In a well-ordered world, Gerard Latortue whould now be sitting quietly in a jail in The Hague, preparing to defend himself against charges of treason, terrorism, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution and, possibly, genocide.

Instead, on Wednesday last week, he was sitting, immaculately tailored, as always, in a conference room at United Nations headquarters, as the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States (OAS) vainly attempted to give a decent burial to US government policies in Haiti.
It was a farce.

Officiating at the obsequies was the Guyanese-born assistant secretary-general of the OAS, chosen, one imagines, because his clean hands distinguished him from a motley gang of bloodstained bureaucrats who have for two years connived at one of the most blatant and infamous rapes of human rights in modern history.
jamaicaobservor.com

The Puzzling Alliance of Chavannes Jean-Baptiste and Charles Henri Baker
Imagine in U.S. politics if Cesar Chavez had suddenly endorsed and collaborated with George Wallace in his Presidential campaign, and the
United Farm Workers had joined racist white plantation owners in their last-ditch effort to maintain total apartheid in the U.S. South. This is not an inappropriate comparison to the recent bizarre alliance in Haiti between Chavannes Jean-Baptiste’s powerful and genuinely grassroots peasant organization, MPP (Papaye Peasant’s Movement) and Charles Henri Baker, the elite owner of a Haitian garment industry sweatshop. Despite years of fighting U.S. economic polices toward Haiti, from the Creole Pig fiasco under the Duvaliers to the disastrous neoliberalism of the past decade, Chavannes and the MPP now uncritically support openly neo-liberalist and Duvalierist members of the tiny, mostly “blanc” (light-skinned, Francophone), Haitian elite, who are in turn supported by U.S. right-wing groups like the IRI (International Republican Institute), funded by USAID.

Perhaps just as bizarre has been the continuing uncritical support (at least until now) by MPP’s U.S. funder, Grassroots International. GI consistently takes a strong stand against what it calls the U.S. “death plan,” structural adjustment and the whole World Bank neo-liberal program, yet remained silent for years after Chavannes and MPP became closely linked to precisely the U.S. “death plan” agenda, in their growing support for the successful overthrow of the Aristide government, and their close alliance with opposition groups with a neoliberal agenda and worse.

Advertising hoardings promoting “Own direction for Zulia” in the context of “liberal capitalism” appeared in this western state of Venezuela and which was labelled part of a secessionist campaign by local media.

The digital publication Aporrea (www.aporrea.org ) indicated that the “Zulianity” adopted by a section of the opposition is the start of “a new campaign to propel an imperialist coup” against the revolutionary process of President Hugo Chavez.

These hoardings contain a subliminal message about the separation of this state from the rest of Venezuela. Zulia is controlled by the opposition and this campaign is a project previously denounced by Venezuelan authorities.

Advertising hoardings promoting “Own direction for Zulia” in the context of “liberal capitalism” appeared in this western state of Venezuela and which was labelled part of a secessionist campaign by local media.

Analysts confirm that the proposal of a capitalist direction for Zulia is intended to prepare the general public for a violent separation from the rest of Venezuela and the privatization of public services.

Let’s also remember that on “Zulia Day” the US Ambassador in Venezuela, William Brownfield was invited to a local television programme in which he catalogued Zulia as the best state of Venezuela. In 2005, Brownfield visited Zulia some 17 times and this state is also where the war games exercise “Operation Balboa” to invade Venezuela was played out in Madrid in May 2001 by NATO and US commanders.

Authorities and the media had previously alerted about the existence of a secessionist plan for Zulia as part of actions planned against the government of President Chavez.

This state where a great deal of Venezuela’s oil wealth is located, is controlled by opposition governor Manuel Rosales who has been accused of participating in conspiracy meetings with ex military coup mongers and Colombian paramilitaries.
axisoflogic.com

Walking across the central plaza in Oaxaca City time slows down. Stepping into the expanse of cobblestone walkways that weave through trees and flower beds, surrounded by old colonial government buildings and sidewalk cafes, one feels one’s hurry diminish like a drop in temperature. Taking a stroll and then leaning back with an espresso seem to be the most natural activities in the world.

And this is no accident, the state of Oaxaca spent 80 million dollars in the past two years renovating the plaza, crafting the image that the Mexican state so dearly loves to export: the perfect balance of an antique culture represented in art and architecture and the conveniences and luxuries of capitalism.

This is the preferred snapshot of the “new” Mexico and the “democratic change” attributed to President Vicente Fox’s six years in office. The idyllic colonial plaza equipped with credit-card ready shops and restaurants. The route of the Other Campaign through Oaxaca, however, revealed a different image of this intersection between Mexico’s elder culture and its contemporary capitalism: the molded concrete of a prison wall.

