The Anglo-American aggression addicts haven’t kicked the habit. The team that brought you shock and awe and Operation Infinite Justice is gearing up for yet another crack at winning a senseless war in the Middle East.

This time the target is Iran, the pretence the regime’s imminent possession of nuclear weapons. But some things will remain the same – it will lead to slaughter and end in disaster.

A brief recap of the Anglo-American “war on terror” in the Middle East, 2001 to date: Afghanistan was occupied to “eliminate terrorism” but, many thousands of dead later, terror has spread to Pakistan and beyond, leaving Kabul with the most corrupt government on earth.

Iraq was invaded to disarm Saddam of weapons he didn’t have. US troops have finally withdrawn, leaving millions dead or displaced and the country broken in dysfunctional sectarian misery.

Libya, far from being the war that went well, was bombed to “protect civilians” with the result that 30,000 died and thousands more remain in prison reportedly being tortured by the regime Nato installed.

“They couldn’t be so crazy” is therefore not an unreasonable response to the speculation about yet another Middle East war. But here we go again.

The US national intelligence director James Clapper’s unsubstantiated claim that Iran is preparing attacks in the US itself – without even a 45-minute warning, apparently – is one sign among many that the familiar spook-media propaganda coalition is in overdrive again, selling another cock-eyed conflict.

An attack against Iran will not stop the regime acquiring nuclear weapons if it wishes to do so. It can only make it more likely that it will decide to acquire them, and will eventually surely succeed.

Along the way thousands more will die, conflict will extend across the region, oil supplies will be disrupted and the Iranian regime will be strengthened domestically.

Iran is not a liberal democracy. That is an issue which, as the Arab spring shows, is more likely to be addressed by the Iranian people themselves than by a foreign attack sponsored by Saudi Arabia, most recently the butchers of Bahraini democracy.

The central case for attacking Iran is animated by the determination that Washington and its allies have the right to dominate the Middle East come what may.

That is the argument offered by Matthew Kroenig, until six months ago the Pentagon’s special adviser on Iran, in an article in Foreign Affairs baldly titled Time to Attack Iran: “A nuclear-armed Iran would immediately limit US freedom of action in the Middle East … Iran could threaten any US political or military initiative in the Middle East with nuclear war, forcing Washington to think twice before acting in the region.”

The pragmatic case against war is overwhelming. But the principled case is even stronger. Britain and the US have launched a series of wars across the Middle East for no better purpose than maintaining their control over a region whose peoples they dare not allow to be self-governing and independent.

Can an attack be stopped? If Britain can be detached that would help derail the war drive. Five British warships sail alongside the US navy in the Gulf, and we can be sure that Diego Garcia will be a base for the bombing onslaught – it was ethnically cleansed by the Wilson government for precisely this sort of purpose.

William Hague has made plain government support for US policy so far. The delight of the Commons exchanges on the issue was Jack Straw, whose only contribution to diplomacy was marketing the novel concept of the “unreasonable UN veto” at the time of the Iraq aggression, insisting that Britain should not act without clear UN authority now.

Millions of British people peacefully and democratically opposed the Iraq war and were ignored by Tony Blair. He got his war but lost his political momentum, reputation and job, in that order, as a result.

Today’s anti-war campaign must learn from the Occupy movement and UK Uncut, as well as breaking that bipartisan parliamentary consensus for war which proved so calamitous in 2003, if the cycle of war is to end. A nationwide day of action on Saturday 11 February against attacking Iran is the start. By  Andrew Murray, The Guardian

A month before the Russian Prime Minister stands for re-election as president to the Kremlin, the first major rally since the New Year showed that the anti-government protests which began after parliamentary elections in early December are not just going to go away.

After the march yesterday, a number of opposition leaders addressed the crowds from the stage. One ripped up a portrait of Mr Putin to loud cheers, while others demanded new, free elections. “Russia without Putin,” the crowd chanted repeatedly. The organisers claimed 120,000 people had attended.

Across Moscow, another rally was held in support of Mr Putin. Police said more than 50,000 people turned up, but eyewitnesses put it much lower. There were widespread reports that civil servants and those working for state-affiliated companies had been told to attend, and that flags and placards were distributed among them.

The atmosphere at the anti-Putin rally was more spontaneous, and many of the protesters had designed their own banners and slogans. One of the more creative was an eight-metre condom, with “protection from Putin” written on it. Mr Putin, in a December televised phone-in, claimed he had mistaken the white ribbons that the protesters wear for used condoms. He also said that the protests were organised from abroad, and that people were paid to attend.

Mr Putin’s current approval ratings have slipped to between 40 and 50 per cent. He does not face any serious challengers in the 4 March ballot, but will need to get at least 50 per cent of the vote to avoid a second-round runoff. The Independent

Iran has threatened to close the narrow and strategic waterway — a chokepoint for one fifth of the world’s traded oil — in the event of a military strike or the severe tightening of international sanctions.

The New York Times, citing unnamed US officials, said late Thursday that the White House has communicated to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that closing the strait would be a “red line” and provoke a response.

The officials did not provide further details about the covert communication channel, except to say that it was separate from the Swiss government, through which the United States occasionally relays messages to Iran’s leaders.

The United States and its allies have stepped up increasingly harsh sanctions on Iran over its nuclear enrichment program, which they have charged is part of a secret drive to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran has insisted its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and vowed to retaliate against any strike on its facilities.

Tensions have flared in recent days following the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist in a bombing Tehran has blamed on US and Israeli intelligence services. US officials have denied any involvement in the attack.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have announced new naval maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz within the next few weeks, underlining Tehran’s threat to close the narrow channel between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

Washington has meanwhile sent a second aircraft carrier to waters just outside the Gulf, and a third is on its way. The Times of India

The demonstration, bigger and better organized than a similar one two weeks ago, and smaller rallies across the country encouraged opposition leaders hoping to sustain a protest movement ignited by a fraud-tainted parliamentary election on Dec. 4.

The enthusiasm also cheered Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader who closed down the Soviet Union on Dec. 25, 1991.

“I’m happy that I have lived to see the people waking up. This raises big hopes,” the 80-year-old Gorbachev said on Ekho Moskvy radio.

He urged Putin to follow his example and give up power peacefully, saying Putin would be remembered for the positive things he did if he stepped down now. The former Soviet leader, who has grown increasingly critical of Putin, has little influence in Russia today.

