(Christian Science Monitor/AP) - The United States is changing course on anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan, a senior official said, shifting its focus from the destruction of opium poppies to fighting drug traffickers and promoting non-narcotic crops among Afghan farmers who depend on the poppy harvest for survival.

Many analysts criticized the old policy for ignoring the economic logic that draws Afghan farmers to opium production, and said destroying their crops was no way to win their hearts and minds.

Opium is used to make heroin, and although Afghan production has dropped 19 percent in the past year, it still produces 93 percent of the world supply, according to the Associated Press. Most of that production happens in the south, where support for the Taliban is highest, generating between $50 and $70 million annually for the group, according to UN estimates.

Poppy eradication has been a tenet of US policy in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. But speaking to reporters at a G8 summit on Afghanistan in Italy, US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke called it "a waste of money," says the AP.

Mr. Holbrooke said that, rather than weaken the Taliban, the US anti-poppy effort may have actually made the group stronger, the BBC reports.

"Spraying the crops just penalizes the farmer and they grow crops somewhere else. The hundreds of millions of dollars we spend on crop eradication has not had any damage on the Taliban."

"On the contrary, it has helped them recruit. This is the least effective programme ever," Holbrooke added.

The US will increase its funding of agricultural assistance programs to Afghanistan from "tens of millions of dollars a year to hundreds of millions of dollars," according to Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, says the AP. Holbrooke says the US will use that money "to work on interdiction, rule of law, [and] alternate crops."

The policy shift comes after years of criticism for the poppy eradication program, which observers say ignored the economics of the Afghan drug trade.

Afghan Taliban firefight shows challenge for US troops

(Jerusalem Post) - Israel's decision to sell advanced unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to Russia was made after Moscow gave assurances it would not transfer the technology to Iran or Syria and will suspend the sale of anti-aircraft systems to these countries, defense officials told The Jerusalem Post.

Russian news agencies revealed that Moscow had signed a deal with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to purchase UAVs, after its own unmanned drones performed poorly during its war with Georgia in August.

This is the first sale of Israeli military hardware to Russia. Before agreeing to it, Israel needed to receive permission from the United States.

Russia's interest in Israeli drones surfaced in late 2008 following the war in Georgia, during which Tbilisi operated Israeli-made drones. At the time, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry's Diplomatic-Security Bureau, paid a visit to Moscow and reportedly received assurances that Russia would not sell the S300 defense missile system to Iran.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai says Afghan guards working for the U.S. coalition at a base in Kandahar city killed the province's police chief.

Karzai is demanding that the coalition hand over the guards to Afghan authorities.

(BBC News) - A provincial police chief and at least eight other police have been killed in a clash with US-trained Afghan guards in Kandahar, reports say.

The clash is said to have erupted after the guards, who are employed by US special forces, tried to remove an Afghan prisoner from a civic building.

A senior provincial official said the police chief, head of the criminal department and seven officers died. But the situation remains confused, with Kandahar city closed off.

Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan is a Taliban stronghold. It is a key battleground in the fight between Taliban insurgents and the Afghan government and coalition forces.

The Afghan-Pakistan militant nexus

The Jewish people in Palestine who believe in and have been working toward this national state have become an immensely proud and determined people. It is already a truly great modern example of the birth of a nation with the primary ingredients of dignity and self-respect.

Malca and her family to me are the personification of that determination. She is a young girl of the age of 23 and her husband and four brothers are members of the Haganah. She herself is with the intelligence corps and worked on the average of 15 hours a day, which evidently was not unusual. She had seen and felt much horror and told me the story of a case she had just handled.

A Jewish girl in her teens was picked up by some members of the Haganah on the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and, as she was injured, she was taken to the Hebrew Hospital in Jerusalem. They believed that she had somehow been separated from a Jewish convoy which had just gone through and which had had a scrap with the Arabs.

She was particularly noticed because of the strange people who were her visitors and by the fact that she insisted on being moved to the English hospital. Malca was sent to question her. She was turned away gruffly by the girl after the girl admitted that she had in reality been in a British tank with a boy friend and wanted nothing to do with the Jews.

The Jewish Agency offered to send the girl out on a farm in order to let her regain her health and give her a new start, but she just demanded her release which they were forced to give her. She continued consorting with the British police despite warnings from the Stern gang.

Brother Shoots Sister

One night the Stern gang followed the tactics of the underground forces in the last war. They shaved all the hair off the girl's head. Two days after Malca told me this story the sequel took place. The girl's brother returned for leave from duty with the Haganah up in Galilee and, finding her in such a state, shot her.

LONDON (Reuters) - One person captured on Internet videos helping "Neda," the young Iranian woman killed last week who has become an icon of the protests, was identified by a British newspaper on Friday as a doctor who has since fled Iran.

"I felt she was trying to ask a question, 'Why?'," Dr. Arash Hejazi told the Times in an interview as he recalled her final moments lying in a street with blood pouring from her body.

