U.S. ‘mangoes’ diplomacy, Iran wants freedom from big-power domination

Re-reporting, compilation, editing, minor comment by Carolyn Bennett

PAKISTAN
U.S. secretary of State Hillary Clinton today in Pakistan promised [mango trade] “massive aid” for that country and proposed building relations with this “wavering anti-terror ally.” The U.S. plan delivered by Clinton reportedly includes water dam projects in the areas of Gomal Zam, Satpara and Baluchistan; renovation of three hospitals in Karachi, Lahore and Jacobabad; and programs devoted to agriculture, training of farmers in dairy production and increasing production and export of mangoes.

Meanwhile, seriously, in
GENEVA
Former Iranian chief disarmament negotiator now speaker of Iran’s parliament said today “The current prevailing structure of power has not only been unable to secure international peace and security, but has also led to the emergence of such new phenomena as terrorism in a very dangerous and organized framework. No doubt this inability is due to the double standards and unilateral policies exercised by the big powers, including the USA,” Ali Larijani said. He was speaking to an audience that included U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.

The U.N. Security Council [China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States] imposed new sanctions on Iran in June over its nuclear program. Russia and China supported U.S. proposals aimed at putting increased pressure on Tehran. Western powers believe Iran is trying to produce nuclear weapons. Iran says its program is only for peaceful purposes.

IRAQ
Mosul
Four foreigners died and five Iraqi civilians suffered wounds when a suicide bomb exploded into an armored vehicle and a British security company’s convoy in northern Iraq on Monday. Everyone inside the vehicle died.

AFGHANISTAN
Kabul
Six Afghan police officers and two U.S. troops died and four others suffered wounds today when roadside bombs exploded in southern Afghanistan. The troops were traveling south by vehicle to Kandahar.

June was the deadliest month for U.S. and international forces. One hundred and three military personnel have died including 60 Americans. This month so far in Afghanistan 57 NATO troops have died including today’s deaths among them 42 from the United States.

Sources - Wire reports
“Attack on British security firm in Iraq kills 4,” July 19, 2010,
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20100719/twl-oukwd-uk-iraq-violence-britons-13abf6c.html
“Road bombs kill 6 Afghan policemen, 2 US troops,” July 19, 2010,
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/ap/20100719/twl-as-afghanistan-2nd-ld-writethru-38359fb.html
“U.S. to announce aid package to Pakistan,” July 18, 2010, http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20100718/twl-us-to-announce-aid-package-to-pakist-2802f3e.html; http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20100718/twl-us-to-announce-aid-package-to-pakist-2802f3e.html
“Iran calls for world body free of big power control,” July 19, 2010, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20100719/twl-oukwd-uk-iran-larijani-13abf6c.html
“U.S. announces new Pakistan aid,” July 19, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/2010719449787390.html

The United Nations Security Council is composed of five permanent members: China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The current ten non-permanent members (with year of terms’ end) are: Austria (2010), Japan (2010), Turkey (2010), Bosnia and Herzegovina (2011), Lebanon (2011),  Uganda (2010), Brazil (2011),  Mexico (2010), Gabon (2011),  Nigeria (2011) [http://www.un.org/sc/members.asp].

USA, How many died today ─ Aden to Atchafalaya Bay?

Re-reported, compiled and edited by Carolyn Bennett

MEDITERRANEAN SEA TO ARABIAN SEA

Gaza (occupied land)
As survivors mourn and the dead are buried, an autopsy and Freedom-Flotilla eyewitnesses give evidence of execution-style slaughter.

The Turkish council of forensic medicine reports that nine men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times. Five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head.

• A 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back.
• A 19-year-old named Fulkan Dogan [who also held U.S. citizenship] was shot five times from less that 45cm. He was shot in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back.
• Two other men were shot four times
• Five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back

The chairperson of the council of forensic medicine, Dr Haluk Ince, in Istanbul, said that in only one case was there a single bullet wound to the forehead from a distant shot; every other victim suffered multiple wounds. All [the bullets] were intact. This is an important piece of evidence because “when a bullet strikes another place it comes into the body deformed [but] if it directly comes into the body, the bullet is all intact.” The doctor went on to say that all except one of the bullets retrieved from the bodies came from 9mm rounds. The other round was of a kind of material they had not seen before used in firearms. “It was just a container including many types of pellets usually used in shotguns; it [had] penetrated the head region in the temple; we found it intact in the brain.”

