position:leader

Far-right Japan Restoration Party defends wartime abuse of “comfort women” - World Socialist Web Site

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/23/osak-m23.html

Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, a leader of the far-right Japan Restoration Party (JRP), set off a firestorm in Asia and within Japan last week, by declaring that the Japanese army’s policy of keeping thousands of women as sex slaves throughout Asia during World War II was necessary.

#extrême-droite #japon

Les dangers d’Internet en Azerbaïdjan
3. Aller en prison, laver les chiottes ET tout le monde l’apprend grâce à... Internet
Photos Of Jailed Azerbaijani Activists Cleaning Toilets Spark Outcry
http://www.rferl.org/content/azerbaijan-activists-toilets/24985873.html

Si l’on en croit cet article d’Al Monitor, en Turquie, il y a deux camps : Erdogan d’un côté, et des malades mentaux antisémites de l’autre. Erdogan Confronts the Near Insanity Of His Opposition. Ambiance.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/reyhanli-bombing-watershed-moment-for-turkey.html

However, Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has had a different take on Reyhanli since the beginning. Spokesmen for the party, whose sympathies for the Assad regime — for ideological and sectarian reasons — have only been thinly veiled, rather implied that the Syrian opposition must be behind the bombings. One CHP speaker, Nihat Matkap, even offered a bizarre conspiracy theory by claiming that “there were strangely no Syrians on the streets right before the bombing.” In other words, he implied that Syrian refugees in Reyhanli were somehow informed about the bombing, and thus were collaborators of the crime. (To me, he sounded like a lunatic, similar to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists who keep claiming that Jews did not go to work in New York’s World Trade Center on 9/11.)
Soon, CHP’s leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu made another accusation, this time to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “The murderer of [the people of] Reyhanli,” he bluntly said, “is none other than Erdogan.” (A few days later, Erdogan sued Kilicdaroglu for these words, claiming that this is a personal insult.)

A more dramatic Kilicdaroglu statement came out in Europe and caused a political scandal. Speaking at a press conference during a visit to Brussels on May 15, Kilicdaroglu claimed that both Assad and Erdogan are “dictators,” and the difference between them is “only a nuance.” In the face of this claim — whose pro-Assadism was probably more intolerable than its anti-Erdoganism — Hannes Swoboda, president of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, who was supposed to meet Kilicdaroglu, canceled the meeting.

Nouveau clip du collectif “Kazeboon” (Menteurs), “Ikhwan Survive”

http://www.juancole.com/2013/05/survive-brotherhood-egyptian.html

#Ikhwan #Egypte #Kazeboon

Les surprises de l’élection présidentielle en Iran

Iran Surprises Again !

LobeLog.com

http://www.lobelog.com/iran-surprises-again

Okay, it is time to admit that the only thing predictable about Iranian politics these days is its unpredictability!

There are people who know Iran well and as early as a few months ago thought that the next president of the country was already decided by the powers that be. There are also others who will say that they predicted all this. I am not one of these.

I am stunned. As of late yesterday (Friday), I did not think that former president and current Expediency Council chair Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani would run for the presidency. All the talk about his entry – and the previous talk and hope about former president Mohammad Khatami’s entry – was mostly tactical, I thought. The loud calls – and pleas – for either Khatami or Hashemi Rafsanjani to run were to show the depth of their support among various sectors of Iranian society, from a good number of the urban middle classes to the business community. I thought it was sort of a flexing of social power muscle. But, given the hysterical reaction both former presidents elicit from the hardliners, I thought they would ultimately be reluctant to run, in the end preferring to throw their support to another candidate who would try to carefully pull the country to the middle.

Report: Former Egyptian President Mubarak says too early to judge Morsi - Middle East - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/report-former-egyptian-president-mubarak-says-too-early-to-judge-morsi-1.52

Former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak said it was too early to judge President Mohammed Morsi, saying the Islamist politician faced a difficult job, in comments billed as his first interview since his removal from power in 2011.

El-Watan newspaper said its journalist broke through security lines to speak to Mubarak on Saturday before his retrial on charges of complicity in the death of protesters killed in the popular uprising that swept him from office.

“He is a new president who is carrying out weighty missions for the first time, and we shouldn’t judge him now,” Mubarak said in the remarks published on Sunday.

