BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) – More than 8,000 Brazilian landless activists surrounded the central bank on Thursday and threatened a big fight over land next year unless they get more public money to speed up land reform.

Joao Pedro Stedile, a leader of the radical leftist Landless Workers Movement, said peasants could stage more land occupations if Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva does not earmark more funds to expropriate and redistribute unused farmland, as the Brazilian constitution demands.

Lula, Brazil’s first working class president, pledged to settle 400,000 families — or around 1.6 million people — during his four-year term. He has only created plots for 106,000 families nearly two years into office.

In April, the Landless Workers Movement staged its biggest wave of land grabs in five years and Stedile said next year’s could be even bigger.

“In April and May there could be a big struggle in this country,” Stedile told Reuters as he led the mile-long march of landless peasants through the heart of Brazil’s capital.

Mounting pressure for massive land reform sparked Brazil’s worst rural violence in years as activists occupied land and owners hired gunmen to defend it.

Hooded “pistoleiros” killed five Landless Workers Movement members in Minas Gerais state on Saturday.

Stedile said land reform programs had been starved of money by Finance Minister Antonio Palocci and other officials, who have cut public spending to meet IMF fiscal targets.

Members of the Landless Workers Movement burned a U.S. flag with “IMF” written on it and chanted for the ouster of ministers like Palocci.
Full Article:nytimes.com/reuters

An Opportunity for the United States

Olga Oliker

The United States has said that the Caspian region, and the development of its energy resources, is a key national security interest. It has also made clear its commitment to the independence of Ukraine. But current options for Caspian oil transport are beset with political and logistical problems and, therefore, fall far short of guaranteeing the safe, secure export of Caspian oil in the short or long term. At the same time, Russia’s increasing stranglehold on Ukraine’s energy imports does not bode well for the smaller country’s ability to maintain its hard-won sovereignty, and it increases the risk that Ukraine will call on the United States and its NATO allies to stand behind it against Russia. The development of an export route for Caspian oil through Ukraine is a cheap and effective means of ameliorating both problems, and thus an approach that Washington should support.

CASPIAN OIL, THE UNITED STATES, AND UKRAINE

The Caspian Sea basin has attracted considerable attention in recent years, due largely to speculation as to the potential size of the region’s natural gas and oil reserves. While analysts continue to debate whether the resources will ever prove truly significant, states are making policy choices in the apparent belief that they will. The United States is no exception. The potential for energy wealth has already led Clinton administration officials to class Central Asia and the Caucasus as a region “vital” to the United States.[1] Washington hopes that the development of natural gas and oil there will lead to reduced reliance on Middle Eastern suppliers for both the United States and its European allies. It also sees successful exploitation as the key to independence and prosperity for the Caspian states. This independence and prosperity, it is believed, will in turn foster democracy, something Washington has long held as a central policy goal for all of the former Soviet Union.

Because the United States is far from alone in its interest in the region and its resources, however, there is plenty of room for discord. One of the primary points of contention has been the question of how Caspian oil and gas will reach customers. The easiest, most direct route is through Iran, but Washington has been vehement in its opposition to Teheran’s involvement in Caspian development. Moscow advocates an expansion of current transport routes–through Russia and over the Black Sea (or, in the case of natural gas, under it). Ankara, while cooperating with Moscow to develop the underwater natural gas pipeline plan, is strongly opposed to its preferred oil route, citing the environmental hazards posed by increased traffic through Turkey’s narrow Bosporus Strait. Instead, Ankara supports the Baku-Ceyhan route through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and its own territory.
Full Article: rand.org

The “Great Game” for Caspian Sea Oil
by Andre Gunder Frank
A book OIL AND GEOPOLITICS IN THE CASPIAN SEA REGION [edited by Michael P. Croissant and Bulent Aras, Westport, Conn. & London: Praeger 1999] with a foreword by Pat Clawson of the National Defense University and editor of ORBIS, and dedicated to Ronald Reagan and Turgut Ozal, announces its far-right wing political pedigree and U.S establishment legitimation literally up front. Clawson already explicitly, indeed brutally, lays out the groundwork in his two page foreword: The Caspian Sea region is a world-class oil area with complex econo- and geo-strategic conflicts of interest and corresponding competing policies among surrounding states and the West, particularly the United States. The issues are not only the oil per se, including its low price at the time of publication, but also the related conflicts of interest over pipeline routes and the U.S. intent to deny them to Russia and Iran. The rule of law, democracy and human rights come in at the tail end.

