When the news about chemical weapons use in Syria hit the headlines again last week, I wrote that the whole debate on the issue was bogus. I argued that the alleged use of chemical weapons didn’t change the fact that the administration sees war in Syria as too costly and that, in any case, chemical weapons aren’t any different from the conventional military means that have already killed tens of thousands.
RT | April 30, 2013
Seeking to expand in its export markets, Russia’s gas major Gazprom is now looking to develop terminals to process liquefied natural gas as well as distribution networks in Japan.
Japan is largely dependent on gas exports, as the country consumes above 100 billion cubic metres of gas a year while producing domestically no more than 4 billion. Since the Fukushima disaster in 2011 Japan is seeing a greater need for gas.
RT | April 29, 2013
President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe say the countries foreign ministers are to resume speedy talks on a peace treaty that was suspended in 2003.
“The heads of the two nations have expressed their resolution to overcome the existing differences in the parties’ positions and to sign the peace treaty by finally solving the question in a mutually acceptable form,” reads a joint statement after a meeting between the two men.
RT | April 29, 2013
Russia and Japan have launched a new tool for the development of mutual investments. The new Russo-Japanese investment platform involves injections starting from $1 billion and is aimed at boosting Russia’s Far East.
The agreement was reached on an official visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Moscow where he met with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. It was the first official trip by a Japanese Premier to Russia for ten years.
I am pleased to introduce the latest addition to the Antiwar.com staff, our new Contributing Editor, Lucy Steigerwald.
Lucy was previously an Associate Editor at Reason magazine, where she wrote on issues ranging from drones, the drug war, the US justice system, politics, the warfare state, and everything in between. Before that, Lucy worked briefly at the Pittsburgh City Paper.
Atlantic Community
April 30, 2013
Sweden: A Special NATO Partner?
Ryan C. Hendrickson
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[I]t was during NATO’s Operation Unified Protector in Libya that Sweden reached a new level of partnership, which has no parallels among partner states.
Interfax
April 30, 2013
Current Georgian army much larger than in August 2008 – South Ossetian President
TSKHINVAL: Solid protection of South Ossetia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity remains the most important sphere of the country’s foreign policy, South Ossetian President Leonid Tibilov said on Tuesday while delivering his first statement to the people and parliament since he took office.
Looks to me as if the traitorous nations doing the deals are largely the US/Israel subordinates in the GCC.Israel is the big winner and the Palestinians are getting railroaded.. :To rush or push (something) through quickly in order to prevent careful consideration and possible criticism or obstruction
Al-Akhbar | April 30, 2013
A Palestinian man stabbed dead an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, the Israeli ambulance service and police said, in what may have been a response to a violent settler attack on a nearby village one day earlier that left two elderly Palestinians hospitalized.
By Hüsnü Mahalli | Al-Akhbar | April 29, 2013
Istanbul – At a press conference attended by nearly a hundred Turkish and foreign reporters, Murat Karayilan, acting leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), announced his group’s plan for reconciliation with the Turkish government.
RT | April 30, 2013
The Russian Justice Ministry has published an order for all NGOs that register as foreign agents, telling them to detail the spending of their funds every three months.
The ministry also instructs those groups with foreign agent status to prepare reports on their activities and management every six months and a full audit of their accounting books once a year.
Press TV – April 30, 2013
Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has received approval from the country’s constitutional court to run for reelection next year.
Bolivia’s Constitutional court president Ruddy Flores said on Monday that Morales could run for his third consecutive presidential term.
This is while only two consecutive terms are allowed under the country’s new constitution.
By Ryan Mallett-Outtrim | Venezuelanalysis | April 29, 2013
Mérida – Venezuela and Cuba signed 51 bilateral agreements related to energy management and social programmes in areas including healthcare, education and recreation this past weekend and pledged to spend $2 billion on bilateral social development projects this year.
The agreements were signed during Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s visit to Cuba over the weekend.
Has Syria crossed the “red line” that warrants a U.S. military invasion? Has it not? The political establishment in the United States seems at odds with itself. Obama’s government cannot speak with one voice on the issue, and the U.S. media is likewise spewing from both sides of its mouth in an attempt to reconcile [...]
Dozens of metal and wooden tents cling to the rocky hillside, just outside of Jerusalem along the road leading to the Dead Sea, while the unmistakable red roofs of Israeli settlements peak out from behind opposite hilltops. For 49-year-old Eid Hamis Jahalin, this quiet spot symbolises the potential centre of peace in the region, and [...]
Jeremy Scahill’s new book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, is sort of like approaching a dark cavity in an old tree. How many of us would instinctively cry out, “I don’t want to look – there will be creepy crawly things in there and I’m better off not knowing!” Life is filled with [...]
“The worst mistake of my presidency,” said Ronald Reagan of his decision to put Marines into the middle of Lebanon’s civil war, where 241 died in a suicide bombing of their barracks. And if Barack Obama plunges into Syria’s civil war, it could consume his presidency, even as Iraq consumed the presidency of George W. [...]
Attacks struck Shi'ite cities and neighborhoods south of Baghdad today. At least 49 people were killed 100 more were wounded in them.