The next June mission, the Rachel Corrie, named for a young American activist killed in Gaza in 2003, lands on Saturday and again is boarded by Israel’s military. The aid boat had ignored Israeli orders to divert to Israel’s Ashdod port where Israel had offered to unload the cargo and deliver it to Gaza after inspecting it. The Rachel Corrie carried Irish and other activists and was the latest attempt to break Israel’s four-year old blockade on Gaza. The national coordinator of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Dublin called Israel’s taking of the ship “‘another brazen act of Israeli piracy on the High Seas.’” The abduction comes five days after Israel attacked the multinational aid-carrying Freedom Flotilla.

In separate incidents, five Palestinian fighters died Tuesday in the Gaza Strip after coming under Israeli fire. After Monday’s Israeli attack killing ten people on the aid-carrying Freedom flotilla of hundreds of activists, tension has increased in the Palestinian territories.

Afghanistan

A series of attacks against schools and female students have driven many Afghan girls underground to obtain an education. The Taliban have waged a violent campaign against girls who go to schools in their Afghan strongholds but the Taliban have denied involvement in the recent spate of suspected attacks and have condemned the targeting of school girls. In a 2008 attack in Kandahar men on motorbikes sprayed acid on approximately 15 girls and teachers. Taliban rule in the years 1996-2001 prohibited girls’ attending school.

Also in Afghanistan foreigners reach a death mark. This year alone approximately 230 foreign troops have died in the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Two-thirds of the year’s casualties were U.S. citizens, as U.S. forces comprise most of the estimated 130,000 rising to 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. Casualties too will surely rise all round foreign and domestic.

Iraq

An Iraqi politician from the Iraqiya bloc died when armed men opened fire in the northern city of Mosul. Police said unknown assailants shot Faris Jassim al-Jubouri early on Saturday in his home in Mosul about 350km north of Baghdad.

Armed By Global, U.S. War Industry

Arms keep pouring in. The top U.S. commander in Iraq said he expected the United States to meet a long-standing Iraqi request for new Lockheed Martin Corp F-16 multi-role fighter aircraft, although not as soon as Baghdad had expected. [Army General Ray Odierno] said the United States would not meet Iraq’s request before the scheduled completion of a phased U.S. troop withdrawal at the end of next year.

However, Iraqi Defense Minister Abdel Qader Jassim had let it be known in July that Iraq had ‘many alternatives’ for securing such aircraft if the United States failed to supply F-16s. France, Russia, China and others have been jockeying to help fill Iraq’s multibillion-dollar arms wish list, which includes multi-role fighters to defend its air space from its neighbors. Lockheed Martin is the U.S. Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier by sales and the F-16 is the world’s most widely flown fighter. More than 4,400 of them have been produced or are in the pipeline for 25 countries.

HORN OF AFRICA, WESTERN ASIA

(Gulf of Aden to Indian Ocean)
Pirates captured a Panama-flagged cargo vessel carrying sugar from Brazil to the northern Somali city of Bossaso. The ship piloted by a Pakistani captain was “travelling inside of the internationally recommended transit corridor.” Security forces from Somalia’s Puntland region Wednesday stormed the Panama-flagged cargo vessel and freed the ship’s 24-member crew from Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Ghana. In the gun battle, two Somali soldiers suffered wounds; the Pakistani captain of the MV QSM Dubai died.

EASTERN ASIA

(Sea of Japan to South China Sea) 

An investigation by an anti-government Myanmar broadcaster finds evidence that Myanmar’s [Burma’s] “military regime has begun a program to develop nuclear weapons.” Though “journalists from the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) have been gathering information about secret military projects in Myanmar for years, they say recent revelations from a former army officer show that the military government is pushing ahead with ambitions to become a nuclear power.”