But the protesters have no central leader and no candidate capable of posing a serious challenge to Putin, who intends to return to the presidency in a March vote.

Even at Saturday’s rally, some of the speakers were jeered by the crowd. The various liberal, nationalist and leftist groups that took part appear united only by their desire to see “Russia without Putin,” a popular chant.

Putin, who gave no public response to the protest Saturday, initially derided the demonstrators as paid agents of the West. He also said sarcastically that he thought the white ribbons they wore as an emblem were condoms. Putin has since come to take their protests more seriously, and in an effort to stem the anger he has offered a set of reforms to allow more political competition in future elections.

Kremlin-controlled television covered Saturday’s rally, but gave no air time to Putin’s harshest critics.

Estimates of the number of demonstrators ranged from the police figure of 30,000 to 120,000 offered by the organizers. Demonstrators packed much of a broad avenue, which has room for nearly 100,000 people, about 2.5 kilometers (some 1.5 miles) from the Kremlin, as the temperature dipped well below freezing.

A stage at the end of the avenue featured banners reading “Russia will be free” and “This election Is a farce.” Heavy police cordons encircled the participants, who stood within metal barriers, and a police helicopter hovered overhead.

Alexei Navalny, a corruption-fighting lawyer and popular blogger, electrified the crowd when he took the stage. He soon had the protesters chanting “We are the power!”

Navalny spent 15 days in jail for leading a protest on Dec. 5 that unexpectedly drew more than 5,000 people and set off the chain of demonstrations.

Putin’s United Russia party lost 25 percent of its seats in the election, but hung onto a majority in parliament through what independent observers said was widespread fraud. United Russia, seen as representing a corrupt bureaucracy, has become known as the party of crooks and thieves, a phrase coined by Navalny.

“We have enough people here to take the Kremlin,” Navalny shouted to the crowd. “But we are peaceful people and we won’t do that — yet. But if these crooks and thieves keep cheating us, we will take what is ours.”

Protest leaders expressed skepticism about Putin’s promised political reforms.

“We don’t trust him,” opposition leader Boris Nemtsov told the rally, urging protesters to gather again after the long New Year’s holidays to make sure the proposed changes are put into law.

He and other speakers called on the demonstrators to go to the polls in March to unseat Putin. “A thief must not sit in the Kremlin,” Nemtsov said.

The protest leaders said they would keep up their push for a rerun of the parliamentary vote and punishment for election officials accused of fraud, while stressing the need to prevent fraud in the March presidential election.

Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov was among those who sought to give the protesters a sense of empowerment.

“There are so many of us here, and they (the government) are few,” Kasparov said from the stage. “They are huddled up in fear behind police cordons.”

The crowd was largely young, but included a sizable number of middle-aged and elderly people, some of whom limped slowly to the site on walkers and canes.

“We want to back those who are fighting for our rights,” said 16-year-old Darya Andryukhina, who said she had also attended the previous rally.

“People have come here because they want respect,” said Tamara Voronina, 54, who said she was proud that her three sons also had joined the protest.

Putin’s comment about protesters wearing condoms only further infuriated them and inspired some creative responses. One protester Saturday held a picture montage of Putin with his head wrapped in a condom like a grandmother’s headscarf. Many inflated condoms along with balloons.

The protests reflect a growing weariness with Putin, who was first elected president in 2000 and remained in charge after moving into the prime minister’s seat in 2008. Brazen fraud in the parliamentary vote unexpectedly energized the middle class, which for years had been politically apathetic.

“No one has done more to bring so many people here than Putin, who managed to insult the whole country,” said Viktor Shenderovich, a columnist and satirical writer.

Two rallies in St. Petersburg on Saturday drew a total of 4,000 people.

“I’m here because I’m tired of the government’s lies,” said Dmitry Dervenev, 47, a designer. “The prime minister insulted me personally when he said that people came to the rallies because they were paid by the U.S. State Department. I’m here because I’m a citizen of my country.”

Putin accused the United States of encouraging and funding the protests to weaken Russia.

Putin’s former finance minister surprised the protesters by saying the current parliament should approve the proposed electoral changes and then step down to allow new parliamentary elections to be held. Alexei Kudrin, who remains close to Putin, warned that the wave of protests could lead to violence and called for establishing a dialogue between the opposition and the government.

“Otherwise we will lose the chance for peaceful transformation,” Kudrin said.

Kudrin also joined calls for the ouster of Central Election Commission chief Vladimir Churov.

Putin has promised to liberalize registration rules for opposition parties and restore the direct election of governors he abolished in 2004. Putin’s stand-in as president, Dmitry Medvedev, spelled out those and other proposed changes in Thursday’s state-of-the nation address.

Gorbachev, however, said the government appears confused.

“They don’t know what to do,” he said. “They are making attempts to get out of the trap they drove themselves into.” North Jersey

The creation of a new government heralds a new era in Tunisian history [Reuters]

Tunisia’s constituent assembly has overwhelmingly approved the country’s new government, two months after the first free elections since its January revolution.

The creation of a new government on Friday is a major milestone for Tunisia following the popular revolt against Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, who had been in power for 23 years that began in December 2010.

The line-up unveiled on Thursday by Hamadi Jebali, the country’s prime minister, of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party was approved in a confidence vote with 154 in favour, 38 opposed and 11 abstaining, after a full day’s debate.

The 41-member cabinet was the subject of weeks of negotiations between Ennahda and its two left-leaning allies.

Among the leading cabinet appointees, Ali Larayedh, a former political prisoner and senior Ennahda official, was tapped as interior minister and Rafik Ben Abdessalem, son-in-law of Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi, was named

foreign minister.

Nourredine Bhiri, party spokesman, was appointed justice minister while independent Abdelka Aim Zbidi was kept on at the defence ministry, the only one to stay in his old job.

The Arab Spring

In depth coverage of first Arab Spring vote

The uprising in Tunisia triggered what became known as the Arab Spring – uprisings across the region that also led to the overthrow of veteran dictators in Libya and Egypt.

Ben Ali ultimately fled to Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia has charged him in absentia with many crimes including murder.

Ennahda emerged as the largest party in the October 23 vote, winning 89 of the 217 seats in the constituent assembly, which elected Moncef Marzouki of the Congress for the Republic party as Tunisia’s president.

