… In fact Venezuela’s huge Orinoco heavy oil fields, the richest reserves of oil in the world, are still owned by foreign capital. The controversy over President Chavez’s radical economic measures revolves around a tax and royalty increase from less than 15% to 33% – a rate which is still below what is paid by oil companies in Canada, the Middle East and Africa. What produced the stream of vitriolic froth from the US and British media (Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, etc) was not a comparative analysis of contemporary tax and royalty rates, but a retrospective comparison to the virtually tax-free past. In fact Chavez and Morales are merely modernizing and updating petrol-nation state relations to present world standards; in a sense they are normalizing regulatory relations in the face of exceptional or windfall profits, resulting from corrupt agreements with complicit state executive officials. The harsh reaction of the US and EU governments and their energy MNCs is a result of having become habituated to thinking that exceptional privileges were the norm of ‘capitalist development’ rather than the result of venal officials. As a result they resisted the normalization of capitalist relations in Venezuela and Bolivia in which state-private joint ventures and profit sharing , common to most other countries. It is not surprising that the president of Royal Dutch Shell, Jeroen van der Veer, advised his oil colleagues that the nationalist position of oil rich countries and their redrawing of contracts is a ‘new reality’ that international energy companies have to accept. Van der Veer, the realist, puts the nationalist reforms in perspective: ‘In Venezuela we were one of the first to renegotiate. Under the circumstances we are quite satisfied we can work our future there. We have harmony with the government, which is very important. In Bolivia, I assume we will come to a solution’ (Financial Times, May 13, 2006 page 9). Likewise Pan Andean Resources (PAR), an Irish gas and energy company stated it could successfully operate in Bolivia following Morales ‘nationalization’ declaration. David Horgan, President of PAR, in justifying a joint venture in gas with the Bolivians, stated, ‘We don’t really care what precedents it (PAR’s gas agreement with the Bolivian state) sets. What the majors (big oil companies) see as a problem, we see as an opportunity’ (Financial Times, May 13, 2006, page 9).
informationclearinghouse.info

…Rice said the U.S. works nearly ever day to try to return detainees to their native lands if their governments will take them and guarantee that they will not be mistreated but will be monitored for criminal behavior.

U.S. military officials at Guantanamo said prisoners with makeshift weapons attacked guards during a phony suicide attempt Friday. The incident that left six prisoners wounded. The commanding officer of the facility told reporters that the attack was evidence of the “dangerous nature” of the prisoners.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., agreed that the U.S. should ensure that no prisoner at Guantanamo is subjected to torture. But, he said, closing the prison is premature without a legal resolution to the prisoners’ cases.

“I don’t think they deserve a fair jury trial, but there should be some sort of adjudication” to decide whether detainees are held for life, executed or released rather than held indefinitely, McCain said.

“This administration has tried, and it’s frustrating, to get some sort of process,” McCain said. “I’m hoping we can come up with some methodology to resolve this.”
fortwayne.com

MAHMOUD ABBAS, the Palestinian President, met Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Foreign Minister, yesterday in the first high-level contact between the two sides since Hamas, the Islamist group, won the Palestinian elections in January.

The meeting, in Egypt, came amid increased tensions in Gaza, where assassination attempts on two Palestinian security officials prompted Mr Abbas to warn against civil war between his secular Fatah and its Islamist rival.

The tensions were an unsettling backdrop for Ehud Olmert’s departure last night for Washington and the newly elected Israeli Prime Minister’s first meeting with President Bush.

Mr Abbas said that he would begin talks with Hamas this week. ‘We have to look for a solution,’ he said, warning that civil war was ‘a red line that nobody dares cross, no matter which side they are on’.
timesonline.co.uk

Four killed, including child, mother, grandmother, in Israeli airstrike in Gaza
Four Palestinians were killed in an Israeli ‘targeted assassination’ on Saturday, and four more seriously injured. Three of those killed were a child, his mother, and his grandmother, travelling in a car behind the ‘targeted’ vehicle, which was hit by two missiles fired from a helicopter by the Israeli airforce.

Israeli and international human rights groups have previously issued condemnations of the Israeli practice of ‘targeted assassinations’, which are illegal under international law, arguing that civilians often end up being the victims.

In the month of April, Israeli soldiers killed 37 Palestinians, including 6 children, in fourteen assassination attacks. Israeli missiles fired in airstrikes have killed children at home, at school, in cars and on the streets in Gaza.

Israeli forces reinvade Balata Refugee Camp, shoot 48 year old woman in head, killing her immediately
Israeli forces killed 48 year old Aisha Abu Muslim in eastern Nablus’ Balata Refugee Camp. Israeli forces have invaded and reinvaded the northern West Bank city almost daily for weeks, months, years on end since the beginning of the Intifada.

Israeli soldiers shot the woman while she was in her home in the camp Sunday morning. Apparently she was near a window.

