Urban Vancouver

Bush visits Iraq Veterans

As we come to understand that stockpiling of oil by various world powers is for more than domestic use, and also to the realization that as oil is the most essential element of modern warfare and that this is a strong indicator of a huge and virtually all encompassing global struggle, Noami Wolf details how we are and will be kept in control.

She compares the Bush Administration’s anti-terrorism “watch list” to citizen surveillance tools used by authoritarian governments.

In the spring of 2007 a group of 8 Iraqi women – and a six year old child – participated in a unique creative event. Using digital photography, the women set out at considerable risk to make deeply personal and emotional photo stories of their lives in Iraq, now.
http://www.openshutters.org/index.htm

http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/davis10-26-07_detail.asp?picnum=13

In Artnet, October 26th, Ben Davies wrote on the work of Shirana Shahbazi, recently shown at the Swiss Institute in New YorK.

A Democratic congressman accused AIPAC of having “pushed” the Iraq war.

“AIPAC is the most powerful lobby and has pushed this war from the beginning,” U.S. Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) said in this month’s Tikkun magazine. “Because they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful—most of them are quite wealthy—they have been able to exert power.”

An Iranian diplomat said in New York on Wednesday that Hamas as a party with deep popular base among the Palestinian people, cannot be excluded.

Ahmadinejad stated that he had generally no objections to Oliver Stones’ proposal for making a biopic about him. However, Iran’s president in a news conference explained that the Iranian officials should be aware of this documentary’s framework.

In a dispatch posted on its website Saturday, Quds Press reported that the head of the Union of Tribes of Western Iraq in the area of the Upper Euphrates near the Syrian border had disclosed that the “Israeli” Mossad had increased its presence in those areas, beginning two months ago. He said that US forces are extending protection to the Mossad’s cars and headquarters in the area.

Radiation levels in selected regions of Iraq’s southern province of Basra warn of imminent danger to thousands of local residents who might be more prone to cancer and birth deformities, according to Khajak Vartanian, an environmental radiation measurement specialist from the province.

Bush Administration plans to sell $20 billion of sophisticated weapons to Saudi Arabia and five other Arab monarchies are likely to backfire and produce less regional security. Far from balancing Sunni Arab states against Shia Iran, such massive arms sales may ignite conflicts that will make the current war in Iraq look like child’s play.

Europe and America have been long-term partners as well as rivals. New spheres of influence between the European Union and the United States have unfolded. The Middle East and its peripheral geographic areas lie at the heart of this process.

In the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a unified stance has developed within both the E.U. and NATO in regards to this geopolitical re-division. This unified stance is a reflection of an unfolding political and strategic consensus between the U.S., Britain, France, and Germany.

They thought Iraq would be a cakewalk. After all, for years, its army was being deprived of potential recruits in preparedness for an attack. Half a million Iraqi children were killed[i] during the 13 years of sanctions leading to the 2003 invasion – “Mission Accomplished”.

WASHINGTON, Aug 14 (IPS) – When a top U.S. commander in Iraq reported last week that attacks by Shiite militias with links to Iran had risen to 73 percent of all July attacks that had killed or wounded U.S. forces in Baghdad, he claimed it was because of an effort by Iran to oust the United States from Iraq, referring to “intelligence reports” of a “surge” in Iranian assistance.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, signalled his determination to counter US global power yesterday by meeting his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, in a demonstration of growing Iranian influence in Afghanistan.

The idea that the US could be considering classifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a “terrorist” organization, based upon some dubious evidence that the organization is supplying some weapons-in particular those shaped charges that have been so effective in roadside bombs against US military vehicles-is pretty preposterous when you consider the source.

The unprecedented move by the United States to designate a branch of another sovereign nation’s armed forces, in this case Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a “terrorist” organization [1], is only the latest episode of a menacing plan that has taken years to implement.