The Angry Arab on Egypt: "A coup, not a revolution":

"It is quite a show to watch Egyptian liberals and some leftists cheering a reactionary military coup by the man, Sisi, who has been in charge of Egyptian-Israeli military-intelligence cooperation. Sisi is the man who tightened the siege of Gaza and who serviced Israel more than it was serviced in Mubarak's days. This is a man who killed Egyptians and Palestinians to win US and Israeli approval. I understand that the AUC crowd is happy and that some of them have classist contempt for the Islamists and think of them as uncouth and backward, but how can one not see a coup when one is taking place on TV screens? No one has more detestation than the Ikhwan but Sisi and his other henchmen have less legitimacy than even the lousy Morsi. Any popular legitimacy that is lent to Sisi can permit him in the future to overthrow a different elected government, perhaps a progressive government. The battle against the Ikhwan should proceed side-by-side with a battle against the military dictators of Egypt who serve US-Israeli alliance. Lastly, I wish to point out that the Likudnik House of Saud media, like Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat (mouthpiece of Prince Salman and his sons) are very pleased with Sisi. That should be indicative."

There is a summary of the most recent Egyptian election results in Wikipedia. Although a lot of people opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood didn't vote in protest, the will of the people is quite clear. Unless the army actually bars the Muslim Brotherhood, I imagine the next set of results will be similar, and the anger at army involvement may actually increase support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course, it is arguable that the election was fixed by the vast amounts of Qatari money that poured into the MB party coffers.

The army said it wasn’t a military coup. But when the Republican Guard occupied the television station and convoys of troops and armoured personnel carriers rolled down Cairo’s main boulevards, there could hardly be much doubt. - When Hosni Mubarak was forced out two-and-a-half years ago, the military played its part. But this was the army fulfilling the role that Arab generals carved out so well in the 1950s but many thought was a thing of the past. The deadline it set for President Mohammed Morsi to solve the country’s political crisis passed at 5pm and the nation held its breath. There was an atmosphere of excitement among the anti-Morsi throngs in Tahrir Square, of fatalism at the Muslim Brotherhood’s encampment near the presidential palace. Then the tan-coloured trucks poured over the Nile bridges and along the capital’s flyovers. There was near hysteria in the capital’s upmarket, anti-Brotherhood neighbourhoods, clashes in the outer suburbs, stronger Islamist territory. Finally, at 9pm, came the televised statement the nation had waited all day to hear. Gen Abdulfattah al-Sisi, whom Mr Morsi had himself appointed as defence minister a year ago and who was supposed to have Islamist sympathies, took to the stage.

Johannes Stern & Alex Lantier: Egyptian army coup topples Islamist president Mursi - The removal of the hated Mursi regime has evoked jubilation. However sincere and deeply felt this sentiment may be, the fact is that Mursi’s overthrow has placed the army, not the masses, in power. None of the essential demands that motivated the mass protests—for decent jobs, livable wages, adequate social services, and democratic rights—will be met by the military regime.

Stephen Lendman: Turmoil Rocks Egypt: Morsi's Out - Unconfirmed reports suggest Morsi's under house arrest. Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) gave him 48 hours to yield. Do so or step down, it said. The deadline came and passed. Reuters reported that SACF said it's "ready to die to defend Egypt's people against terrorists and fools." It did so in response to Morsi. It headlined "The Final Hours." It did so hours after Morsi rejected a power sharing ultimatum. It expired Wednesday morning. Reuters said Egyptian troops control state television. Shoukry Abu Amira heads it. He confirmed it. Armored vehicles patrol outside.

