Peace and Justice Post

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By Dahr Jamail and Ahmed Ali, IPS News. Posted December 28, 2007.

The U.S.-backed Iraqi government will half Iraqis’ rations because of “insufficient funds and spiraling inflation.”

The Iraqi government announcement that monthly food rations will be cut by half has left many Iraqis asking how they can survive. The government also wants to reduce the number of people depending on the rationing system by five million by June 2008.

Iraq’s food rations system was introduced by the Saddam Hussein government in 1991 in response to the UN economic sanctions. Families were allotted basic foodstuffs monthly because the Iraqi Dinar and the economy collapsed.

The sanctions, imposed after Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Kuwait, were described as “genocidal” by Denis Halliday, then UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq. Halliday quit his post in protest against the U.S.-backed sanctions.

The sanctions killed half a million Iraqi children, and as many adults, according to the UN. They brought malnutrition, disease, and lack of medicines. Iraqis became nearly completely reliant on food rations for survival. The programme has continued into the U.S.-led occupation.

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AFP – January 2, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) – – The leaders of a US commission that examined the September 11, 2001 terror attacks accused the CIA Wednesday of having obstructed their investigation by withholding information about videotaped interrogations of terror suspects.

But Kean and Hamilton wrote that although US President George W. Bush had ordered all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the probe, “recent revelations that the CIA destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot.”

“Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.”

They continued: “There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the CIA — or the White House — of the commission�s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot.

“Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations,” Kean and Hamilton wrote.

They said the panel made repeated, detailed requests to the spy agency in 2003 and 2004 for information about the interrogation of members of the Islamic extremist network but were never notified about the existence of the tapes.

The CIA revealed last month that in 2005 it destroyed videotapes that showed harsh interrogations of two Al-Qaeda members.

WSWS, 29 December 2007

By Debra Watson
The number of people hungry and homeless in US cities rose dramatically again in 2007, according to the annual report on hunger and homelessness from the US Conference of Mayors. The 23-city Hunger and Homelessness Survey was released in late December.

Requests for emergency food increased in four of every five cities. Among 15 cities with quantifying data, the median increase in requests for food was 10 percent and in some cities it was much higher. Detroit and some other cities reported seeing more working poor among those seeking food.

In Detroit, emergency food requests shot up 35 percent over the 12-month period ending in October. Officials there noted that “due to a lack of resources, emergency food assistance facilities have had to reduce the number of days and/or hours of operation.”

Thirteen of 19 survey cities reported they could not meet the demand for emergency food. Los Angeles was one of the major cities reporting difficulties in serving the growing need.

An official in LA said: “Emergency food assistance facilities have to turn away people. According to the LA Regional Foodbank, over 30 percent of their food pantries have had to turn clients away and pantries that don’t turn clients away are providing less food.

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McClatchy Newspapers, December 31, 2007

By Saeed Shah

NAUDERO, Pakistan — The day she was assassinated last Thursday, Benazir Bhutto had planned to reveal new evidence alleging the involvement of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies in rigging the country’s upcoming elections, an aide said Monday.

Bhutto had been due to meet U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., to hand over a report charging that the military Inter-Services Intelligence agency was planning to fix the polls in the favor of President Pervez Musharraf.

Safraz Khan Lashari, a member of the Pakistan People’s Party election monitoring unit, said the report was “very sensitive” and that the party wanted to initially share it with trusted American politicians rather than the Bush administration, which is seen here as strongly backing Musharraf.

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Consortiumnews.com, December 31, 2007

By Robert Parry

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is signaling that a second Clinton presidency will follow the look-to-the-future, don’t-worry-about-accountability approach toward Republican wrongdoing that marked Bill Clinton’s years in office.

That was the significance of former President Clinton’s remarkable Dec. 17 comment that his wife’s first act in the White House would be to send Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush on an around-the-world mission to repair America’s damaged image.

“The first thing she intends to do is to send me and former President Bush and a number of other people around the world to tell them that America is open for business and cooperation again,” said Bill Clinton, who has accompanied the senior Bush on international humanitarian missions over the past several years.

What was perhaps most stunning about the remark was its assumption that Americans would be impressed that the country’s two dominant political dynasties would team up in early 2009 to tidy up some of the mess created by the headstrong son of the senior dynasty, the Bush Family.

The Bushes and the Clintons – who have held pieces of the nation’s executive power for more than a quarter century dating back to George H.W. Bush’s election as Vice President in 1980 – essentially would be keeping matters within the board rooms of the Washington Establishment.

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David Edwards and Katie Baker Raw Story, Sunday December 30, 2007 del.icio.us |
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Latest: Police ‘prevented Bhutto autopsy’: Click for more…

On Sunday, UK’s Channel 4 news broadcasted a new video of the Bhutto assassination which they say “provides the most conclusive evidence yet that Benazir Bhutto was shot.”

Although the Pakistani government officially claims that Bhutto died from hitting her head on the sunroof as she ducked into her car, evidence in the video drastically contradicts that account.

The video shows a large crowd swarming around Bhutto’s car. A clean-shaven man in sunglasses is visibly watching, concealing a gun; behind him stands the suspected suicide bomber dressed in white. As the video rolls, the man in sunglasses moves closer to Bhutto’s car and fires three shots. Directly after, the suicide bomber detonates his device and chaos ensues.

Continued . . .

Pakistani officials trying to muddy the water, Guardian told

Declan Walsh in Naudero
Tuesday January 1, 2008
The Guardian

Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of slain Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, offers mourning prayers at the Bhutto residence in Naudero. Photograph: Asif Hassan/AFP

Benazir Bhutto’s husband, Asif Zardari, dismissed government claims of al-Qaida involvement in his wife’s assassination, accusing officials of a cover-up and comparing it to the death of John F Kennedy. “I think soon the chickens are going to lay their eggs and we will blame them on al-Qaida,” he told the Guardian at the family home in Naudero. “Al-Qaida has nothing to fear; why would they fear us? Are they our political opponents?” he said.

New evidence raised fresh doubts about the government’s version of Bhutto’s death. Fresh video footage appeared to show that she died last Thursday from an assassin’s bullet and not, as the interior ministry said, from a blow to the head in the force of a bomb explosion.”They want to muddy the waters,” said Zardari, sitting in a room filled with portraits of his wife. “[Even] Kennedy’s murder is not solved. What do they do? They always find 10 excuses and 10 people to blame, and one to hang.”

Continued . . .