Her husband delivers in the central vegetable market, while their home is on a street bordering the camp’s center. Eyewitnesses report that Israeli forces opened heavy random fire, shooting the woman in the head.

Relatives took Aisah to Nablus’ Rafidiya Hospital immediately, but there was little doctors could do. Israeli forces have hit this camp time and time again, destroying infrastructure and lives. Aisha’s husband and children are all in poor physical condition, as are many camp residents who try to survive with very few resources and frequent attacks.

WASHINGTON — As concerns rise over Iran’s nuclear program, U.S. security agents reportedly fear the Hezbollah terror group may be planning to attack U.S. cities.

The New York Post, quoting sources, said the Lebanon-based fundamentalist Islamic group may be planning to activate sleeper cells in New York or other big cities. The investigation is being carried out by the FBI and the Justice Department.

Quoting law-enforcement and intelligence officials, the newspaper said about a dozen hard-core supporters of Hezbollah have been identified in recent weeks as operating in the New York area. The Iranian Mission to the United Nations also is being watched.
wpherald.com

World Bank to Lebanon: ‘Let’s go’ with reform
BEIRUT: The World Bank on Sunday underlined the need for Lebanon to expedite proposed economic reforms. In an interview with The Daily Star, Joseph Saba, the World Bank’s country director for Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, said waste must be cut in areas such as electricity and social services, adding that citizens will be more than happy to pay taxes if they get good services.

…”There was hope among people after the Taliban’s ouster that things would improve economically, Afghanistan would be reconstructed. But it seems those hopes did not come true,” Mozhdah said.

The Western-backed government’s efforts to eradicate opium-growing were also playing into the hands of the Taliban.

“Instead of arresting officials involved in trafficking the government has resorted to punishing poor farmers. That has caused anger.”
news.yahoo.com

Drug Addiction Lucrative for Neolib Banksters, CIA
‘An American counternarcotics official was killed and two other Americans wounded in a suicide bombing in western Afghanistan today, while heavy fighting between Taliban insurgents and Afghan police continued in two southern provinces, officials said,’ reports the New York Times. ‘We confirm that a U.S. citizen contractor for the State Department Bureau of International Narcotic and Law Enforcement, working for the police training program in Herat was killed in a vehicle-borne I.E.D. attack,’ Chris Harris, an American Embassy spokesman, told the newspaper. After this mention, the Times moves on to detail the increasing violence between Afghan puppet police and ‘militants,’ that is to say Afghans fighting against the occupation of their country, an entirely natural occurrence.

Of course, the Times does not bother to mention that the Afghan opium trade: in fact much of the opium trade in the so-called ‘Golden Crescent’ (Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan)was cultivated and nurtured by the United States government and the CIA, leading to countless cases of miserable heroin addiction in America and Europe. Reading the Times, we get the impression the Taliban, at one time sponsored by the CIA and Pakistan’s intelligence services, so long as they were kicking Russian hindquarters,are responsible for the opium trade all on their lonesome. As usual, the Times twists the story through omission.

‘ClA-supported Mujahedeen rebels engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting against the Soviet-supported government,’ writes historian William Blum. ‘The Agency’s principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading druglords and a leading heroin refiner. CIA-supplied trucks and mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport opium to laboratories along the Afghan/Pakistan border. The output provided up to one half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe. U.S. officials admitted in 1990 that they had failed to investigate or take action against the drug operation because of a desire not to offend their Pakistani and Afghan allies,’and also because selling heroin and spreading misery is highly profitable. In fact, the Soviets attempted to impose an opium ban on the country and this resulted in a revolt by tribal groups eventually exploited by the CIA and Pakistan.

$4b later, drugs still flow in Colombia
TUMACO, Colombia — Six years and $4 billion into the US-backed campaign to wipe out cocaine at its source, Colombia appears to be producing more coca than when the campaign started, according to US government estimates.

As Congress opens debate this month on another $640 million for next year for Washington’s most ambitious overseas counternarcotics effort, a growing number of critics say the costly program has neither dented the cocaine trade nor driven down the number of American addicts. Two of the program’s major missions — to dramatically reduce coca growing in Colombia and provide alternative livelihoods for drug farmers — have fallen far short of hoped-for goals.

Onetime supporters, including some Republican lawmakers who championed the plan at its creation, are now demanding to know why the most expensive US foreign aid program outside the Middle East and Afghanistan is not winning the war on drugs.

‘If one day the world’s largest oil producers demanded euros for their barrels, it would be the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike’. Bill O’ Grady, A.G. Edwards

On May 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin ignited a firestorm that is bound to sweep across the global economy. In his State of the Nation speech to parliament,, he announced that Russia was planning to make the ruble ‘internationally convertible’ so that it could be used in oil and natural gas transactions. Presently, oil is denominated exclusively in dollars and sold through the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMX) or the London Petroleum Exchange (LPE) both owned by American investors. If Russia proceeds with its plan, the ruble will go nose to nose with the dollar on the open market sending several billions of surplus greenbacks back to the United States. This could potentially send the American economy into freefall; triggering a deep recession and an extended period of hyper-inflation.

