Media Review Network – Page 1035 – Providing Context and Substance

Sudan the changes across the landsCape here would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Jeffery Gettleman

(source: New York Times)

The rebel groups that started the war in Darfur in 2003, catalyzing a conflict that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, almost seem to have gone into hibernation. So, too, have the infamous janjaweed, the marauding bandits who raped, killed and terrorized countless civilians.

And this planting season, for the first time since 2003, United Nations officials say that tens of thousands of farmers who had been seeking refuge in squalid displaced persons camps returned to their villages to plant crops, a journey many Darfurians would have considered suicide until recently.

Israeli general brigadier general uzi eilam denies Iran is nuclear threat

by MRN
January 1, 2013January 6, 2014

By Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv

(source: The Wisdom Fund)

A general who was once in charge of Israels nuclear weapons has claimed that Iran is a very, very, very long way from building a nuclear capability.

Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, 75, a war hero and pillar of the defence establishment, believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons.

The views expressed by the former director-general of Israels Atomic Energy Commission contradict the assessment of Israels defence establishment and put him at odds with political leaders.

Greed is the cause of terrorism

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Dr Firoz Osman-Laudium, Tshwane

(source: STAR – January 07, 2010 Edition 1)

The Star’s editorial, "Terror: no easy answers" (January 5), cites the example of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried to blow up a US airline, in the difficulty in countering terrorism.

Part of the problem, and solution, lies in the statement "that citizens of 14 nations will be subject to intensified screening at airports worldwide". Every targeted country – with one exception, Cuba – is Muslim.

They are Iran, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.Most of the Muslim nations are either invaded and occupied, or have a despotic puppet ruler – armed and propped up by the US and its allies – oppressing the population.

Others are determined to guard their ideology and sovereignty and follow an independent foreign policy, so they are victimised.The problem, therefore, is the invasion, occupation, suppression and exploitation of Muslim lands by the US, Israel, Russia, India, UK and the Nato countries.

Cape Times oped

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

Jordanian spy’s presence in Afghanistan shows America’s enemies collaborate

By Robert Fisk

(source: Cape Times, January 07, 2010 Edition 1)

In the vast American embassy in the hills outside the Jordanian capital, Amman, a senior US Special Forces officer runs an equally special office. He buys information from Jordanian army and intelligence officers – for cash, of course – but he also helps to train Afghan and Iraqi policemen and soldiers. The information he seeks is not just about al-Qaeda but about Jordanians themselves, about the army’s loyalty to King Abdullah II as well as about the anti-American insurgents who live in Jordan, primarily Iraqi but also Iraqi al-Qaeda contacts with Afghanistan.

It’s easy to buy army officers in the Middle East. The Americans spent much of 2001 and 2002 buying up the warlords of Afghanistan. They paid for Jordanian troops to join their own occupation army in Iraq – which was why the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad was ruthlessly bombed by Washington’s enemies.