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Middle East

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The Middle East has long been the battleground for conflicts over key natural resources, turning its past into a narrative of imperialist invasions and ideological clashes fuelled by religious differences, powerful militias and national interests. The resolution of entrenched hostilities is largely dependent upon agreements to share the region’s land, oil and water more equitably as a first step towards establishing lasting peace.

Latest Articles

Iran: Women on Trial for Peaceful Demonstration

28th Feb 07 -Human Rights Watch

The Iranian Judiciary should immediately end its prosecution of several women’s rights advocates for exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly, Human Rights Watch said today. 

 
Oily Truth Emerges in Iraq
23rd Feb 07 - Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily

Throughout nearly four years of the daily mayhem and carnage in Iraq, President Bush and his aides in the White House have scoffed at even the slightest suggestion that the U.S. military occupation has anything to do with oil.

 
Bush is Dreaming and Won't Wake Up

Bush Dreaming

12th Feb - Paul Siegel, New York NewsDay

The president's persistence in the face of reality represents a disturbing state of mind

Critics are charging almost daily that President George W. Bush is in "denial" about Iraq. A recent Newsweek poll found that "67 percent of Americans believe that the president's decisions are more influenced by personal beliefs than by the facts." But denial is just the tip of the Freudian iceberg. Psychologically, Bush has been in a more serious state: dissociation from reality.

 
Billions and Billions of Dollars Just Disappear in Iraq

Iraq 9th Feb 07 - Joseph L. Galloway, McClatchy Newspapers

Show me the money, or at least some receipts scribbled on the backs of old envelopes and grocery bags.

This week, we were treated to the spectacle of the former U.S. civilian overlord of Iraq, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, squirming in the hot seat as he attempted with little success to explain what he did with 363 TONS of newly printed, shrink-wrapped $100 bills he had flown to Baghdad.

That's $12 billion in cold, hard American cash, and no one, especially Bremer, seems to know where it went.

It may be an urban legend, but the late Sen. Everett Dirksen, the Illinois Republican, is widely quoted as saying: "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." If he didn't say it, he should have.

 
Blood and oil: How the West will profit from Iraq's most precious commodity

Iraq oil field

7th Jan 07 - The Independent UK

The 'IoS' today reveals a draft for a new law that would give Western oil companies a massive share in the third largest reserves in the world. To the victors, the oil? That is how some experts view this unprecedented arrangement with a major Middle East oil producer that guarantees investors huge profits for the next 30 years

So was this what the Iraq war was fought for, after all? As the number of US soldiers killed since the invasion rises past the 3,000 mark, and President George Bush gambles on sending in up to 30,000 more troops, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Iraqi government is about to push through a law giving Western oil companies the right to exploit the country's massive oil reserves.

And Iraq's oil reserves, the third largest in the world, with an estimated 115 billion barrels waiting to be extracted, are a prize worth having. As Vice-President Dick Cheney noted in 1999, when he was still running Halliburton, an oil services company, the Middle East is the key to preventing the world running out of oil.

 
Blair Fails to Condemn Hanging as Bush Ducks the Question
Andrew Grice, 4th Jan 07, The Independent

Downing Street has welcomed the Iraqi government's decision to hold an inquiry into the fiasco over the execution of Saddam Hussein and admitted that mistakes had been made.

 
Iraqis say they were better off under rule of Saddam Hussein

Angus Reid, 5th Jan 07 - Global Research

Many adults in Iraq believe the coalition effort has been negative, according to a poll by the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies and the Gulf Research Center. 90 per cent of respondents think the situation in their country was better before the U.S.-led invasion.

 
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