‘The ruble must become a more widespread means of international transactions,’ Putin said. “To this end, we need to open a stock exchange in Russia to trade in oil, gas, and other goods to be paid for in rubles.”

Currently, the central banks around the world carry large stockpiles of dollars to use in their purchases of oil. This gives the US a virtual monopoly on oil transactions. It also forces reluctant nations to continue using the dollar even though it is currently underwritten by $8.4 trillion national debt.

Putin’s plan is similar to that of Iran, which announced that it would open an oil-bourse (oil exchange) on Kish Island in two months. The bourse would allow oil transactions to be made in petro-euros, thus discarding the dollar. The Bush administration’s belligerence has intensified considerably since Iran made its intentions clear. In fact, just yesterday, Secretary of State Condi Rice said that ‘security guarantees were not on the table’ regardless of any Iranian commitment to stop enriching uranium. In other words, Washington will not provide Iran a ‘non-aggression pact’ whether it follows UN Security Council guidelines or not.

Surely, this is a sign that Uncle Sam is on a fast-track to war.
informationclearinghouse.info

American defence officials have secretly requested a “prodigious quantity” of ammunition from Russia to supply the Afghan army in case a Democrat president takes over in Washington and pulls out US troops.

The Daily Telegraph can disclose that Pentagon chiefs have asked arms suppliers for a quote on a vast amount of ordnance, including more than 78 million rounds of AK47 ammunition, 100,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 12,000 tank shells – equivalent to about 15 times the British Army’s annual requirements.

The Bush administration is said to want the deal because of worries that the next president could be a Democrat, possibly Hillary Clinton, who may abandon Afghanistan.

White House insiders fear that Afghanistan could “drift” and consequently, they want heavily to arm President Hamid Kharzai’s government before the 2008 US presidential election.

Diplomatic sources also believe that the US may be offering the estimated $400 million (£215 million) deal, including transport costs, to the Russians as an inducement to embargo its arms and nuclear technology exports to Iran.
telegraph.co.uk

Ah, a brilliant plan.

I’m not sorry for poor Africans but I am sorry for the British and Irish public who have had to suffer the most recent outbreak of Bonoitis of which there seems to be no known cure though I hear Guardian readers are working on a vaccine …

In defence: There are some really exciting things happening on the ground in Africa and back home that are worth making a song and dance about.

To help us with the HIV/Aids emergency we have come up with the concept of Red products. Why Red? Because Red is the colour for an emergency. And 6,500 people dying in Africa every day of a preventable and treatable disease is an emergency.

Red is where desire meets virtue, where consumerism meets philanthropy, where shopping attempts to meet the need of a continent in crisis, where once HIV/Aids meant a death sentence but where two pills a day can now have you back at work in 40 days.

Really the deal is this. These brands are prepared to share their profits with the Global Fund to Fight Aids in the hope that the association with Red will bring them to new and more loyal customers. At certain price points a consumer usually has a few choices when it comes to t-shirts, trainers and mobile phones. A product Red partner, such as Gap or Nike, hopes it will give them something else: an emotional attachment. It may reflect the values they already have or the values they aspire to: we don’t mind.
guardian.co.uk

Your ‘not minding’ is the problem, isn’t it. Shining up the profile of the two biggest child-slavers on the planet in service of your morally bankrupt ‘philanthropy.’

Saturday September 29, 2001
The Guardian

In the aftermath of the unconscionable September 11 suicide attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre, an American newscaster said: “Good and evil rarely manifest themselves as clearly as they did last Tuesday. People who we don’t know massacred people who we do. And they did so with contemptuous glee.” Then he broke down and wept.

Here’s the rub: America is at war against people it doesn’t know, because they don’t appear much on TV. Before it has properly identified or even begun to comprehend the nature of its enemy, the US government has, in a rush of publicity and embarrassing rhetoric, cobbled together an “international coalition against terror”, mobilised its army, its air force, its navy and its media, and committed them to battle.
guardian.co.uk

Lest we forget where all those poppy fields in Afghanistan come from…

Their film records what was probably history’s shortest-lived coup d’etat. It’s a unique document about political muscle and an extraordinary portrait of the man The Wall Street Journal credits with making Venezuela “Washington’s biggest Latin American headache after the old standby, Cuba.”

Chavez, elected president of Venezuela in 1988, is a colorful folk hero, beloved by his nation’s working class and a tough-as-nails, quixotic opponent to the power structure that would see him deposed. Two independent filmmakers were inside the presidential palace on April 11, 2002, when he was forcibly removed from office. They were also present 48 hours later when, remarkably, he returned to power amid cheering aides.

Watch the film

Now here is democracy in action.