The Guardian: Mohamed Morsi ousted in Egypt's "second revolution" in two years
John Glaser: Morsi Or Not, the US Empire Has A Stranglehold on Egypt

CNN's Ben Wedeman is in Egypt's Tahrir Square, where massive crowds have gathered to protest President Morsi.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi says he was not consulted by the army before it set a 48-hour ultimatum to resolve the country's deadly crisis. Mr Morsi said a part of the statement "may cause confusion in the complex national scene". He vowed to stick to his "national reconciliation" plan. The army has warned it will intervene if the government and its opponents fail to heed "the will of the people". However, it denies that the ultimatum amounts to a coup. Meanwhile, Egypt's state news agency Mena reported early on Tuesday that Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr had submitted his resignation. If accepted, he would join at least five other ministers who have already reportedly resigned over the political crisis. On Sunday, millions rallied nationwide, urging the president to step down.

Millions have taken to the streets across Egypt to demand the resignation of President Morsi on the first anniversary of his inauguration. But Morsi loyalists are staging counter-demonstrations, saying they will defend the leader with all means available.

Stephen Lendman: Mass Protests Rock Egypt - Washington engineered Hosni Mubarak's ouster. He fell from grace. He opposed Obama's regional agenda. It cost him dearly. He became more liability than asset. Mohammed Morsi replaced him. He's Washington's man in Egypt. Hard line rule continues. Morsi's its public face. Egypt's anti-democratic tradition persists. Junta power rules. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) runs things. Politicians serve them. Elections don't matter.

Johannes Stern: Mass protests erupt against US-backed Mursi regime in Egypt - As in 2011, the mass protests are driving by Egypt’s staggering social inequality—which has increased under the rule of the military junta and the Muslim Brotherhood—and the repressive character of the US-backed Egyptian state apparatus.

Al-Manar News: Anti-Mursi Campaign Collects 22 Million Signatures

Anti-U.S. protesters have burned posters of U.S. President Barack Obama in the South African city of Johannesburg ahead of his visit to the city on Saturday. - Protesters also burned miniature U.S. flags outside the University of Johannesburg Soweto campus, expressing their anger at the U.S. government’s foreign policy. Demonstrators expressed their opposition to Washington’s support for the Israeli regime, the killing of innocent civilians in U.S. drone strikes, and the continuing operation of the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay prison. Some protesters compared the Obama administration’s support for the Israeli regime to the apartheid in South Africa. Moreover, activists from the Free Palestine Organization of South Africa waved Palestinian flags and carried signs that urged Obama to “Stop Funding Israeli Apartheid.”

Felicity Arbuthnot: Lies, Perfidies and Tony Blair - Having learned nothing from the catastrophes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, it seems President Obama, the equally clueless UK Prime Minister Cameron and his culturally challenged Foreign Secretary William Hague are cheer-leading another bloodbath in formerly peaceful, secular, outward looking Syria. Having covertly provided arms and equipment to insurgents from numerous different countries for over two years, they have now moved to the overt stage, a move over which even arch hawks such as former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former Republican Senator Richard Luger, six term leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged caution. Luger said such action would boost extremists, with Brzezinski dismissing Obama’s talk of “red lines” as thoughtless and risking: “a large-scale disaster for the United States.”

■ A reliable source has revealed that Nelson Mandela’s life support machine was shut down and he has died in the hospital aged 94. According to the source, the iconic Mandela died last night while he was still in the hospital for the recurring lung infection that left him in critical condition for several days. ■ Rumors have flooded the newspapers and the internet with several sources reporting his death days earlier in a cruel attempt to fool the public and to upset the many people who have respect for this great humanitarian. The loss of the great man will be felt across the world. ■ Earlier today one of our writers, Laura Oneale, wrote an article questioning whether or not Nelson Mandela was still alive. He had been in the hospital 19 days for a recurring lung infection. As speculation surrounding his health continued to grow with many asking whether he was still alive or if, in fact, he had died. Until recently authorities would only confirm that he was on a life support system and remained in a critical condition.

