Our early brush with climate change shows what an unequivocal scandal the privatisation of water represents.

…So what should forever stay in the public realm? No absolute rule seems to fit every service and circumstance. Few deny the privatisation of British Airways or British Telecom was a good idea, but as the NHS struggles to discover which of its functions are core and which can usefully be contracted out, a coherent dividing line eludes most observers.

However, one privatisation will always stand out as an unequivocal scandal: the privatisation of water. It is used all over the world as a classic example of what not to do. Making millions out of an element that falls freely from the skies – profiteering from rivers, rain and clouds – affronted most citizens. It gifted shareholders an absolute monopoly over a necessity no one could do without. There was no chance to choose from another supplier (unless perhaps bathing in Perrier). The price of water doubled, great profits were made and the public got nothing.
guardian.co.uk

“Do you care more about the pigs around you or God?” BattleCry leader Ron Luce asked the crowd of more than 17,000 youth gathered at Wachovia Spectrum Stadium in Philadelphia on Friday, May 12. No, this wasn’t a metaphor. After reading a passage from Luke 15 that mentions pigs, he actually had a bunch of those big, oinking, pink, farm animals on stage with him! Get it, you either get with Luce’s hateful, hyperpatriotic, woman-bashing, racist god, or you’re a … pig?

And it became clear during the BattleCry rally, all the talk of battles, warriors and war is not metaphor either.

White Man’s Burden

Early on the second day, a tribal drumbeat filled the stadium and a voice boomed out “the most violent people in human history.”

Grainy images appeared on the stadium screens of indigenous Ecuadorians running and throwing spears. Proof of their “barbarism”? Never mind that their land was destroyed by oil development and their way of life undermined, these “savages” had killed five missionaries who came to destroy their belief systems decades ago. One of the supposed killers is brought on stage. He’s been “civilized” by the Bible and calls on the youth to sign up for mission trips to go and convert others like him.

News flash to Luce’s audience: These indigenous people, whose very existence is hanging by a thread-threatened by the encroachment of the “modern world” of exploitation, racism, environmental destruction and cultural genocide-are at least a hundred million people short of being “the most violent people in human history,” even if they did what he accused them of.

The reality is that over a hundred million indigenous people were killed by the Europeans who followed Columbus to the “new world.” And let’s not forget that the genocide against Native Peoples was blessed by people carrying Ron Luce’s Bible.

Finally, after being programmed with these racist lies, Luce’s flock flooded down to the floor of the stadium to sign up for missions this summer-to Africa, Latin America, the urban U.S., Australia, the Mideast and beyond. As they went, Ron Luce offered odd encouragement, “You guys are freaks of a whole different breed … You guys are a bunch of wild animals. Man!”
counterpunch.org

Hugo Chāvez has announced that director Oliver Stone is planning to make a film of the attempt to oust the Venezuelan president in 2002. US officials deny Mr Chāvez’s claim that American officials were behind the botched coup.
guardian.co.uk

Bush decries ‘erosion of democracy’ in Venezuela, Bolivia
Asked here about the two Latin American countries’ seemingly adverse policies towards Washington, Bush did not directly answer the question, but vowed to continue to foster positive policies in Latin America.

“I am going to continue to remind our hemisphere that respect for property rights and human rights is essential for all countries in order for there to be prosperity and peace,” the US president said at a national meeting of restaurateurs, where he spoke about developments in Iraq.

“I’m going to remind our allies and friends in the neighborhood that the United States of America stands for justice; that when we see poverty, we care about it, and we do something about it,” Bush said.

And in what appeared to be an oblique reference to reports that Venezuela played a supporting role in presidential elections last December in Bolivia, Bush cautioned against “meddling.”

“I’m going to remind our people that meddling in other elections to achieve a short-term objective is not in the interests of the neighborhood,” Bush said.

‘The neighborhood.’

The young accomplice of a sniper who spread panic and fear around the US capital during a three-week killing spree told a court today how his former partner vowed to “terrorise the nation”.