Democratic Voice of Burma observed, “A poor country with a weak economy and starvation yet manages to gather resources to build a nuclear weapon… in many ways North Korea is a parallel to Burma.” Few people a short time ago “imagined that countries like North Korea, Iran and Pakistan would also become nuclear powers.”

KILLER OIL

(Alaska to Atchafalaya Bay)

From Phoenix, Louisiana, activist Tyrone Edwards’ comments in Friday’s interview with Democracy Now
“Once you kill the fishing industry, you have devastated their [fishers’] whole life. For most of these people, that’s how they survive. Their whole living depends on the water environment. That’s all they know. Some people fish every day—Sunday, Saturday, all day, because they own their own oyster bed.

“Not only is the oil spill devastating the environment and people’s livelihoods and the fishing industry, it is destroying people’s health, their lives. We’re concerned about dispersants in the water because everything we do is controlled by the Mississippi River: the water we drink and the water that we bathe in. Once that’s contaminated, we are destroyed. We’re concerned about an epidemic in our community that we had no control over.

“This oil spill disaster has long-term impact. That’s why you have the anxiety among our community now. When we went to Washington, D.C., after we left the House judiciary hearing, we went to [Louisiana Senator Mary L. Landrieu’s] hearing and we were frightened by the fact that she had someone representing the large fishing industry, people who do international business. We had Byron Encalade [owner of Encalade Fisheries in East Pointe a la Hache in Plaquemines Parish] who represents little [fishing business owners] who go out and get 200 sacks of oysters ─ compared to somebody who is dealing with hundreds of thousands of sacks of oysters. We found that more attention was being placed on [big businesses] because what … Landrieu was saying to BP was, ‘Can somebody come to your office—can a business come to your office and file a million-dollar claim?’ Our little fisher men can’t file a million-dollar claim. … We can’t make contributions to elected officials’ campaigns. We vote for what they do for us. We’re concerned that we’re going to get lost in that shuffle because we cannot compete. We think we deserve the same kind of treatment as big business and casinos. We’re talking about our lives.”

War, Occupation Casualty sites reporting

June 5, 2010 (accurate totals unknown, usual reporting not updated)

• Anti-war dot com casualties in Iraq starting March 19, 2003: Since January 20, 2009 inauguration: 174 dead; 31,839-100,000 wounded; 320,000 U.S. veterans with brain injuries; 18 suicides a day [May 8 update], http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

• Iraq Body Count: documented civilian deaths from violence 96,663 – 105,408, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,402 U.S, 4,720 Coalition; AFGHANISTAN: 1,089 U.S., 1,797 Coalition http://icasualties.org/oif//

The Washington Post citing senior military and administration officials reported Friday, “Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups. U.S. Special Operations forces have grown in number and budget and are deployed in 75 countries.” At the beginning of 2009, the Post article said, the number stood at approximately 60. “In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.”


Sources and notes, hegemony, geopolitical landscape 
Atchafalaya Bay is an arm of the Gulf of Mexico extending southeastward along the southern coast of the U.S. State of Louisiana. The bay’s reefs contain oyster shells, which provide road ballast and raw materials for making lime and cement at many coastal factories. There are many natural gas and oil fields in the area. The bay also is the focus of the Atchafalaya Delta Wildlife Management Area that occupies some 214 square miles (554 square km) of water and land.

Atchafalaya Bay extends for 21 miles (34 km) from Point Chevreuil to Point Au Fer on Point Au Fer Island. The bay is 10 miles (16 km) wide, and Four League Bay extends another 11 miles (18 km) to the southeast. Eugene Island lies on a long shell reef extending 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Point Au Fer. The Lower Atchafalaya River links the bay with Morgan City, 15 miles (24 km) north, where the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway meets the Plaquemine–Morgan City Waterway and connects to the Mississippi River system.
“Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range,” June 5, 2010,

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/04/gaza-flotilla-activists-autopsy-results
 Exclusive: Nine Turkish men on board Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times, autopsy results reveal