El-Watan, which is fiercely critical of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, said its journalist spoke to Mubarak, 85, just before he entered the court.

Mubarak, who was president for almost 30 years, said he was saddened by what he described as the difficult conditions facing the poor and the Egyptian economy, which has been hammered by political instability that has frightened off tourists and investors.

“This is the secret of my sadness: to see the poor in this condition,” said Mubarak, who was toppled by an uprising fuelled by economic hardship.

He said he was worried by the prospect of Egypt concluding an agreement with the International Monetary Fund on a $4.8 billion loan seen as vital to supporting the economy. The loan would bring austerity measures likely to curb subsidy spending.

Economists fault the Mubarak-era subsidy regime for failing to target state support at the most needy. The Morsi administration says it wants to better direct the subsidies.

Mubarak said the poor were at the heart of his decision-making, especially when it came to subsidy spending on staples.

“I fear for the country because of the IMF loan,” he said. “Its terms are very difficult, and represent a great danger to the Egyptian economy later on. This will then hit the poor citizen, and the low-income bracket,” he said.

With parliamentary elections approaching later this year, the Morsi administration has yet to conclude an IMF deal.

Mubarak also said he was concerned about lax security, apparently referring to increased crime, and a rise in Islamist militancy in the Sinai Peninsula.

He added, “History will judge and I am still certain that the coming generations will view me fairly.”

Incidemment, l’accusation du Hezbollah en Bulgarie, mis en cause par l’ancien ministre de l’intérieur Tsvetan Tsvetanov, s’effondre : Bulgarian police seize 350,000 ’fake’ ballots.
http://www.aljazeera.com/video/europe/2013/05/2013511165252491385.html

Private BGNES news agency named the party as Borisov’s GERB, whose deputy leader Tsvetanov headed the interior ministry until GERB’s ousting from power in end-February.

The prosecution did not comment on this information.

The allegations come at an awkward time for Tsvetanov, already embroiled in late April in a scandal about alleged illegal wiretapping of the party’s opponents and businesspeople.

#zionist_hoodlums

Le Pape Tawadros II en visite historique au Vatican

http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/71044.aspx

#religions #coptes

Les ambiguïtés du discours de Nasrallah et les problèmes de sa traduction vus par la BBC

Hezbollah chief’s ambiguous phrase on Syria arms raises translation headache
Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah’s mention in his 9 May speech of new weaponry has had translators and journalists scratching their heads and scouring their dictionaries for a clear, consistent and meaningful translation.

Differences have emerged in Western news agency reports of the speech, Arabic English-language media and even Iranian news sources; all of them coming up with alternative phrases for a key passage.

In the literal translation of his speech, broadcast live on Al-Manar TV, Nasrallah says Syria would supply his movement with “qualitative weaponry” that would be considered as a “balance-breaker” in the region.

BBC Monitoring translates Nasrallah as saying in his speech: “The first response, you Israelis must know, if you considered Syria as a weapon corridor to the resistance, then Syria will give weaponry to the Resistance. This is a major strategic decision. More than that, if you [Israel] claim that your aggression’s aim is to prevent the expansion of the Resistance’s capability, then Syria will give the Resistance qualitative weaponry that the Resistance has never obtained until now. This is higher than a matter of capability expansion; we went for a balance-breaker.”

The key phrase in Nasrallah’s speech is “silahan naw’iyyan lam tahsal ’alayhi al-muqawama hatta al-an”, which BBC Monitoring translates as “qualitative weaponry that the Resistance has never obtained until now”.

Elsewhere, Nasrallah’s choice of the Arabic word for “qualitative” - “naw’i” - has also been interpreted as “game-changing”, “sophisticated” and “strategic”. Reuters, for example, quotes Nasrallah as saying: “then Syria will give the resistance sophisticated weapons the like of which it hasn’t seen before” Meanwhile AFP quotes the same passage from the Hezbollah leader as “Syria will provide (Hezbollah) with game-changing weapons it has not had before”

BBC Monitoring notes that Nasrallah uses the Arabic word “silah” - the singular form denoting weapon or weaponry - instead of the plural form “asliha” for weapons. It is used throughout in conjunction with the ambiguous term “qualitative”.

In the passage, Nasrallah uses the phrase “kasir lil-tawazun” (balance shifting, literally balance breaking), which may account for the “game-changing” translation elsewhere.

