The Many Deaths of Hakimullah Mehsud

Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan Leader Still Not Dead, Despite Reports

by Jason Ditz, October 05, 2009

They say cats have nine lives. It’s not clear how many Tehreek-e Taliban (TTP) leader Hakimullah Mehsud has, but it’s at the very least more than four.

Hakimullah Mehsud

Hoping to stem reports of his death, Hakimullah met at an undisclosed location with members of the press, and a video clip showing the healthy-looking militant was broadcast around the nation.

Over the weekend US officials declared of the reclusive TTP leader “we’re pretty clear that we think he’s dead.” If that sounds familiar you’re not alone, Hakimullah was also declared killed in early September, and twice in August.

The first of Hakimullah’s many deaths occurred in early August, when he and fellow TTP commander Wali Rehnman reportedly killed one another. Rehman came forward almost immediately and insisted the fight never happened, Hakimullah did the same days later.

The persistent rumors of Hakimullah’s death seemed to center around a conspiracy theory involving his somewhat similar looking brother Kalimullah, who supposedly had been making public appearances in Hakimullah’s place. Kalimullah was reportedly killed last week in a US drone attack.

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Probing the Arctic Sea conspiracies

Experts found it hard to believe the ship would be hijacked for its cargo of timber

What really happened when the Arctic Sea cargo ship went missing amid allegations of hijacking and weapons smuggling? The BBC's Sarah Rainsford went to Kaliningrad to find out.

The man's voice on the crackly recording from onboard the Arctic Sea cargo ship sounds very calm, even cheerful.

"My last port of call is Jakobstadt, Finland."

"Your destination, sir? Bejaia?" the female coastguard asks from the station on the Dover cliffs overlooking the English channel.

"Yes, that's correct," the voice replies.

But the Arctic Sea never reached Algeria. This was the last recorded conversation with the vessel, two days before it disappeared amid rumours of a hijack, whispers of arms smuggling and the whiff of international conspiracy.

I was given the first copy of the call by Dover coastguards as I began probing the many theories about what happened.

The cargo ship was finally located by the Russian navy 300 miles (483km) west of Cape Verde.

Eight men said to have boarded close to Sweden were whisked away to a Moscow prison and charged with hijack.

After weeks searching the vessel, far out at sea, Russian investigators announced they had found no suspicious cargo.

Cover story?

But the official account leaves many questions unanswered.

How could pirates operate in heavily-monitored European waters? Would they really hijack a cargo of wood, or was something more valuable on board? And why did the alleged pirates surrender without a fight or a ransom?

Apart from fuel and provisions for the crew, [the Arctic Sea] was empty as a drum Vladimir Parshin The Russian Maritime Register in Kalingrad

Stitching together John le Carre-style plotlines is simple.

But pinning-down hard evidence is far tougher, and that seems deliberate.

The ship's crew is under a gagging order, and my requests for interviews with Russian investigators and officials have come to nothing.

Fuelled by a level of secrecy unusual even for Russia, speculation about the Arctic Sea abounds.

Most gripping is the theory prompted by an Israeli intelligence source who told the BBC that Israel had warned Russia it knew the ship was smuggling S300 anti-aircraft defence systems to Iran.

Israel feared those missiles would protect any nuclear weapons facilities Iran might be building. So the hijack was a cover story, the source said, to let Russia block the delivery and save face.

The Russian foreign minister denies there were S300s onboard the Arctic Sea, and Israeli sources will say no more. The story is implausible but not impossible - so I tested the practicalities.

Normal ship

Before its last voyage, the Arctic Sea spent almost three weeks in Kaliningrad for what its owner calls routine maintenance.

The Arctic Sea has a similar-sized hold to this one - did it contain missiles?

The militarised Russian region was a smugglers' paradise after the collapse of the USSR.

The Baltic Fleet there is equipped with S300 missiles. So Kaliningrad seems a prime spot to load secret cargo.

It was the first time the ship's owner had chosen the Russian port, but classification records I have seen show this was a scheduled docking.

"This was an intermediate survey. It was the end of year three in a five-year cycle so it fits," confirmed Vladimir Parshin, local head of the Russian Maritime Register.

