…Most of the promised development projects, like schools, roads and electricity supplies, have failed to materialise. Instead, they say, their land and water have been polluted by oil spills and their air ruined by the constant burning-off of natural gas.

There is an apocryphal story often told about the origin of the disquiet in the Delta.

In the 1990s the then military ruler, Sani Abacha, invited people from the Delta to the new purpose-built capital, Abuja.

When they saw its huge, well-ordered roads, bridges and high-rise buildings, they realised what the oil money could do, and how little of it they saw.

And so the trouble began.
bbc.co.uk

…Mrs. King and her late husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., were renowned proponents of nonviolence and racial and economic justice. They had close ties to peace and social action organizations. Mrs. King was a fixture at antiwar rallies. She was a dignified and reserved public figure, yes; a shrinking violet, no. To recall, she was arrested here in Washington at the South African Embassy in an anti-apartheid protest.

So it should have come as no surprise that during a six-hour funeral for a woman whose life was dedicated to the civil rights and peace movements — and on a program with more than 35 participants — a few would have something to say about racism, the futility of war, and military spending when it trumps the needs of the poor. That the outspoken critics happen to have been a preacher, an ex-president and a mayor, and that they did it in the presence of a sitting president, is hardly the outrageous act that conservative pundits have made it out to be.
washingtonpost.com

Michael Brown, head of the federal disaster agency at the time of Hurricane Katrina, has reopened a painful wound for President George Bush, charging that the White House knew New Orleans’ protective levees had broken far earlier than it had acknowledged.

Testifying to a Senate committee yesterday, Mr Brown said that by the evening of Monday 29 August, his Fema agency had reported to superiors that catastrophic floodwaters were pouring into the city, that fires were breaking out and large numbers of people were stranded.

Conditions, a Fema message said that evening, were “far more serious” than media reports suggested. Nonetheless the following morning, Mr Bush told the country from his ranch in Texas that New Orleans had “dodged the bullet”.
independent.co.uk

Pensacola FLA: Officials are investigating the death of a 14-year-old boy allegedly brutally beaten by guards at a young offenders’ “boot camp” hours before he died. A video apparently shows the guards punching, kicking and choking the boy after he became unco-operative during a work-out session.

…Frank McKeithen, the Bay County Sheriff, said politicians over-reacted and made “inaccurate statements”. But the boy’s mother, Gina Jones, demanded to see the video, saying her son’s organs were so damaged they could not be donated.The boy was sent to the camp after being arrested for joy-riding in his grandmother’s car. She did not want to press charges. The results of a post-mortem examination have not been released.
independent.co.uk

It is not often that the left agrees with Tony Blair, let alone George Bush. But the good sense the two leaders have shown in the Danish cartoons affair by siding with leftwing and liberal critics of the offensive drawings’ publication is one of the more remarkable aspects of the drama. The Bush-Blair position is a useful antidote to those who claim that fear is stalking the offices of western newspapers, where cowardly executives allegedly shrink from publishing anything that might upset Muslims. Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, which first printed the unfunny cartoons, says he wanted to break away from Denmark’s “self-censorship” in the face of Islam. Other European papers that followed suit boasted of courage.

They will find it hard to claim that the men who sent ground troops into one of the oldest capital cities of the Arab world, and still keep them there on an open-ended basis in spite of opposition from a majority of Iraqis, are afraid to upset Muslims. Nor can one seriously argue that Bush is now trying to appease the Islamic world after “learning a lesson” from Iraq. He continues to inflame many Muslims with his sabre-rattling over Iran.

The fact is that on the cartoon issue the great neocon and his ideological advisers were pragmatic and smart enough to see that the drawings were in poor taste, deliberately provocative and grotesquely inaccurate in suggesting that every Muslim is a murderous would-be martyr and, worse still, that the Qur’an advocates suicide bombing.

Bush’s reaction shows that Americans have a better understanding of multiculturalism than most Europeans.
guardian.co.uk

Oh I very highly doubt it: this is what they call in the biz ‘good cop
bad cop.’ The essential cluelessness on both sides of the pond is the same.

Israel has accused Russia of stabbing it in the back after President Vladimir Putin invited Hamas leaders to visit Moscow as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people after the Islamic group’s election landslide last month.

