There was little fanfare and much protest on March 1 as The Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) went into effect in El Salvador. The country is the first Central American nation to honor CAFTA and for the second straight day, thousands marched and traffic was snarled throughout San Salvador. Five other signatory nations have failed to meet US requirements necessary to join the agreement.

The day before, Salvadoran President Tony Saca proclaimed the start of CAFTA by announcing to George Bush (who was not present), “Come with your basket empty and take it home full.”

Today’s march started at the “Salvador del Mundo Plaza” and streamed for blocks to the Civic Plaza, in the heart of downtown San Salvador. Vendors of pirated CD’s and small farmers took to the streets next to unionists, students, and anarchists. All declared their opposition to CAFTA, or the “TLC,” as it is known in Spanish.
upsidedownworld.org

President-elect Chooses Free Trade Over Democracy
Oscar Arias, Costa Rica’s president-elect, has vowed to do everything in his power to push CAFTA through Congress despite widespread public opposition.

“You should not have the least doubt that in this, we will not cede,” said Arias, who won the election by a mere 1.1 percent against a candidate who ran on an anti-CAFTA platform.

The Bush administration breathed a sigh of relief with Arias’ narrow victory and it is hoped that he “can be a counterbalance against leftist movements springing up in South America.”

CAFTA opponents from different sectors of civil society have promised strikes and protests against the largely unpopular trade agreement.

“We are going to follow the strategy of the referendum of the streets,” said Albino Vargas, leader of the main public employees’ union.
upsidedownworld.com

“But the greatest doubt – considering that over half of all Garifuna communities are located in protected areas or their respective buffer zones – is if the dedication to environmental protection work really exists or if it can be reduced to a formula for territorial control, so that later the protected areas can be raffled off among the same old sorcerers as always.” (The Fraternal Black Order of Honduras)

On October 11, 2005, the day before the infamous October 12 anniversary commemorating 513 years of imperialism, colonialism and pillage in Latin America, the Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) published a communiqué denouncing the ridiculous findings of an Environmental Impact Assessment Study, which proclaimed that the Los Micos Beach & Golf Resort—an enclave of a global tourist complex, which includes an 18-hole golf course, set inside a national park—is, in fact, sustainable. Although ridiculous, the distortion is far from surprising.

For decades, plans have been in the works for a luxury resort complex in the Tela Bay, located in the department of Atlántida on Honduras’ Caribbean coast. Over the years, the legal obstacles in its way began to disappear, while repression against Garifuna leaders and communities working to defend their communal territory, resources and culture from the destructive mega-project continues.
upsidedownworld.org

A group of about 2,000 rural activists invaded a eucalyptus plantation in southern Brazil this week causing millions of pounds damage to one of the country’s biggest paper producers.

The protesters, linked to Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST), ransacked the grounds of Aracruz Celulose in the early hours of Wednesday, tearing up bulbs and destroying 15 years of genetic research, according to the company.

Yesterday, as Brazilian authorities condemned the attacks as “vandalism” and “banditry”, those responsible said they were opening up a new front in the fight for justice in rural areas and against multinational agricultural businesses.
guardian.co.uk

The Mapuche, Chile’s largest indigenous population, is forming a political party in an effort gain autonomy and self-government.

The Wallmapuwen (party) hopes to be legally recognized later this year so that it has the time to organize and prepare to field candidates in the 2008 municipal elections.

The group plans to “restore the Mapuche nation as a political and administrative entity, under a statute of territorial autonomy that enshrines the rights of its native people, and establishes Mapuzugun as an official language.”
upsidedownworld.org

One of Latin America’s most extraordinary political families is poised to produce another of the continent’s Left-wing authoritarian leaders with no love for Washington.

Ollanta Humala is one of two favourites to become Peru’s next president, a role for which, to believe his mother, he has been groomed from birth.

Ollanta Humala: ‘I am a nationalist and anti-imperialist’
“We have been preparing our children to take power since they were born,” Elena Tasso has said of her eight progeny. “If the boys are not successful this time, then it will be the turn of the girls.”