In his chapter on the United States, Stephen Blank has done enough of his homework to bring along multiple strategic [in more senses than one] quotations from the horse’s mouth in Washington and at NATO headquarters. The background of it all is of course the ongoing American competition with Russia, now also with the regions under review, among which “the Transcaspian has become perhaps the most important area of direct Western-Russian contention today” [p.250 in the book]. Therefore, the author argues, that the new geo-economic competition cannot be separated out from the old but still ongoing geo-political one. That is, the nineteenth century “Great Game” competition for the control of Central Eurasia is still alive and kicking also in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Blank writes that “Washington is now becoming the arbiter or leader of virtually every interstate and international issue in the area” [254] and indeed also “the main center of international adjudication and influence for local issues” [255]. However in the face of the Russian bear, old style gun-boat diplomacy is too dangerous and is now replaced by its “functional equivalent … peace operations” [256]. Washington is pursuing these with intense “actual policy making on a daily basis throughout the executive branch” [253] in Washington and by a myriad of “Partnership for Peace” programs of which the Strategic Research Development Report 5-96 of the [U.S] Center for Naval Warfare Studies reports

on activities of these forces that provide dominant battlespace knowledge necessary to shape regional security environments. Multinational excersizes, port visits, staff-to-staff coordination – all designed to increase force inter- operability and access to regional military facilities – along with intelligence and surveillance operations…. [So] forward deployed forces are backed up by those which can surge for rapid reenforcement and can be in place in seven to thirty days [256-257]

— all as a ‘partnership for peace” in – we may understand – Orwellian double-speak. Indeed, U.S. local diplomats and the Clinton administration now regard the Transcapian as a ‘backup’ for Middle East oil supplies and some insist that the U.S. “take the lead in pacifying the entire area” including by the possible overthrow of inconveniently not sufficiently cooperative governments [258]. The policy and praxis of common military exercises also includes distant Kazakstan. All this and more “reflects a major shift in U.S. policy toward Cental Asia … coordinated by the National Security Council,” as the author quotes from the hawkish U.S. JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION MONITOR. The Security Council’s former head and then already super anti-Soviet Russian hawk, Zbigniew Brzezinsky, now promotes a modernized Mackinder heartland vision of a grand U.S. led anti-Russian coalition of Europe,Turkey, Iran, and China as well as Central Asia [253]
Full Article:rrojasdatabank.info

In west Baghdad’s Omar al-Khattab mosque, a Sunni preacher assails his Shia compatriots for failing to come to the aid of the besieged city of Falluja.

“Those of the black turbans” Iraq’s Shia clergy “are but traitors and agents of America. It is they who have provoked the Amer-icans to attack the Sunni, whom they call extremists and terrorists,” Sheikh Ahmed al-Kubaisi told his congregation last Friday.

Mr Kubaisi’s sermon is typical of many Sunni mosques across the country, where preachers are delivering fiery attacks on the Shia clergy who, they say, have “sold out” Islam. In the aftermath of the Falluja battle, the insurgency has never been more divided along sectarian lines: guerrilla groups are overwhelming made up of Sunni Arabs, thought to make up about 20 per cent of the population, while most of the majority Shia and the minority Kurds support the interim government.

Both Sunni and Shia militants had put aside differences and found common cause back in April, when radical Shia preacher Moqtada al-Sadr took up arms against the US during the first siege of Falluja, which ended with insurgents in control of the town. During that campaign Shia mosques launched relief drives to aid Falluja and delegations from each sect visited the other’s mosques with messages of solidarity.

However, Mr Sadr’s followers have since laid down their weapons, and while he and several other Shia clerics have harshly condemned the Falluja offensive, more establishment clerics such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have remained silent on the assault; some have even supported it. The Sunni clerical establishment is particularly incensed by an appearance by Shia cleric Iyad Jamal al-Din on al-Arabiya satellite television, in which he praised the assault on the “dens of terrorists and Saddam’s supporters who know only violence in Falluja”.
Full Article: news.ft.com

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Bush administration on Wednesday urged the Supreme Court not to rush a decision in an extraordinary appeal about the government’s plans for military trials for foreign terror suspects.

The government also criticized the appeal, filed this week by lawyers for a man facing a military trial, Salim Ahmed Hamdan. The Yemeni was a driver for Osama bin Laden, but has denied supporting terrorism.

The high court had been asked to decide by next week whether to hear Hamdan’s case, which raises questions about government power to prosecute wartime prisoners.

