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By ATUL ANEJA recently in Teheran

Iran: Official results showing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory in the presidential election lead to unrest in the country.

AMIR KHOLOUSI, ISNA/AP
Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Teheran on Augut 30, 2005. Even when the counting was still in progress, he welcomed Ahmadinejad as the country’s President for a second successive term.

IT is easy to lose perspective on Iran, which is facing a student-led revolt of unprecedented intensity. For days there has been an outpouring of youthful energy, with thousands of people staging demonstrations and rallies in protest against a presidential vote they think was stolen.

Unrest rocked the streets of Teheran on June 13, soon after official results showed that the incumbent President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had won the previous day’s election hands down, defeating his nearest rival Mir-Hosain Mousavi by nearly double the votes. The margin of victory was astounding.

With Mousavi’s campaign on a roll since the beginning of June, especially after heated television debates energised it, a close contest was expected. A run-off between the top two candidates – Ahmadinejad and Mousavi – was the most likely scenario. It was estimated that neither of the two would manage to muster 50 per cent of the votes that was necessary to emerge winner.

Frontline for more

By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE – Red-hot chili peppers could soon come to India’s defense. The country’s defense scientists are working on using the world’s hottest chilies in hand grenades for use in counter-insurgency operations and riot control.

An important ingredient in Indian cooking, hitherto chilies have been confined to kitchens. They seem poised now to storm another bastion. If ongoing field trials are successful, chilies will soon make a grand entry into India’s defense armory.

The plan is “to harness the pungency value of chilies to make hand grenades that can be used in riot control and counter-insurgency situations”, R B Srivastava, director of life sciences in the government-run Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), told Asia Times Online.

Unlike its explosive-filled counterpart, the chili grenade is non-lethal. It works quite like tear gas. While it will not kill, it triggers tears and could put the victim in a semi-conscious state. “It will be useful in forcing militants out of their hideouts,” he said.

Even ordinary chilies cause severe itching and burning of the eyes. The chili that the DRDO is thinking of using – the bhut jolokia – is no ordinary chili.

Asia Times for more

Hmm. It seems that I, for one, owe a wee apology to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. I blamed most of the paralyzing toxicity in Springfield in recent years on him. Many of my columns have hammered on Blagojevich’s stubbornness, his confrontational style and his tendency to grandstand rather than lead.

He and his fellow Democrats had it all. Solid majorities in both chambers and, since 2006, every statewide office. Yet all we got was one long sandbox fight.

So now Blago’s gone. Arrested. Impeached. Removed from office. Indicted. Exiled to his home in Ravenswood Manor.

We have a new governor — the good-hearted Pat Quinn. For good measure we also have a new Illinois Senate president — John Cullerton — replacing Emil Jones, who was Blagojevich’s main enabler in the legislature. And what are we seeing in Springfield?

Another round of paralyzing toxicity! Name-calling. Infighting. Finger-pointing. Dueling accusatory news conferences about who’s to blame for a budget stalemate that put the General Assembly into an overtime session for the third summer in a row.

Chicago Tribune for more

Dinosaurs are objects of eternal fascination to we puny humans because of their sheer size. Some, like the long-necked sauropods, are thought to have had eight times the mass of an African elephant, the largest modern land animal.

Now a new model from zoologist Brian McNab suggests that the secret of dinosaurs‘ size was really quite simple: They had plenty to eat, and didn’t have to expend much energy in their daily lives. Says McNab: “Like couch potatoes sitting within easy reach of high calorie foods, the gargantuan size of dinosaurs most likely stems from the abundance of resources available, coupled with low energy expenditures” [Telegraph]. McNab’s findings also contribute to the long-running debate between paleontologists about whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or cold-blooded creatures.

Warm-blooded animals like mammals and birds have to eat a lot more; they expend energy to keep their internal body temperatures constant, and so they have a high metabolic rate. But cold-blooded creatures such as reptiles rely on their environment for body heat, and their internal temperature fluctuates depending on the surrounding conditions [LiveScience]. McNab argues that dinosaurs could only have gotten so big if they didn’t have to expend energy on maintaining body temperature as warm-blooded creatures do, and could devote their energy to facilitating growth.

In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, McNab argues that dinosaurs were “homeothermic,” somewhere in between warm and cold-blooded. They did not have a high metabolic rate, but their internal temperature did not fluctuate like that of cold-blooded creatures. Instead, their sheer size kept their body temperature constant. “When you’re that big, you can’t cool off rapidly like a small lizard will,” said McNab. “You have a large volume, and you have comparatively small surface area. And so if you’re warm, you’re going to stay warm, unless something unforeseen happens” [LiveScience].