In fact two of her sons, Ollanta and Ulises, are standing as rivals in next month’s presidential election and a third, Antauro, is running for parliament.

Faced with not one but two sons to support, the head of the family, Isaac, backs Ulises.

But the father’s real enthusiasm is for the eccentric philosophy of “Etnocacerismo”.

This racist creed, which Isaac founded, calls on indigenous Americans, whom he calls “coppers”, to take on the “whites”, and their sidekicks the “blacks”, and keep the “yellows” at a safe distance.

“Isaac Humala should be investigated by child care agencies,” said a former interior minister, Fernando Rospigliosi. “God only knows what he put into his children’s heads during their formative years.”
telegraph.co.uk

QUITO, Ecuador, March 8 (Reuters) – Petroecuador said on Wednesday it expected to bring oil production to near normal levels in three or four days after troops fired tear gas to clear out strikers who have cut crude output at Ecuador’s state oil firm by nearly half.

Production was down to 96,360 barrels of oil per day — a slight improvement from earlier on Wednesday when the ongoing strike slashed output by nearly three-quarters. Petroecuador normally produces around 200,000 bpd.

Petroecuador said in a statement it expects production to rise to 190,000 bpd in about four days as troops gradually clear striking contract workers from its oil infrastructure and wells.
A company official said Petroecuador could hire replacement employees to start operations.

“It will be difficult because of the number of workers, but we can sign new contracts with the same sub-contracting companies and they can hire other workers,” Jaime Crow, head of Petroecuador production division, told Reuters.

The roughly 4,000 contract workers walked off the job to demand full-time jobs and delayed payments. Strike leaders vowed to continue with the protest.

“Neither Petroecuador nor the government has given us an answer to our demands,” said Luis Ubidia, a union leader, by telephone. “The strike will continue for the moment.”

The strike is the latest dispute to hit Ecuador’s oil industry and embattled President Alfredo Palacio. Last month, protesters forced a cut in exports after briefly shutting two pipelines to demand a bigger share of oil revenues.
alertnet.org

LAGOS, Nigeria – A Nigerian militant group holding three foreign oil workers hostage said its fighters clashed Wednesday with army troops in this West African nation’s oil-rich delta region.

The militants said in an e-mailed statement that one of their vessels was attacked on the Escravos River by four Nigerian navy patrol boats, sparking a 45-minute gunbattle they claimed left seven government soldiers dead.

The reported skirmish could not be independently confirmed and military officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

“The Nigerian government and military should note that we have sufficient firepower in that vicinity to repel any attack,” the militants said.

Ethnic Ijaw militants took nine foreign oil workers hostage Feb. 18 and released six of them last week. The remaining three include two Americans and a Briton.

The militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta claims to be fighting to win a greater share of oil wealth on behalf of the Niger Delta’s impoverished inhabitants, who have remained poor despite the fact that most of Nigeria’s oil is being pumped from the swampy region. The government characterizes the militants as criminals and oil thieves.
thestate.com

A UN expert has said that East Jerusalem is undergoing major changes because of a new wall through Palestinian neighbourhoods aimed at reducing the number of Palestinians in the city.

John Dugard, special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a report to the UN Human Rights Commission on Wednesday that the Israeli-built separation wall was causing major humanitarian problems.

“The character of East Jerusalem is undergoing a major change as a result of the construction of the wall through Palestinian neighbourhoods,” Dugard said.

“The clear purpose of the wall in the Jerusalem area is to reduce the number of Palestinians in the city by transferring them to the West Bank.

“This causes major humanitarian problems: Families are separated and access to hospitals, schools and the workplace are denied.”

Dugard recalled that the wall between Israel and Palestinian territories – described by Israel as a security measure – had gone ahead despite a 2004 ruling by the International Court of Justice.

The report to the UN was immediately condemned by the Israeli UN envoy to the UN rights panel, who said the document was pursuing “manifest political ends”.

Meanwhile, a report by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said the Israeli army had increased the number of roadblocks and barriers in the West Bank by 25% since last summer.