"We have to check the tanks and the drainage system. We can't do that when the ship is loaded. Apart from fuel and provisions for the crew, she was empty as a drum."

But his team's last visit was on 16 July, and data from Lloyds Register/Fair Play indicates that the Arctic Sea remained in Kaliningrad another day.

Despite repeat requests, I was not permitted to visit Pregol shipyard to investigate whether an illicit cargo could have been loaded then.

Instead, I traced those who went onboard the Arctic Sea in Finland, where the ship took on its official cargo of pine. I discovered there was no physical inspection.

"If they say they are empty, they are empty," customs officer Kjell Lintholm told me. "We were on the ship for passport control, just documents. It was a normal ship."

But could a consignment of S300s have been hidden somewhere?

Equally flawed

Inside the vast hold of a British-owned ship almost identical in size to the Arctic Sea, I watched dockers at work as cranes lowered mobile homes onto deck.

There is clearly ample space for the S300 launch vehicles, but no way for the Finns to miss them.

Moscow denies S-300 missiles were on board

The seven-metre long missiles are also hard to hide.

The only feasible place is the ballast tanks, so I squeezed through a manhole and climbed into one of them to take a look.

Access to all these dark, damp areas is through an oval hole about 80cm (31 inches) at its widest.

The space beneath is fairly generous but manoeuvring a long, thick missile in there would be impossible.

"You could squeeze something in, but not big stuff," the ship's Russian captain agreed. "And I don't believe these missiles are flexible."

Accessing the bottom ballast tanks would mean cutting open the lower deck and resealing it.

If the Russian navy was really scrambled to remove the missiles, it would have to do that from a fully-loaded timber carrier - out at sea.

Captain Yevgeny, like others I met, is deeply sceptical.

"If the tanks are covered, there is no chance to get in them," he told me.

Might a Russian naval frigate have transferred the timber?

"Everything's possible, if you really want it," the Captain laughed. "But it's closer to a fairy-tale. It would be a miracle."

Even allowing for that miracle, all this sidesteps other big questions including how the supposed missiles would reach Iran from Algeria, and why crossing the Caspian Sea was not simpler.

I have explored several alternative theories about the Arctic Sea, and interviewed dozens of people in many countries.

So far all versions are unproven and equally flawed.

Frustrating though it is, unless someone breaks their silence, what is left is a deep mystery and any thrilling plotline you care to choose.

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The Iranian Rift in the IAEA

Leaked Paper on Iranian Nuke Based on Disputed Intel

By GARETH PORTER
October 6, 2009

Excerpts of the internal draft report by the staff of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published online last week show that the report's claims about Iranian work on a nuclear weapon is based almost entirely on intelligence documents which have provoked a serious conflict within the agency.

Contrary to sensational stories by the Associated Press and The New York Times, the excerpts on the website of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) reveal that the IAEA's Safeguards Department, which wrote the report, only has suspicions – not real evidence - that Iran has been working on nuclear weapons in recent years.

The newly published excerpts make it clear, moreover, that the so-called "Alleged Studies" documents brought to the attention of the agency by the United States five years ago are central to its assertion that Iran had such a programme in 2002-03.

Whether those documents are genuine or were fabricated has been the subject of a fierce struggle behind the scenes for many months between two departments of the IAEA.

Some IAEA officials began calling for a clear statement by the agency that it could not affirm the documents' authenticity after the agency obtained hard evidence in early 2008 that a key document in the collection had been fraudulently altered, as previously reported by this writer. As journalist Mark Hibbs reported last week in Nucleonics Week, opposition to relying on the intelligence documents has come not only from outgoing Director General Mohamed ElBaradei but from the Department of External Relations and Policy Coordination.

Since September 2008, however, the Safeguards Department, headed by Olli Heinonen, has been pressing for publication of its draft report as an annex to a regular agency report on Iran.

Heinonen leaked the draft to Western governments last summer, and in September it was leaked to the Associated Press and ISIS. That has generated sensational headlines suggesting that Iran can already build a nuclear bomb.

The draft report says the agency "assesses that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device". But other passages indicate the authors regard such knowledge only as a possibility, based on suspicions rather than concrete evidence.