Iranian, pan-Arab coverage
Iran’s conservative student news agency ISNA quotes the key passage from Nasrallah in this way: “Syria will provide the Resistance with strategic weapons which the Resistance has never had before We are ready to receive any type of weapon; even if it upsets the current balance in the region.” (Farsi: amma [Syria] selahhay-e stratezhiqki be moghavemat khahad daad ke ta konoon moghavemat aan ra dar ekhtiyar nadashte ast.)

Iran’s conservative news website Tabnak uses the following phrase as a direct quote: “They will be unique weapons which the Resistance has never possessed before.” (Farsi: [Syria] selahhay-e monhaserbefardi khahad daad ke ta konoon moghavemat aan ra dar ekhtiyar nadashte ast.)

Iran’s English-language Press TV also chooses the term “unique” on its website: “Nasrallah said Hezbollah has the capability to obtain what he described as unique weapons that could be used to defend Lebanon against the enemies.”

The English-language Arabic source Al Jazeera TV website borrows both the Reuters and the AFP wording: “The head of Hezbollah has said he is ready to receive ’game-changing’ weapons from Syria, which has long been a conduit for Iranian weapons bound for the Lebanese armed group The resistance [against Israel] is prepared to accept any sophisticated weaponry even if it was to break the equilibrium [in the region],” Al Jazeera quotes Nasrallah directly saying in his speech.

Source: Media observation by BBC Monitoring in English 10 May 13

Syrie-Russie-Israël-Négociations israélo palestiniennes.

Poutine met en garde Netanyahou contre toute nouvelle intervention en Syrie et fait savoir que de nouvelles armes russes pourront être fournies à Damas. John Kerry, en visite à Moscou, reçoit un discours similaire : « pas question de renverser Assad ». En préalable à la visite de Netanyahou en Chine, le Président Xi rend public ses idées sur le règlement du conflit israélo-palestinien (le « plan de paix chinois » dans l’article).

US to arm Syrian rebels: Putin’s rebuke, Chinese “peace plan” mar Netanyahu’s Chinese trip

DEBKAfile Special Report May 7, 2013, 2:19 PM (IDT)

http://debka.com/article/22957/US-to-arm-Syrian-rebels-Putin%E2%80%99s-rebuke-Chinese-%E2%80%9Cpeace-plan%E2

Negative diplomatic ricochets are pursuing Israel in the aftermath of its air force attacks on Syria. In the first place, they are seen to have had no effect on Hizballah’s successful military intervention on the side of the Assad regime or the Syrian war at large. In the second, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, while in Shanghai, was given a sharp dressing-down by President Vladimir Putin Monday, May 6, a warning that Russia would not tolerate further Israeli attacks on Damascus and would respond.

Putin did not say how, but he did announce he had ordered the acceleration of highly advanced Russian weapons supplies to Syria.
debkafile’s military sources disclose that the Russian leader was referring to S-300 anti-air systems and the nuclear-capable 9K720 Iskander (NATO named SS-26 Stone) surface missiles, which are precise enough to hit a target within a 5-7 meter radius at a distance of 280 kilometers.

In his phone call to Netanyahu, the Russian leader made no bones about his determination not to permit the US, Israel or any other regional force (e.g. Turkey and Qatar) overthrow President Bashar Assad. He advised the prime minister to make sure to keep this in mind.

Our sources add: Since Syrian air defense teams have already trained in Russia on the handling of the S-300 interceptor batteries, they can go into service as soon as they are landed by one of Russia’s daily airlifts to Syria. Russian air defense officials will supervise their deployment and prepare them for operation.

Moscow is retaliating not just for Israel’s air operations against Syria but in anticipation of the Obama administration’s impending decision to send the first US arms shipments to the Syrian rebels.
Intelligence agencies in Moscow and the Middle East take it for granted that by the time Washington goes public on this decision, some of the Syrian rebel factions will already be armed with American weapons (…)

The Chinese president unveiled his peace plan before meeting the Israeli prime minister. This plan emphasizes, as the key to a settlement, the Palestinian right to a state on the basis of 1967 borders with east Jerusalem as its capital. It also adopts Abbas’s preconditions for talks, including a stop to settlement activities, an end of the Gaza blockade and “proper handling” of the Palestinian prisoners issue. (…)

Dexter Filkins : What Should Obama Do About Syria ? : The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/13/130513fa_fact_filkins?currentPage=all

Ce (très long) texte prend pour acquis que le régime syrien a utilisé des armes chimiques.