 “Aid ship Rachel Corrie ‘intercepted’ by Israeli troops: Gaza,” June 5, 2010, http://gulfnews.com/news/region/palestinian-territories/aid-ship-rachel-corrie-intercepted-by-israeli-troops-gaza-committee-1.636962
“‘Rachel Corrie victim of piracy, terror,’” June 5, 2010, http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=129143§ionid=351020202“Five Gazans killed by Israeli fire,” June 1, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/201061135822164378.html

“Afghan girls brave Taliban threats,” June 5, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/20106510171162225.html
“Foreign troop death toll in Afghanistan hits 230,” AFP - Saturday, June 5, 2010,

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100605/tap-afghanistan-unrest-nato-eea7cf4.

“Iraq politician shot dead in Mosul,” June 5, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/201065112649147845.html

“U.S. eyes new F-16 fighters for Iraq – commander” (Reporting by Jim Wolf; Editing by Tim Dobbyn UPDATE), Friday June 4, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0414780020100604?type=

“Somali forces free ship,” June 3, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2010/06/20106391238963851.html
The Horn of Africa is an extension of land between the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden inhabited by Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Djibouti, cultures linked throughout their long history.

The Gulf of Aden is a deepwater basin forming a natural sea link between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. Named after the seaport of Aden, in southern Yemen, the gulf is situated between the coasts of Arabia and the Horn of Africa. In oceanographic and geologic terms, it extends to the eastern limits of the continental shelf [Almost everywhere the shelves represent a continuation of the continental land mass beneath the ocean margins] beyond the Kuria Muria Islands to the north and the island of Socotra to the south, covering an area of some 205,000 square miles (530,000 square km).

The Indian Ocean is bounded by Iran, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh to the north; the Malay Peninsula, the Sunda Islands of Indonesia, and Australia to the east; Antarctica to the south; and Africa and the Arabian Peninsula to the west. In the southwest, it joins the Atlantic Ocean south of the southern tip of Africa, and to the east and southeast, its waters mingle with those of the Pacific. The question of defining the oceanic limits of the Indian Ocean is complicated and remains unsettled. The Indian Ocean is a body of salt water, covering approximately one-fifth of the total ocean area of the world; it is the smallest, youngest, and physically most complex of the world’s three major oceans.

“Myanmar ‘nuclear plans’ exposed, June 4, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/06/2010642542469132.html
Myanmar is bordered by China to the north and northeast, Laos to the east, Thailand to the southeast, the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal to the south and southwest, Bangladesh to the west, and India to the northwest.

[On India’s western border is Pakistan and on Pakistan’s western border is Afghanistan; on China’s eastern border on the Sea of Japan is North Korea. The largest of all Asian countries, with the world’s largest population, occupying nearly the entire East Asian landmass, approximately one-fourteenth of the land area of the Earth ─ China is bounded by Mongolia to the north; Russia and North Korea to the northeast; the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea to the east; the South China Sea to the southeast; Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), India, Bhutan, and Nepal to the south; Pakistan to the southwest; and Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan to the west. In addition to the 14 countries that border directly on it, China also faces South Korea and Japan, across the Yellow Sea, and the Philippines, which lie beyond the South China Sea]. 

Officially the Union of Myanmar (also called Burma, Burmese Myanmar or Pyidaungzu Myanma Naingngandaw country), Myanmar sits in the western portion of mainland Southeast Asia. In 1989, the country’s official English name was changed from the Union of Burma to the Union of Myanmar; in the Burmese language, the country has been known as Myanma (or, more precisely, Mranma Prañ) since the 13th century. The English name of the capital, Rangoon, in 1989 became Yangôn. 

“Nearly 5 Years After Katrina, African American Fishing Community in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish Faces New Struggle in Oil Spill Devastation and BP Obstruction,” June 4, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/

“U.S. ‘secret war’ expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role” (Jennifer Jenkins), June 4, 2010, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2010/06/us_secret_war_expands_globally.html?wprss=washingtonpostinvestigationsBackground notes: Britannica