Nelson Mandela may not spin webs like Spiderman or dodge bullets like Batman but, for most South Africans, he is far more of a hero. Now, his struggle against white domination is the subject of a series of comic books designed to re-awaken young South Africans to the history of their black population.

When Nic Buchanan decided to tell the tale of his country’s most famous hero, he decided to enlist the help of young animators. The result is a nine-part comic book series based on Nelson Mandela’s life called Madiba Legacy Series, of which one and a half a million copies will be freely distributed in schools and newspapers.
independent.co.uk

Iran’s hardline President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has stirred up a diplomatic storm and risked further isolating his country by saying that Israel should be “wiped off the map”.

Iran’s refusal officially to recognise Israel’s right to exist is a major obstacle to improved relations between Tehran and the West and has fuelled Israeli fears that the Islamic republic is bent on building a nuclear bomb. Yesterday’s diatribe – the first such outburst in many years by an Iranian leader – will have done nothing to assuage fears.

Speaking to 4,000 radical students attending a conference entitled “The World Without Zionism”, the President was greeted by chants of “Death to Israel”.The former member of the fanatical Revolutionary Guards told his audience that “leaders of the Muslim nation who recognise Israel will burn in the flames of anger of their own people”.
independent.co.uk

Although transnational water companies have suffered setbacks in places like Puerto Rico, Bolivia, and Uruguay, they continue with plans to appropriate the region’s hydrological resources-rivers, aquifers, wells, and aqueduct systems. While “privatization” has become a loaded term in the water business, companies prefer a softer discourse, employing concepts such as “decentralization,” “civil society participation,” and “sustainable development.”
guerillanews.com

…Yes, dramatic and painful images of black people packed into a sports arena-turned-shelter have tweaked the consciences of many. But tweaked consciences are notorious for lapsing back into complacency quickly when no political pressure is applied. Lots of well-off white people may have felt bad about what they saw in New Orleans, but such feelings are not morally admirable unless they lead to action that can change things. That means moving from an emotional reaction to a political analysis, and from speculation about whether things might change to a commitment to making things change.

Racism and racialized poverty in the United States are systemic and structural problems. They are not simply the result of confusion on the part of people in power; they are institutionalized. Progress comes when those systems, structures, and institutions change. That requires collective action, not individual fretting.

It’s true that the collective political project of overcoming racism is intertwined with the very personal struggle to overcome our complacency. It’s true that history can provide dramatic moments in which things can change quickly. But it is naïve — to a degree that suggests purposeful ignorance — to believe that a single emotionally charged experience such as viewing the images of racialized suffering in New Orleans will have a long-term effect on systems, structures, or institutions.
commondreams.org

…The Democrats complicity in the Iraq saga goes much deeper than their willful support of Bush’s war resolution in 2002. How soon we forget that back in 1998, President Clinton signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act drafted by the same Republican hawks that helped thrust forth Bush’s own Iraq policy including; Republican staffer Randy Scheunemann, Donald Rumsfeld, former-CIA director R. James Woosley, and Ahmad Chalabi.

As I discuss in greater detail in Left Out!, Clinton’s legislation outlined the US’s ultimate objective for its involvement in Iraq. That is, to remove Saddam and overthrow his government. When Clinton signed his legislation into law in mid-October 1996, Republican Senator Trent Lott sang his praises: “The Clinton administration regularly calls for bipartisanship in foreign policy. I support them when I can. Today, we see a clear example of a policy that has the broadest possible bi-partisan support. I know the Administration understands the depth of our feeling on this issue.”

Despite Lott’s gratitude, Iraq wasn’t just a Republican issue the Democrat’s had also long propagated falsehoods about Saddam’s potential WMD threat.

“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear,” President Clinton admitted in February of 1998. “We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.”

In a letter to President Clinton, Democratic Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry among others wrote in October of 1998, “[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.”

The Iraq invasion isn’t just about the Democrats buying into Bush’s propaganda. Despite popular belief, the Dems had not been duped. The illegal invasion of Iraq was a result of a concert of bi-partisan lies that spewed from the US government over many years. The Democrats were and are just as responsible for the bloodthirsty deceptions as the Republicans.
counterpunch.org

CLINTON, N.Y., Oct. 24 (AScribe Newswire) — “The nearly 2,000 Americans killed in combat (1,998 on October 24, 2005) in Iraq since 2003 are more than were lost in Vietnam combat in the first four years of U.S. combat (1961-1965, when just over 1800 died). This total is more than were lost in the last two years of combat (1971-1972, when just over 1600 died),” recounts Maurice Isserman, co-author of “America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s.”

“Today public opinion polls show that the percentage of Americans who believe that it was a mistake for the U.S. to go to war in Iraq is roughly comparable to the number of Americans who believed it was a mistake for the U.S. to go to war in Vietnam in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive in 1968. The principal difference between the anti-war opposition of 2005, and that of 1968, is that in the Vietnam war a significant group of Democratic Party leaders – starting with Senators Morse and Gruening in 1964 and eventually including such figures as Senators Fulbright, McCarthy, Kennedy (Robert and Ted), and McGovern – joined the opposition to the war. This lent legitimacy and influence to the opposition. Today, the Democratic party, with a few brave exceptions, mostly in the House of Representatives, is supportive of or silent about the war,” observes Isserman.

ascribe.org

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) – Nearly 400 Lebanese soldiers have deployed near the Syrian border after Lebanon demanded a militant Palestinian group hand over members who killed a Lebanese contractor, a security official said Wednesday.

