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Asia Times Online :: Middle East News - The tortured world of US intelligence : "With President George W Bush's choice of ex-Central Intelligence Agency director Robert Gates to take over the Pentagon, this most uninformed of presidents unwittingly gave us back vital pages of our recent history. If Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the neo-conservative claque in the second echelon of the administration are all complicit in today's misrule, Gates personifies older, equally serious, if less recognized, less remembered abuses. His laden resume offers needed evidence that Washington's tortuous, torturing foreign policies did not begin with the Bush administration - and will not end with it. "

Jennifer Loewenstein: The Triumph of US / Israeli Policy in Palestine : "Western nations are standing by in silence as the deadly siege of Gaza and the dismemberment of the West Bank continue unabated. What we are witnessing in full view each day are unprecedented steps taken by the world's only superpower and its favorite client state, Israel, to ensure the death of a nation. While friction between the two key political factions in the occupied Palestinian territories has long undermined the smooth functioning of internal affairs, it was the direct, cynical involvement of US and Israeli policy-makers in these affairs that guaranteed the breakdown of internal stability and paved the way for the Hamas 'coup' in Gaza."

They’ll Break the Bad News on 9/11 - CommonDreams.org

allAfrica.com: East Africa: There's More Than a Border in Ethiopia, Eritrea Conflict (Page 1 of 2) : "The two countries agreed to binding arbitration about the location of their border in Algiers in 2000. The small town of Badme was awarded to Eritrea. Until then, Ethiopia refused to allow the demarcation because Eritrea invaded Badme to spark the war in 1998. Why? Because for the preceding year, a series of incidents provoked the Eritrean government into thinking that Ethiopia soldiers were trying to take over Badme by stealth."

Reuters AlertNet - Ethiopia rebels say govt kills 40 in air raids NAIROBI, June 25 (Reuters) - Rebels in Ethiopia's remote eastern Somali region accused the government on Monday of using warplanes to bomb three villages, killing around 40 people, in an escalating offensive against the insurgents. The government said it had the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) "on the run", but denied using planes during fighting in the poor and arid region on the border of Ethiopia and Somalia in the Horn of Africa. An ONLF spokesman said as well as the victims of air raids, 57 more civilians had died in the past 10 days or so of battles. "This is a big offensive, mostly targeting the population because they cannot beat us," Abdirahman Mahdi, an ONLF founder member and now its UK-based spokesman, told Reuters. "We hear from our commanders that they carpet-bombed three villages -- Abaaqorow, Dar es Salaam, and Ayun -- with MiG jets last Thursday. About 40 civilians d...