In May, the senior American official who is involved in Syria policy met me at his office in Washington. When I asked him to predict Syria’s future, he got up from his desk and walked over to a large map of the country which was tacked to his wall. (...)

“What does that sound like? Lebanon. But it’s Lebanon on steroids.” He walked back to his desk and sat down. “The Syria I have just drawn for you—I call it the Sinkhole,’’ he said. “I think there is an appreciation, even at the highest levels, of how this is getting steadily worse. This is the discomfort you see with the President, and it’s not just the President. It’s everybody.” No matter how well intentioned the advocates of military intervention are, he suggested, getting involved in a situation as complex and dynamic as the Syrian civil war could be a foolish risk. The cost of saving lives may simply be too high. “Whereas we had a crisis in Iraq that was contained—it was very awful for us and the Iraqis—this time it will be harder to contain,” he said. “Four million refugees going into Lebanon and Jordan is not the kind of problem we had going into Iraq.” In a year, he estimated, Lebanon alone could have four million refugees, doubling the population of the country. “Jordan will close its borders, and then you will have tens of thousands of refugees huddling down close to that border for safety.”

The rapid growth of Al Qaeda in Syria is deeply troubling, he said. “In February, 2012, they were tiny. No more than a few dozen. Now, fast-forward fourteen months. They are in Aleppo. They are in Damascus. They are in Homs.” In Iraq, he said, “They didn’t grow so fast and they didn’t cover all the big cities. In Syria, they do.” Also, he pointed out, there were no chemical weapons in Iraq, as there are in Syria. “We will have a greater risk, the longer this goes on, that the bad guys—they are all bad guys, but I mean terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Islamist extremist groups—will acquire some of these weapons. How do you plan for that? The longer the war goes on, the more the extremists will gain.” Indeed, the longer the war goes on, the greater the threat that it will engulf the entire region.

The official said that the United States’ quandary was clear enough: “...I know there is a debate on military intervention. I cannot recommend it to the President unless there is a very clearly defined political way back out. People on the Hill ask me, ‘Why can’t we do a no-fly zone? Why can’t we do military strikes?’ Of course we can do these things. The issue is, where does it stop?” ♦

Reported Israeli airstrikes in Syria could accelerate U.S. decision process - The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/reported-israeli-airstrikes-in-syria-could-accelerate-us-decision-making/2013/05/05/72c6eafc-b5c2-11e2-92f3-f291801936b8_print.html

Israel’s reported airstrikes in Syria — and the threat of a retaliatory strike by the Syrian government — are likely to accelerate the decision-making of the Obama administration, which was already moving toward a sharp escalation of U.S. involvement in the two-year-old crisis.

Senior officials said the deployment of U.S. troops to Syria remains unlikely, but they have indicated that a decision will come within weeks on options ranging from the supply of weapons to the Syrian rebels to the use of U.S. aircraft and missiles to ground President Bashar al-Assad’s air power by destroying planes, runways and missile sites inside Syria.

Neither Israeli nor U.S. officials confirmed an attack Sunday morning that reportedly hit a weapons shipment in Syria — including sophisticated missiles and air defense equipment — about to be transferred to Lebanon-based Hezbollah.

But President Obama, in an interview broadcast just hours later Sunday, said Israel is justified in preventing the provision of weapons to Hezbollah.

“We coordinate very closely with the Israelis, recognizing that . . . they are very close to Syria, they’re very close to Lebanon,” Obama said in the interview, recorded Saturday with the Spanish-language Telemundo, after an earlier Israeli attack reported late Friday.

Throughout the Syrian crisis, the administration has repeatedly voiced the belief that Syria is already awash in weapons and that sending more will not tip the balance in favor of the rebels.

Now, in part because of growing confidence in the rebel Free Syrian Army, “the national security team and the diplomatic team around the president” favor increased involvement, and their views are gaining momentum despite the caution expressed by Obama’s political advisers, according to a senior Western official whose government has closely coordinated its Syria policy with Washington and who spoke before the reported Israeli strikes. The official discussed sensitive diplomatic assessments on the condition of anonymity.