The official said dozens of elite commandos supported by tanks are among the deployment, which started moving into place late Tuesday near the remote southeastern village of Helweh, a few miles from the Syrian border.

The pro-Syria Fatah Uprising group has a training base in Helweh and members of the group on Tuesday allegedly shot dead Mohammed Ismail, a civilian contractor working for the Lebanese army, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to speak to the media.

Lebanese authorities are calling on the group to hand over those who killed the contractor, the official said.

But Fatah Uprising, one of several Damascus-based radical Palestinian factions with bases in Lebanon, has so far declined to turn any of its members over, claiming the group did not kill the contractor, the official added.

It was unclear if the Lebanese army plans to storm the militant group’s base, which is on the edge of the village of Helweh and just a half mile from the border with Syria.
guardian.co.uk

10/25/05 “WSW” — — The interior ministry of the pro-US government in Iraq is being directly accused of carrying out the murder of Sadoun Antar Nudsaif al-Janabi, a key defence lawyer in the trial of Saddam Hussein and seven others that began on October 19.

Janabi was seized from his office late in the evening on October 20 by as many as 10 men. Witnesses claim they were wearing police uniforms. Several hours later, Janabi’s body was found on the street near Baghdad’s Fardous Mosque. He had been killed execution-style with two gunshots to the head.

Hemeid Faraj al-Janabi, the sheik of the Al Janibiyeen tribe to which Janabi belonged, told the Arabic daily Al Hayat on Monday: “We have evidence from the interior ministry that the executors of the operation are from the ministry. They kidnapped Sadoun al-Janabi and took him to one of the ministry’s buildings in the Al Jaderiyah region—which is the house of the one of the daughters of the overthrown president—where they assassinated him.”

Interior Minister Bayan Jabr is a senior leader of the Shiite fundamentalist Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Along with the Da’awa movement of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, SCIRI has worked closely with the US-led occupation forces since the 2003 invasion. Following the election last January, which gave the Shiite parties control of the government, many of SCIRI’s Badr Organisation militiamen have been incorporated into the interior ministry or the new Iraqi army.

There are widespread accusations that the interior ministry and SCIRI, with the complicity of US advisors, are behind a wave of terror being unleashed against people believed to be supportive of the armed anti-occupation resistance or critical of the Baghdad government.
informationclearinghouse.info

Saddam’s defense team wants to put Bush on trial

With the continued quagmire in Iraq and the likely indictments of senior Bush administration officials for trying to shore up the shaky rationale for the invasion, one would think that things couldn’t get much worse for the administration. But where success has a thousand architects, failure leads to much finger pointing. The administration’s latest headache comes from Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff. In a well-publicized recent speech before the New America Foundation, which I attended, Wilkerson lambasted the “Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal” that got control of U.S. foreign policy from a president “not versed in international relations and not too much interested either.”

Wilkerson’s scathing remarks were designed to deflect criticism from his former boss. As one anti-war Republican Senate staff member told me, Wilkerson “summoned his courage about three years too late.” The typically politically correct, inside-the-beltway audience was too polite to ask why Powell and Wilkerson didn’t resign over the invasion of a foreign nation that they privately opposed.
commondreams.org

Wilkerson: The White House Cabal
In President Bush’s first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New American Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.

But it’s absolutely true. I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less. More often than not, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.

Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and “guardians of the turf.”

George Galloway is considering taking his fight with Senator Norm Coleman to the Republican’s heartland by booking a venue in Minnesota and challenging him to a debate.

Mr Coleman is chairman of a senate permanent sub-committee on investigations that yesterday accused Mr Galloway of lying under oath about Saddam Hussein’s multi-million pound oil-for food programme.

The senate investigation claimed Mr Galloway, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, was granted eight oil allocations totalling 23 million barrels between 1999 and 2003. Mr Galloway said he had never received a penny in oil money.

Ron McKay, Mr Galloway’s assistant, said that a hall could be booked for Minnesota possibly for as early as next week. The two could fly to the US and challenge Senator Coleman to turn up for a debate.

Mr Galloway said that the debate was one of a number of options and a final decision had not been taken. “We want to take the fight to the enemy,” he said. He expressed little confidence that Mr Coleman would agree to such a debate.

Mr Galloway surprised Mr Coleman in May by flying to Washington to confront him directly in the senate over the oil allegations. Last month he flew to New York to debate Iraq with the writer Christopher Hitchens.

Mr Galloway described the senate’s report as “politically motivated”.

He also repeated his challenge to Mr Coleman to make his allegations outside the protection of the senate, to accuse him of perjury and let a court decide.

“I have no confidence that Coleman will charge me. That would require [Tariq] Aziz [the former Iraqi deputy prime minister being held in jail in Iraq and one of the senate committee’s alleged sources] and others appearing in court.” He said the senator would be “terrified of that”.

“If they say they are going to charge me I’ll head for the airport and I’m calling for them to do so, begging them to do so,” he said. “The charge against me in this sneak attack is that I lied under oath in front of the Senate when I went there in May and trounced this group of lickspittle pro-war Bushites. I am unequivocally stating here and now I’ll head for Heathrow now, pausing only to pick up my toothbrush, if they will promise to charge me with perjury. It is very clear what they said, I lied under oath. It is a criminal offence which is what they told me when I swore the oath. It is put up or shut up time. See you in court Senator Coleman.”
guardian.co.uk