Archives for September 2009

Iranian authorities maintained that they counted the ballots of a nationwide election in June in only about 10 hours and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad immediately claimed victory, despite widespread suspicions of fraud. Afghanistan held its presidential election on August 20 and all the ballots are still not counted, and it isn’t clear whether there will be a […]

Newsweek is reporting that the US intelligence community continues to assess that Iran is not working on getting a nuclear weapon. Iran insists that its nuclear energy research program is for the purpose of producing fuel for the Bushehr reactors when their construction is complete. I.e. they are seeking an “exotic way of boiling water” […]

Note: Revised 9/21/09 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a sermon on Friday for “Jerusalem Day” that is full of the most vile crackpot anti-Semitism that can be imagined. Anti-Semitism as a form of bigotry typically ascribes the most abject motives and character to Jews in general at the same time as they are depicted as secretly […]

A suicide bomber used a huge truck bomb to blow up the market in the Shiite village of Ustarzai, Kohat District, killing 33 and wounding 80. Many shops, buildings and vehicles were destroyed in the blast. The village is largely inhabited by Bangash Pashtuns, who tend to follow the Shiite branch of Islam, unlike most […]

Guerrillas attacked an Italian convoy in Kabul on Thursday, killing 6 Italian troops and 10 Afghan civilians, and wounding over 50 others. Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi as a result called for foreign troops to depart Afghanistan sooner rather than later. It had already been decided that 500 of Italy’s 3000-strong military mission would soon go […]

President Barack Obama has scrapped an expensive ($56 bn so far) and probably useless “missile shield” program in the Czech Republic and Poland to which Russia had vehemently objected, and which had increasingly been described as aimed not at Russia but at Iran. In fact, the proposed ten anti-missile missiles in Poland the proposed radar […]

President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would wait for a while before deciding whether to send more US troops to Afghanistan. The administration is said to be deeply divided on the issue, and Obama says he wants further reports from the State Department and other civilian agencies before he makes a final determination. Obama […]

The Independent reports that a United Nations fact-finding inquiry has found that Israel committed war crimes during its attack on Gaza last winter, as did the Palestinian Hamas. The lion’s share of blame in the report, however, falls on Israeli forces, which stand accused of planning out a disproportionate use of force, the punishing of […]

Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a formal about-face when testifying before the Senate Armed Services committee, now speaking of the necessity of sending more American troops to Afghanistan. Last February, Mullen had said he did not envisage sending more than 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Some 17,000 new […]