Slowly the grip tightens. Quietly, Bush has signed an order to reorganize the chain-of-comand in the Pentagon. The Pentagon's intelligence chief is now in the No. 3 spot in the succession hierarchy behind the Secretary of Defense.

The changes, announced last week (Dec 2005), are the second in six months and reflect an emphasis on intelligence gathering versus combat in 21st century war fighting.

Get ready for a "dirty war" in the USA.

In the recent past an American grandmother demonstrating against the tyrant Bush, held a placard as she marched on the Capital, it read, “The Road to Hell is lined with Bushes”. It is now evident that this grandmother (who puts younger Americans to shame) was exhibiting prophetic or intuitive insight. In that period Bush was relatively tame. This American woman and true patriot is an inspiration to us all.

The World Trade Organisation’s ministerial conference just met in Hong Kong, and encountered militant protests. The WTO should be setting firm rules in agriculture--which is more important to poor countries than to rich ones--to ensure a sustainable future. But the developed nations want `access to markets' and are using reform of their farm subsidies as a bargaining chip to increase their exports of services and industrial goods. Jacques Berthelot provides analysis. Berthelot concludes that the regulation of agricultural trade should be the work of "a different body--perhaps the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation or the UN Conference on Trade and Development, or an entirely new body created for the purpose. This body’s role would be to control supply at the international level to avoid structural overproduction, and to set minimum prices, especially for tropical goods."

Hong Kong-based journalist Pranjal Tiwari and San Francisco-based activist David Solnit provide an account of the protests at the meetings of the World Trade Organization in Hong Kong.

Iraq’s election a victory for Iran, says Rafsanjani

By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran
Published: December 16 2005 18:22 | Last updated: December 16 2005 18:22

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran’s influential former president, on Friday called Iraq’s parliamentary elections a “victory” for Iran and said the vote had shattered any US expansionist ambitions in the Middle East.


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He also criticised Washington for refusing to give Tehran a role in its Iraq policy.

“The election was a victory won by the Iraqi nation, which we share with them, because we paid a price for its preparation - since the Iran-Iraq war [1980-1988] and the Ba’athist regime,” Mr Rafsanjani told Friday worshippers at Tehran University campus. “Although Iraq has still a difficult future ahead, the trend is on the right track.”

The US accuses Iran of misusing its influence and fuelling the insurgency to destabilise Iraq. Iran denies such charges and argues that stability in Iraq is in line with its national interests.

Mr Rafsanjani is known as a pragmatic conservative who favours strategic co-operation with the US in the region. “It could be to the US’s benefit not to ignore Iran’s role; instead, they were hostile wherever they could be,” Mr Rafsanjani said.

Samir Amin, author of "Accumalation on a World Scale" and "The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World", critically examines Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's "Empire" and "Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire". Amin asks the question "Are Hardt and Negri analyzing a post-imperialist empire or the renewed expansion of imperialism?" He examines the analytical power of the concepts of "empire" and "multitude" finding them abstract and weak. Amin argues that the background political culture that stands behind Hardt and Negri's discourse is that of US liberalism. He concludes with an alternative historical materialist analysis.

Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture for winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. In "Truth, Art & Politics," British playright Harold Pinter begins by discussing the creative writing process in relation to truth. Then, he examines the untruths of the US-UK imperial politics in relation to the Iraq war, and the long history of the US's foreign interventions since the end of WWII. Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture was pre-recorded, and shown on video December 7, 2005, in Börssalen at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.

AltPress E-Newsletter
By Alternative Press Center

The Alternative Press Center's "Picks of the Month!" Links to articles on the Iraqi constitution, Arnold Schwarzenegger and California politics, business beneficiaries of the Katrina disaster, socialist-feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich, struggles of a documentary filmmaker doing work on GMOs, radical-feminist Robin Morgan's analysis of militarism and terrorism, Winona LaDuke on the danger of uranium mining to the Navajo population, alleged terrorist funding through bootleg DVD sales.