engagés hier à Winnipeg à renforcer leur présence en matière
de maintien de la paix, au terme d’une conférence marquée par le coup
de colère du Sénégal contre l’accueil réservé par le Canada à
Abdou Diouf, secrétaire général d’Organisation internationale de la
Francophonie (OIF).

S’exprimant pour la première fois sur cette affaire, M. Diouf a
déclaré hier à la presse n’être «pas étonné qu’il y ait eu de
l’émotion au Sénégal concernant ce qui s’est passé». «Je suis
citoyen sénégalais et ancien président de la République du
Sénégal», a-t-il tenu à souligner.

Le chef de la diplomatie sénégalaise Cheikh Tidiane Gadio avait
exigé la veille, en pleine séance plénière, des «excuses
publiques» du premier ministre canadien Stephen Harper pour cet
«incident grave».

Ottawa a rejeté la demande sénégalaise en rappelant que le ministre
canadien des Affaires étrangères Peter MacKay avait déjà exprimé
ses «profonds regrets» à M. Diouf pour cette affaire qui a jeté un
froid sur la conférence.

Une réussite

La ministre canadienne de la Coopération internationale et de la
Francophonie, Josée Verner, a cependant qualifié de «réussite»
cette réunion qui «a renforcé le potentiel de la Francophonie à
résoudre les conflits».

Les ministres — une vingtaine de pays africains — et délégués des
53 pays et gouvernements membres de l’OIF ont notamment réitéré leur
engagement à «assurer une plus forte participation des pays de l’OIF
aux opérations de maintien de la paix, en étroite coopération avec
l’ONU», ainsi qu’à «renforcer les capacités des États dont les
moyens sont insuffisants», dans une déclaration commune.

Ils ont également demandé à M. Diouf «d’examiner les possibilités
pour l’OIF d’être associée» à des programmes comme Recamp
(Renforcement des capacités africaines de maintien de la paix) mis sur
pied par la France. Ils ont enfin souhaité un renforcement de la
formation linguistique des contingents non francophones déployés dans
des pays de l’OIF.

Plus de la moitié des Casques bleus déployés dans le monde le sont
dans des pays de l’OIF, comme la Côte d’Ivoire, le Burundi ou Haïti.