As part of the ongoing propaganda battle between the United States and Iran over a Jan. 6 incident in which two alleged Iranian speed boats approached some U.S. Navy ships in the Straits of Hormuz, the U.S. military held a press conference Jan. 13 in Bahrain. The commanders of the two U.S. ships involved in the incident, the U.S.S. Port Royal and U.S.S. Hopper, explained their versions of the incident. Here’s video of that press conference: And here’s the complete Defense Department’s video of the incident (all 45 minutes of it): Meanwhile, on Sunday, a new theory emerged about the [...]
TAYLOR TRIAL RESUMES — At the Hague Jan. 7, prosecutors began presenting their case against former Liberian President Charles Taylor. A Canadian “blood diamond” expert was called as the first of 144 expected witnesses for the prosecution. Taylor faces 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his alleged role trading weapons for diamonds in the brutal 1991-2002 Sierra Leone war. Additionally, the prosecution alleges that the diamond trade through Liberia that earned the Revolutionary United Front — which was responsible for much of the war’s violence — $125 million a year could not have happened without the [...]
A Wednesday report in the German economic daily Handelsblatt makes clear that German-Iranian trade continued to boom in 2007 despite existing U.N. sanctions and international calls to isolate Iran economically. According to statistics cited in a report by Germany’s Federal Trade Agency (BFAI), German exports to Iran are supposed to have declined by 15 percent to around €3.5 billion. However, in what the paper calls a “surprising development,” German imports from Iran actually increased by 50 percent to some €580 million. It should be noted, moreover, that both figures are said to be based on statistical data running only through [...]