It says the "necessary information was most likely obtained from external sources and probably modified by Iran". But it cites only the 15-page "uranium metal document" given by the A. Q. Khan network to Iran when it purchased centrifuge designs in 1987.

"Based on the information in the document," it says, "it is possible that Iran has knowledge regarding the contents of a nuclear package."

The IAEA "suspects" that the 15-page document was part of "larger package that Iran may have obtained but which has not yet come to the Agency's attention", according to the leaked excerpts.

But that document only outlines procedural requirements for casting uranium into hemispheres, not the technical specifications, as the IAEA report of Nov. 18, 2005 noted. No evidence has ever surfaced to challenge the Iranian explanation that Khan's agents threw in the document after a deal had been reached on centrifuges in an effort to interest Iran in buying the technology for casting uranium.

The IAEA affirmed that it has found no evidence that Iran ever acquired such technology.

The only external "nuclear package" ever reported to have been provided to Iran is a set of flawed technical designs for a "high-voltage block" for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon, which was slipped under the door of the Iranian mission in Vienna by a Russian scientist working for CIA's Operation Merlin in February 2000.

Another far-reaching claim in the draft report is that the IAEA "has information, known as the Alleged Studies, that the Ministry of Defence of Iran has conducted and may still be conducting a comprehensive programme aimed at the development of a nuclear payload to be delivered using the Shahab 3 missile system."

It does not explain how the "Alleged Studies", which are documents on work done in 2002 and 2003, could have any bearing on whether Iran is now conducting work on nuclear weapons.

Using the same language found in published IAEA reports, the draft suggests that the Alleged Studies intelligence documents represent credible evidence. "The information, which has been obtained from multiple sources, is detailed in content and appears to be generally consistent," it says.

But that characterisation of the intelligence first shown to the IAEA by the United States in 2005 has been contested by sceptics in the agency. A senior IAEA official familiar with the documents suggested in an interview with IPS last month that the claim of "multiple sources" may be misleading.

Given the existence of "intelligence sharing networks", the official said, "one can't rule it out that one organisation got the intelligence and shared it with others." That would explain the reference to "multiple sources consistent over time", he said.

The initial U.S. account, according to the official, was that the documents came from the laptop computer of one of the Iranian participants in the alleged nuclear weapons research programme. Later, however, that account was "walked back", he said.

"There are holes in the story," said the official.

The introduction by ISIS to the excerpts from the report, evidently based on conversations with the IAEA personnel, confirms that the documents did not come from Iran on a laptop computer, as U.S. officials had claimed in the past. It suggests that the documents were smuggled out of Iran as "electronic media" by the wife of an Iranian who had been recruited by German intelligence and was later arrested.

That new explanation is highly suspect, however, because an intelligence agency would not confirm the identity of one of their agents, even if he were arrested. Asked about the ISIS account, Paul Pillar, who was national intelligence office for the Middle East when the "laptop documents" surfaced, said it "sounds unusual".

The draft report also argues that the information in the documents is credible, because it "refers to known Iranian persons and institutions under both the military and civil apparatuses, as well as to some degree to their confirmed procurement activities".

But the senior IAEA official cast doubt on that claim as well. The names of people working in the relevant Iranian military and civilian organisations are readily obtainable, he observed. "It's not difficult to cook up such a document," the official told IPS.

The draft paper states that the agency "does not believe that Iran has yet achieved the means of integrating a nuclear payload into the Shahab 3 delivery system with any confidence that it would work".

That statement hints at the fact that the reentry vehicle studies were found to have serious technical problems. The senior IAEA official told IPS that the Sandia National Laboratories, which ran computer simulation analyses of the plan, not only found that none of them would have worked, but had expressed doubt that they were genuine.

The paper makes an indirect reference to a plan for a bench-scale facility for uranium conversion, but does not mention that it had several technical flaws, as acknowledged by Heinonen in a February 2008 briefing for members.