The Russian government responded by saying that all the big powers would inevitably have to talk to Hamas if they wanted to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict.
guardian.co.uk

Architects threaten to boycott Israel over ‘apartheid’ barrier
A group including some of Britain’s most prominent architects is considering calling for an economic boycott of Israel’s construction industry in protest at the building of Israeli settlements and the separation barrier in the Occupied Territories.

Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, whose members include Richard Rogers and the architectural critic Charles Jenckes, met for the first time last week in secret at the London headquarters of Lord Rogers’ practice. He introduced the meeting, and the 60 attendees went on to condemn the illegal annexation of Palestinian land and the construction of the vast fence and concrete separation barrier running through the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The group said that architects, planners and engineers working on Israeli projects in the occupied territories were “complicit in social, political and economic oppression”, and “in violation of their professional code of ethics”.

It said that: “Planning, architecture and other construction disciplines are being used to promote an apartheid system of environmental control.”

The CIA official in charge of intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of ignoring assessments that sanctions and weapons inspections were the best way to deal with Saddam Hussein, and that an invasion would have a “messy aftermath”.

In an article in the next edition of the bimonthly journal, Foreign Affairs, Paul Pillar, has become the highest-ranking CIA official from the prewar period to accuse the White House of manipulating the intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

…”If the entire body of official intelligence analysis on Iraq had a policy implication, it was to avoid war – or, if war was going to be launched, to prepare for a messy aftermath.”

Mr Pillar said a CIA assessment of the implications of a US-led occupation had “presented a picture of a political culture that would not provide fertile ground for democracy and foretold a long, difficult, and turbulent transition”, including guerrilla attacks and sectarian conflict.
guardian.co.uk

That’s cool…the more turbulent the better.

Rumsfeld cautions Iran and Syria about aiding Iraq insurgency
TAORMINA, Sicily (AP) – Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cautioned Iran and Syria against trying to undermine the newly elected government in Iraq, but he also said he understood their determination to resist U.S. efforts to stop them.

“I think they are making a mistake,” Rumsfeld told a news conference Friday in this Sicilian seaside resort after two days of talks with North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers.

…Rumsfeld did not cite specific examples of Iranian and Syrian behavior or detail what the United States was doing about them.

ASADABAD: Roadside bombs killed eight Afghan soldiers on Friday, a provincial governor said. Seven soldiers were wounded in two separate blasts in Kunar province, on the Pakistani border, said the province’s governor, Assadullah Wafa.

“The soldiers were travelling in convoys when the enemies of Afghanistan set off bombs planted on the roads,” Wafa told Reuters. Six soldiers were killed in one of the blasts and two were killed in the other, he said. He did not elaborate on who he thought was responsible but Taliban and allied militants are known to operate in the province.

US forces mounted a major sweep to clear insurgents from Kunar last year and 16 US troops were killed there in June when their helicopter was shot down.

In a separate incident, four Canadian soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their armoured vehicle in the Kandahar province on Thursday, a spokesman for Canadian troops said. A Taliban commander claimed responsibility.
dailytimes.com

The entire northern hemisphere is experiencing a sustained period of warming that is unprecedented in the past millennium, a study has found.

A review of a range of temperature records, from tree rings and ice cores to historical documents, has found that at no time since the 9th century have temperatures been so consistently high. The study, published in the journal Science, found that the late 20th century was the warmest period for the northern hemisphere since at least 800AD, eclipsing the well-known medieval warm period when vines were cultivated successfully in northern Europe and the Vikings exploited the ice-free seas to colonise Greenland.
independent.co.uk

The U.S. trade deficit soared to a record in 2005 for the fourth year in a row, according to a government report released yesterday that provided a reminder of the dangers hovering over a generally robust economy.

The United States imported $725.8 billion more in goods and services than it exported last year, the Commerce Department said. That is up 17.5 percent from last year, and it is an all-time high not only in dollar terms but as a proportion of the economy; the figure is equal to 5.8 percent of gross domestic product.

For December alone, the trade gap increased to $65.7 billion from a revised $64.7 billion in November. That is the third-highest monthly deficit ever.
washingtonpost.com