Throughout Oaxaca Subcomandante Marcos listened to hours of testimony from family members and co-workers of indigenous activists who have been taken prisoner. The charges range from belonging to the armed Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) to acts of murder and kidnapping. Yet the evidence—when there is any—is reduced to a signed confession, extracted under torture.
zmag.org

WARRI, Nigeria (AP) – Militants released six foreign oil workers, including a diabetic Texan celebrating his 69th birthday Wednesday, taken captive last month to press fighters’ demands for a greater share of oil revenues generated in this restive southern state.

But three other hostages – two Americans and a Briton – were kept by militants from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. A militant spokesman said all “low-value” hostages taken Feb. 18 had been freed.
guardian.co.uk

From cabbies to shahs, most Iranians believe political events can be traced back to English interference.

Watching his fellow countrymen observe the annual Shia Islamic mourning ceremony of Ashura, the disaffected Tehran taxi driver voiced a wish to convert to Christianity that may not have been as sincere as it was incongruous. But whatever his true ecclesiastical leanings, his beliefs about the source of the religious tyranny that so irked him about Iran were real.

“It is England that has imposed these mullahs on us,” the cabbie mused, resisting all protestations at the notion’s absurdity.

The idea that the Islamic revolution was a plot hatched in Whitehall, and that its spiritual leader, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was some sort of heavily disguised 007 in the secret service of Her Majesty’s government does indeed seem weird. But not to many Iranians.

Suggestions that the convulsive events of 1979, which ushered in the Islamic republic, were manipulated and orchestrated by the British are widely accepted here as a given. It is a belief held, even before his reign was swept to oblivion in a revolutionary tidal wave, by the last shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Resentful that the British had deposed his pro-German father during the second world war, the shah commissioned a television drama, My Uncle Napoleon, whose main character’s catchphrase was: “The British are behind everything”. The shah echoed this mantra during his reign’s last desperate days, telling the American ambassador, William Sullivan, that he “detected the hand of the English” behind the street demonstrations raging against him. Sullivan surmised that the teetering monarch had lost his mind and, with it, the will to survive.

But the shah was reflecting a broader mindset. The sun may have long set on British imperial might but in Iran it has been replaced by an enduring mirage of dominance which still shines brightly. If the rest of the world has become accustomed to the American hegemonic age, to Iranians Inglestan still wields the true power, albeit stealthily. Behind events great and small, they are ready to perceive the sleight of a hidden British hand. Belief in the “old coloniser’s” diabolic powers unites Iranians in a way matched by no other issue, including the Islamic regime’s pursuit of nuclear technology.
guardian.co.uk

Oh yeah, those crazy Iranians. Let’s bomb them.

Chances are you won’t hear a single word about U.S.-Indian military links in the mainstream media’s reporting about President Bush’s first visit to India this week. For months the media in both countries have been encouraged to speculate about whether a deal on U.S.-Indian cooperation on civilian nuclear power would be ready in time for Bush’s visit, but that deal is just the quid pro quo.

The actual “quo” was a de facto military alliance between India and the United States, but we don’t talk about that in front of the children.

“The largest democracy in the world and the oldest democracy in the world are becoming strategic partners, and that is a very consequential development in international politics,” said U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns on Feb. 24 after a visit to New Delhi.

“Consequential” is the right word. The two countries that will have the world’s second- and third-largest economies a generation from now have made an alliance against the country that will have the biggest economy, China – but hardly anybody in the media seems to have noticed.
strib.com

U.S., India Seal Nuclear Deal
NEW DELHI, March 2 — In a break from decades of U.S. policy, President Bush agreed Thursday to provide nuclear energy assistance to India for the first time in exchange for imposing new safeguards on India’s civilian weapons facilities.

Eight years after India startled the United States government by resuming testing of nuclear weapons, Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed off on a pact requiring India to separate its civilian and military nuclear programs to gain U.S. expertise and fuel to satisfy its energy rising needs.

Under the deal, the United States offered India nuclear fuel and technology in return for India agreeing to put a wall between its civilian and military nuclear facilities and place its civilian program under international inspections.

WASHINGTON (Feb. 28) – President Bush said his 2004 re-election victory over Sen. John Kerry was inadvertently aided by Osama bin Laden, who issued a taped diatribe against him the Friday before Americans went to the polls, The Examiner newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Bush said there were ”enormous amounts of discussion” inside his campaign about the 15-minute tape, which he called ”an interesting entry by our enemy” into the presidential race.

Bush’s comments in the Washington newspaper were excerpts from the new book ”Strategery” by Bill Sammon, a long-time White House correspondent.