Discover Magazine for more

By Nadia Popova / The Moscow Times

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday said making good on a Kremlin promise to promote the rule of law would be a vital step toward boosting trade between U.S. and Russian companies.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said economic ties could soon improve because he had received assurances from the Obama administration that it would prioritize the scrapping of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a major Soviet-era trade barrier between the countries.
The heads of U.S. and Russian companies, meanwhile, griped at a business conference about the challenges of working in each other’s countries.

“We want Russia to be selling us goods, and we want Russia to be buying from us,” Obama told the Moscow Business Summit co-organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia. “Our fortunes are linked, and yet so much potential remains untapped.”
Annual trade between the countries totals $36 billion, which is about 1 percent of U.S. trade with the rest of the world.

The percentage has remained “virtually unchanged since the Cold War,” Obama said. “That $36 billion is about the same as our trade with Thailand, a country with less than half the population of Russia. Surely we can do better.”

But a condition for better trade relations is Russia’s observance of the rule of law, he said.

“We have to promote transparency, accountability [and] rule of law, on which investments and economic growth depend,” Obama said. “And so I welcome very much President Medvedev’s initiatives to promote the rule of law and ensure a mature and effective legal system as a condition for sustained economic growth.”
Medvedev urged business executives to look beyond Russia’s oil and gas.

“It is important that our American partners not only work in the oil and gas sector … but also invest in other spheres, both in those that are traditional for Russia and in high-technology,” he said.

The Moscow Times for more

By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer Matti Friedman, Associated Press Writer –

JERUSALEM – More than two dozen Israeli soldiers who fought in the Gaza war say the military forced Palestinians to serve as human shields and used reckless firepower that caused needless deaths, according to a report released Wednesday.

One of the soldiers said the army needlessly used powerful weapons such as mortars and white phosphorous, an illuminating agent that can cause severe burns, in the three-week offensive last winter.

The allegations were the strongest evidence to come from Israeli war veterans that the army used excessive force during the war, and echoed claims by Palestinian witnesses and international human rights groups. The Israeli military rejected the report, calling it defamation and noting that the accounts were all anonymous and impossible to verify.

The testimonies of 26 war veterans were collected by Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli army reservists critical of their country’s policies toward the Palestinians. They describe demolishing homes and using firepower beyond what was necessary given the relatively light resistance they encountered. One said the regulations on when to shoot were vague.

“Sometimes the force would enter while placing rifle barrels on a civilian’s shoulder, advancing into a house and using him as a human shield. Commanders said these were the instructions and we had to do it,” one soldier said.

Another soldier said the army needlessly used powerful weapons such as white phosphorous, an illuminating agent that can cause severe burns, and mortars. None of the soldiers was identified, and no dates or locations were provided for the events they recount. Breaking the Silence said it wanted to protect the identity of the soldiers, fearing they would suffer for speaking out. But it said soldiers would “gladly testify” if a formal inquiry were launched.

Israel fought the 3-week war in December and January after Palestinian militants fired thousands of rockets from Gaza aimed at Israeli civilians over an eight-year period.

Israel maintains that responsibility for the Gaza carnage lies with the militant Hamas rulers of Gaza. Israel accused fighters of hiding ammunition in civilian buildings like schools and mosques, blending in with civilians and using them for cover.

More than 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 900 civilians, were killed in the fighting, thousands of homes were destroyed and Gaza’s infrastructure suffered heavy damage, according to Gaza health officials and human rights groups. Israel puts the death toll closer to 1,100 and says most were armed fighters. Thirteen Israelis also were killed, including three civilians who died from rocket fire.

Israel’s military rejected the report and accused the group of “defaming and slandering the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and its commanders.”

It questioned the report’s veracity, saying it “regrets the fact that yet another human rights organization is presenting to Israel and the world a report based on anonymous and general testimonies, without investigating their details or credibility.” The military also said that since no identifying details were given, it was impossible to verify the accounts. It urged soldiers to come forward and register official complaints.

“The IDF is one of the world’s most moral armies and operates according to the highest moral code,” said Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas government in Gaza, said the report “reflects the crimes committed in Gaza,” and called on “human rights bodies and international groups” to put Israel’s leaders on trial.

Palestinian witnesses and international human rights groups like Amnesty International have long argued that Israel’s response was disproportionate and it used powerful weapons indiscriminately in heavily populated areas. The U.N. has also launched a probe into Israel’s actions during the offensive. Human rights groups have also said Palestinian militants violated the laws of war by firing rockets at civilian areas in Israel.
Read More at Yahoo news

Third World Network
Africa: Deeper regional integration needed in response to crisis
Published in SUNS #6728

Geneva, 25 Jun (Kanaga Raja) — The global economic crisis, which has reached the African continent, requires the re-examination of existing approaches to international development, with one important response being deeper regional integration to address the long-standing structural weaknesses of African economies, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said Thursday.