Even U.S. lawmakers who have expressed reservations about stepped-up U.S. involvement appeared to now see it as inevitable.

...

The impunity with which the Israelis apparently struck targets in Damascus, McCain said on “Fox News Sunday,” undercut the argument of the U.S. military that Syrian air defenses would pose a formidable impediment to imposition of a no-fly zone over rebel-held areas of Syria.

“The Israelis seem to be able to penetrate it rather easily,” Mc­Cain said. The “red line” Obama drew, promising consequences for Assad if he used chemical weapons, “was apparently written in disappearing ink,” he said.

...

The administration has long exercised caution out of fears that U.S. involvement could worsen the situation. But Obama’s reservations have been challenged by U.S. allies and partners who have urged the United States to take more of a leadership role over their disparate efforts to help the Syrian opposition. At the same time, U.S. confidence has been growing in the cohesiveness of the Free Syrian Army led by Gen. Salim Idris.

Idris, who met with Secretary of State John F. Kerry in Istanbul two weeks ago, pledged that no U.S.-supplied arms would go to Islamist extremist groups fighting for the same cause as the U.S.-backed rebels and said that all weapons would be carefully supervised and returned to donors at the end of the conflict.

...

New mob killing in Egypt’s Sharqiya : Son of Brotherhood leader beaten to death

Son of Brotherhood party leader beaten to death by revengeful mob in Egypt’s Nile Delta city of Zagazig for shooting two men over online post.
(...)
Lasheen’s son, Youssef, was accused of shooting a 28-year-old man merely for insulting his father in a Facebook post for his affiliation with the FJP. An auto rickshaw (tok tok) driver in his 40s was accidentally gunned down too.

The revengeful mob, including members of both men’s families, dragged Lasheen’s son to the street and used bladed weapons while assaulted him, according to Al-Ahram’s daily correspondent. The assistants then left him for dead in the street.

Youssef was taken to the hospital, where he succumbed to the fatal injuries.

The police forces were completely absent from the scene until dawn on Friday, where only two policemen were dispatched to Lasheen’s house after the end of the melee, according to Al-Ahram’s correspondent.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/70623/Egypt/Politics-/New-mob-killing-in-Egypts-Sharqiya-Son-of-Brotherh.aspx

#violence

Israel is the superpower of international panic-
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/israel-is-the-superpower-of-international-panic.premium-1.518427

Zvi Bar’el:

It’s not important what’s said at the United Nations, what the superpowers are busy with or even what strategic issues are guiding the powers that be. When Israel speaks the world stands at attention. The Iranian threat? If it weren’t for the revelations by Israeli intelligence and the fears of a vicious response by Jerusalem, it’s doubtful whether the United States or the rest of the world would get excited about Iran’s nuclear program.

Syria’s chemical weapons? Only the public statements by Military Intelligence research chief Itai Brun forced the U.S. administration to admit that chemical weapons had been used. Al-Qaida in Sinai? A few rockets fired from Sinai and the deadly incident on the border turned Egypt into a threat, forced Mohammed Morsi’s regime to clash with armed Salafist groups and dragged the United States into the arena.

The wrong impression is that only Israel has precise intelligence in the region, and without it the world wouldn’t know about the dangers. The right impression is that Israel knows how to turn its intelligence into an international panic. This should be a proud achievement for such a small and strategically unimportant country. It’s an enormous success to harness the world’s strongest power to help the country that always says it doesn’t need foreign armies’ help.

Le président Morales expulse l’USAID de Bolivie
http://www.romandie.com/news/n/_Le_president_Morales_expulse_l_USAID_de_Bolivie71010520131631.asp

AFP - LA PAZ - Le président Evo Morales a annoncé mercredi l’expulsion de Bolivie de l’USAID, l’agence américaine pour le développement international, en l’accusant de conspiration et d’ingérence dans la politique intérieure bolivienne.

Nous avons décidé d’expulser l’USAID de Bolivie. L’USAID s’en va de Bolivie , a lancé M. Morales dans un discours enflammé prononcé devant des milliers de personnes.

Il s’adressait à la foule pendant un rassemblement pour la Fête du Travail sur la place d’Armes de La Paz, devant les bâtiments des pouvoirs exécutif et législatif boliviens.

