Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, on Tuesday expressed the hope that Muslim nations would see the best side of the US in its generous response to the victims of the Asian tsunami.

“What it does in the Muslim world, the rest of the world is [being] given an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action,” Mr Powell said in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation, where the death toll from the disaster could exceed 100,000.

The Bush administration, determined to dispel impressions that the US’s initial response to the disaster was too limited, has taken the chance to project the image of a caring superpower.

“America is not an anti-Islamic, anti-Muslim nation. America is a diverse society. We respect all religions,” Mr Powell said after meeting Hassan Wirayuda, the Indonesian foreign minister. Mr Powell said US co-operation around the world served to dry up the “pools of dissatisfaction” that led to terrorism.
Full Article: nytimes.com

O brother. The only message to be gotten here is that the US can choose to save Muslims as easily as it can choose to slaughter them.

President Thabo Mbeki has made a withering attack on Winston Churchill and other historic British figures, calling them racists who ravaged Africa and blighted its post-colonial development.

The South African president was addressing the Sudanese assembly, and he was criticised for not dealing with the government’s human rights violations in Darfur.

He said British imperialists in the 19th and 20th centuries had treated Africans as savages and left a “terrible legacy” of countries divided by race, colour, culture and religion.

He singled out Churchill as a progenitor of vicious prejudice who justified British atrocities by depicting the continent’s inhabitants as inferior races who needed to be subdued, and pointed out that Kitchener and Wolseley had waged ruthless campaigns in Sudan and South Africa.

“To some extent we can say that when these eminent representatives of British colonialism were not in Sudan, they were in South Africa, and vice versa, doing terrible things wherever they went, justifying what they did by defining the native peoples of Africa as savages that had to be civilised, even against their will.”
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

I remember when I was a little girl I read an article about Winston Churchill. I cut out all the pictures and pasted them on paper and made a book which I proudly showed my big sister, declaring Winston Churchill ‘the greatest man in the history of the world.’ She smiled and gently suggested that when I got older I might change my mind. Indeed. How typical that that story has the tone of ‘Mbeki acting up again.’ Churchill was a virulent and lifelong racist. As a young journalist he accompanied a British expeditionary force in Sudan steaming down the Nile. soldiers firing from their ships as Sudanese bodies stacked up on the shore. It was a day of champagne toasts since the Brits did not sustain a single casuality. And throughout his life, Churchill never hesitated to make his view of ‘the niggers’ known. Why doesn’t every British schoolchild know this history? About 2 minutes on the internet would yield up the story. Virtually every hero of science, literature, and philosophy of 18th and 19th century Europe and the US held the same views. Edward Said rightly asked, how are we to understand or even fully appreciate the ‘cultural treasures’ of Europe since 1500 if we are unwilling to engage imperialism and racism? Why are we afraid to engage this history?

As the international aid effort grows and George Bush launches a fresh appeal, we ask politicians and commentators if 2005 might see a new determination to tackle global poverty

THE RIGHT REV TIM STEVENS, Bishop of Leicester
I am hopeful, but we must see a real commitment to changing the economic relationships between the West and the poorer countries. As well as charitable giving, we need to tackle these fundamental issues.

RORY BREMNER, Comedian
On an individual level, it is not just about what we are prepared to give, but what we are prepared to give up. Having left Afghanistan and Iraq in their wake, can our leaders be trusted to fight a war on poverty?

KANYA KING, Founder, Mobo awards
No longer can we exist in isolation when we see lives and livelihoods being destroyed. All of us need to be pro-active to change things, but we have shown that public opinion and the media can influence government.

STEPHEN TINDALE, Executive director, Greenpeace
It seems churlish to say it, but while it’s relatively easy for most of us to give £50, it would be much harder for us to make the changes in our modern lifestyles that are needed if we are to move to a fairer world.

DR GHAYASUDDIN SIDDIQUI, Leader of Muslim Parliament
Compassion, care and concern for mankind joins each of us – whatever our faith or ethnicity. The tragedy has shown there is a formula on which all mankind can be united to help each other. Mankind has moved forward.
Full Article: independent.co.uk

One of the opinions expressed here is that of a female (Kanya King, I think). There is no possible way to ‘tackle poverty’ without dealing with militarism. And I am going to go out on a limb and declare that the deeper issue is male violence. There is interesting and widespread evidence that our female ancestors, “Lysistrata”-style, formed “menstrual compacts,” which involved withholding sex en masse at certain time in order to focus the gents on group survival activities such as hunts. The male initiation rituals and menstrual taboos that are so strikingly similar throughout the world point to a time when the power of the feminine was revered and even feared until males gained the upper hand and placed strict limits on the time women could spend with each other. It is only in the last generation that women’s voices have finally begun to be heard again.
India has been too busy building nukes to aim at Pakistan to bother with the expense of an earthquake/tsunami warning system which could have saved thousands in India, Sri Lanka, and Africa. The Indonesian army is still busy slaughtering Acehnese ‘insurgents’ at ground-zero of the vast natural (one hopes) holocaust caused by the quake. Of course, since they have forced the people away from the coasts, it was probably many many Indonesian soldiers who were swept away to sea.
A real ‘turning point’ for the world would be signalled by our willingness to come to terms with this endless war-mongering. No matter how well-intentioned, charity is not what the world or its poor people need. All charity does is apply band-aids, and worse, it alows the guys to feel good about themselves. It also allows them to continue viewing people not as fellow humans, but as objects to be saved here, slaughtered with impunity there. We very well know where the vast bulk of our tax dollars is going, and it is indescribably offensive that the entire US efforts in the Andaman represent a single day’s expenditure in Iraq. How long are we in the US going to sit back and allow this to go on? How long are the mothers and wives and sisters and daughters going to stand for it?

by Gary Leupp
I’d been wondering about the Andamans and Nicobars. These are hundreds of small islands that rise out of the Andaman Basin northwest of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. They stretch out five hundred miles towards the Bay of Bengal, and constitute a Union Territory of India with their capital at Port Blair. Most of the islands are uninhabited, the whole archipelago’s population only some 350,000. The people are mostly from the Indian mainland, but there are also “tribals” of what the New Delhi calls “Mongoloid” and “Negrito” stocks.