Nor do the draft report's conclusions deal with the fact, confirmed by the senior IAEA official to IPS, that none of the intelligence documents have any security markings, despite the fact they are purported to be part of what presumably would have been Iran's most highly classified programme.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

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Dollar Hysteria

Commentary on Robert Fisk's recent warmongering:

Is the Sky Really Falling?
06.10.2009
By Mike Whitney

October 06, 2009 "Information Clearing House" — - Robert Fisk lit the fuse with his hyperventilating narrative which appeared in Tuesday's UK Independent titled, "The Demise of the Dollar". The article went viral overnight spreading to every musty corner of the Internet and sending gold skyrocketing to $1,026 per oz. Now every doomsday website in cyber-world has headlined Fisk's "shocker" and the blogs are clogged with the frenzied commentary of bunker-dwelling survivalists and goldbugs who're certain that the world as we know it is about to end.

From Fisk's article:

"In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place – although they have not discovered the details – are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security." (UK Telegraph)

"International cabal"? C'mon, Bob, you're better than that.

Reports of the dollar's demise are greatly exaggerated. The dollar may fall, but it won't crash. And, in the short-term, it's bound to strengthen as the equities market reenters the earth's gravitational field after a 6 month-long ride through outer-space. The relationship between falling stocks and a stronger buck is well established and, when the market corrects, the dollar will bounce back once again. Bet on it. So why all this bilge about Middle Eastern men huddled in "secret meetings" stroking their beards while plotting against the empire?

Isn't that the gist of Fisk's article?

Yes, the dollar will fall, (eventually) but not for the reasons that most people think. It's true that the surge in deficit spending has foreign dollar-holders worried. But they're more concerned about the Fed's quantitative easing (QE) program which adds to the money supply by purchasing mortgage-backed securities and US Treasuries. Bernanke is simply printing money and pouring it into the financial system to keep rigamortis from setting in. Naturally, the Fed has had to quantify exactly how much money it intends to "create from thin air" to placate its creditors. And, it has. (The program is scheduled to end by the beginning of 2010) That said, China and Japan are still buying US Treasuries, which indicates they have not yet "jumped ship".

The real reason the dollar will lose its favored role as the world's reserve currency is because US markets, which until recently provided up to 25 percent of global demand, are in sharp decline. Export-dependent nations--like Japan, China, Germany, South Korea--already see the handwriting on the wall. The US consumer is buried under a mountain of debt, which means that his spending-spree won't resume anytime soon. On top of that, unemployment is soaring, personal wealth is falling, savings are rising, and Washington's anti-labor bias assures that wages will continue to stagnate for the foreseeable future. Thus, the American middle class will no longer be the driving force behind global consumption/demand that it was before the crisis. Once consumers are less able to buy new Toyota Prius's or load up on the latest China-made widgets at Walmart, there will be less incentive for foreign governments and central banks to stockpile greenbacks or trade exclusively in dollars.

Here's a clip from the Globe and Mail cited on Washington's Blog:

"A UBS Investment Research report says that while it would be wrong to write off the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, its roughly 90-year iron grip on that position is loosening. “The use of the U.S. dollar as an international reserve currency is in decline,” said UBS economist Paul Donovan.

“The market share of the dollar in international transactions is likely to decline over the coming months and years, but only persistent policy error – or considerable fiscal strain – is likely to cause the dollar to lose reserve currency status entirely.”

The UBS report maintains that the gradual slide of the U.S. dollar is being driven not by the world’s central banks, but by the private sector, as individual companies increasingly abandon the greenback as their international currency of choice.

“The private sector’s use of reserves is more important than official, central bank reserves – anything up to 20 times the significance, depending on interpretation,” Mr. Donovan said. “There is evidence that the move away from the dollar as a private-sector reserve currency has been accelerating since 2000.”

As private industry veers away from the dollar, governments, investors and central banks will follow. The soft tyranny of dollar dominance will erode and parity between currencies and governments will grow. This will create better opportunities for consensus on issues of mutual interest. One nation will no longer be able to dictate international policy.

So-called "dollar hegemony" has added greatly to the gross imbalance of power in the world today. It has put global decision-making in the hands of a handful of Washington warlords whose narrow vision never extends beyond the material interests of themselves and their constituents. As the dollar weakens and consumer demand declines, the United States will be forced to curtail its wars and adjust its behavior to conform to international standards. Either that, or be banished into the political wilderness.

So, what exactly is the downside?

Superpower status rests on the flimsy foundation of the dollar, and the dollar is beginning to crack. Fisk is right; big changes are on the way. Only not just yet.