”What does it mean? Is it going to help? Is it going to hurt?” Bush told Sammon of the bin Laden tapes. ”Anything that drops in at the end of a campaign that is not already decided creates all kinds of anxieties, because you’re not sure of the effect.

”I thought it was going to help,” Bush said. ”I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.”

Yeah, some of us noticed…

It is not the Palestinians who should be welcoming the European Union’s decision to hastily donate another $142 million before the Hamas government is formed. It is Israel that ought to be pleased that the Western states will continue compensating the Palestinians for the economic decline that is a product of the Israeli occupation.

For it is not natural disasters that have transformed the Palestinians into a nation that lives on handouts from the world; it is Israel’s accelerating colonialist process. One facet of this is the continued takeover of Palestinian lands (whether “private” or public lands, it is the same thing), expansion of construction only for Jews, and de facto annexation by Israel of extensive tracts of Palestinian territory, while simultaneously breaking up the West Bank into enclaves and enclosures for Palestinians.

Another facet of this colonization is a regime of excessive restrictions imposed by Israel on the movement of Palestinians between their enclosures and enclaves within the West Bank, and between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
haaretz.com

Israelis ask Oscars to drop suicide bomb film
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A group of Israelis who lost children to Palestinian suicide bombings appealed on Wednesday to organizers of next week’s Academy Awards to disqualify a film exploring the reasoning behind such attacks.

The bereaved parents said they had gathered more than 32,000 signatures on a petition against the nomination in the best foreign film category of “Paradise Now”, a drama about two West Bank friends recruited to blow themselves up in Tel Aviv.

The controversial film was made by an Israeli Arab director and actors working with a Palestinian crew and locations. The producer was a Jewish Israeli and the funding was European.

Yossi Zur, whose teenage son Asaf was killed in a bus bombing, accused the film of sympathetically portraying a tactic hailed by many Palestinians waging a 5-year-old uprising.

“What they call ‘Paradise Now’ we call ‘hell now’, each and every day,” Zur told reporters. “It is a mission of the free world not to give such movies a prize.”

DAMASCUS (Reuters) – Syria’s liberal opposition has said it will not accept money from a U.S. offer to fund democratic groups in the country, saying that its credibility would be damaged if it took the cash.

A group of a dozen parties, known as the Damascus Declaration, said on Monday they had enough resources on their own to press ahead with a campaign for peaceful change to end a 40-year monopoly by the Baath Party on power.

“The Damascus Declaration refuses foreign funding, including the $5 million from the U.S. State Department for the Syrian opposition,” a statement by the group said.

The United Sates imposed several sanctions on Syria in 2004, accusing Damascus of supporting “terrorism.” Two weeks ago it announced a $5 million grant to fund what it called “democratic reformers” in Syria.

A U.S. State Department official said the money was not aimed at opposition or political groups in Syria.

“The funds are there to help civil society groups interested in promoting democracy at large. It is not a promotion of direct political parties or views,” he said in response to whether Washington was disappointed with the Syrian opposition response.

Damascus Declaration founding member Hassan Abdel Atheem told Reuters the United States cannot expect popular support for its policy toward Syria while it maintained sanctions against the country.

“Support by international powers for democratic change in Syria is welcome. This does not include financing because it means subordination to the funding country,” he said.

“Our project is nationalist, independent democratic change in Syria, not through occupation or economic pressure as we see the United states doing,” he said.
abcnews.go.com

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the Middle East to be free of nuclear weapons.

Speaking after talks with Kuwaiti leaders, Mr Ahmadinejad said nuclear weapons were a threat to stability.

He said Iran was a good neighbour, and reiterated that its nuclear programme was for peaceful, civilian purposes.

Gulf Arab states, including Kuwait, have said they want an agreement with Iran to keep the Gulf region free of nuclear weapons.

Mr Ahmadinejad’s brief visit to Kuwait was the first by an Iranian head of state since the Islamic revolution of 1979.
bbc.co.uk

smart

Egypt’s Mubarak says he warned the United States not to attack Iran
CAIRO, Egypt – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak strongly advised the United States not to attack Iran, warning that military action would create more terrorists in neighboring Iraq, according to comments published Wednesday.

Mubarak also told Egyptian newspaper editors he warned Vice President Dick Cheney that ground troops “will have a hard time” in such a conflict.

“If an airstrike (against Iran) takes place, then Iraq will be turned to terror groups,” Mubarak was quoted as saying by the daily Al-Gomhouria.

He said Shiite Muslims in the Gulf region also could turn against the United States because “Iran generously provides for Shiites in every country and these people are ready to do anything if Iran is attacked.”

“Listen to my advice for once,” he recalled telling Cheney in English. “You have vital interests in the Gulf region, especially oil.”