HuffPo: Nelson Mandela Health Condition Very Critical [06/27/13, 08:14 AM ET EDT]

Thierry Meyssan: The Turkish people are not protesting against Recip Tayyeb Erdogan’s autocratic style, but against his policies; in other words, against the Muslim Brotherhood, of which he is the mentor. What started on Taksim Square is not a color revolution over a new building project, but an uprising that has spread across the entire country; in short, it is a revolution that calls the "Arab Spring" into question. Across North Africa—with the exception of Algeria—the Muslim Brotherhood have been placed in power by Hillary Clinton. Everywhere, Turkish communications advisors are on board, courtesy of the Erdogan government. Everywhere, "democracy" was a facade which allowed the Brothers to Islamize firms in exchange for embracing the pseudo-liberal capitalism of the United States. It is important to remember that the label "Arab Spring" given by the West is a deception to make people believe that the Tunisian and Egyptian governments were overthrown by a mass movement. While there was a popular revolution in Tunisia, its goal was not to change the regime, but to achieve economic and social changes. It was the United States, not the street, that ordered Zinedine el Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak to step down. Then it was NATO that toppled and lynched Muammar al-Gaddafi. And it is again NATO and the GCC that have fueled the attack against Syria.

Almost unnoticed, the UN is about to fight its first war. 3,000 Soldiers from South Africa, Tanzania and Malawi wearing UN insignia will take on the irregulars who sow mayhem in Congo’s east. - African economies are rising steadily, but in the Democratic Republic of Congo life for many is as bad as ever. Armed men rape and plunder with impunity. Rebel groups terrorise vast stretches of land rich in minerals and agricultural potential. Millions have died as a result. And for years the outside world has done little more than shrug. Its main effort—a 14-year-old UN peacekeeping mission—has failed to end “Africa’s world war”, which started as an ethnic conflict sparked by the genocide next door in Rwanda before descending into murderous anarchy farther afield. Now things are changing. The Rwandan government backed Congolese rebels until recently but, shamed by their cruelty and by international outrage, it has abandoned them. That presents an opportunity too good to waste, so the UN Security Council is trying a new tack (see article), deploying 3,000 troops to fight at least some of the rebels. Soldiers from South Africa, Tanzania and Malawi wearing UN insignia will take on the irregulars who sow mayhem in Congo’s east.

Silvio Berlusconi asked Italy’s secret services to bump off Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, so the then premier could end his increasingly embarrassing ties with the Libyan dictator, it was claimed today.

Mr Berlusconi’s unusual request to Italy's then spy chief Gianni De Gennaro, came in 2011, shortly after the start of the Nato-backed Libyan rebellion that saw Gaddafi ousted and eventually killed by one of his own countrymen. Today’s claims come in the left-wing Italian daily, Il Fatto Quotidiano, which quotes unnamed but "well placed” diplomatic sources in its front-page story. A spokesman for Mr Berlusconi, 76, who is currently battling sex, corruption and tax fraud charges, has dismissed the report as “totally false”. The paper claims, however, that with Gaddafi’s star waning, the tycoon-premier decided it was time to switch sides, after years in which he had led Italy’s obsequious overtures to the eccentric North African despot in order to win big oil deals.

Europe Online Magazine: Italy's Berlusconi wanted Gaddafi dead - sources

[Puke Read:] French President Francois Hollande has been awarded the annual Felix Houphouet-Boigny Peace Prize by UNESCO for his decision to invade Mali. Hollande received the major prize from the United Nations' cultural organization during a ceremony in the French capital, Paris on Wednesday. The move has raised questions about how an armed foreign intervention can be worthy of such an accolade. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said during the ceremony that "All of us have reason to be proud of France's decision to stand by Mali - at the request of President Traore and with the support of the United Nations - to protect the peoples and culture of that country."