"She was just a person in the street who was against the injustice going on in her country, and for that she was murdered," said Hejazi, an Iranian who is resident in Britain but says he went to Tehran on a business trip.

Hejazi said Neda Agha Soltan, a 26-year-old music student, was killed by a government militiaman.

Iran has accused the West, particularly Britain and the United States, of inciting violence. State television has blamed violence on "terrorists" and "vandals."

Hejazi, 38, said he fled from Iran when the video footage sped around the world on websites because he feared his own life might be in danger as he could be seen with Soltan.

(Hartford Courant) - The tapes reflect secretly recorded conversations between Nixon and his associates during January and February 1973. Among the things on his mind during that period were the Vietnam War, how to savage his political enemies and the unfolding Watergate drama.

The tapes also caught his reaction to Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. In a Jan. 22 conversation with aide Chuck Colson, Nixon can be heard saying: "There are times when abortions are necessary -- I know that. . . . Suppose you have a black and a white, or a rape."

Nixon and Colson agreed that legalized abortion encouraged permissiveness. "It breaks the family," Nixon says.

... Discussing Nixon's political opposition, Colson says it included "the blacks and the poor." Nixon adds: "And the intellectuals." Colson goes on to say that it also included "the lavender shirt mob . . . the homos and the queers."

The Nixon Tapes: Richard Nixon Hates All in the Family (1971)

(Daily Mail) - During the Cold War, civil servants used the book to rehearse what would happen if there was a devastating nuclear exchange.

Drawn up more than 40 years ago - and updated as recently as the early Nineties - it sets out in immense detail how Britain would have been administered in the event of a devastating nuclear exchange.

The book has been obtained by Whitehall historian Peter Hennessy, who said it showed how civil servants 'peered into the abyss' as they contemplated what would need to be done if deterrence failed and nuclear war became a reality.
Plans to round up 'subversives' were also examined and to see if the BBC had enough notice to get staff to its wartime bunker.

The exercises took place every two years and ended with R hour - the release of all nuclear weapons.

COUNTDOWN TO 'R' HOUR


• As the Soviet threat becomes more likely, people start staying away from work.
  
• Demand builds up at builder's yards for the materials to build household refuges, as well as long queues at food shops.
  
• Soviet forces attack West Germany, Italy and Greece. They then assault Danish islands.
  
• People in Britain start moving out of cities.
  
• Anti-war demonstrations start outside Downing Street but they fade away as the Soviet advance continues.
  
• Major art treasures and historical objects are removed from London to Edinburgh, and all but the acutely ill are discharged from hospital.
  
• There may already have been 'tactical' nuclear strikes, but then 'R Hour' arrives, and most of the the UK is destroyed.
  
• Twelve regions set up in aftermath run by Cabinet ministers with draconian powers

(QUOTE) "I have one vote. I gave it to Mousavi. I have one life. I will give it for freedom."

May her death not be in vain...

"Her name was Neda....
I find it rather fitting that 'Neda' (the girls name) means 'voice' or 'call' in Farsi. (UNQUOTE)

Mahmood's Den - Like the rest of the world, I’ve been half interested in the Iranian elections, not for anything specific, but I guess it’s a good gig to while away the time with. If you think this is endeavor – the elections – are “the real thing” then please be reminded that this is The Middle East. Rule is either by force, charisma, religion or preferably a combination of all three even if the last trait is by proxy. Iran and its leaders has plenty of all three, and then some.

Listening to the big kahuna on BBC News as I type this, and I have been doing so for the best part of an hour so far, what I surmised is the following:

 1. It’s a zionist conspiracy. Iran is pure.
 2. Shut the fuck up and accept Mahmoodi as my chosen puppet and your president.
 3. Everybody else is a liar.
 4. You’re simple people and don’t understand. Keep the thinking to us turbanned lot.
 5. It’s the Jooze who want the destruction of Islam.
 6. They also want to destroy the illustrious Islamic Republic of Iran.
 7. My, I have a lot of sheep in front of me whom I can command on a whim.
 8. The Amerikans are arrogant and bad and want to destroy us.
 9. The Islamic Republic of Iran is the soundest, most democratic and most pure country on earth.
10. But those Zionists are putting out reports that we are corrupt, we are not (stomps feet and thumps lectern).
11. The elections were a-okay and you should trust me, believe me for I am your leader! (on cue, crowd’s fists thumping the air, look into the camera lens and shout Allahuakbar)
12. Islamic Republic will not cheat and will not betray the people election mechanism allows no cheating. (cue cards up, fists thump air again etc)

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman visit with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington D.C.:

"We have no intention to change the demographic balance in Judea and Samaria," Lieberman said during his talks with the secretary of state in Washington. "Everywhere people are born, people die, and we cannot accept a vision of stopping completely the settlements. We have to keep the natural growth."