I am truly appalled by the actions shown by the American public, especially the citizens of Boston and Watertown, in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon drill and operation.... It was disgusting to watch these people cheer on their police forces with shouts of "USA!
By Sam Pizzigati · OtherWords · April 24, 2013
Under current U.S. law, all our publicly traded corporations must annually disclose exactly what they pay their top executives. So why do all those CEO pay scorecards we see every spring show such different results?
Drones are the weapon of choice for fighting undeclared wars all over the Middle East. Surveillance drones are on the cusp of becoming that for U.S. government and law enforcement officials as they continue their efforts to observe everyone as much as and as often as possible.
After you have read..Israel: Extreme claims for geopolitical gains read below Notice that Russia, Syria & Iran, in unison, have been reminding us all of the lies employed by the US and others that led up to the illegitimate, immoral attack on Iraq.
Civil Georgia
April 27, 2013
Saakashvili Meets Biden
Sociopaths sharing a smile (file photograph)
Tbilisi: President Saakashvili met U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on April 26 at the Sedona Forum, an annual event organized by the McCain Institute for International Leadership in Sedona, Arizona.
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Leo Tolstoy: Selections on war
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Leo Tolstoy
Translated by V. Tchertkoff and A. C. Fifield
Painting by Ilya Repin
Notes for Officers (1901)
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
April 23, 2013
Germany proposes rapid-response EU military training corps
Helen Maguire
By Peter Hart | FAIR | April 29, 2013
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman doesn’t understand how on earth the Boston bombers could rationalize their act of violence–and believes that some aspects of Muslim culture must answer for it.
By Michael Hoffmanwww.revisionisthistory.orgI am currently writing the introduction, compiling the bibiliography and designing the cover for our forthcoming book, Testing the Talmud, which was written by a professor of Hebrew at a major university.
RT | April 29, 2013
A US government task force is drafting FBI-backed legislation that would penalize companies like Google and Facebook for refusing to comply with wiretap orders, media report.
In the new legislation being drafted by US law enforcement officials, refusal to cooperate with the FBI could cost a tech company tens of thousands of dollars in fines, the Washington Post quoted anonymous sources as saying.
Allegations of Syrian chemical weapons.... Following up on the rather sudden and surprising chemical weapons in Syria meme bomb being dropped and the subsequent fall out. I see mention of Israel as the ‘joker’ in all of this... Took some time to read up on the Joker. Jokers are wild. The Joker can be extremely beneficial or extremely detrimental, depending on the game being played.
The International Committee of the Red Cross wrote a three-volume Report of the on its Activities during World War II and published in Geneva in 1948. Contrast this to the camps run by the Jews in the Soviet Union where we know tens of millions did die. Or compare the treatment of Palestinians in Israeli prisons or Muslims in those secret torture camps run by the CIA under the control of the Zionist puppets Bush and Obama.
Press TV – April 29, 2013
Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar al-Jaafari says Britain and France are trying to undermine Damascus’s official request from the United Nation to investigate chemical weapons use in Aleppo.
By Chris Carlson | Venezuelanalysis | April 28, 2013
Maracaibo – Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced yesterday that they would not approve Henrique Capriles’ additional demands for the auditing of the April 14 elections, and explained that he lacks any proof of fraud.
The announcement was made on Saturday night via a televised statement by CNE President Tibisay Lucena.
Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down. These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather [...]
The new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will fly its first mission on June 14, 2013, but it won’t be over Afghanistan, Syria or Yemen. It’ll be over the mythical town of Smallville, in the upcoming Man of Steel. In reality, the F-35 may never fly; the program is currently grounded due to flight difficulties after [...]
The Standard
April 29, 2013
Nato warship set to dock at Mombasa port
By Philip Mwakio
ITS San Marco
A naval warship belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), which is part of allied forces combating piracy off the Horn of Africa, is expected to dock at the port of Mombasa on Labour Day.
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Georg Brandes: Selections on war
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Georg Brandes
From The Conquest of Basra (1914)
Translated by Catherine D. Groth
Iraq pulled the broadcast licenses of 10 satellite television stations, claiming the stations are provoking sectarian unrest. Internationally respected al-Jazeera was among the stations punished. Security forces also arrested a tribal leader who had been promoting demonstrations. Meanwhile, at least seven Iraqis were killed and nine more were wounded in comparatively light violence.
As America hardens into empire, and the assumptions and conceits of imperialism become the social and political norm, the American “left” is morphing into a mutant caricature of itself: we see this in the recent decision by the San Francisco “Gay Pride” parade committee to revoke an earlier decision to honor whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Manning, [...]
In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger reveals that the story of the first Australians is still one of poverty and humiliation, while their land yields the world's biggest resources boom.
Yes, it is Sunday, and first I want to let everyone know that I am feeling much better today.... Better than I have for the last two weeks.... I have been suffering from a head cold, migraine headaches, body chills, etc... Many of the symptoms of Influenza but without the extra great things that come along with having the Flu itself.... I have noticed that many people have had much the same illness that I have had, and it does make me wonder....
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