PressTV: French jobless rate rises to record high since 1998

US military sites in Germany are playing a key role in the use of American combat drones to target the killing of people in Africa. - According to reports from the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and the ARD television programme “Panorama”, the Stuttgart-based supreme command of the United States Africa Command (US Africom) and the Air Operations Center (AOC) at the US air force base in Ramstein, in the state of Rhineland Palatinate, are directly involved in the drone attacks. Media reports claim that fighter pilots in the US are operating through a relay station on the Ramstein air base to maintain contact with combat drones employed in Africa. Quoting from an internal policy brief of the US air force, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and “Panorama” revealed that “the drone attacks in Africa could not be carried out” without the support of this satellite station. Up to 650 employees at the US flight control centre in Ramstein use 1,500 computers to monitor European and African airspace. They analyse drone and satellite images and plan new operations.

Ethiopia has diverted the Nile River as it continues with the construction of a new $4.7 billion hydroelectric dam. - In its quest to become Africa’s largest power exporter Ethiopia has set out plans to invest more than $12 billion in various projects designed to harness the natural power of the various rivers running through the country’s rugged highlands. The flagship of the plan is the Grand Renaissance Dam being built in the Benishangul-Gumuz region near to Sudan; currently 21% complete, it will have a 6GW capacity once finished. The Chief Executive Officer of the state-run Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation, Mihret Debebe, said that “the dam is being built in the middle of the river so you can't carry out construction work while the river flowed.” The diversion of the Nile around the site “now enables us to carry out civil engineering work without difficulties. The aim is to divert the river by a few meters and then allow it to flow on its natural course.”

A US State Department official testified Wednesday that he was one of the last people to speak with an American ambassador before his death in Benghazi and was later demoted in retaliation for questioning how the September 11, 2012 attack was managed. - During a six-hour hearing with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Gregory Hicks told lawmakers he spoke with J. Christopher Stevens at the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Hicks said Stevens sounded frantic and communicated a quick “Greg, we’re under attack” before the call was lost. Hicks, who was in Tripoli at the time, added that he had requested air support from a US Air Force base in Aviano, Italy and later for ground troops to fend off Libyan insurgents but was denied by the State Department in both instances. Fearing their consulate would be the next to be overrun, Hicks and his aides began destroying communications equipment with an ax, according to The New York Times.

New York Times: Diplomat Says Questions Over Benghazi Led to Demotion

As I wrote about here yesterday there was a special ops unit in Tripoli on the night of the terrorist attack in Benghazi which was preparing to mobilize in order to assist the brave heroes who died that night trying to save Chris Stevens. If this team had made it to the scene it is very possible that Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods would be alive today, but that team never made it to Benghazi because it was ordered to stand down. Yesterday I wrote that I found it hard to believe anyone would ignore a direct order from the commander-in-chief during an attack which amounted to an act of war against the United States and today it is being reported that only the president–or someone acting on his behalf–could order the special ops to stand down. If this it true it means either Barack Obama is lying and he didn’t authorize all available resources to be used to thwart the attack, he himself ordered the stand down, or he told someone else (Hillary Clinton?) to order the stand down while he went to bed in order to rest before his major fundraiser in Nevada on September 12th. Now that we know this order came down from someone very high up in the Obama regime–acting on the behest of the president–the only question remaining is why was the stand down order issued?

A lost ancient Egyptian city submerged beneath the sea 1,200 years ago is starting to reveal what life was like in the legendary port of Thonis-Heracleion.

For centuries it was thought to be a legend, a city of extraordinary wealth mentioned in Homer, visited by Helen of Troy and Paris, her lover, but apparently buried under the sea. In fact, Heracleion was true, and a decade after divers began uncovering its treasures, archaeologists have produced a picture of what life was like in the city in the era of the pharaohs. The city, also called Thonis, disappeared beneath the Mediterranean around 1,200 years ago and was found during a survey of the Egyptian shore at the beginning of the last decade. Now its life at the heart of trade routes in classical times are becoming clear, with researchers forming the view that the city was the main customs hub through which all trade from Greece and elsewhere in the Mediterranean entered Egypt.