The assembly’s main task now is to write a new constitution.

Jebali on Thursday vowed to make job creation and reparations to victims of the ousted regime among his key priorities.

Tunisia is in the midst of an economic crisis, with unemployment running at 20 per cent while economic growth is expected to be a sluggish 0.5 per cent for 2011. Al Jazeera

The fifth man in quick succession to be shoehorned into the job by an ageing, drunk president with a single-figure approval rating, there seemed every reason to dismiss Russia’s newly appointed prime minister as another stop-gap measure. But the grey blur that Russians saw being interviewed for the first time on television in August 1999, most of them for the first time, would become one of the most important statesmen in their country’s history. His demeanour would transition from awkward catatonia to the man who always has a wisecrack ready; from a greyish technocrat to a charismatic superman. It’s a truism of modern politics that “you either have it or you don’t”. Vladimir Putin is the man who somehow managed to grow into it.

“The main problem we have is an absence of political stability,” said Putin on arrival in office, a sentiment that would remain a leitmotif running through his decade in charge, even as the man himself changed beyond recognition. After a four-year interlude as prime minister, during which he was essentially still running the country, elections next March are almost certain to return Putin to the Kremlin.

It is hard to say how Putin will be viewed half a century from now. Will he be remembered as the tough-talking leader who cared little for democracy or human rights, but restored order to a chaotic country that had lost its way and its self-esteem? Or will he be seen as a man who was unable to step away from power, gradually becoming more vain and detached from reality? A lot will depend on the price of oil and other commodities, but much will also depend on whether the Russian youth return to their previous apathetic state. The response to this month’s parliamentary elections – a significant reduction in support for Putin’s United Russian party followed by protests on a scale not seen in Moscow in recent years – suggests that, for some, the apathy is subsiding. Among the population at large, it is true that for a long time, 59-year-old Putin enjoyed popularity ratings that would be the envy of most Western European leaders. But a more nuanced reading of the polls shows a rather different picture. An October opinion poll that asked Russians what they feel about Putin showed 3 per cent expressing “awe” and 3 per cent expressing “disgust” for the prime minister. The proportion who said they “liked” Putin stood at 24 per cent, down from 40 per cent just three years ago. All the other responses fell in various categories of ambivalence or mild dislike. Despite his small, vocal fanbase, and complete control of the airwaves, the majority of Russians remain floating voters and, during a sustained period of economic decline, the apathy could quickly become discontent. As Putin addressed a big crowd of Russians after a martial arts fight at Moscow’s Olympic Stadium in November, the unthinkable happened – the crowd started booing and jeering. Putin, who had never before received such a reception, looked flustered, and left the stage quickly. The protests in the aftermath of the election, when suddenly nearly 10,000 people came out to shout for Putin’s removal instead of the usual couple of hundred that the opposition attracts, suggests his bid for another 12 years of power is no done deal.

“Of course I don’t like Putin much,” a 26-year-old Muscovite friend of mine, with a degree in foreign languages and a well-paid job in the media told me before the recent elections. “I’m definitely not going to bother voting. The system is ridiculous. But what can I do to change it? Nothing.”

This sentiment is representative of the Putin generation but there is no doubt that, since the “national leader” announced his planned return to the Kremlin, there has been a subtle, but perceptible change of mood. Several thousand people chanting “Putin is a thief” in central Moscow is not going to bring down the regime tomorrow, but it was utterly unthinkable just a few months ago. “I never thought I’d come to something like this and, to be honest, I’m not sure I trust the opposition either,” said 21-year-old Dmitry, a history student at the protest rally on 5 December, the day after the parliamentary elections. “But enough is enough! Putin first came on the scene when I was nine years old, and now he wants to stay until I’m in my thirties? It’s time for something new.”

Putin is long used to a small, vocal minority declaring him the devil incarnate; indeed he thrives on it. But widespread cynicism and irritation are new symptoms, declaring themselves slowly but surely. Dealing with that will be a very different challenge indeed.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in St Petersburg – then called Leningrad – in 1952, and grew up in a kommunalka, the miserably cramped communal flats that housed millions of urban Soviet families. Two brothers died young and Vladimir lived with his parents in one room of the apartment. The sink and gas stove in the corridor were shared with two other families, as was a grim toilet. Large rats lurked in the stairwell, Putin would later claim, and he admitted that, as a young boy, he frequently got into fights in the courtyard outside. He was a fairly sharp student, gaining entry to the Law Faculty of Leningrad State University. At the same time, he was a keen athlete, opting not for a team game but for the individual pursuit of judo. While some of Putin’s later televised “achievements” as president appear staged, in judo at least he was genuinely talented, rising to become Leningrad city champion in 1976. He had joined the KGB in 1975 and worked mainly in counter-intelligence, monitoring foreign tourists and diplomats in the city before he was dispatched to Dresden in 1985, where he served until the Soviet collapse. Putin occasionally makes reference to the harsh conditions of his youth, but his formative years have not been subjected to the hagiography that some dictatorial leaders impose on their childhood. Very few people who knew Putin well as a child or a young man talk openly, and it is hard to know exactly what he did in his early years, including during his time in the KGB and during his posting to Dresden.

As the Soviet Union disintegrated, Putin returned to his home city, which would soon readopt its historical name, St Petersburg, and began working for Anatoly Sobchak, a former law professor at his university who was now the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Putin managed the city council’s international relations, where he gained a reputation as an energetic and reliable operator. A report that suggested he had been involved in corrupt dealings, which he denied, was hushed up. When Sobchak failed in his bid for re-election in 1996, Putin refused a job on the team of the new administration, reportedly stating he would rather be hanged for loyalty than rewarded for treason. This fierce, almost mafia-like obsession with loyalty can be seen in later years in both the punishments for those who crossed him and the rewards for those who remained true.

In 1997, Putin was called to Moscow to work in the presidential administration, and by 1998 he was heading up his old organisation, now renamed the FSB. In the 1990s, most of the old KGB generals, shorn of their ideological mission, had instead gone into business, and the institution was seen as corrupt, inefficient and irrelevant. A decade later, Putin had ensured that, while there would still be accusations of corruption, nobody could now suggest that the FSB was irrelevant. Andrei Soldatov, the leading chronicler of the FSB, has called them a “New Nobility”, an elite that amassed huge political power and financial wealth in the decade since Putin came to power, yet were ultimately doomed.