The government’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Paul Clement, said in a court filing that Hamdan’s appeal is “wholly unjustified” and that the court should not speed up consideration of it.

A federal judge had sided with Hamdan, who is being held at a military prison in Cuba with hundreds of other foreign detainees.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is taking up the government’s appeal. Hamdan’s lawyers, however, want the Supreme Court to review the case before the appeals court rules.

Such appeals are unusual, and Clement said it is premature and unnecessary for the Supreme Court to step in now.

The case is Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 04-702.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Powell Says U.S. Will Not Accept Final Tally in Ukraine
Article: nytimes.com

Looke like Soros and Bush are on the same page.

Soros preparing revolution in Ukraine
03/31/2004
Article: pravda.ru

Sticky Times for George Soros
Article: businessday.co

Tens of thousands of opposition supporters surrounded Ukraine’s presidential offices after their pro-Western leader declared himself president, defying the government after a weekend election they believe was rigged in favour of the Russia-backed candidate.

With the political crisis threatening to spiral out of control, hundreds of riot police cordoned off the building in the capital Kiev, pushing back demonstrators who shouted slogans and called on security personnel to join the protest, as the government met in emergency session.

Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko had earlier declared himself president during an emergency parliament session attended only by his supporters and which lacked a quorom.

Outgoing President Leonid Kuchma warned that the act could have unforeseeable consequences but he promised his government would not be the first to use force against the uprising, sparked by accusations of irregularities during the weekend presidential vote.

As criticism of the poll gathered momentum in the West, two members of Ukraine’s central electoral commission were reported to have urged their 13 colleagues not to approve the results because of major ballot violations.

Yushchenko called on Ukrainian civil servants and police to cross over and join the mass protests that have gripped the nation since the vote.
Full Article: news.yahoo.com

The exit polls don’t match the outcome? The people hit the streets. Another people, voting with their feet, against fear. The great purveyor of democracy seems the most unfree country in the world.

In this winter of American discontent, it is good to know that there is a place in America where, on November 2nd, the people voted against fear. A beautiful essay.
Rootsie

by Eduardo Galeano
A few days before the election of the President of the planet in North America, in South America elections and a plebiscite were held in a little-known, almost secret country called Uruguay. In these elections, for the first time in the country’s history, the left won. And in the plebiscite, for the first time in world history, the privatization of water was rejected by popular vote, asserting that water is the right of all people.
* * *
The movement headed by President-elect Tabare Vazquez ended the monopoly of the two traditional parties–the Blanco and the Colorado parties–which governed Uruguay since the creation of the universe.

And after each election you would hear this exclamation: ‘I thought that we Blancos won but it turns out we Colorados did”–or the other way around. Out of opportunism, yes, but also because after so many years of ruling together, the two parties had fused into one, disguised as two.

Tired of being cheated, this time the people made use of that little-used instrument, common sense. The people asked, Why do they promise change yet ask us to chose between the same and the same? Why didn’t they make any of these changes in the eternity they have been in power?

Never had the abyss between the real country and electioneering rhetoric been so evident. In the real country, badly wounded, where the only growth is in the number of emigrants and beggars, the majority chose to cover their ears to block out the oratory of these Martians competing for the government of Jupiter with highfalutin words imported from the moon.
* * *
About thirty or so years ago, the Broad Front (Frente Amplio) sprouted on these southern plains. ‘Brother, don’t leave,’ the new movement implored. ‘There is hope.’ But crisis moved faster than hope, and the hemorrhaging of the country’s youth accelerated. The dream of a Switzerland of the Americas ended, and the nightmare of violence and poverty began, culminating in a military dictatorship that converted Uruguay into a vast torture chamber.

Afterward, when democracy was restored, the dominant politicians destroyed the little that remained of the system of production and converted Uruguay into a giant bank. And as is often the case when it is assaulted by bankers, the bank went bust and Uruguay found itself emptied of people and filled with debt.

In all these years of disaster after disaster, we lost a multitude. And as if in a bad joke, not content to just force its youth from the country, this sclerotic system also prohibits them from voting-one of a small number of countries that do so. It seems inexplicable, but there is an explanation: Who would these emigrants vote for? The owners of the country suspect the worst, and with good reason.

In the final act of his campaign, the vice presidential candidate for the Colorado Party announced that if the left won the elections, all Uruguayans would have to dress identically, like the Chinese under Mao.