Lee Boyd Malvo testified that his father figure, John Allen Muhammad, outlined a plan for six sniper shootings a day for 30 days. That would have been followed by a bombing campaign targeting schools, school buses and children’s hospitals, the court heard.

….Malvo’s lawyers contended Muhammad brainwashed the teenager and turned him into a killer. They also said that well after the arrest, Malvo never fully detached himself from Muhammad despite deep anger toward him. The case continues.
guardian.co.uk

Who (or what) is this guy? A military weapon?

LONDON (AFX) – The OECD has warned that the eventual rebalancing of the US current account gap ‘looks increasingly unavoidable’ and will send shock waves across the globe, starting with a slump in the dollar’s exchange rate.

The OECD said in its world economic outlook that the depreciation faced by the dollar could be ‘of the order of one-third to one-half.’
forbes.com

VIENNA (Reuters) – The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief headed on Monday for talks in Washington where he is likely to nudge U.S. officials to consider security assurances for Iran to defuse a crisis over Tehran’s nuclear program, diplomats said.

Mohamed ElBaradei’s trip heightens a diplomatic swirl over Iran as European Union leaders craft incentives for Tehran to stop enriching uranium. Their package will be considered at a meeting of U.N. Security Council powers in London on Wednesday but has already run into U.S. and Iranian skepticism.

Some EU officials, ElBaradei’s International Atomic Energy Agency and many analysts believe Iran could be motivated to stop activity that could lead to nuclear bomb-making only with a U.S. pledge not to try to topple the Islamic Republic’s government.
news.yahoo.com

Fresh insurgent attacks across Afghanistan claimed nearly 20 more lives, officials said on Tuesday, adding to the death toll of around 300 killed in some of the heaviest fighting since the fall of the Taliban.

Three policemen and 12 Taliban were killed when a convoy carrying a deputy provincial governor and a police chief came under attack in the south while three health workers and their driver died in a roadside bombing near the capital Kabul.

In total more than 20 insurgency-linked attacks were reported in at least 12 provinces over the past two days.

Many were outside the insurgency-hit south and south-east, the traditional hotspots for Taliban-linked violence.

Villagers and human rights groups meanwhile insisted that the civilian death toll from an hours-long coalition air and ground assault in the southern province of Kandahar early Monday was higher than the 16 claimed by Afghan officials.
abc.net.au

Clashes in Southern Afghanistan Kill 3 Policemen, 11 Militants
…In Kabul, a roadside bomb killed four healthcare workers employed by the Afghan Health Development Service. Police and aid officials say a doctor, a male and a female nurse and their driver were killed Monday as they were traveling in Wardak province, about 50 kilometers west of the capital.

Insurgents linked to the ousted Taleban regime have been blamed for a series of attacks on schools as well as health and development workers.

Taleban insurgents intensified their attacks this past week and so did U.S.-led coalition forces who are trying to destroy Taleban hideouts. More than 250 militants, Afghan forces, coalition soldiers and civilians were killed as a result.

Afghan president to summon top US commander over civilian deaths
KABUL -President Hamid Karzai will summon the top commander of US forces in Afghanistan for an explanation of civilian deaths during a coalition air and ground attack in the south, his office said on Tuesday.

The president has also ordered Afghan authorities to investigate the incident, a palace statement said.

Kandahar’s provincial governor has said at least 16 civilians were killed in the operation that started late Sunday in Panjwayi district but villagers say the number of civilian dead is far higher.

Governor Asadullah Khalid said Taleban rebels had hidden in villagers’ homes. The coalition has said up to 80 Taleban may have been killed and it was investigating reports of civilian deaths.

Karzai, who is visiting the United Arab Emirates, was saddened by the incident but also condemned ‘the cowardly act of terrorists hidding in people’s homes,’ the statement said.

He would summon the commander of the coalition forces, Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, to explain how the casualties occurred, it said.

The statement noted that Karzai had ‘in past has also asked troops to be careful to avoid civilian casualties during combat operations.’