But in the late 1990s, that was all in the future. The country had gone through a painful financial collapse, the president, Boris Yeltsin, could hardly string a sentence together and a gruesome war in Chechnya had ended with thousands of Russian soldiers dead and a humiliating pullout. After he was made prime minister in 1999, Putin staked his reputation on hard rhetoric over Chechnya, and on the eve of the millennium, a slurring Yeltsin stepped aside and Putin became acting president. Almost without anyone noticing, Putin had become Russia’s second leader since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Despite his tough talk over Chechnya, Putin in 2000 was a very different kind of politician to the one we know today. One high-ranking Western politician, who has met Putin on more than a dozen occasions over the past decade, recalls an extraordinary transformation during the first couple of years. “The first time we met, he was meek, avoided eye contact and seemed unsure of himself,” the politician, who asked not to be identified, told me on the sidelines of an international conference recently. “He would say things like, ‘The army generals want this but I am inclined to disagree. I hope we can come to an agreement’. It was almost like he was looking for allies abroad against his opponents within Russia. He came across as a very insecure leader.”

On the home front, too, things started off shakily. The tough talk on Chechnya went down well with an electorate that was tired of bad news from the Caucasus on their television screens, but when the Kursk submarine sank in August 2000, Putin did not bother to cut short his holiday in Sochi, causing a wave of criticism in the Russian media, which was still relatively boisterous. Over 100 sailors died in the accident and Putin was criticised for waiting five days before returning to Moscow. In an infamous interview on American television, Larry King asked him what had happened with the submarine. A faint smirk and a glimmer of disgust flashed across Putin’s face. “It sank,” he said. Putin’s mixture of insecurity and callousness was a textbook display of the worst response a politician could make to a crisis.

Soon, however, Putin began to feel at home in the role and set about creating the rigid “power vertical”, as his system has become known. First to be reined in were the oligarchs, the coterie of rich men who towards the end of the Yeltsin era were far more powerful than the president himself. Boris Berezovsky, the kingmaker who had nudged Yeltsin to put the apparently pliable Putin into the Kremlin, was to realise the spectacular misjudgement he had made and fled to London, from where he has been carping at the Putin regime ever since. Another oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the richest man in Russia, did not flee but attempted to defy Putin within Russia, funding opposition political parties and continuing to believe that the 1990s scenario whereby rich men could dictate to the state and subvert its demands was still applicable. He was arrested in 2003 and sent to prison, where he remains. “I have eaten more dirt than I need to from that man,” Putin would later say privately.

Oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich, who agreed to play by Putin’s rules, were allowed to spend their cash as lavishly as they wished, as long as they also contributed to state projects. In the ensuing decade, many of those close to Putin in the early years also accumulated huge fortunes and political power, whether they were his former KGB comrades, his judo teachers, or people who lived in the same dacha compound outside St Petersburg in the 1990s. Many top government officials are either old contacts of Putin’s from the KGB, or from St Petersburg, and many of them are believed to have amassed illicit fortunes. Putin himself has been referred to as “the richest man in Europe” with claims that he has built up a multi-billion-dollar fortune through secretly holding stakes in major Russian companies. He called the allegations “complete rubbish, pulled out of somebody’s nose and smeared on bits of paper”.

Such a retort is characteristic of Putin’s idiosyncratic, sarcastic, vernacular lexicon. Whenever confronted with criticism, he seems to have an earthy idiom at the ready. “Let them teach their wives to make cabbage soup,” he once said, in response to a question about European leaders lecturing Russia on democracy. On another occasion, irked by a Western reporter’s aggressive question on human rights in Chechnya during a trip to Europe, Putin snapped: “If you seriously want to become a radical Islamist and undergo circumcision, I invite you to come to Moscow… We have a specialist on this matter and I will advise him to have the operation done in such a way that nothing will ever grow back.”

As his time in office went on, Putin became notorious for his televised stunts, which seemed to occur with increasing frequency – flying planes, riding Harley Davidsons, catching tigers, shooting a tracking device at a whale with a crossbow, and topless horse-riding in Siberia, to name just a few. The stunts have become more surreal as the years have gone by, culminating recently in Putin “discovering” two ancient urns when he went diving at the site of a seabed archaeological expedition. That set-piece caused so many sniggers that his spokesman eventually had to admit that the urns had been specially placed there before the dive for Putin to “find”.

Given all of this, Putin should be a satirist’s dream. Imagine the fun that Rory Bremner or Private Eye would have if David Cameron had a penchant for getting his kit off or donning a wetsuit. But in Russia, a country that has a long history of exquisitely penetrating political satire, such criticism is impossible, at least through mainstream channels. Kukly, Russia’s version of Spitting Image, was ruthless in its satire of the new president during his first months in office. Putin, in one sketch, was portrayed as a foul-mouthed baby in a crib, repeatedly shrieking “Waste them in the outhouse”, his famous phrase about eliminating Chechen terrorists, with his mentor and kingmaker Boris Berezovsky buzzing around him like an evil fairy godmother.

The show pulled few punches, and was soon taken off the air, with Putin acutely aware of the damage that the oligarch-controlled television channels had done to the image of his predecessor. NTV, the channel that showed Kukly, was shortly after taken over by the energy giant Gazprom in what spelled the end for free television in Russia.

Putin’s personal life is a closed book, existing only in the world of rumour, and mainly online, as the Russian press shies away from the topic. The most persistent whisper, backed up by many sources in Moscow but vigorously denied by Putin himself, is that the Russian leader has had a relationship, and a child, with former Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva.

Certainly all is not right in his marriage, and a rare joint television appearance by Putin and his wife Ludmila last year was so bizarre and stilted that it only reinforced rumours that the couple are separated. The latest obsession of the Russian blogosphere is the prime minister’s alleged Botox injections. Looking at pictures of Putin now compared with a few years ago, the facial contours are indeed strikingly different, though his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has insisted that his boss has had no “surgical interventions”.

In foreign policy, the Russian leader reached out to George W Bush in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks in New York and said Moscow would not resist the US using bases in the former Soviet Central Asian countries to launch their war against Afghanistan. But when the US moved into Iraq as well, and backed (or, as the more conspiratorial minds in the Kremlin were sure, organised) the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and Rose Revolution in Georgia, there was a feeling of betrayal. Youth movements such as Nashi were set up to idealise Putin and fight against unwanted “Orange Fever” in Russia. Relations with the West became openly hostile, culminating in a 2007 speech in Munich where Putin angrily laid into US influence in the world, prompting many to muse that a “New Cold War” was on the cards.