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Israeli tanks enter eastern Gaza

Press TV - October 6, 2009 15:28:44 GMT

Fighting has broken out between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters in eastern Gaza Strip after Israeli tanks and armored bulldozers crossed the border into the coastal region.

Military tanks fired shells at residential areas in the region, leaving a Palestinian wounded, a press TV correspondent reported Tuesday.

The incursion set off the fighting.

Saudi Bank Governor Denies Talks to Replace Dollar

By Camilla Hall

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabia hasn’t held talks with China and other countries on dropping the dollar as the currency for pricing oil, Saudi Central Bank Governor Muhammad al-Jasser said, denying a report in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper.

The Independent report is “absolutely incorrect” and there has been “absolutely nothing” of that nature discussed between Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, and other countries, al-Jasser told reporters in Istanbul, where he’s attending an International Monetary Fund summit. The dollar pared losses after his remarks.

The London-based newspaper said today that Gulf oil producers and nations including China, Japan, Russia and Brazil had held secret talks on a nine-year plan to phase out the dollar in oil trade, and move toward pricing the fuel in a basket of currencies plus gold. It cited unidentified Gulf officials and unidentified Chinese bankers.

“I don’t give credence to this story,” said Simon Williams, a Dubai-based economist at HSBC Holdings Plc. “Short- term, it’s highly unlikely that oil will not continue to be priced in dollars.”

The dollar pared losses against the euro following al- Jasser’s comments, trading at $1.4725 as of 9:40 a.m. in London, from $1.4648 in New York yesterday. It weakened to $1.4749 earlier on the Independent story. It was at 89.10 yen, from 89.53 yesterday, after falling to 88.86.

Dollar Dependence

Criticism of the dollar’s role as the world’s main reserve currency has grown in the wake of the global financial crisis. China and Russia in June agreed to expand use of each other’s currencies in trade to reduce dependence on the dollar, and those countries plus Brazil and India -- the so-called BRIC nations -- have discussed buying each other’s bonds and swapping currencies. The dollar fell to a one-year low of $1.4844 per euro on Sept. 23.

Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally, pegs its currency to the U.S. dollar like most other oil-rich Gulf nations, and has resisted calls for a move away from the dollar in oil pricing as the U.S. currency lost value in recent years.

Iran and Venezuela raised the proposal at a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps about 40 percent of the world’s oil, in November 2007. The weaker dollar adds to costs for OPEC members who use oil revenue to buy goods priced in other currencies.

New Gulf Currency

Saudi Arabia and three other Gulf oil-producers are planning to create a shared currency that may allow them more freedom from U.S. monetary policy. As the region’s economies rebound faster than the U.S. from the global crisis, “the shortcomings of the dollar peg will become increasingly clear,” HSBC’s Williams said.

Other countries cited by the Independent as being involved in the secret plan also denied it.

Japanese Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii said at a news conference in Tokyo today that he “doesn’t know anything about it,” when he was asked about the newspaper report.

Russia’s Finance Ministry isn’t holding talks on replacing the dollar for oil sales, Interfax news agency reported, citing Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin. Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmed Al-Abdullah Al-Sabah told reporters today in Kuwait City that Gulf Arab states have no plans to drop the dollar for oil pricing.

To contact the reporter on this story: Camilla Hall in Dubai at chall24@bloomberg.net

Heavy security around al-Aqsa

Al Jazeera
October 5, 2009

Israel has deployed large numbers of police officers around the Old City of Jerusalem after sporadic clashes with Palestinian worshippers around the al-Aqsa mosque compound.

Muslim men under the age of 50 were prevented from entering the compound as thousands of Jews gathered at the nearby Western Wall on Monday for prayers marking the week-long holiday of Sukkot.

The area, known as the Haram al-Sharif to Muslims and the Temple Mount to Jews, is the third holiest location in Islam and Judaism's most important site.

Some scuffles were reported to have broken out between Israeli police and Palestinian worshippers at the Damascus Gate after people were refused access.

Worshippers restricted

"There were Palestinian worshippers who turned up for morning prayers. They were told by the police force that anyone under the age of 50 would not be allowed through," Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reporting from Jerusalem, said.

