Fridays

The Giants took two of three from Arizona over the weekend. We're now two games back in a tie for third. Woohoo! The National West is nothing if not exciting this year. Please send us more pitching!

So my local bodega has started carrying the international edition of The Times (of London). I mean, they carry the post already, and they are both tabloids in the Rupert Murdoch empire, so I'm not sure why (I was really dissapointed to discover that the Times hd switched from being a broadsheet toa tabloid, but that's Murdoch for you). But I've started reading it, mostly for the soccer news during the World Cup. well I was thumbing through the international section and I came upon something called "The Shanghai Cooperation Organization" which is holding a summit in China which is being attended by Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, and a few others. Like I said, I'd never heard of it. It was apparentl founded after September 11 to fight terrorism and drug traficking in central Asia.

Like I said, never heard of it. Not once. And there in the Times was a headline saying "Iran in talks to join aliance against Westm" on an article about how this organization is positioning itself as counterbalance to Western influence and to NATO. Iran is seeking full membership. The organization has drafted a statement that basically supports Iran in its efforts to resist US presure: "In an implicit reference to the US and its pressure on Iran to end its nuclear weapons programme, he said that the SCO could 'ward off the threats of domineering powers to use their force against and interfere in the affairs of other states.'"

Never heard of it. Now this is from a rupert Murdoch tabloid, so I don't completely trust it. I went and ran a Google News search. The only mention in an American source was an article posted 3 hours ago on Voice of America that, while at the conference, Iran's president indicated that the recent offers of dialouge from te US was a positive step. This is good news. But about the other issue of SCO being a possible rival no NATO, nothing. The conference isn't even being covered in the US. It's covered in the Pakistani news service, the Uzbeki wire service, Islam Press, China and India, but not by the American press. Don't you think Americans might be interested in an organization that cold re-ignite the cold war. China, India, and Russia, while opposing Nuclear armamnet in Iran, have already expressed support for Iran at the UN on the issue of sanctions. If they really do enter into a military aliance with Iran, the cold war will be on again. And we hear nothing. Rumsfeld did comment to the Times in a shot at Iran, but nothing else.

The article also mentioned that this is all due to growing anti-Americanism as a result of our president's foregin policies. No surprise there.

All of which leadds me to wonder two things: first off, why isn't the American pess covering this? Second, why isn't this administration bangine the drum. The answer to the first is probvably some variation of "Americans don't care." But might not an answer to the second be that a new cold war would serve a conservative agenda?

Likely this is all just Murdoch stiring things up. China, Russia and India need ou markets a lot more than they need Iran tohave bombs. Maybe I'm just paranoid. But I still wonder why until now I've never heard about it.