Nuri al-Maliki, the new Iraqi prime minister, had a surprise for Tony Blair and his entourage in Baghdad yesterday. At a joint press conference, Mr Maliki said British troops would hand over responsibility in two provinces to Iraqi security forces by next month and that he expected US, British and other foreign troops out of 16 of the country’s 18 provinces by the end of the year, a much speedier and more ambitious schedule than the US and Britain have so far admitted to.

The announcement was news to Mr Blair and his team. Mr Maliki said there was an agreement with the British: but British officials said there was no agreement. And he said the withdrawals would be in June: officials say it will be July.

Mr Blair was more vague than the Iraqi prime minister. He insisted that there was no timetable and that the handover to Iraqi forces would depend on the prevailing conditions.

Both Mr Maliki and Mr Blair’s comments were telling. With the arrival at last of an Iraqi government, the US and British can at last begin to plan for specific withdrawals. The planes to carry troops home can be booked.
guardian.co.uk

sure

Ministers have one thing in common – Britain
IT MAY have taken five months of wrangling for Iraq’s competing sectarian and ethnic groups to form a working coalition, but many of the new ministers have at least one thing in common.

Five of the most prominent figures in the new Iraqi Government spent much of their long period in exile in Britain.

ACTS of violence have killed nearly 2500 people and forced more than 85,000 to flee their homes in Iraq, the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq said today in a March-April report on the human rights situation.

The fatality count was comprised by death certificates issued by the Baghdad morgue, the report said.

“The Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad issued 1294 death certificates in March and 1155 in April”, the majority of which had been deaths caused by gunshot wounds, it said.

“As a result of the pervasive violence, Iraqis continue to leave their areas of residence, either voluntarily or as a result of violence or threats by insurgents, militias and other armed groups,” it said.

Citing the International Organisation of Migration, the report stated 14,302 families had been displaced since the February 22 destruction of a Shiite shrine in Samarra that precipitated a rash of sectarian killing.
news.com.au

At least 22 killed in Iraq unrest
At least 22 people were killed Tuesday in attacks including a car bombing on a busy Baghdad street, marring the first week of Iraq’s new cabinet which has set restoring security as top priority.
The car bomb in the south-eastern district of Baghdad, al-Jadeeda targeting a police patrol, killed five people and wounded seven, an interior ministry official said.

The neighbourhood has been hit repeatedly over the past three days.

In the main northern city of Mosul, a family of blacksmiths was targeted when gunmen drove up next to their car and opened fire, killing four and wounding one, police said.

Also in Mosul, a former official of the Baath party which ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein was killed in a drive-by shooting outside his home.

Three day labourers on their way to work were also killed when gunmen in a car raked their mini-bus with bullets on the road from Baquba to Khalis, north-east of the capital, police said.

East of Baquba, in Balad Ruz, a bomb near the courthouse killed a 10-year-old boy and wounded two others.

In the northern oil centre of Kirkuk, a member of President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party working for the city education department was gunned down as he drove away from his home in the northern, oil-rich city.

In west Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on three elderly men, one of whom was blind and another disabled, killing them all.
In the city centre, a mortar round struck near the heavily fortified Green Zone administrative compound, killing one person and wounding four.

In the restive Palestine Street district, technology professor Ali Hussein Ali and an industry ministry employee were killed in separate drive-by shootings.

In Amiriyah on the capital’s western outskirts, one person was killed and four wounded when a minibus hit a roadside bomb.
Three corpses were found in Baghdad, one of them a 10-year-old boy, police said.

The boy, who was kidnapped from the southern neighbourhood of Dura on Monday, had been tortured before being shot in the head.

Bomb kills eleven outside Shiite mosque in Baghdad
BAGHDAD, Iraq A security official in Iraq says a bomb on a motorcycle has exploded in the courtyard of a Shiite (SHEE’-eyet) mosque in northern Baghdad, killing eleven people.

Insurgents keep U.S. at bay in Ramadi
RAMADI, Iraq – Whole neighborhoods are lawless, too dangerous for police. Some roads are so bomb-laden that U.S. troops won’t use them. Guerrillas attack U.S. troops nearly every time they venture out – and hit their bases with gunfire, rockets or mortars when they don’t.