They have discovered the remains of more than 64 ships buried in the thick clay and sand that now covers the sea bed. Gold coins and weights made from bronze and stone have also been found, hinting at the trade that went on. Giant 16 foot statues have been uncovered and brought to the surface while archaeologists have found hundreds of smaller statues of minor gods on the sea floor. Slabs of stone inscribed in both ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian have also been brought to the surface. Dozens of small limestone sarcophagi were also recently uncovered by divers and are believed to have once contained mummified animals, put there to appease the gods.

Dr Damian Robinson, director of the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Oxford, who is part of the team working on the site, said: “It is a major city we are excavating. “The site has amazing preservation. We are now starting to look at some of the more interesting areas within it to try to understand life there. “We are getting a rich picture of things like the trade that was going on there and the nature of the maritime economy in the Egyptian late period. There were things were coming in from Greece and the Phoenicians.

Max Ajl: Perhaps no war in recent memory has so thoroughly flummoxed the Euro-Atlantic left as the recent NATO war on Libya. Presaging what would occur as U.S. proxies carried out an assault on Syria, both a pro-war left and an anti-anti-war left started filling up socialist e-zines and broadsheets with endless explanations and tortuous justifications for why a small invasion, perhaps just a “no-fly-zone,” would be okay—so long as it didn’t grow into a larger intervention. They cracked open the door to imperialism, with the understanding that it would be watched very carefully so as to make sure that no more of it would be allowed in than was necessary to carry out its mission. The absurdity of this posture became clear when NATO immediately expanded its mandate and bombed much of Libya to smithereens, with the help of on-the-ground militia, embraced as revolutionaries by those who should have known better—and according to Maximilian Forte, could have known better, had they only looked.

UN report reveals Libya as hub for arms deliveries to insurgents in Syria and Mali, fails to identify state sponsors of terrorism and elicits systemic flaws of UN System. - A report, issued by the United Nations Security Council´s group of experts who monitor an arms embargo imposed on Libya in 2011 stresses, that arms shipments which have been organized from various locations in Libya, including Misrata and Bengazi, were transferred to Syria via Turkey and northern Lebanon. The report also confirms that Libya has developed into a hub for illegal arms deliveries to insurgents in Mali and beyond. The report is stopping short of identifying those state actors, who overtly and covertly finance and arm insurgents, including internationally outlawed terrorist organizations, and state actors use of these organizations as mercenaries in unconventional warfare. The report fails to call for an investigation into the arms trade and state sponsored terrorism and reveals deep systemic problems with the UN System as a whole.

Egypt's armed forces participated in forced disappearances, torture and killings across the country – including in Cairo's Egyptian Museum – during the 2011 uprising, even as military leaders publicly declared their neutrality, according to a leaked presidential report on revolution-era crimes. - The report, submitted to President Mohamed Morsi by his own hand-picked committee in January, has yet to be made public, but a chapter seen by the Guardian implicates the military in a catalogue of crimes against civilians, beginning with their first deployment to the streets. The chapter recommends that the government investigate the highest ranks of the military to determine who was responsible. More than 1,000 people, including many prisoners, are said to have gone missing during the 18 days of the revolt. Scores turned up in Egypt's morgues, shot or bearing signs of torture. Many have simply disappeared, leaving behind desperate families who hope, at best, that their loved ones are serving prison sentences that the government does not acknowledge.

A British peer has, in explosive revelations, said that London’s spy agency MI6 murdered the first democratically-elected Prime Minister of Congo, once described as “the most important assassination of the 20th century”. - Lord David Edward Lea made the disclosure in a letter to the editor in the March 21 edition of the London Review of Books (LRB) in response to a question made in a new book published in January. The question is made by Calder Walton in his book Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire. Walton writes: “The question remains whether British plots to assassinate Lumumba … ever amounted to anything. At present, we do not know”. Sir Lea wrote in his letter that

“actually, in this particular case, I can report that we do” know that Britain plotted to kill Lumumba. “It so happens that I was having a cup of tea with Daphne Park… She had been consul and first secretary in Leopoldville, now [capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo] Kinshasa, from 1959 to 1961, which in practice (this was subsequently acknowledged) meant head of MI6 there,” Sir Lea said. “I mentioned the uproar surrounding Lumumba’s abduction and murder, and recalled the theory that MI6 might have had something to do with it. ‘We did,’ she replied, ‘I organised it’.”

