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Dear WW4 REPORT Readers:

The upcoming anniversary of the September 11 attacks will mark four years that WORLD WAR 4 REPORT has been publishing. After three years of experimenting, we believe we have found both a name and a format that work.

The "World War III" envisioned in the Cold War was a devastating conflict between two monolithic superpowers. The Cold War, thankfully, never reached this climax. But now we are faced with its chilling sequel: the age of "asymmetrical" or "molecularized" warfare, in which a single globalized superpower faces an invisible, hydra-headed enemy which is everywhere and nowhere; in which the expansion of "free markets" is an explicit aim of military campaigns; and in which indigenous peoples, stateless ethnicities and localist/autonomist poltical models—the "fourth world"–are increasingly targeted and conflated with the "terrorist" threat. The leaders of this new global crusade acknowledge openly that it will last generations. To emphasize that this new world situation requires a new kind of thinking, we have joined with those on the left and right alike that call this global conflict World War 4.

Z magazine supports genocide

With all of the current horrors in the headlines, the world has paid little note to the tenth anniversary of the July 1995 massacre of 8,000 at the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica after it was overrun by besieging Serb rebel forces. The town's women, children and elderly were put on buses at gunpoint and expelled to Bosnian government-held territory. But the adult men were separated out and kept by the Serb forces for "interrogation." Their whereabouts became the subject of an international investigation which is now bearing grim fruit—thousands of corpses exhumed from mass graves, held in Bosnia's morgues, where international teams are conducting the lugubrious work of DNA identification, matching genetic material from the bones with samples provided by relatives of the missing. Some 2,000 of the dead have now been thusly identified, the International Commission on Missing Persons reports. The massacre is rightly called Europe's worst since World War II.

UK, US plan Iraq withdrawal?

UK memo says US, UK readying Iraqi withdrawal-report

LONDON, July 10 (Reuters) - A leaked document from Britain's Defence Ministry says the British and U.S. governments are planning to reduce their troop levels in Iraq by more than half by mid-2006, the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported.

The memo, reportedly written by Defence Minister John Reid, said Britain would reduce its troop numbers to 3,000 from 8,500 by the middle of next year.

"We have a commitment to hand over to Iraqi control in Al Muthanna and Maysan provinces (two of the four provinces under British control in southern Iraq) in October 2005 and in the other two, Dhi Qar and Basra, in April 2006," the memo was reported to have said.

Edinburgh aftermath: police over-reach, Wolfowitz praises Geldof

Protesters are starting to leave Edinburgh, but at least four were re-arrested for violating bail conditions banning them from the city while actually trying to get out of town. Human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar told the court: "The situation with public transport out of Edinburgh [on July 7] was pandemonium after the bomb blasts in London. I find it impossible to see how people are able to leave Edinburgh if the bail restrictions say they are not allowed in Edinburgh. It seems they are getting arrested by overzealous police officers." (The Scotsman, July 9) In a proverbial case of strange bedfellows, World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz praised do-gooder rock star Bob Geldof for his campaign to pressure the G8 on African poverty. The G8 finally arrived at a deal for increased aid and debt relief for Africa. The leaders of Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania attended the summit to lobby for the debt relief program. "I thought it was extremely positive," Wolfowitz said. "If you'd told me a couple of months ago that there would be a commitment to a doubling of aid and debt cancellation, I'd have said you were dreaming." But he emphasized that the aid and debt relief programs are conditioned on economic reforms. "It's a deal for a deal," he said. (London Sunday Times, July 10)

Iraq war spills into Syria?

Syrian forces have arrested two fugitives from Jordan who are believed to be former bodyguards of Saddam Hussein and linked to the Iraq insurgency. The manhunt followed a clash between militants and Syrian forces on Qassioun Mountain overlooking Damascus July 4. Condoleezza Rice offered rare praise for the Syrian regime upon news of the arrests. The July 4 clash was but the most recent in a series of skirmishes that come as Washington is pressuring Syria to seal its border with Iraq. (Lebanon Daily Star, July 7) In another sign of the Iraq insurgents' isolation from Damascus, Syria strongly denounced on the killing of an Egyptian diplomat in Iraq as a "horrible criminal action," the official SANA news agency reported. Egypt's Ambassador-designate to Baghdad Ihab el-Sharif was kidnapped near his home in Baghdad on July 3. The group "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" announced his death July 7 in an Internet statement. (Xinhua, July 9) The US and its client regime in Iraq have previously claimed evidence that Syria is supporting the insurgents.

Basra: Shi'ite theocracy bans music

More glowing reports of freedom on the march in Iraq. This from the July 7 New York Times, reprinted the following day in the International Herald Tribune.

Shiite theocracy takes hold in Iraqi oil city
By Edward Wong The New York Times

BASRA, The loudest sounds from musicians' row these days come from explosions.

Ahmed Ali walked through a shop that had sold musical instruments before it was gutted by a bombing a week earlier, the latest in a series of mysterious attacks in this narrow alley in the past six months, he said. The men here, just a block from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, sell instruments by day and perform at weddings in the evening.

BJP exploits backlash violence in India?

Following the July 5 attack by presumed Islamic militants at the disputed Indian holy site of Ayodhya, protests have broken out throughout India. Over 2,000 were arrested in Delhi, where police used tear gas, and critics charge the protests have been particularly violent in states controlled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

New armed group attacks in southern Mexico

A previously unknown armed group, the Fatherland is First Popular Revolutionary Command (Comando Popular Revolucionario La Patria es Primero), has claimed responsibility for the July 6 assassination of former Guerrero state government secretary Ruben Robles Catalan, whose driver was also killed in the attack.

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