…If the trend of recent events continues, it won’t be Bush-style democracy that is spreading, but rather, Russian and Chinese influence over major oil and gas energy supplies.

The quest for energy control has informed Washington’s support for high-risk ‘color revolutions’ in Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kyrgystan in recent months. It lies behind US activity in the Western Africa Gulf of Guinea states, as well as in Sudan, source of 7% of China oil import. It lies behind US policy vis-a-vis Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela and Evo Morales’ Bolivia.

In recent months, however, this strategy of global energy dominance, a strategic US priority, has shown signs of producing just the opposite: a kind of ‘coalition of the unwilling,’ states who increasingly see no other prospect, despite traditional animosities, but to cooperate to oppose what they see as a US push to control it all, their energy future security.
globalresearch.ca

China envoy defends Africa policy
A top Chinese diplomat has vigorously defended his country’s growing economic involvement in Africa, including close trade links with Zimbabwe and Sudan.

Turkish Kurd teenagers turn to the PKK after enduring years of brutality.

…”Going into the mountains” is a common phrase in Diyarbakir. It means going to join the PKK fighters, thought to number around 5,000, in their bases in nearby northern Iraq.

At least 100 local youths have gone into the mountains in the past month, says Mr Ozsoy. “Guys I know have just disappeared. They’re like ghosts. You would see them in the cafes and now they’re not here.”
guardian.co.uk

…The wife of the unnamed staff sergeant claimed there had been a “total breakdown” in the unit’s discipline after it was pulled out of Falluja in early 2005.
“There were problems in Kilo company with drugs, alcohol, hazing [violent initiation games], you name it,” she said. “I think it’s more than possible that these guys were totally tweaked out on speed or something when they shot those civilians in Haditha.”
guardian.co.uk

Excluding the capital’s nearly daily bombings, new Iraqi government documents show that more Baghdad residents died in shootings, stabbings and other violence in May than in any other month since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

…Since 2003, at least 30,240 bodies have been brought to the morgue, the vast majority of them shot by gunmen who are seldom caught or prosecuted.
sfgate.com

More than 6,000 corpses found in Iraq in five months

Armed men kidnap 50 in Baghdad

Gunmen Kill 21, Including High School Students, After Dragging Them Off Buses Near Baghdad

Sixteen people killed in clashes in Sunni mosque in Basra

Some of Britain’s high street banks are almost “putting profits before human life”, a senior banking executive claims in a BBC1 programme to be broadcast today.
The unnamed executive said that following a string of cases in which people have killed themselves after running up big debts, the law should be changed so that banks shown to have loaned money irresponsibly can face criminal charges. In the past two years, at least eight cases have been reported of people taking their lives after debts spiralled out of control.
guardian.co.uk

LIMA, Peru – Former President Alan Garcia staged a remarkable political comeback in Peru’s runoff election, beating a retired army lieutenant to regain control of the country 16 years after his first term ended in economic ruin and rebel violence.

Garcia’s victory Sunday was a blow to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who had endorsed Ollanta Humala, a political upstart many Peruvians saw as dangerous to democracy.

“I want our party this time to demonstrate to the Peruvian people, who have called it to the highest responsibilities, that it will not convert the state into booty,” said Garcia, referring to the widespread corruption that marked his first term from 1985-90, when tens of thousands of party members landed state jobs.

Garcia said voters had sent an overwhelming message to Chavez that they rejected the “strategy of expansion of a militaristic, retrograde model that he has tried to impose in South America.”
news.yahoo.com

A brutal new/old dictator for the US to support…

BUENOS AIRES, June 3 Ñ From the moment NŽstor Kirchner became president of Argentina three years ago, sectors of the military have chafed under his criticism and tough human rights policy. But as the president moves ahead with plans to overhaul the armed forces and reduce their authority, those tensions are breaking into the open.

At an Army Day ceremony here on Monday, a few officers turned their backs on Mr. Kirchner and another walked offstage as he delivered a speech attacking the armed forces for their past associations with “state terrorism” and for a recent case in which military intelligence was found to be spying on politicians and reporters. The wife of a recently dismissed officer even stood and publicly challenged Mr. Kirchner’s version of the military’s history.

“As president of the nation, I have no fear,” Mr. Kirchner told the crowd at one point. “I’m not afraid of you.” He then left the ceremony without reviewing the troops that had been assembled for him.
nytimes.com

Colombian Rebels Say Uribe Victory Illegitimate
…Uribe, Washington’s strongest ally in South America, won 62 percent of votes cast on Sunday, easily winning a second four-year term. But the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said his mandate lacks credibility because of an abstention rate of about 55 percent.

“Uribe only won 27.5 percent of all possible votes … It is an illegitimate victory,” said a statement posted on the FARC’s Web site.

“The strategy of domination of the White House won a beachhead with this re-election,” the statement said.

…”The only issue on transparency is that China would benefit by demystifying the reasons why they are investing in what they are investing in, in my view,” Rumsfeld said.
news.yahoo.com

THIRTEEN years after President Bill Clinton withdrew forces from Somalia, in the ‘Black Hawk down’ shambles, American security officials are giving clandestine support to the same warlords who mutilated and humiliated US soldiers in 1993.
sundayherald.com

Tony Blair faces an unprecedented revolt from the wives and mothers of serving soldiers, who want British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Dozens of women whose sons, husbands and daughters are now in the Gulf or have served there, have joined a national campaign to be launched this week calling for Britain to pull out of Iraq. In a strongly worded statement passed to the IoS, they claim the war in Iraq “was based on lies”, and call for British withdrawal “as a matter of urgency”.
independent.co.uk