[See also VIDEO of press conference - Oui]  

(Jerusalem Post - by Leon de Winter) - Obama didn't mention the core message of Hamas: the worldwide destruction of the Jews. Ayatollah Khomeini, the instigator of the present Islamist revolution, defined world history, the course of human events, as follows: "From the beginning, the Islamic movement has been obstructed by the Jews. They were the first who developed anti-Islamic propaganda and conspiracies. And this is still the case."

The Atlantic Dish by Andrew Sullivan

have to go my dear...the shouts are getting louder and louder. [end quote] 10 minutes ago from web  

I had so many long days without sleep, I did not find time to do more. ...oh gun shots!!! I hope it is in the air only... 10 minutes ago from web

Now people are shouting "Death to dictator" all around Elahieh... 11 minutes ago from web

Students activists told me they know that two students also were killed in Isfahan Sanaati [technical] university. 12 minutes ago from web

Also Art University and Allameh dorms were attacked. 13 minutes ago from web

Some died as they were being beaten. 14 minutes ago from web

I talked to 2 students who were present during the attack [on the university dormitory], it was heart breaking. 14 minutes ago from web

Also all press permits have been canceled; there is a Revolutionary Guard decree that journalists be barred from working. 15 minutes ago from web

they were ordered to pack their things and leave for their provinces. 17 minutes ago from web

80 students were freed yesterday in front of Tehran University dormitory. 17 minutes ago from web

Now [about 40 minutes ago] I hear people are chanting Allohakbar on their roof-tops, on all roof tops, it is stronger than any day [so far]. 18 minutes ago from web

50 professor resigned yesterday and were asking for the body of killed students. 19 minutes ago from web

EARLIER NEWS:

Confirmed - Iranian National Football Team show support for Mousavi - sea of green

Six Iranian soccer players wore green wristbands as protest. (Photo Lee Jin-man / AP)

"Aslan: Rafsanjani calls "emergency" meeting of Assembly of Experts in Qom." This is unbelievable and amazing!

10:30 AM Protest at Azad University north branch, they are too loud

Unconfirmed: Several Military Generals have been detained or arrested. They rejected the call to help the govn't fight people.

Iran's state radio reported that clashes in the Iranian capital the previous night left seven people dead after an "unauthorized gathering" following a mass rally over alleged election fraud.

The seven were killed in shooting that erupted after protesters in western Tehran "tried to attack a military location," the radio said, providing no details.

It was the first official confirmation of Monday's fatalities in Tehran's Azadi Square, where witnesses had seen at least one person shot dead and several others seriously wounded by gunfire from a compound for volunteer militia linked to Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard.

VIDEO: Basiji (Paramilitary force) opening fire on Tehran demonstrators

PRESS TV reporter says the shooting in Tehran happened in Azadi Square, killing at least 1 person and causing panic.

URGENT -- Iranian state TV says gunfire has erupted at the pro-Mousavi rally in Tehran where hundreds of thousands of people were protesting.

Huge pro-reform rally defies crackdown threats

(Haaretz) - Dennis Ross, who most recently served as a special State Department envoy to Iran, will abruptly be relieved of his duties, sources in Washington told Haaretz. An official announcement is expected in the coming days.

The Obama administration will announce that Ross has been reassigned to another position in the White House. In his new post, the former Mideast peace envoy under President Bill Clinton will deal primarily with regional issues related to the peace process.

Washington insiders speculate that a number of reasons moved the administration to reassign Ross. One possibility is Iran's persistent refusal to accept Ross as a U.S. emissary given the diplomat's Jewish background as well as his purported pro-Israel leanings. Ross is known to maintain contacts with numerous senior officials in Israel's defense establishment and the Israeli government.

Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem surmised that another possibility for Ross' ouster is his just-released book, "Myths, Illusions, and Peace - Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East." Ross and co-author Mokovsky also raised the possibility of military action against Iran.

Both Israeli Arab and nationalist political leaders blasted the speech as political spin.

"There is no such thing as a demilitarized state, Netanyahu knows very well that no political force on earth can prevent a country from arming itself or signing military treaties like any other country."

MK Zevulun Orlev, of the Jewish Home party, said that the policy represented a drastic change in stance and was an affront to the coalition agreement.

"Netanyahu offered lip service by agreeing to a demilitarized Palestinian state, thus disappointing most of his coalition partners," he said. "Netanyahu's speech requires a serious coalition discussion to ensure that the democratic resolution as it was manifested in the elections will be represented in the government's policy."

Israeli Arab MK Ahmed Tibi said that the address was full of contradictory policy, and essentially a "ploy" to close the rift growing between Netanyahu's government and the Obama administration.

"Netanyahu's mountain turned into a mole hill," said Tibi. "The speech manifests an intellectual fixation which sees a non-sovereign Palestinian state together with continued settlement construction. I hope that the White House will blow the cover from Bibi's [Netanyahu's] public relations ploy. The PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] doesn't need to, and never will, recognize Israel as a Jewish state."

MKs from the opposition Kadima Party, however, said that the speech represented a long-awaited step toward regional peace.

ANALYSIS / Netanyahu speech: Soft words and hardline positions