Foreign leaders were now dealing with a very different leader to the uncertain man whom the Western politician remembered from the early days. “Very soon he changed completely, and would stride into meetings with a list of demands and a confident demeanour,” the politician recalled. There were some topics that “you learnt not to raise” with the Russian president, he remembered, including Estonia and Georgia, sore topics that Putin believed the West didn’t understand properly. “Mention Georgia and he’s off for 20 minutes. He’d bang his fists on the table and, one time, he even drew me a map.”

Indeed, Georgia would become one of the defining foreign policy issues of the Putin era. Although when the decisive moment came, he had already moved over to the prime ministerial role, there was no doubting that he called the shots during Moscow’s brief but vicious war with Georgia in August 2008. Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s charismatic but impulsive president, infuriated Putin with his pro-Western rhetoric and his desire to bring Georgia into the EU and Nato. He promised to end Russian influence in Georgia, and even named a street in Tbilisi after George W Bush, as relations with Russia continued to spiral downwards. When I interviewed him in May 2008, just after Dmitry Medvedev’s accession, he said he hoped he might have more in common with the new, younger president than with Putin, and that relations, which had already become fraught, would improve. But every time Saakashvili tried to put a call in to Medvedev, he claimed, the Kremlin would put him through to Putin instead. The Georgian president describes talking to Putin as “somebody standing with an axe at your head and saying ‘Don’t worry, everything’s OK, just close your eyes and relax’.” Putin later told Nicolas Sarkozy that he wanted to hang Saakashvili “by the balls”.

Throughout 2007, there had been intense speculation about whether or not Putin would defy the constitution and run for a third presidential term. As ever in the opaque system that Putin himself had built, the president kept all the cards close to his chest. Journalists, analysts, and even most Kremlin officials themselves could do little more than guess at what the president was planning. For months, the guessing game went on, until a carefully choreographed set piece when Medvedev, the softly-spoken and ostensibly liberal lawyer was nominated for president, and Putin “agreed” to become prime minister, previously a formal role with little real power, but now set to become a very different position. The constitution had been adhered to in letter, if not in spirit.

Medvedev, though theoretically in charge, was always second in command to Putin. “Personally, I always knew that we only have one commander-in-chief, and it wasn’t [Medvedev],” a lieutenant-general in the Russian army told The New Times, a Russian magazine, earlier this year. “In the midst of the Georgia events, I tried to report to the president on the situation in South Ossetia. He interrupted me, said it was not information for him, and told me to report to the chief.” The “chief” was Putin, of course. The guessing game was repeated this year, with months of speculation as to whether Medvedev would be allowed a second term, or whether Putin would reassume the top job on paper as well as in practice. When the announcement came, there was a sense of the inevitable about it. Putin was back for more, although he had never really gone away.

The worry, of course, is what might happen in the next 12 years. If Putin is already ripping his clothes off on an alarmingly regular basis and having ancient urns placed for himself to find heroically, just what heights might be reached by 2024? In March 2006, just 10 per cent of Russians thought there was a Putin personality cult; by October this year, it was 25 per cent, with another 30 per cent agreeing that there are “more and more signs of one appearing”. Recently, I asked Alexander Voloshin, formerly Putin’s chief of staff, and still one of his most influential advisers, whether he thought that the “action man” stunts had gone a little over-the-top of late. “Putin has a team of people working on his image, and they are very professional,” he answered. “But to a great degree, Putin is his own director.” The image this creates of the Great Leader scripting ever more absurd scenarios for himself is rather disturbing.

In the run-up to this month’s parliamentary elections, state television rehearsed a familiar “Good Tsar, bad nobles” routine, with Putin reprimanding regional leaders for the poor conditions in which many Russians still live. On a visit in November to a dental clinic in a provincial city, Putin expressed disgust at how old the equipment was, and demanded that the local governor sit in the dentist’s chair. “This all needs to be replaced, or I’ll come back and ‘fix’ everything myself, using this,” Putin told the governor, wielding a scary, antiquated piece of equipment. The governor laughed uneasily. There is no doubt that Putin personally is still much more popular than his United Russia party, which has been dubbed “the party of crooks and thieves”, but his own approval ratings are also sliding, gradually but palpably.

During the early years of Putin’s rule, he gained popularity from the contrast he presented with Yeltsin. It is hard to overestimate just how disgusted the majority of Russians were with the 1990s. From afar it is easy to paint them as a time of new freedoms, but in reality, a few people walked off with all the cash, while the majority lived in poverty and chaos. “Life is still hard, but at least we have a real man in power now,” I was told by residents of a remote village in the far Eastern region of Sakhalin three years ago.

“Putin isn’t like the oligarchs, who just want to steal cash. He is working hard to make Russia great again.” But while a contrast with the Yeltsin era was a powerful catalyst for support in the early years, 12 years later the argument is wearing thin. Corruption has become institutionalised, freedoms have been curtailed and the war that Putin promised to win in the Caucasus still brings terror to the streets of Moscow. It is no longer sufficient to parade the “stability” of today as an achievement, and increasing access to the internet among Russians means that it is harder to control information about corruption and discontent. The reactions to this month’s elections suggest that more and more Russians have had enough. But is this dissatisfaction enough to stop Putin’s return to the top job?

“Look at the price of oil, at the money that has come into the country, at all the opportunities Putin had to really make this place great,” a 38-year-old Moscow-based lawyer told me recently, shaking his head sadly. “And instead we’ve got corruption and lawlessness. What a mess. I used to think that anyone who criticised the government was a traitor, but the longer this goes on, the more I feel that the opposite is true.” By Shaun Walker, The Independent

According to official figures released by the “Bahrain Center for Human Rights” website, so far 44 Bahraini citizens were killed at the hands of the mercenaries of the Al Khalifa regime. The Bahraini martyrs include the 6-year-old Mohammed Farhan, 14-year-old Ali Jawad Alshaikh and 15-year-old Sayed Ahmad Saeed Shams. The Bahraini organization has reported that many of these martyrs were killed while in custody. The Center has also published documents indicating that more than 1,500 Bahrainis including about 100 women were incarcerated since the eruption of turmoil in the Persian Gulf country on February 14, 2011 and that more that 90 journalists have faced threats to their life.