In its “Economic Development in Africa” report for 2009, UNCTAD says that regional integration is essential for sustained development on the continent, especially within the context of the current crisis.

It argues that better links between countries, ranging from paved roads to banking cooperation, are needed to spur mutual economic growth. Weak physical and institutional infrastructure is the key obstacle to increasing intra-African trade and investment.

The report notes that Africa currently has the world’s lowest shares of regional trade and investment – 9% of recorded flows of total external trade and 13% of recorded flows of total inward foreign direct investment.

The report on Africa comes just as UNCTAD revealed on Wednesday that global foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) – the main mode of FDI – drastically declined in the last quarter of 2008, and the fall has continued into 2009. FDI inflows dropped by 54% and M&As by 77% during the first quarter of 2009 as compared to the same period last year.

Third World Network for more

By George Burchett

[Contribution to the Reimagining Society Project hosted by ZCommunications]

In May this year I visited the Museum Of The Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia.

In April 1955, the heads of state of 29 Asian and African countries1, many of them newly independent, gathered in Bandung to chart a course for peaceful co-existence and mutual respect between all nations. The conference was hosted by Indonesia’s President Soekarno. The museum commemorates this important and mostly forgotten event.

At the end of the Conference, the delegates issued a ten-point declaration known as The Ten Principles of Bandung. They are:

1. Respect for fundamental human rights and for the purpose and principles of the Charter of the United Nations;
2. Respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries,
3. Recognise the equality of all races and the equality of all nations,
4. Non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,
5. Respect for the right of each nation to defend itself singly or collectively, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.
6. (a) Abstention from the use of arrangements of collective defence to serve any particular interests of the big powers.
(b) Abstention by any countries from exerting, pressures on other countries.
7. Refraining from acts or threats of aggression or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any countries.
8. Settlement of all international disputes by peaceful means, such as negotiation, conciliation, arbitration or judicial settlement as well as other peaceful means of the parties’ own choice, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.
9. Promotion for mutual interest and cooperation.
10. Respect for justice and international obligations.

All ten points sound eminently sensible to me.

I was born one month after the Bandung Conference, in Hanoi, Vietnam, one of the participating countries. 1955 was a good year, filled with optimism and promises. The day I was born, the last French colonial troops left Hanoi. Vietnam was finally free and independent, although temporarily divided. In accordance with the Geneva Agreements of 1954, elections were to be held in both North and South, and the country was to be united again. Everyone expected Ho Chi Minh to win the elections in a landslide. One imperial power and its allies wanted to prevent this at all costs. Vietnam was eventually re-united in 1975, not through the ballot box but through armed struggle. We all know at what cost. Millions of people died, millions of bombs were dropped, millions of tonnes of toxic chemicals released and countless atrocities committed because neither the 1954 Geneva accords nor the 1955 Ten Principles of Bandung were respected by the world champions of “freedom and democracy”.

My father, Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett – an incurable optimist despite witnessing the horrors of the Great Depression, Nazi Germany, World War II, Hiroshima and Korea – was in Bandung in April 1955. There is a very nice photo of him in the Museum. There is also a photo of the Kashmir Princess, an airplane chartered by the Chinese government to fly China’s Premier Zhou Enlai to the conference. It was blown up in mid air by an American-made bomb planted by a Taiwanese agent in Hong Kong.2 Luckily, Zhou Enlai had a last minute change of plan and flew on a different plane. My dad was also supposed to be on the Kashmir Princess, but eventually flew direct from Hanoi with the Vietnamese delegation led by Premier Pham Van Dong.

ZMag for more

The economy faces a climb to get back to full employment, but the worst job losses may now be in the rearview mirror. One indicator to watch for: a bump in average hours worked.


How bad is this jobs recession?
When considered in terms of the number of jobs available at the start of the recession versus 18 months later, this is the deepest since World War II. As of June, about 1 in 6 people in the labor force is either unemployed and seeking work, wants a job but has stopped looking, or is working part time and wants a full-time job. Among those hit hard: Those with only high school educations are faring worse than they did in the 2001 recession.

What policies are needed to bring jobs back?
President Obama is banking on his $787 billion stimulus plan, which includes tax cuts and government spending on everything from schools to clean energy. His team hopes that this, coupled with support for the banking system, will pave the way for private-sector job creation to begin again.

On the left, some economists say an additional stimulus plan may be needed. But conservative economists say the real need is to keep taxes low and make sure that government spending and regulations don’t crowd out free enterprise. No one has easy answers, though, at a time when consumers are digging out from under a mountain of debt.
The Obama administration is backing other measures focused not just on the quantity of jobs but also on the quality of pay and benefits. Healthcare reform and boosting the bargaining power of organized labor are priorities for the administration.

According to Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland in College Park, the recipe for a healthy job market is not to empower unions but to fix the trade deficit and banking system.

CS Monitor for more