"There are [at present] about 7,000 Jewish worshippers attending a prayer, a blessing at the Wailing [Western] Wall, which is just at the foot of the Haram al-Sharif.

"This is one of the three times during the year in which Jewish worshippers are told to go to Jerusalem and pray."

Justifying the restrictions on entry to the mosque, Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, said: "These measures were taken to avert new incidents on the compound and the Old City and to prevent stones being thrown at the Jewish faithful who come to pray at the Western Wall."

He said "hostile elements are inciting to violence", pointing the finger at the Islamic Movement, an Arab-Israeli group that regularly calls the faithful to rally to the defence of al-Aqsa.

For its part, the Palestinian Authority urged the international community to "immediately intervene and bring the question of the al-Aqsa mosque before the UN Security Council".

Jordan, meanwhile, summoned Israel's ambassador in Amman to demand a halt to "repeated violations" by Israel at the al-Aqsa compound.

Sunday's clashes

Skirmishes broke out near the Lion's Gate entrance to the Old City on Sunday after Israeli security forces closed off Haram al-Sharif to prevent Palestinians from joining about 200 worshippers who had staged a sit-in at the site.

The Palestinians had gathered at the mosque on Saturday night, saying they intended to prevent Jewish hardliners from gaining access.

The Palestinian group Hamas, which effectively governs the Gaza Strip, has warned that an "aggressive assault" by Jewish worshippers on the compound risks sparking a new wave of unrest in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

"... we will not sit on our hands as we will rise in defence of our sanctities. Prejudice to al-Aqsa Mosque is not only a red line, but it is a ticking time bomb that will explode in the face of the Zionist aggressors," Hamas said in a statement.

'Flock to al-Aqsa'

Hamas also urged Palestinians to "flock to al-Aqsa" to offer their prayers in defiance of the Israeli blockade.

"We call on the brave fellow Palestinians and all the Arab and Muslim peoples to rise in defence of our sanctities, to spark another Intifada [uprising] to defend Jerusalem and al-Aqsa mosque," the group's statement said.

At least 13 Palestinians were injured and seven detained in clashes the previous Sunday after a group of non-Muslims entered the mosque compound.

Israeli police said the group was made up of French tourists, while the Palestinians said they were Israeli extremists.

Israel captured and annexed the Old City with its holy sites, along with the rest of Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank, in the war of 1967.

“Save Darfur”: Fast the Eid!

by Alex de Waal - September 14, 2009

America’s Darfur campaign sometimes goes beyond parody. The last few weeks have shown this to the full, beginning with the fantastical “Sudan Now” campaign and culminating in the proposal to fast the Eid. It beggars belief.

Having spent most of the last few months in Sudan, especially Darfur, it is increasingly evident that “Save Darfur”—here meaning not just the Save Darfur Coalition but the wider movement—is out of touch with realities. What they describe and prescribe has little or no relation to what is happening and what should be done. Three recent “Save Darfur” activities highlight this.

First is their campaign to push Obama to “keep the promise” and the ridiculous advertisements in newspapers and the Obamas’ vacation destination. They might do well to recall John Maynard Keynes’s well-known riposte to someone who accused him of inconsistency: “When the facts change, I change my mind? What do you do sir?” The facts have changed, the campaign hasn’t. A few months ago I asked rhetorically, “Can Sudan activism transform itself for the Obama era?” So far, the record is dispiriting.

There’s an episode in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 where the principal character, Yossarian, is tending to a badly wounded young airman, Snowden. He goes about stemming a leg wound in the airman’s leg, while the boy mutely nods, until Yossarian realizes that he is meaning that there’s another wound too—a piece of shrapnel has got inside Snowden’s flak jacket and torn open his side. Yossarian has been busy bandaging the wrong wound while the poor boy is dying. It’s the defining trauma of the book. And it’s the defining error of the “keep the promise” campaign—money misspent on a campaign that is only hampering General Scott Gration the task he has correctly identified, which is finding a workable political settlement for Sudan as a whole. The efforts by “Save Darfur” to try to link its clamour on Darfur with the national issue stretches credibility.

Next was a revealing quote from John Prendergast in response to the remark by Gen. Martin Agwai, outgoing UNAMID Force Commander, that the war in Darfur was essentially over. He could not dispute Gen. Agwai’s facts nor his integrity. Prendergast’s criticism was that this was “something that takes the wind out of the sails of international action.”