It’s also said that the Bahraini government has blocked the citizens’ access to more than 1000 opposition websites which are mainly used to organize and plan protests and mass demonstrations.

The Bahraini regime commits all of these aggressive and brutal actions with the direct involvement of Saudi Arabia and the implicit support and backing of NATO and the United States. The author of the “Hidden Harmonies China” blog in a March 14, 2011 post referred to the abuses of human rights in Bahrain with the flagrant, duplicitous support of the White House: “The Entry of Saudi security forces to crack down on the protesters with deadly force is a complication for U.S. policies, to say the least, since U.S. is reluctant to criticize its oil ally dictators in the region.”

He also called Bahrain the “Las Vegas” of the Middle East, host to the U.S. 5th Fleet and a haunt for the rich Saudis who are forbidden by Islamic laws at home from indulging in alcohol and other immoral enjoyments, “but who often vacation in Bahrain for these reasons.”

Bahraini citizens have uploaded several video files on the internet, showing the cruel and ruthless torturing and persecution of the protesters by the Al Khalifa lackeys. These videos depict the Bahraini forces using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters and killing many of them straight away. Some of these videos also show Saudi and Bahraini cars nonchalantly running over Bahraini children and women, killing them at once.

The U.S.-Saudi project of crackdown on the Bahraini people was also empowered by many of the European cronies of Washington. In July 2011, Germany sold a set of 200 62-ton Leopard tanks to Saudi Arabia which sparked a huge controversy among the German parliamentarians and anti-war activists. According to the Daily Telegraph, Wolfgang Gerhardt, former leader of the Free Democrats, the junior coalition member to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said it was “unacceptable” the deal went through without the knowledge of his party’s MPs. However, the agreement which was worth around USD 1,252 million was concluded and the Saudi government dispatched many of these newly-bought tanks to Bahrain to accelerate and facilitate the bloody clampdown on the protesters.

The situation in Yemen, however, is far more deplorable and appalling. Allvoices.com has reported that as of September 25, 1,870 Yemenis were killed in the revolution and the majority of the martyrs were unarmed civilians taking part in anti-government demonstrations.

The Yemeni dictator who has remained defiant in the face of frequent calls by the tribal leaders, opposition groups and demonstrators to step down and give up power has turned his country into a bloodbath and made the Yemeni uprising the longest, most devastating revolution in the revolutionary wave of protests in the Middle East. The protests in Yemen started on February 3, 2011 and have continued so far. The only reaction of the international community to the brutality in Yemen was an indecisive and faltering resolution by the UNSC which called for “an end to violence” and asked President Ali Abdullah Saleh to accept a peace deal brokered by the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council. However, Abdullah Saleh who is tacitly supported by the U.S., kept up with the brutalities and according to Yemen Times, 94 protesters were killed after the Security Council adopted resolution 2014.

In a report published on Yemen Times on November 17, it was revealed that “ninety-four Yemenis were killed and over 800 injured since UN Resolution 2014 was issued on October 21.”

“Tentative reports show that over the last three weeks in Yemen, 124 homes, seven mosques, six public institutions including one hospital, two community wells, and 17 vehicles were effectively destroyed,” Yemen Times reported.

In the days leading to the detainment and death of Moammar Gaddafi, the Western mainstream media were only talking about the Libyan civil war, and the reason was clear: NATO had secured a UNSC resolution to enact a no-fly zone over Libya and it was in the interests of the U.S. and its European partners to give coverage to the tumultuous situation in the North African country. However, the reports and news regarding the carnage in Bahrain and Yemen were predominantly shunned and boycotted, simply because these two despotic regimes were close allies of the U.S. in the Middle East.

In a report published on “Independent Australia,” Zaid Jiani alluded to the violent crackdown on the protesters in Bahrain and Yemen and posed the question “is the media downplaying these events because the two dictatorships are firm allies of the West?”

“A Think Progress analysis of press coverage by the three major U.S. cable news networks -CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News – from March 14 to March 18 finds that Bahrain received only slightly more than ten percent as many mentions as Libya and that Yemen received only six percent as many mentions as Libya.”

Now what concerns the independent thinkers, scholars, university professors, journalists and peace activists is that Syria has become the target of international pressure, simply because it has strong ties with Iran and resistance groups in Lebanon and Palestine, while the reactionary regimes of Bahrain and Yemen are getting away with the felonies which they commit by virtue of their alliance with the United States.

The Arab League has vindictively suspended the participation of Syria while it has taken no practical step to normalize the situation in the turbulent and chaotic Yemen and Bahrain in which innocent people are being killed on a daily basis by their tyrannical rulers and their loyalists.

All that can be said is that the performance of the Arab League in neglecting the situation in Yemen and Bahrain and exaggerating the unrest in Syria, which is mainly caused by foreign intervention, and the West’s indifference toward the plight of the suppressed nations in Yemen and Bahrain is all-out hypocrisy and a clear, undeniable exercise of double standards. Who can really devise a clear-cut solution for this unsolvable dilemma? By Kourosh Ziabari, WorldNews

As the presstitute media will not inform us of what any of this means, let me try.

With the exception of Ron Paul, the only candidate in either party qualified to be the president of the US, the rest of the Republican candidates are even worst than Obama, a president who had the country behind him but sold out the American people to the special interests.

No newly elected president in memory, neither John F. Kennedy nor Ronald Reagan, had the extraordinary response to his election as Barak Obama. A record-breaking number of people braved the cold to witness his swearing in ceremony. The mall was filled with Americans who could not see the ceremony except as televised on giant screens.

Obama had convinced the electorate that he would end the wars, stop the violation of law by the US government, end the regime of illegal torture, close the torture prison of Guantanamo, and attend to the real needs of the American people rather than stuff the pockets of the military/security complex with taxpayers’ money.

Once in office, Obama renewed and extended the Bush/Cheney/neoconservative wars.

He validated the Bush regime’s assaults on the US Constitution. He left Wall Street in charge of US economic policy, he absolved the Bush regime of its crimes, and he assigned to the American people the financial cost necessary to preserve the economic welfare of the mega-rich.