L’USAID, présente en Bolivie depuis 1964, se trouve dans ce pays pour des objectifs politiques et non pour des objectifs sociaux , a affirmé M. Morales, une des figures de la gauche radicale latino-américaine.

L’USAID et d’autres institutions liées à l’ambassade des Etats-Unis à La Paz conspirent contre le peuple, et particulièrement contre le gouvernement national , a accusé M. Morales, qui dirige la Bolivie depuis 2006.

En 2008, pour des motifs similaires, la Bolivie avait expulsé l’ambassadeur des Etats-Unis et l’agence anti-drogue américaine DEA.

Plus jamais l’USAID, qui manipule, qui utilise nos frères dirigeants, qui utilise des camarades de la base en leur donnant des aumônes ! , a déclaré le président bolivien.

Top Gamaa Islamiya leader resigns to ’fight counter-revolution’

Abdel Maged sees that the restrictions and standards imposed on the members of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya has made it similar to any other party or group and have made the group incapable of facing the counter-revolution.

(...) He reveals that he will start taking a bolder stance against who he calls “former regime remnants” and their attempts to regain leadership of Egypt’s political scene and doesn’t want Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya to be held responsible for his statements.

(...) He believes Islamists should be in constant revolution on the street and among the public.

Assem Abdel Maged was among those convicted in the assassination of President Sadat in 1981. In the same year he led an armed group following the Jihad Islamist group to attack and occupy the Assiut security directorate, killing no less than 97 policemen and civilians in one of the worst terrorism clashes in the Upper Egyptian city. He was injured and arrested in that operation. In 1984 he was sentenced 25 years in jail.

In 1997, however, as a member of the Shura council of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, he took part in the initiative to stop violence between Islamist groups and security forces and to reject violence.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/70195.aspx

Article apocalyptique dans le New York Times : Islamist Rebels’ Gains in Syria Create Dilemma for U.S.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/world/middleeast/islamist-rebels-gains-in-syria-create-dilemma-for-us.html

Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

(C’est moi qui souligne cette dernière phrase.)

Ne pas se méprendre : ça ne veut pas dire que c’est plus vrai que lorsque le New York Times ment dans l’autre sens… Mon intérêt ici, c’est à nouveau de remarquer qu’il y a d’un côté l’habituel discours assez simple et binaire des dirigeants (avec spectaculaire alignement du gouvernement français), mais qu’il y a aussi, quasiment depuis le début, nombre de tribunes totalement contraires dans les médias. Certes loin d’être majoritaires, mais beaucoup plus forts et présents que pour d’autres guerres. Et ces discours hétérodoxes (pendant que les gouvernements occidentaux refont le coup des armes de destruction massive) débarquent au NY Times. C’est assez curieux.

Un article sur le grillisme en #Italie par un collectif d’écrivains, anciennement #Luther-Blissett.

Grillismo : Yet another right-wing cult coming from Italy | #Wu-Ming Foundation
http://www.wumingfoundation.com/english/wumingblog/?p=1950

Several Left-wing and progressive commentators tend to look with a certain sympathy to the Five Star Movement. They heard that even Dario Fo, a famously leftist Nobel Prize Winner, endorsed Grillo during the campaign. They think that Grillo’s fiery, pied-piperesque speeches are just a bit of theatre – he used to be a comedian after all.
Indeed, news from Italy are baffling as usual, but in the end, many have the impression that the #5SM is a populist movement oscillating between the progressive and radical quarters of the political spectrum. A movement having features in common with other anti-austerity movements and mobilisations across southern Europe (Portugal, Greece, Spain, Slovenia).
People who make that assumption should – literally – know better.
Trouble is, many Italians should know better too.

Simone Di Stefano: «Are you an antifascist?»
#Beppe-Grillo: «This question doesn’t concern me. 5SM is an ecumenical movement.»
(Conversation between Grillo and one of the top leaders of neofascist party CasaPound, 11 January 2013 )

Churchill avait confié à Jabotinsky qu’il était un admirateur du génocide des « Indiens rouges d’Amérique » et de celui des Aborigènes d’Australie, en même temps qu’un fervent partisan du sionisme, au nom de la « supériorité raciale »

Zionism’s Colonial Roots
http://nationalinterest.org/print/article/zionisms-colonial-roots-8377

In a frankly comical interview with the Daily Telegraph two years ago, [netanyahu] complained about the British today, who look at Israel through their “colonial prism” and thus “see us as neo-colonialists.” But “we are not Brits in India!” he exclaims. Still, Netanyahu retains one great British hero: he has a portrait of Winston Churchill in his room, and posed beside it for the Telegraph photographer. It evidently did not occur to the interviewer to ask Netanyahu whether he was under the impression that Churchill condemned colonialism, or was ashamed of the Raj.