The number of road obstacles rose to 471 in January, from 376 last August at the time of Israel’s Gaza pullout, OCHA said, and they tightened travel restrictions for Palestinians and made it harder for them to reach properties, markets and medical services.
aljazeera.net

The two state solution, a cruel joke
Israel’s current delusional, myopic policies in the occupied territories will render its people even more profoundly insecure, for a state cannot live in peace and security by denying it to others.

The interminable torment inflicted on the Palestinian people by Zionism is in the active phase of yet another disastrous historical culmination. The Palestinians’ role in this karmic dialectic is as the obscenely oppressed victims who progressively lose land, life, and livelihood. 1948 represents the mega catastrophe, preceded by decades of unrelenting militant Zionist intrusion protected by the reigning colonial power of the time. 1967 was of much lesser proportions in terms of its collective consequences, but the decades since have led to that singular Zionist goal supported by the superpower of the day: dispossession of Palestine.

Today, we are witness to an unfolding disaster of gigantic proportions in what is left of historic Palestine and its people. The Israeli goal under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his successors, short of another 1948 or 1967-like event that would provide cover for further mass expulsions, is the complete political and social annihilation of Palestinian will and society, leaving it fragmented, pauperized, disoriented, and demoralized, severely dividing it along geographical, local, factional, and ideological fault lines, destroying its social cohesion, its demographic and geographic continuity, its national identity, its nationalist response.

Death of two boys in airstrike stirs anger in Gaza, soul-searching in Israel
An Israeli missile obliterated a vehicle in crowded Gaza City, killing two Palestinian militants inside — a common sight these days. But the attack also killed three boys, provoking grief and rage among Palestinians and criticism from Israelis.

Second Historic Mission to Iran
Anti-Zionist Orthodox Rabbis visited Iran

A delegation of of Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish Rabbis visited the Islamic Republic of Iran, March 2006, where they met with clerics, Imams, and Government Officials.

“…Orthodox Jews the world over, are saddened by the hysteria which has greeted the recent stated desire of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to see a world free of Zionism. This desire is nothing more than a yearning for a better, more peaceful world. It is a hope that with the elimination of Zionism, Jews and Muslims will live in harmony as they have throughout the ages, in Palestine and throughout the world.”

The race to save hundreds of thousands of Pakistani earthquake survivors from the harsh Himalayan winter has been won, the United Nations said yesterday.

“There has been no second wave of deaths, no massive population movement down the mountains, no severe malnutrition, and no outbreak of epidemics,” said Jamie McGoldrick, the deputy humanitarian aid coordinator in Islamabad.

Five months ago yesterday about 87,000 people died when a 7.6 magnitude quake shook Kashmir and North-West Frontier province. Another 1,300 died in Indian-occupied Kashmir.

But fears of a second wave of deaths were averted by a milder than expected winter and a helicopter-led aid effort. By this week an international air fleet, including US and British military helicopters, had flown more than 27,400 trips ferrying food, tents and medicine.
guardian.co.uk

RAWALPINDI: President Musharraf presented the US Commander Gen John P Abizaid intelligence information on a conspiracy some Afghan government leaders hatched against Pakistan.

Musharraf called for greater coordination and sharing of actionable intelligence in real time to achieve desired objectives of catching “big fish”. The US Central Command chief called on the president here on Wednesday.

The US general flew in Rawalpindi as a follow-up to US President Bush visit to Pakistan for sharing intelligence information on al-Qaeda suspects and the mini-crisis emerged following the unsubstantiated and non-sense charges hurled on Pakistan by the Afghan government of President Karzai.

The president told the US commander that the Afghan information was outdated, as only real time information could help nab “big fish.” General Abizaid’s meeting with President Musharraf lasted for nearly two hours. Abizaid is expected to share the information and perceptions of Pakistani leaders with the Afghan government leaders.

Following Bush visit, relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan became strained when the Karzai government leaked information to the press, levelling allegations on Pakistan for not acting against terrorists.

President Musharraf termed all these charges rubbish and non-sense and called the US leaders for greater coordination and sharing an actionable intelligence in real time to achieve the objectives.
jang.com.pk