One would think such a totally failed president would be easy to defeat.  Given an historic opportunity, the Republican Party has put before the electorate the most amazingly stupid and vile collection of prospects, with the exception of Ron Paul who does not have the party’s support, that Americans have ever seen.

In the November 22 presidential “debate,” the candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, revealed themselves as a collection of ignorant warmongers who support the police state. Gingrich and Cain said that Muslims “want to kill us all” and that “all of us will be in danger for the rest of out lives.”

Bachmann said that the American puppet state, Pakistan, is “more than an existential threat.”  The moron Bachmann has no idea what is “more than an existential threat.”

However, it sounded heavy, like an intellectual thing to say for the candidate who previously declared the long-defunct Soviet Union to be today’s threat to the US.

Any sentient American who watched or read about the Republican presidential debate must wonder what there is to be thankful for as the national holiday approaches.

The Russian government, which prefers to use its resources for the economy rather than for the military, has decided that it has been taking too many risks in the name of peace. The day before Thanksgiving, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, in a televised address to the Russian people, that if Washington goes ahead with its planned missile bases surrounding Russia, Russia will respond with new nuclear missiles of its own, which will target the American bases and European capital cities.

The President of Russia said that the Russian government has asked Washington for legally binding guarantees that the American missile bases are not intended as a threat to Russia, but that Washington has refused to give such guarantees.

Medvedev’s statement is perplexing. What does he mean “if Washington goes ahead?”  The American missile and radar bases are already in place. Russia is already surrounded.  Is Medvedev just now aware of what is already in place?

Russia’s and China’s slow response to Washington’s aggression can only be understood in the context of the two countries’ experience with communism. The sufferings of Russians and Chinese under communism was extreme, and the thinking part of those populations saw America as the ideal of political life. This delusion still controls the mentality of progressive thinkers in Russia and China.  It might prove to be a disaster for Russia and China that the countries have citizens who are aligned with the US.

Belief in Washington’s trustworthiness even pervades the Russian government, which apparently, according to Medvedev’s statement, would be reassured by a “legally binding guarantee” from Washington.  After the massive lies told by Washington in the 21st century–”weapons of mass destruction,” “al Qaeda connections,” “Iranian nukes”–why would anyone put any credence in “a legally binding guarantee” from Washington? The guarantee would mean nothing. How could it be enforced?  Such a guarantee would simply be another deceit in Washington’s pursuit of world hegemony.

The day prior to Thanksgiving also brought another extraordinary development–the failure of a German government bond auction, an unparalleled event.

Why would Germany, the only member of the EU with financial rectitude, not be able to sell 35 per cent of its offerings of 10-year bonds?  Germany has no debt problems, and its economy is expected by EU and US authorities to bear the lion’s share of the bailout of the EU member countries that do lack financial rectitude.

I suspect that the answer to this question is that the failure of the German government’s bond auction was orchestrated by the US, by EU authorities, especially the European Central Bank, and private banks in order to punish Germany for obstructing the purchase of EU member countries’ sovereign debt by the European Central Bank.

The German government has been trying to defend the terms on which Germany gave up control over its own currency and joined the EU. By insisting on the legality of the agreements, Germany has been standing in the way of the ECB behaving like the US Federal Reserve and monetizing the debt of member governments.

From the beginning the EU was a conspiracy against Germany. If Germany remains in the EU, Germany will be destroyed. It will lose its political and economic sovereignty, and its economy will be bled in behalf of the fiscally irresponsible members of the EU.

If Greeks will not submit to the tyranny, why should Germans? By Paul Craig Roberts, CounterPunch

“The Lady is good for business,” said Ko Lynn, a senior editor at a Yangon weekly journal, one of many publications enjoying the slight relaxation in recent months of the government’s strict regulation of the media.

“Before, we ran about 6,000 copies. Now, it’s 10,000.”

Suu Kyi’s decision on Monday to contest upcoming by-elections has raised hopes democracy may take root in one of the world’s most isolated and authoritarian states.

But the fact Myanmar’s media is covering the story at all is a story in itself.

For a half-century, every song, book, cartoon, news story and planned piece of art required approval by teams of censors rooting out political messages and criticisms of Myanmar’s authoritarian system.

Suu Kyi’s name was seldom spoken in public, let alone her image emblazoned across newspaper front pages, since she began opposing Myanmar’s rulers over two decades ago.

The Nobel laureate was freed last November after spending 15 of the last 21 years in detention although until recently newspapers dared not report on her.

But Myanmar, also known as Burma, appears to finally be changing under the most sweeping reforms in the former British colony since a 1962 military coup. Nearly half-century of direct military rule ended in March when a nominally civilian parliament opened seven months after elections.

Although the legislature is stacked with former generals, they can no longer count on the same strictly controlled media that was ranked 174th of 178 nations in a global press freedom index by Reporters Without Borders last year.

Bans on prominent news web sites were lifted in September, including Reuters.com, and some run by critics of the government. And the government is now drafting a new law that officials say would do away with direct political censorship.

Ko Ko Hlaing, chief political adviser to the president, said Myanmar would end political censorship.

“According to our constitution, freedom of expression is guaranteed for every citizen, so our new media law will reflect such a guaranteed freedom of expression, so no censorship,” he told Reuters on Saturday on the sidelines of an international conference in Bali, Indonesia.

“There will be some monitoring systems and also legal process,” he said.

“But censorship will only be cultural and religious. We are very sensitive on maintaining our traditions, cultures and religions,” he added. “Other than that, they can express their opinion very freely.

SHIFT IN ATTITUDE

The shift in attitude flared during an unusually public debate over the government’s plan to build a $3.6 billion, Chinese-funded dam in Myitsone in northern Myanmar.

The project would have flooded an area about the size of Singapore, threatening the Irrawaddy River, the aorta of the country. Ninety percent of its power would have gone to China, and construction jobs would mostly go to Chinese workers.

It struck a raw nerve of nationalism. Popular resentment against the project had seethed since it was agreed in 2006, but until this year, it was relegated to whispers and muffled coffee-shop chatter.

Draconian press rules enforced by the Orwellian-sounding Press Registration and Scrutiny Board rendered the dam, and scores of other juicy subjects including crime and politics, strictly off limits.

But as the national mood changed this year, one of the country’s biggest media executives, Than Htut Aung, took a calculated risk by obliquely criticising the dam in a speech and calling for outside experts to assess river conditions.