He was one of the many involuntary publicity agents of the victorious left. Not even the most tireless electoral workers did as much for this victory as the tribunes of the homeland who alerted the population to the imminent danger if democracy were to fall to the tyrannical enemies of freedom and the terrorists, kidnappers, and assassins who oppose democracy. Their attacks were extremely efficient: The more they denounced the devils, the more people voted for hell.

Largely thanks to these heralds of the apocalypse, the left won by an absolute majority, without a runoff. The people voted against fear.
* * *
The plebiscite on water was also a victory against fear. Uruguayans were bombarded with extortion, threats, and lies: A vote against privatizing water will condemn you to a future of sewage-filled wells and putrid ponds.

As in the elections, in the plebiscite common sense triumphed. In their vote, the people asserted that water, a scarce and finite natural resource, must be a right of all people and not a privilege for those who can pay for it. The people also showed they know that sooner rather than later, in a thirsty world, the reserves of fresh water will be as, or more, coveted than oil reserves. Countries that are poor but rich in water must learn to defend themselves. More than five centuries have passed since Columbus. How long can we go on trading gold for glass beads?

Wouldn’t it be worthwhile for other countries to put the issue of water to a popular vote? In a democracy, a true democracy, who should decide? The World Bank, or the citizens of each country? Do democratic rights exist for real, or are they just the icing on a poisoned cake?

In 1992, Uruguay was the only country in the world to put the privatization of public companies to a popular vote: 72 percent opposed. Wouldn’t it be democratic to do the same in every country?
* * *
For centuries, Latin Americans have been trained in impotence. A pedagogy passed down from the colonial times, taught by violent soldiers, timorous teachers, and frail fatalists, has rooted in our souls the belief that reality is untouchable and that all we can do is swallow in silence the woes each day brings.

The Uruguay of other days was the exception. That Uruguay instituted free public education before England, women’s suffrage before France, the eight-hour workday before the United States, and divorce before Spain-seventy years before Spain, to be exact.

Now we are trying to revive this creative energy and would do well to recall that the Uruguay of that sunny period was the child of audacity, and not fear.
* * *
It will not be easy. Implacable reality will promptly remind us of the inevitable distance between the desired and the possible. The left is coming to power in a shattered country, which, in the distant past, was at the vanguard of universal progress but today is one of the furthest behind, in debt up to its ears and subjected to the international financial dictatorship, which doesn’t vote but simply vetoes.

Today, we have very little maneuvering room. But what is usually difficult, even impossible, can be imagined and even achieved if we join together with neighboring countries, just as we have joined together with our neighbors.
* * *
In the Broad Front’s very first demonstration, which flooded the streets with people, someone shouted, half-joyous, half-scared, ‘Let’s dare to win.’

Thirty or so years later, it came true.

The country is unrecognizable. Uruguayans, so unbelieving that even nihilism was beyond them, have started to believe, and with fervor. And today this melancholic and subdued people, who at first glance might be Argentineans on valium, are dancing on air.

The winners have a tremendous burden of responsibility. This rebirth of faith and revival of happiness must be watched over carefully. We should recall every day how right Carlos Quijano was when he said that sins against hope are the only sins beyond forgiveness and redemption.
zmag.org

By Roger Burbach
Fifty thousand demonstrators greeted George Bush on his arrival in Santiago Chile for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit meeting of twenty-one Pacific Rim nations. The largest and most militant demonstration since the dictatorship of General August Pinochet, the protestors called for an end to neo-liberal free trade agreements like those advanced by the APEC leaders. The demonstrators carried banners proclaiming “No to the dictatorship of the market” and asserted that trade accords drive workers and peasants into a “race to the bottom.”

The ire of many protestors centered on Bush and the war in Iraq. Chants of “Terrorist Bush,” and ” Bush, Fascist, Thief, Murder!” rang through the air. While the demonstrations were overwhelmingly peaceful, groups of anarchists, punks and others broke away from the main march to vandalize a McDonald’s restaurant and corporate stores. About 200 people were arrested and over 25 injured.

Bush, on his first trip outside the United States since the elections, found another unwanted answer to the question he posed in the aftermath of 9/11: “Why do they hate us?” It is certainly not for “our freedoms” as Bush inanely asserts. Aside from the war in Iraq, many protestors in Chile are deeply hostile because the United States backed a military coup on September 11, 1973 that took away their freedoms. It deposed the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and marked the beginning of a seventeen year dictatorship. One banner stated: “US Terrorist State: The First September 11.” A common refrain of demonstrators who want no further US meddling in their affairs proclaimed: “Bush, listen, Chile is not for sale.”

