Mission Accomplished

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Business leaders hit Lebanon with a strike on Friday to protest violence and political infighting as the country's political crisis intensified after the slaying of a Christian leader.
With tension running high a day after a massive demonstration outside the funeral of Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, factories, banks and financial institutions closed on orders from business community leaders who held a meeting on Thursday.
The Western-backed prime minister is locked in a power struggle with the pro-Syrian president and is in dispute with the Parliament speaker, who also is a Syria supporter.

There has been no response to Saniora's appeal to the resigning ministers to come back to the fold and for the opposition to engage in dialogue with the government.

Further stoking the tension was Saniora's call for a Cabinet session on Saturday to approve a protocol sent by the United Nations to set up an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri - a highly divisive issue because Syrian officials have been implicated in the murder. Damascus has denied it had anything to do with the murder.

The Cabinet - without its Shia ministers - earlier this month approved the U.N.-drafted framework over the objections of the president and the Shias who claimed the government was no longer constitutional.

Pro-government groups who have blamed Gemayel's assassination on Syria have warned that more killings may be in store to deny the Cabinet the legal two-thirds quorum of 16. Syria has denied the accusations and condemned the killing.

MOSCOW Russia has begun delivery of Tor-M1 air-defence missile systems to Iran, confirming that it is proceeding with arms deals despite Western criticism.

An official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to specify when the deliveries had been made and how many systems had been delivered.

Officials had said previously that Moscow would supply 29 of the sophisticated missile systems to Iran under a $700 million (£565 million) contract, signed in December.

from what i read , many citizens that can afford it , are leaving both iraq and lebanon .
since many of these are medical doctors , craftsmen , merchants and other professionals , the countries are "being sucked dry" and will no doubt suffer for many more years to come - no matter what happens now - the train has left the station .
what is that chinese proverb : "may you live in interesting times ! " .
hbg

I will not be happy until Bush is officialy charged with war crimes.

As Lebanon's government tries to maintain its shaky grip on power, sources tell TIME that Tehran and Damascus are shipping weapons to the militant Shi'ite group
By ELAINE SHANNON/WASHINGTON AND TIM MCGIRK/BEIRUT
SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHOR

* Viewpoint: What the U.S. Hasn't Learned in Lebanon
* Background: Lebanon Buries a Dream
* Fallout: Cabinet Ministers Wonder Who's Next

Posted Friday, Nov. 24, 2006
Iran is smuggling weapons through Syria to re-arm Lebanese allies Hizballah, despite renewed efforts by United Nations peacekeepers and the Lebanese army to seal off the mountain borders with Syria in the wake of last summer's war between the Shi'ite militia and Israel, according to reports by Saudi and Israeli intelligence sources that have been confirmed by western diplomats in Beirut.

Israeli military officials in Tel Aviv say that Hizballah replenished nearly half of its pre-war stockpiles of short-range missiles and small arms. But western diplomats in Beirut say these calculations under-estimate the weapons flow and that Hizballah has now filled its war chest with over 20,000 short-range missiles -- a similar amount fo what they had at the start of the conflict, during which the group is believed to have fired over 3,000 rockets at Israel. "The Iranian pipeline through Syria was already working during the war," despite constant Israeli bombing raids on the roads into Lebanon from Syria, this Beirut source said. Officially, Syria and Iran deny that they're supplying weapons to Hizballah. As for the Shi'ite group itself, when asked about receiving a new shipment of arms from Syria and Iran, a spokesman told TIME, without elaborating, "We have more than enough weapons if Israel tries to attack us again."

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Revenge-seeking Shiite militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left Friday prayers, drenched them with kerosene and burned them alive, and Iraqi soldiers did nothing to stop the attack, police and witnesses said.


The fiery slayings in the mainly Sunni neighborhood of Hurriyah were a dramatic escalation of the brutality coursing through the Iraqi capital, coming a day after suspected Sunni insurgents killed 215 people in Baghdad's main Shiite district with a combination of bombs and mortars.

The attacks culminated Baghdad's deadliest week of sectarian fighting since the war began more than three years ago.

Police Capt. Jamil Hussein said Iraqi soldiers at a nearby army post failed to intervene in the burnings of Sunnis carried out by suspected members of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia, or in subsequent attacks that torched four Sunni mosques and killed at least 19 other Sunnis, including women and children, in the same northwest Baghdad area.

Where are all the statesmen when you need one?

Being smeared as cowards, appeasers and defeatists by those bereft of any idea beyond "stay the course."

Mission accomplished?

Wheat is war, and US enjoys a triumph without scrutiny
Richard Baker
The Age
November 25, 2006
WHEN a handful of AWB executives and Iraq Grains Board officials met in Cairo last year to negotiate a $900 million wheat deal, they were being watched.

As they moved around the Egyptian capital, the Australians were shadowed by a small group of personnel from the US Government's foreign agricultural service who were hell-bent on finding out what AWB was up to.
It would be another 10 months before a United Nations report outed AWB for paying $290 million in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime.

Despite the heavy US attention, the Australians managed to secure an agreement from the Iraqis for a huge 2.6 million-tonne wheat contract ?- AWB's biggest ever single deal.

But it was not long before the US officials found out and made direct protests to senior Iraq Government ministers, according to sources. The Iraqis, including then prime minister Iyad Allawi, were told by the US ambassador in Baghdad that the deal with Australia was not to go ahead.


As the Howard Government this weekend digests the Cole inquiry into the wheat kickbacks scandal, it also has to consider how Australia lost its top wheat market and how the US, our friend and ally, played a key role in revealing AWB's corrupt activities to boost its own trade ambitions.

In Iraq, the US was involved in the scuttlebutt about metal filings being in Australian wheat. They were doing everything they could to get wheat contracts."

he Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was told by Australians working in the CPA that a US official was responsible for leaking confidential AWB contracts with Iraq to the US media in 2003 in a bid to undermine Australia's dominant position in Iraq. These US press reports were the start of AWB's downfall.

So while AWB has suffered the full ramifications of having illicit dealings with Saddam Hussein, what has happened in the US to companies found to be paying kickbacks? Not much.

Despite some company executives being charged with offences, leading US Democrats have accused the Bush Administration, the Pentagon and the State Department of failing to co-operate with investigations into the involvement of US companies in oil-for-food rorts. Senior Democrat Carl Levin said: "We've got to look in the mirror at ourselves as well as point fingers at others."

The US Government is providing massive subsidies for American farmers to grow hard white wheat crops, which the Iraqis love and Australia has traditionally supplied, instead of their normal red wheat variety.


War for wheat

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With Iraq near all-out civil war, the Bush administration is renewing efforts to break the cycle of violence there by enlisting the help of moderate Arab nations while also seeking to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki are due to meet next week and Vice President Dick Cheney left for Saudi Arabia on Friday for talks on the Middle East.

Exporting ammunition is always Russia's main income source, regardless it will bring great damages to the import countries. Condemn the Siberian bear!

Agreed. The Bear stands condemned.

By the way, do you have to hand the comparable figures for export dollars from the sale of weapons technologies and systems for both Russian and the US?

"Where are all the statesmen when you need one? "

my old boss used to say : "statesmen are politicians who've lost their teeth !" :wink:
hbg

THE BEAR STANDS CONDEMNED?

Better that than to be condemned in the prone.