“I couldn’t sleep that night,” he told Reuters. “Last year I couldn’t have openly criticised the project. I might have been thrown in prison.”

An opinion piece opposing the dam made it past state censors and into his flagship publication, Eleven Weekly News. The floodgates were open.

Other private news journals and magazines quickly followed, running their own articles critical of the dam and soon, a grassroots social movement to end the project began to snowball into widespread public anger, prompting President Thein Sein to shelve the dam on Sept 30, “according to the desire of the people.”

TESTING BOUNDARIES

The changes have gathered steam since early June when the Ministry of Information decided to allow about half of Myanmar’s privately-run weekly journals and monthly magazines to publish without submitting page proofs to a censorship board in advance.

Tint Swe, a senior Ministry official, told reporters the remaining publications would be allowed to be publish without prior censorship “at an appropriate time” and the government would eventually allow private dailies to operate.

Papers have since been testing the boundaries, often putting Suu Kyi on their front pages. Editors say this was unthinkable before the middle of this year.

In one indicator of change, one-time political prisoner and respected senior journalist U Soe Thein won unprecedented government approval in August to organise National Press Awards in Myanmar for the first time.

Working with the government-backed press association, U Soe Thein organised a committee of more than 30 prominent reporters and editors that will select top contributions in five categories next year, awarding a cash prize to each winner.

“The reporting this year has been better than last year,” he said, listing key stories — from the Myitsone Dam, ethnic conflicts, and Suu Kyi’s negotiations with the government.

“I don’t think there will be any backtracking.”

SELF CENSORSHIP?

But much has remained unchanged, underscoring the tentative and fragile nature of the reforms so far.

Currently, only the state can publish daily newspapers, which are filled with propaganda. However, they are no longer critical of Suu Kyi and in August dropped back-page banners attacking Western media for “killer broadcasts” and “sowing hatred.”

The reforms have also been slow to trickle down to towns outside Yangon and to rural areas, and journalists say they are still subjected to hassles such as having cameras confiscated.

About 20 journalists are still held in prisons.

In much of the country, heavy censorship remains a fact of life. Publications that must still send their work to a censorship board must do so 10 days in advance of publishing.

On printouts of a recent edition of a top weekly journal seen by a Reuters journalist, large Xs had been made in red marker to indicate stories, phrases and cartoons that did not make the cut.

At another publication, a picture of Suu Kyi was rejected because, juxtaposed against the headline, censors felt it suggested that she represented the political future of Myanmar.

While the Myitsone hydro-dam story emboldened the media, some editors say the censors fear other controversial projects could upset the public. Some probing articles have been rejected, underscoring the limits to the new open-ness.

Although the information ministry has told editors a new press law next year would scrap the registration and scrutiny board, media will still be choosing their words carefully, likely adopting the kind of self-censorship now in place in other parts of Southeast Asia. In Singapore for instance, media is usually careful to avoid displeasing the government and not falling afoul of strict libel laws.

Thiha Saw, editor of Myanma Dana Business magazine, said he still expects the government to retain control over the media.

“There may be private daily newspapers, no pre-press censorship, but they will be watching and they will take action afterwards,” he said.

Than Htut Aung of Eleven Media said Myanmar now had about 20 percent press freedom and he expects that to increase if the government allows private companies like his to open daily newspapers, which is something he has applied for.

“Some hardliners want to change the media to be like China, but that’s rubbish,” he said. “Within one year it will be like in Singapore and there will be self-censorship.”

Still, he admits that anything is possible.

“We’re worried about changes being rolled back. The chances are small, but every journalist must hope for the best.” The Star

“Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest last year … She has met with the President. There has been the release of political prisoners, though not all of them,” Ms Suu Kyi’s senior aide, U Win Htein, said last night from Rangoon. “My prediction is that she will [contest a seat].”

Although Ms Suu Kyi has given no indication of wanting to stand for the highest office of President, she would be the most popular choice in any free and fair election in the country where she is referred to simply and adoringly as The Lady. At present, the President is elected not by the people, but by parliament, which is heavily stacked with military cronies.

A year after the release of Ms Suu Kyi, who spent seven years under house arrest, developments in Burma are coming at a rapid pace. The supposedly civilian administration under former general Thein Sein has taken a number of steps that have been welcomed by campaigners, including the relaxing of controls of the media. It has also released several hundred political prisoners, though many more remain behind bars. Earlier this week, the Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) elected Burma to chair the organisation in 2014.

The moves by Thein Sein have also been rewarded by the West, where sanctions against Burma are still in place. The British International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, visited the country this week, spending time with both Ms Suu Kyi and government officials. He said there were grounds for cautious optimism.

But the biggest coup came with yesterday’s announcement from Mr Obama that Ms Clinton will be despatched within two weeks. “We want to seize what could be a historic opportunity for progress and make it clear that if Burma continues to travel down the road of democratic reform, it can forge a new relationship with the United States of America,” said Mr Obama, who said there had been “flickers” of progress. “If Burma fails to move down the path of reform, it will continue to face sanctions and isolation. But if it seizes this moment, then reconciliation can prevail.”

It is likely the US decision is motivated by several factors. Sanctions mean all but a handful of US companies are prevented from operating inside the country and energy companies would covet the opportunity to bid for oil and gas deals. Washington is also concerned about countering the considerable influence over Burma of China, which has already established a series of energy agreements. Finally, it seems clear the US believes the purportedly civilian administration that came to power after a controversial election last year does represent something different.

Aung Din, a former political prisoner who now heads the US Campaign for Burma, said he had been surprised by Mr Obama’s announcement. But he added: “Since Aung San Suu Kyi agrees and welcomes the Secretary’s visit, I support it as well. I just wish the Burmese regime will understand this serious, good-will gesture of the United States government and respond positively by releasing all remaining political prisoners.”

Mr Obama said he spoke with Ms Suu Kyi by phone for 20 minutes before making the decision. “I spoke to Aung San Suu Kyi directly and confirmed that she supports American engagement to move this process forward,” he said.

At the meeting of the NLD’s central executive committee yesterday, Ms Suu Kyi told members she wanted her party ready to stand in the polls later this year. According to the Reuters news agency, she said: “In my opinion, I would like the party to re-register and to run in the by-elections in all the 48 constituencies.” The Independent