September 24, 2007 4:27

No War Says Ahmadinejad

The Mahmoud Ahmadinejad road show rolled into New York yesterday with a prime time interview on CBS' 60 Minutes . "You have to appreciate we don't need a nuclear bomb. We don't need that. What need do we have for a bomb?" the Iranian President said before playing down any talk of war with the U.S.: "Why should we go to war? There is no war in the offing."

November's Middle East Summit is shaping up to be one big tent with even Syria is being invited. But is Hamas planning a major terrorist attack against an Israeli city to derail the talks, asks the Jerusalem Post.

Is the Burmese military junta losing control or just waiting to crack down on the growing civil unrest? Some 30,000 people marched through Rangoon today, one day after 5 ,000 monks and nuns rallied against the regime .

But perhaps the most poignant signal of the growing discontent against Burma's repressive regime was the brief appearance on Saturday of Aung San Suu Kyi , the first time supporters of the under-house-arrest Nobel Laureate have seen her since 2003.

Politics - Hillary Does the Rounds

Hillary Clinton also had a spell on the telly yesterday - hitting five political talk shows in a single morning and "demonstrating a particularly senatorial skill: the art of the filibuster."

Hillary talks up a storm: Steve Helber / AP

She was direct on one point at least. Clinton told CNN she " won't vote for any more money to support the four-year-old war in Iraq without a plan to start bringing U.S. troops home".

Rudy Giuliani talks a tough game about terrorists. "They want to kill us," the WPost says he recently told a Virginia luncheon. But as GOP donors choke on their soup, the paper reports that Rudy's latter-day pit-bull bark is significantly worse than his previous prosecutorial bite.

While other presidential hopefuls sound the outrage over the recent Blackwater USA debacle, Mitt Romney is keeping mum . Could the fact that one of his top advisers serves as a Blackwater vice chairman have anything to do with Romney's reticence asks the Politico?

Iraq - Military Men Behaving Badly

You thought the Vietnam War was messed up? Get a load of the nefarious goings-on in Iraq as reported in this morning's dispatches.

Blackwater USA (who else) staff are likely to face criminal charges in Iraq for last weekend's civilian shooting incident. At the same time the company denied allegations that employees smuggled "unlicensed automatic weapons and military equipment into Iraq". In it defense, why bother when there's so much unaccounted for U.S. weaponry in the country already?

Talking of accounting, check out the case of Major John Lee Cockerham, an enterprising officer who is accused of "orchestrating the largest single bribery scheme against the military since the start of the Iraq war," (and that's up against some pretty stiff competition by the sounds of things. Cockerham's alleged $10 millions in bribes is the standout corruption scam in some $10 billion of dodgy military contracts being investigated by the Pentagon.

Oh, and apparently a Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to "bait" insurgents by leaving plastic explosives and ammunition in open spaces and then shooting any Iraqis who pick up the items.

Talk about winning the war of hearts and minds.

National - UAW and GM Stuck in Reverse

Are we the only ones who forgot about the United Auto Workers-GM contract negotiations? Last week when we checked they seemed close to an agreement but last night the union set a strike deadline of this morning, saying "G.M. had failed to address job security," among other issues says the NYT.

Florida Democrats have thumbed their noses at a Democratic National Committee directive by sticking with a decision to move forward the state primary to January 29th. The DNC has threatened to strip Florida of its 210 nominating delegates if the state party held a primary before Feb. 5. Good to see the Dems uniting over a state that has real election clout.

Best headline of the day from the Chicago Tribune: Despite deaths, officials call Tasers effective tool .

Good for your health? Credit: PA

Still on the subject of questionable law and order methods, it appears that all that talk of Gitmo 's imminent closure was premature. "The [Guantanamo Bay] detention facility has been embraced by many Republicans as a potent political symbol in their quest to seize the terrorism issue ahead of next year's elections," says the LA Times.

As the FBI investigates a white supremacist "anti Jena 6" website , it's sobering to reflect that it was 50 years ago that the Little Rock Nine struck a blow against racial segregation. Slow progress, no?

Celebrity - West Side Story at 50

Old Timer special this morning.

West Side Story turns 50 this week. The Romeo and Juliet reinvention highlighted the urban ethnic tensions on the tough Upper West Side of Manhattan. Yes...that Upper West Side.

We'd show you some of the original clips on YouTube but this Zombie/West Side Story mash up seems well, just as appropriate...

Lawrence Olivier 's 100th anniversary has been belatedly celebrated with the unveiling outside London's National Theatre of a life-size statue of the great actor playing Hamlet.

As silent as a statue was the trademark of legendary French mime artist Marcel Marceau . He has died aged 84.

Sphere Related Blogs & Articles

|