This was perhaps more illuminating than Prendergast intended: his campaign is not about domestic solutions but international (read: U.S.) action. That’s Save Darfur’s second big error: if there is to be a solution, it will come from inside Sudan, and must be political, addressed at the structural political challenges of Sudan. A campaign focused on a genocide that isn’t happening, for the U.S. to step up its pressure to stop killing that has already ended, is just making Save Darfur look poorly-informed, and America look silly. Intermittently, “Save Darfur” has tried to rebrand itself as a peace movement—but its origins as an intervention campaign make it virtually impossible to make the transformation. Peace cannot be forced or dictated. If “Save Darfur” is interested in peace, the best it can do in the cause of peace is to fall silent.

Third–and simply stunning–is the choice of date for a fast for Darfur: 21 September. Muslims have been fasting since the beginning of Ramadhan and Eid will fall on 20 and 21 September. As soon as I mentioned the date to my wife, who is a Muslim, she laughed out loud. Not just her: every Muslim, Sudanese or otherwise, I have mentioned this to (trying my best to keep a straight face) has guffawed in amazement. Just as Darfurians are breaking their fast, Save Darfur’s campaigners will be starting theirs. The choice of day is astonishingly ignorant of, and insensitive to the Muslim world. “Save Darfur” may be a multi-faith initiative, but Muslims hardly count. “Save Darfur” isn’t about Sudan, or indeed Darfur, at all–it’s about an imagined empathy and generating a domestic American political agenda. Shame on you, Prendergast and your fellow “activists”, shame, shame, shame.

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Ahmadinejad has no Jewish roots

Rumours that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's family converted to Islam from Judaism are false. In fact, they are proud Shias

Meir Javedanfar
guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 October 2009 11.14 BST

In June 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's meteoric rise from mayor of Tehran to president of one of the most influential countries in the Middle East took everyone by surprise. One of the main reasons for the astonishment was that so little was known about him.

One recently published claim about his background comes from an article in the Daily Telegraph. Entitled "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed to have Jewish past", it claims that his family converted to Islam after his birth. The claim is based on a number of arguments, a key one being that his previous surname was Sabourjian which "derives from weaver of the sabour, the name for the Jewish tallit shawl in Persia".

Professor David Yeroshalmi, author of The Jews of Iran in the 19th century and an expert on Iranian Jewish communities, disputes the validity of this argument. "There is no such meaning for the word 'sabour' in any of the Persian Jewish dialects, nor does it mean Jewish prayer shawl in Persian. Also, the name Sabourjian is not a well-known Jewish name," he stated in a recent interview. In fact, Iranian Jews use the Hebrew word "tzitzit" to describe the Jewish prayer shawl. Yeroshalmi, a scholar at Tel Aviv University's Center for Iranian Studies, also went on to dispute the article's findings that the "-jian" ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews. "This ending is in no way sufficient to judge whether someone has a Jewish background. Many Muslim surnames have the same ending," he stated.

Upon closer inspection, a completely different interpretation of "Sabourjian" emerges. According to Robert Tait, a Guardian correspondent who travelled to Ahmadinejad's native village in 2005, the name "derives from thread painter – sabor in Farsi – a once common and humble occupation in the carpet industry in Semnan province, where Aradan is situated". This is confirmed by Kasra Naji, who also wrote a biography of Ahmadinejad and met his family in his native village. Carpet weaving or colouring carpet threads are not professions associated with Jews in Iran.

According to both Naji and Tait, Ahmadinejad's father Ahmad was in fact a religious Shia, who taught the Quran before and after Ahmadinejad's birth and their move to Tehran. So religious was Ahmad Sabourjian that he bought a house near a Hosseinieh, a religious club that he frequented during the holy month of Moharram to mourn the martyrdom of Imam Hossein.

Moreover, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's mother is a Seyyede. This is a title given to women whose family are believed to be direct bloodline descendants of Prophet Muhammad. Male members are given the title of Seyyed, and include prominent figures such as Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei. In Judaism, this is equivalent to the Cohens, who are direct descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses. One has to be born into a Seyyed family: the title is never given to Muslims by birth, let alone converts. This makes it impossible for Ahmadinejad's mother to have been a Jew. In fact, she was so proud of her lineage that everyone in her native village of Aradan referred to her by her Islamic title, Seyyede.