More than three thousand people perished in the aftermath of the coup, another 35,000 were imprisoned and tortured. With the acquiescence of the CIA and the cooperation of military regimes in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, the Pinochet dictatorship set up an international terrorist network, Operation Condor, that targeted opponents throughout the world. Prior to the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the most sensational terrorist act in Washington D.C. took place in 1976 when Orlando Letelier, a leading Chilean opponent of the Pinochet regime, died when a bomb was detonated in his car just blocks from the White House. A young assistant, Ronnie Moffit, was killed along with him.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

by Paul Craig Roberts
It is not yet Bush’s second term. All available US troops are tied down in Iraq by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents. Go-it-alone Bush has isolated America from her allies. And the neocons want to spread their war to Iran.

The Bush administration is recycling the lies that it used to invade Iraq: Iran is acquiring nuclear weapons that will be given to terrorists. In a display of loyalty to a ruthless neocon administration calculated to win him appointments to corporate boards, outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters that Iran was working on nuclear missiles.

The source for this effort to spread hysteria? One “walk-in” source with unverified documents. Most likely, the source is a member of an Iranian exile group given the assignment by neocons Richard Perle and John Bolton.

One might think that Powell would be suffering shame enough for lying to the UN about Iraq. Apparently not, as his last act against world peace is to spread neocon propaganda that Iran is going nuke.

The US media, now a tamed propaganda organ for the White House, dutifully repeated Powell’s unverified claims, thus providing “reports” for Bush to cite as evidence that Iran was rushing ahead with the development of nuclear weapons.

The International Atomic Energy Agency conducts regular inspections in Iran. The IAEA recently issued a report stating that it has found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

Real evidence, however, is no match for neocon propaganda.

And the propaganda is pouring out of the well-oiled neocon machine. French, German and British agreements that confine Iran to the peaceful use of nuclear energy are in the way of the neoconservatives’ intention to spread the war to Iran and must be discredited.

On November 20, Caroline Glick, deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post hysterically accused Europe of defending “Iran’s ability to attain the wherewithal to destroy the Jewish state.” Glick “exposes” France’s efforts to prevent the outbreak of wider war in the Middle East as a trick: “France wishes only to box in the US to the point that the Americans will not be able to continue to fight the war against terrorism.”

The neoconservative Heritage Foundation promptly broadcast Glick’s hysterical rants into the Republican noise machine, reviving talk radio calls for nuking France, “America’s oldest enemy.”

Three years ago Ann Coulter was fired by National Review, a neocon publication, when she declared: “We should invade [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” Today such violent words are common parlance.

There is no evidence whatsoever in behalf of the claims the Bush administration is making about Iranian nukes. The purpose of these false claims is to create fear that will breech the public’s opposition to a draft. The neocons are desperate for troops for their Middle Eastern War.

For a decade or longer, the neocons who control the Bush administration’s foreign and military policies have been writing papers advocating a US-Israeli conquest of the Middle East. A moronic president has given them their chance.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland (Reuters) – The longest-running and costliest public inquiry in British legal history — into Northern Ireland’s so-called “Bloody Sunday” — entered its final phase on Monday.

The tribunal investigating the 1972 killing of 13 civilians by paratroopers began hearing closing speeches as some families of the dead expressed hope their loved ones would be declared innocent.

Bloody Sunday was one of the most traumatic events in the province’s 30-year “Troubles,” fueling suspicion of the authorities among the Catholic minority and prompting dozens to join the IRA’s violent campaign against British rule.

“What happened on that day was, and has remained, controversial in almost every respect,” said Counsel to the Inquiry Christopher Clarke as he began a closing speech scheduled to last two days.

“It is as well … to stand back for a moment … in order to focus on the central question which is: why and how did 13 people come to be killed and 14 to be wounded within something like 10 minutes on January 30, 1972 in this city?”

The Bloody Sunday Inquiry was set up by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1998 after an original 1972 investigation exonerated the paratroopers who shot marchers at a civil rights demonstration in the province’s second city Londonderry.

Thirteen people, all unarmed Catholics, were killed when the soldiers opened fire in the staunchly nationalist Bogside area of the city. A 14th victim later died from wounds. The troops said they shot at people armed with guns or nail bombs.
Full Article: nytimes.com

It’s important to remember that Ireland, wholly or in part, has been an unhappy colony of Britain for over 800 years. Before the Brits ‘discovered’ Africa, it was the Irish who were considered subhuman savages. The thing is, resistance never ends until liberation.