As Xi arrives in Durban, the BRICS summit will announce the formation of a BRICS Development Bank with a $50 billion capital chest (China has a surplus of $3.31 trillion, a vault that will be likely be recycled through this kind of bank). But there are grave doubts about the model of the investment, coming in to promote resource extraction rather than social development. There is worry too that the new BRICS Bank, which is likely to be housed in Shanghai, will be a well-capitalized Southern version of the World Bank rather than the kind of development bank envisaged by BancoSur (before its radicalism was tempered by the Brazilian government – as pointed by Oscar Ugarteche and Eric Toussaint). The kind of regimes that now control the BRICS process are constrained by their own class projects – they favor neo-liberal policies as long as these do not discriminatorily favor the North.

Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian writer who was one of Africa’s most widely read novelists and one of the continent’s towering men of letters, died on Thursday in Boston. He was 82. - His death was announced by Brown University, where he had been on the faculty since 2009. Besides novels, Mr. Achebe’s works included powerful essays and poignant short stories and poems rooted in the countryside and cities of his native Nigeria, before and after independence from British colonial rule. His most memorable fictional characters were buffeted and bewildered by the conflicting pulls of traditional African culture and invasive Western values. For inspiration, Mr. Achebe drew on his own family history as part of the Ibo nation of southeastern Nigeria, a people victimized by the racism of British colonial administrators and then by the brutality of military dictators from other Nigerian ethnic groups. Mr. Achebe burst onto the world literary scene with the publication in 1958 of his first novel, “Things Fall Apart,” which has sold more than 10 million copies and been translated into 45 different languages.

Nigerian Tribune: BREAKING NEWS! Chinua Achebe is dead
NPR Blog: Chinua Achebe, Nigerian Author Of 'Things Fall Apart,' Dies
AllAfrica: Nigeria: Prof Chinua Achebe is Dead

Zimbabwean police are interrogating young children (aged 4-6) at school about whether their parents have radios. The police are confiscating wind up radios in night time raids. - Villagers in Lupane revealed that the police have been visiting schools and asking little children in Grade 0 and Grade 1(aged between 4 and 6 years) whether their parents own or listen to any radios. This follows reports that suspected state security agents on Tuesday raided several homesteads at Mpofu village in the Gwampa area and confiscated the wind-up radios. Speaking to SW Radio Africa one villager who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said the police have been going to schools, writing down names, and then visiting those suspected of owning the radios by night. She said although the agents will be wearing civilian clothes, the villagers know it is the police since they have been announcing their ban on radios. Our source said she suspects the police are aware of the popularity of shortwave radios in the area, hence they are now confiscating them. “The police have been announcing that villagers should not be in possession of these radios. Their reason is that we listen to news broadcasts from outside the country which criticise ZANU PF.

The US military's Special Operations commander is asking lawmakers to lift restrictions that keep American forces from training foreign units with records of human rights violations. He says the US needs to engage such forces "more than ever before." - The restrictions, written by Democratic Vermont Senator Jim Leahy, ban funding that would be used to train foreign military units if they are linked - through credible evidence - to serious human rights violations.

France [says] it will start withdrawing its troops from Mali by April, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Thursday. - "From April, we will start decreasing the number of troops engaged in Mali," Fabius stated. However, "This does not mean that we will go overnight," he added. The military campaign in the Ifoghas mountain range, the stronghold of extremist fighters in northern Mali will end "within weeks," the French top diplomat said. Asked if al-Qaeda main figures Abou Zeid and Mokhtar Belmokhtar were killed in fighting, the French minister said "many leaders were among the hundreds of terrorists who have been killed during the operation," without giving accurate details on their identities.