The reason that Ahmadinejad's father changed his surname has more to do with the class struggle in Iran. When it became mandatory to adopt surnames, many people from rural areas chose names that represented their professions or that of their ancestors. This made them easily identifiable as townfolk. In many cases they changed their surnames upon moving to Tehran, in order to avoid snobbery and discrimination from residents of the capital.

The Sabourjians were one of many such families. Their surname was related to carpet-making, an industry that conjures up images of sweatshops. They changed it to Ahmadinejad in order to help them fit in. The new name was also chosen because it means from the race of Ahmad, one of the names given to Muhammad.

According to Ahmadinejad's relatives the new name emphasised the family's piety and their dedication to their religion and its founder. This is something that the president and his relatives in Tehran and Aradan have maintained to the present day. Not because they are trying to deny their past, but because they are proud of it.

Trichet, Lagarde Push China to Let Currency Gain Against Euro

By Francine Lacqua and Mark Deen

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- European Central Bank President Jean- Claude Trichet led the region’s finance chiefs in pushing China to let the yuan strengthen amid mounting concern the euro is shouldering too much of the burden of a sliding dollar.

Some currencies “have in the medium run to appreciate,” Trichet said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Istanbul yesterday. French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde told Bloomberg that Europe’s economic recovery doesn’t justify further gains in the euro against the dollar.

The officials want China to do more to rebalance the world economy after it kept the yuan largely unchanged versus the dollar for more than a year, aiding its exporters and exposing those elsewhere to the dollar’s dive. The euro has gained about 16 percent versus the U.S. currency since May, raising concern among policy makers that it could slow their economy’s rebound from the worst recession since World War II.

“We need a rebalancing so that one currency doesn’t take the flak for the others” Lagarde said. “The European economy is not doing badly but it’s not doing so well that its currency can be the ultimate recourse.”

Trichet and Lagarde spoke two days after the G-7 published a statement repeating its mantra that volatility in exchange rates hurts economic growth. The communiqué didn’t single out the dollar or ratchet up rhetoric toward China, which is part of the G-20 club anointed by world leaders two weeks ago as the world’s primary forum for global economic cooperation.

‘Strong Dollar’

The dollar fell yesterday, weakening to $1.4637 per euro at 4:45 p.m. in London, from $1.4576 on Oct. 2.

The G-7 statement nevertheless “clearly says excess volatility is not welcome” in exchange rates, Trichet said in the interview. He appreciates “enormously” the U.S. Treasury’s stated preference for a “strong dollar.”

Finance officials are gathering in Istanbul for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. They meet as the world’s major economies look to pursue policies that even-out so-called global imbalances, marked by a U.S. trade deficit and Chinese current account surplus, which they blame for helping trigger the recent financial crisis.

ECB Executive Board member Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi joined the chorus in calling on China to tie their currency less to the dollar and, by extension, the monetary policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

“The best way is that China starts adopting its own monetary policy and detach itself from the Fed’s policy,” said he said in a panel discussion in Istanbul.

Chinese Basket

China, which intervenes to control its currency’s value with reference to a basket of currencies including the euro, is often slow to respond to diplomatic pushes for a more flexible exchange rate. It took almost two years of international lobbying for it to break a peg with the dollar in July 2005. Economists and academics are unconvinced it will respond this time.

The head of China’s bank regulator said the yuan isn’t ready to assume the same stature as the euro and the dollar.

“I do hope that the countries with reserve currencies will be more responsible and we’ve got to be more supportive, and I think in the long-run I think together we can make some difference,” said Liu Mingkang in Istanbul. “It’s far too early to mention that the Chinese currency can be an international reserves currency.”

Further weakness in the U.S. currency means “we could get a battle of the printing presses as the Chinese try to match the printing of dollars by printing their own currency,” Harvard University Professor Niall Ferguson said in an Oct. 3 interview in Istanbul. New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini said that China has returned to an “effective peg by intervening and preventing any further appreciation of the yuan.”