Iran’s disarmament summit upstaged Obama’s and breathes life into next month’s NPT conference in New York, notes Eric Walberg

The logic of power is still overriding the power of logic, quipped the head of Iran’s Atomic Organisation Ali Salehi at the “Nuclear Energy for all, Nuclear Weapons for None” disarmament conference in Tehran last weekend, referring to US foreign policy, in particular, nuclear. Taking this elegant formulation a step further, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says nuclear-armed states such as the United States should be removed entirely from the IAEA and its Board of Governors. Iran’s president called for the formation of a new international body to oversee nuclear disarmament, or at least the reinvigoration of the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Lieutenant colonel Brian Christmas (I'm not making this up) recently threatened the village elders in Sistani, a village near Marja, with “the choice between American guns and American resources”. Read: turn stoolie. The Afghan president begs to differ, says Eric Walberg

There can be no doubt that Washington is in the throws of a mental breakdown over what to do about Afghanistan. The very unenthusiastic surge now underway is a disaster on the ground, as NATO, Taliban and civilian Afghanistan deaths skyrocket in Marja and Kandahar, with Kunduz coming up in the brutal Afghan summer. The staunchly noncombatant Germans are supposed to spearhead the latter operation, but there is a revolution brewing at home after three of them died in a few seconds last week, and nearby their comrades gunned down five Afghan soldiers in a case of “friendly fire”. To make matters worse, far worse, America’s political hope, President Hamid Karzai, is doing his best to scuttle the occupiers’ plans, however altruistic and noble they might be.

NATO plans for Afghanistan this year are shaping up nicely: negotiate with the Taliban, but at the same time kill them in Kandahar and Kunduz, observes Eric Walberg

A joint operation involving several thousand troops was launched in Kandahar last week, the second one this year after Operation Mushtarak in Helmand province. Kandahar has been the bailiwick of 2,500 contingent of Canadian troops who have suffered heavy losses in this mountainous home of the Taliban. It is ruled by a Canadian national, Governor Tooryalai Wesa , a close friend of President Hamid Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, chairman of the Kandahar provincial council, infamous for his involvement in the drug trade.

Apart for Abu Ghraib, Fallujah is perhaps the Iraq war’s defining moment. The hatred and resentment of the occupied people found a catalyst in the four Blackwater mercenaries, who were killed and strung up, and no doubt deserved their fate, certainly as symbols of a cynical, illegal invasion. The US soldiers -- who are just as mercenary, being a professional army invading a country sans provocation -- came and "destroyed the village to save it."

In Russia, Turkey and the Great Game: Changing teams the new line-up of the players in the Great Game was set out. Here, Eric Walberg considers the implications for the Middle East.