It is quite true that Churchill was a romantic supporter of Zionism, and in 1937 he met Jabotinsky. Their cordial discussions influenced what Churchill said and wrote about Palestine immediately afterward. Churchill had already stated in very plain terms that he saw nothing wrong in the Jewish settlers’ supplanting the Arabs, along the lines of an earlier pattern. “I do not admit,” he said,

that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

Inside America’s Dirty Wars
http://www.thenation.com/article/173980/inside-americas-dirty-wars?page=full

While the battle over leaks concerning the operation—as well as the various contradictory stories on how bin Laden was killed—raged in the media, the White House was deeply immersed in planning more lethal operations against so-called “High Value Targets.” Chief among these was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen of Yemeni descent born in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

#JSOC #exécutions #guerre

Mon dieu ! Une tentative d’attentat terroriste au Canada par l’AQ ....iranien.

BBC News - Canada foils ’al-Qaeda inspired’ terror attack on train
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22258191

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said the surveillance operation leading to the arrests of the two suspects was “a result of extensive collaborative efforts”.

They said the two men were not Canadian citizens and were supported by “al-Qaeda elements in Iran” but there was no evidence of state sponsorship.

Via Paul Danahar https://twitter.com/pdanahar/status/326433845673074689

Britain’s involvement in assassination of Congo’s Lumumba confirmed - World Socialist Web Site

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/18/lumu-a18.html

A senior British politician has revealed Britain’s involvement in the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the Congo’s first prime minister.

The leader of the Congolese independence struggle from Belgium was brutally murdered just seven months after taking office on the direct orders of the US and Belgium. Britain, whose involvement had long been suspected, also had a hand in it.

#afrique #lumumba #royaume-uni #royaume-unafrique

Syria: Jordan to spearhead Saudi Arabian arms drive | World news | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/14/syria-jordan-spearhead-saudi-arms-drive

Jordan has agreed to spearhead a Saudi-led push to arm rebel groups through its borders into southern Syria, in a move that coincides with the transfer from Riyadh to Amman of more than $1bn (£650m).

It marks a significant change for Jordan, from a policy of trying to contain the spillover threat posed by the civil war across its border to one of actively aiming to end it before it engulfs the cash-strapped kingdom.

La bataille pour le contrôle du Ministère des télécoms : une question de renseignement et de sécurité, pas d’argent.
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/scramble-lebanon%E2%80%99s-most-valuable-ministries

Future MP Jean Ogassapian recently revealed the true value of the telecommunications ministry, noting that “Hezbollah is not going to make [forming a government] easy for Tammam Salam, for the party will not forgo the Ministry of Telecommunications, because it is a security ministry par excellance.”

The true allure of the ministry for the Future Party is not the finance aspect, but the security aspect.

For example, after the October 2012 assassination of Wissam al-Hassan, the head of the Information Branch in the Internal Security Forces (ISF), the country’s politicians fought for months over demands to release private mobile phone data to the security forces investigating the case.

More importantly, phone data is at the crux of the case built against Hezbollah members by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL). The presence of FPM telecom ministers since 2008 has greatly restricted the ability of the Future Party and its security chiefs to access such critical information.

On top of that, the failure to extend ISF chief Ashraf Rifi’s term has made Future’s need for communications data more necessary than ever. The party is no longer in the mood for endless negotiations each time they want access to this information, particularly as Hezbollah’s trial in the Hague is about to begin.

Khairat El-Shater, the Muslim Brotherhood’s number two, may not have given up on the idea of taking public office

http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/68915.aspx

Carmen Weinstein, figure de la communauté juive en Egypte, est décédée à 82 ans

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/2013/04/13/Leader-of-Egypt-s-Jewish-community-dies-at-82.html

#JuifsEgypte