Though not powerful enough to overrun U.S. positions, insurgents here in the heart of the Sunni Muslim triangle have fought undermanned U.S. and Iraqi forces to a virtual stalemate.

“It’s out of control,” says Army Sgt. 1st Class Britt Ruble, behind the sandbags of an observation post in the capital of Anbar province. “We don’t have control of this … we just don’t have enough boots on the ground.”

Iraq doctor brings evidence of US napalm at Fallujah
EVIDENCE to support controversial claims that napalm has been used by US forces in Iraq has been brought to Australia by an Iraqi doctor.

Dr Salam Ismael, of the Baghdad-based group Doctors for Iraq, said the evidence pointed to the use of napalm on civilians during the second siege of Fallujah in November 2004.

It is contained in film and photographs that doctors took of bodies they collected when they were finally allowed to enter the city after being barred for three days of the military operation.

“We said that napalm had been used, because napalm is a bomb which is a fuel bomb that burns only on the exposed part of the body, so that the clothes will not be affected,” Dr Ismael said from Perth at the start of a speaking tour.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s very good to have you with us. Let’s start where we left off in headlines, and that’s the issue of immigration. How do you see, as you look from the south to the United States in the north, the issue of the wall, the issue of the treatment of immigrants in this country?

EDUARDO GALEANO: It’s a sad story. A daily sad story. I wonder if our time will be remembered as a period, a terrible period in human history, in which money was free to go and come and come back and go again. But people, not.

AMY GOODMAN: You wrote about immigration in your new book Voices of Time.

EDUARDO GALEANO: Yes. There are some stories about it.

AMY GOODMAN: Could you read an excerpt?

EDUARDO GALEANO: One of them, which is quite short. It’s a document on history. Scientific. Pure science. Objective. There is a religion of objectivity here, so I respect it. And this is — you’ll see, you’ll see.
‘Christopher Columbus couldn’t discover America, because he didn’t have a visa or even a passport.

Pedro Alvares Cabral couldn’t get off the boat in Brazil, because he might have been carrying smallpox, measles, the flu or other foreign plagues.

Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro never even began the conquest of Mexico and Peru, because they didn’t have working papers.

Pedro de Alvarado was turned away from Guatemala, and Pedro de Valdivia couldn’t even enter Chile, because they didn’t bring proof of a clean record.

And the Mayflower pilgrims were sent back to sea from the coast of Massachusetts: the immigration quotas were full.’

…JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, you’ve, obviously, over the decades now you spanned enormous changes that have been occurring in Latin America. You were yourself imprisoned during the military dictatorship in Uruguay. You know directly of the problems of Operation Condor and the other terror that spread across the continent in those years. And now there’s enormous changes occurring in many of these countries, if not economically, certainly politically at this point. Your sense of how Latin America is changing or has changed in recent decades?

EDUARDO GALEANO: Yes, I think that all these recent events, elections won by progressive forces and a lot of different movings, is like something that’s moving on and expressing a need, a will of change, but we are carrying a very heavy burden on our backs, which is what I call ‘the traditional culture of impotence,’ which is something condemning you, dooming you to be eternally crippled, because there is a cultural saying and repeating, “You can’t.” You can’t walk with your own legs. You are not able to think with your own head. You cannot feel with your own heart, and so you’re obliged to buy legs, heart, mind, outside as import products. This is our worst enemy, I think.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Much of your writing is about memory. You say the great problem of amnesia in Latin America. Could you talk about that a little bit?

EDUARDO GALEANO: Yeah. It’s forbidden to remember. I’m not in love with the past, you know. For instance, I’m a very bad visitor in museums, because I get bored soon, and I always prefer a live life and in present days. But there is no frontier between past and present when you can revisit the past and make it alive again. And then it would be a good mirror to look at yourself and to understand. Perhaps it would help to understand your present actuality, your present reality. If you don’t know where do you come from, it would be very difficult to understand where are you going.
democracynow.org