Stars and Stripes: Pentagon Deploying More Marines, Green Berets To Africa

The Air Force’s new presence in West Africa that began in late February has around 100 airmen deployed to Niamey, the southwestern region of Niger. - The airmen “provide support for intelligence collection and will also facilitate intelligence sharing with French forces conducting operations in Mali, and with other partners in the region,” President Obama wrote in a Feb. 22 letter to Congress. Included is a team of Air Force Security Forces to protect U.S. resources, personnel and interests in the region, all with Niger’s authorization, said Africa Command spokesman Thomas Sanders. The deployment [allegedly] is an effort “to promote regional stability.”

Bill Van Auken: Washington steps up Africa intervention
Wayne Madsen: Obama’s Military Presence in Niger: Uranium Control and Tuareg Suppression

Israel has deported at least 1,000 Sudanese on ‘voluntary leave,’ Haaretz reported. The UN Refugee agency said it was not informed of the move, and that the deportees were forced to return to Sudan where visiting or living in Israel is a crime. - The repatriation was reportedly carried out secretly over the last few months through a third country. The UN high commissioner for refugees claimed he had no knowledge of the deportations, and that the repatriation was likely not voluntary because there is no “free will from inside a prison,” the newspaper reported. On Wednesday, the same UN high commissioner for refugees demanded that Israel gives an explanation for the secret deportations. No response was immediately given by either Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, or Interior Minister, Eli Yishai.

■ The massive stepping-up of arms supplies to the Gulf States by Germany reflects the geo-strategic interests of German imperialism, which is increasingly acting with military aggression to satisfy its hunger for raw materials and to impose its own interests against those of its rivals. ■ Last week, the financial daily Handelsblatt published an article headlined “Expedition raw materials: Germany's new course”, which laid out German imperialism’s new doctrine. The article states that German industry and government agree that the “securing of raw materials” is a “strategic theme for German foreign policy”. Securing them must also involve the use of “instruments of security and military policy”, the paper wrote. Handelsblatt placed the arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which has the world’s largest oil reserves, in this context.

The return of German imperialism
German industry, government planning for resource wars
German government decides on long-term military deployment in Mali

At least 13 Chadian soldiers have been killed in fighting in northern Mali, the heaviest casualties sustained by French-led African troops since the launch of a military campaign against rebels last month, Chad's army has said. - Sixty-five rebel fighters were also killed in the clashes that began before midday on Friday in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains near the border with Algeria. "The provisional toll is ... on the enemy's side, five vehicles destroyed and 65 terrorists killed," said a statement from the army general staff read on state radio. "We deplore the deaths of 13 of our valiant soldiers." Earlier this month, Chad deployed 1,800 soldiers in the northern city of Kidal to secure what had been the rebels' last urban stronghold, putting itself in the frontline in the fight against the rebels. Tuaregs in the north, who have long sought greater autonomy, rebelled against the federal government and swept across northern Mali in April last year, taking advantage of a power vacuum left by a military coup.

Stephen Lendman: UNESCO Peace Prize to a War Criminal - On February 21, the UN News Centre headlined "French President François Hollande awarded UNESCO peace prize." It's for his "valuable contribution to peace and stability in Africa." He's gone all out to wreck it. He's waging lawless imperial aggression. He's slaughtering innocent civilians. He's committing crimes of war and against humanity.

Deutsche Welle: Chadian troops battle Islamists in northern Mali
El País: Malí: nuevos combates, más militares
Le Monde: De nouveaux combats dans le nord du Mali
Le Monde: Pour le Quai d'Orsay, l'Afrique est une zone "rouge"
RFI: Mali : violents accrochages entre les Touaregs du MNLA et un groupe armé
Barry Grey: US deploys troops, drones to Niger
Zero Hedge: Obama Dispatches 100 US Troops To Niger To “Support Predator Drone Base”