He knows how to play to a heartland audience. It's the Jews who are gonna make me sacrifice your sons on the killing fields of Iran. Never mind that Iran's growing sway over the Baghdad regime poses a threat to US control of Iraq and its critical oil resources. From AFP, March 21, via London's Asharq Alawsat:

This commentary in Egypt's Al-Ahram Weekly gets it just right. The incredibly sad irony is that Al-Ahram's editors obviously didn't read it! The introdek they appended to it assumes the piece is making the same tired point about how the Jews control US foriegn policy. In fact, Massad, to his great credit, is making the opposite point: that the Jews are taking the hit for US imperial interests.

The countdown continues: how long before the idiot left in the West starts rallying around Lukashenko? From AP, March 24:

MINSK, Belarus - Police stormed the opposition tent camp in the Belarusian capital early Friday and rounded up hundreds of demonstrators who spent a fourth night protesting President Alexander Lukashenko's victory in a disputed election. A Canadian freelance journalist was among those in custody.

From Knight-Ridder, March 21:

BOGOTA, Colombia - It's pretty easy to tell when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is angry. The bespectacled president usually airs his grievances in public, particularly against errant generals in his army.

From the AP, March 22:

WASHINGTON — The United States charged 50 leaders of Colombia's largest guerrilla group with sending more than $25 billion worth of cocaine around the world to finance their fight at home, a federal indictment that depicts the rebels as major narco-terrorists.

The Basque separatist ETA has announced a permanent ceasefire after nearly 40 years and some 800 killings. Now, as this report from IOL notes, legal proceedings against accused ETA collaborators may be reconsidered. Note that Arnaldo Otegi faces prison time for, among other things, "defending terrorism by praising dead ETA members." As with the recent "anti-terrorism" legislation in the UK that criminalizes free speech, we see that "the West" betrays the very values it is supposedly defending in the War on Terrorism. And, of course, just as the war between ETA and the Spanish state is winding down, the war between al-Qaeda and the Spanish state may be just beginning...

From AP, March 22:

ROME — Italian police said Tuesday they have arrested five people suspected in the killing of a local politician who was shot last year at a polling station in southern Italy where he was voting in a nationwide primary.

From Reuters:

QUETTA, Pakistan, March 23 - A bomb blew up a telephone call office in Pakistan's troubled Baluchistan province on Thursday, killing the owner and wounding eight other people, police said.