Negritos, dark-skinned, peppercorn-haired people of short stature, extend from the Andamans to the Malay Peninsula to the Philippines and even Taiwan. Their ancestors may well have been the earliest human inhabitants of Southeast Asia, and may have been isolated from the rest of humanity for as much as 60,000 years. Western accounts from the second century (Ptolemy) to the thirteenth (Marco Polo) describe those in the Andamans as cannibals. My first encounter with the Andamans was in Marco Polo’s book (Book III, Chapter XIII), which I read as a boy:

“The people are without a king and are Idolaters, and no better than wild beasts. And I assure you that all the men of this Island of Angamanaian [Andaman] have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise; in fact, in the face they are all just like big mastiff dogs! They have a quantity of spices; but they are of a most cruel generation, and eat everybody that they can catch, if not of their own race.”

There seems to be no modern confirmation for these details. But they captured the European imagination, and dog-headed beings from the archipelago decorate early-modern maps. I remember the dog-faced men from the illustrations in the Yule-Cordier edition of the Travels of Marco Polo.
Full Article: rastafarispeaks.com

British people rate Israel as the country least deserving of international respect, as well as one of the world’s “least democratic countries,” according to a recent survey.

Research company ‘YouGov’ carried out a survey for the British Telegraph, asking Britons to rate almost two-dozen countries on the basis of 12 different criteria.

The online survey was carried out on 2,058 adults across Great Britain between December 17 and 20.
The respondents were required to rate the three best and three worst countries according to those criteria.

Israel was ranked number one country where British people would least like to live or visit on holiday. Out of several other criteria measured, Russia alone scored lower overall than Israel.

Israel gained the title of the world’s least beautiful country and New Zealand the prettiest.
In addition, Israel was rated the most unfriendly country after France and Germany.

Australia, New Zealand and Canada were among the most favored countries.

Results regarding America were mixed, with 19 percent of Britons regarding the US as “most deserving of international respect,” and 25% rating America as “least deserving of international respect.
Full Article: jpost.com (jerusalem post)

HOUSTON — Do not mistake the Trans-Texas Corridor for a mere superhighway.
As imagined by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the $175-billion project will be a transportation behemoth of mind-boggling proportions: 4,000 miles of mostly toll lanes perhaps a quarter-mile wide, capable of carrying cars, trucks, and high-speed freight and commuter trains.

There would be room underground for oil, water, electric and gas pipelines, and the whole works would be built largely with private money.

“It’s a blueprint for our transportation and population needs for the next 50 years,” Texas Department of Transportation spokeswoman Gaby Garcia said. “It’s the wave of the future to plan for different modes [of transport] in one corridor.”

Opponents call the ambitious scheme ill-conceived and absurdly expensive.

“It’s so grandiose and outlandish that people at first didn’t think it would happen,” said David Stall, who founded a group called Corridor Watch to keep tabs on the project. “But they’re railroading it through — and most Texans don’t even know what it is.”

Perry introduced what he called a “visionary transportation plan” during his 2002 reelection campaign, and continued to push for it after he was sworn in. In 2003, he signed a transportation bill that authorized construction of the mammoth roadway.

Full Article: news.yahoo.com

Iran has reported flights by U.S. military aircraft over nuclear facilities near the borders with Afghanistan and Iraq.

Iran’s state-controlled media said the overflights by U.S. aircraft were spotted near a range of nuclear facilities, including the Bushehr nuclear reactor constructed by Russia.

In late December, Teheran ordered the Iranian Air Force to shoot down unidentified aircraft flying anywhere in the country. Iranian officials have accused Israel and the United States of seeking to conduct reconnaissance flights over Iran.

Iran has deployed anti-aircraft missiles around major nuclear sites, including Bushehr. So far, there have been no reports of Iranian missile fire toward U.S. or Israeli warplanes.
Full Article: worldtribune.com

BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip (Reuters) – Moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas called Israel “the Zionist enemy” for the first time on Tuesday after an Israeli tank killed seven Palestinian youths in a Gaza strawberry field.

The words were certain to stir concerns in Israel where images of Abbas embracing fighters during the campaign for a Jan. 9 election have led some to question hopes for reviving peace talks after Yasser Arafat’s death.

The Israeli army said it had targeted militants who had crept into the strawberry field and fired mortar bombs into a nearby Jewish settlement in the occupied territory.

Palestinian witnesses and medics in Beit Lahiya, a north Gaza village, said the militants had vanished by the time the tank shell crashed and all the dead were youths aged 11-17 from two farming families. Four people were critically wounded.

The field, where farmers had been harvesting strawberries, was spattered with blood and body parts.

Word of the incident clearly angered Abbas, widely tipped to win the presidential election, as he continued campaigning in the Gaza Strip despite further fighting between militants and the Israeli army.

“We are praying for the souls of our martyrs who fell today to the shells of the Zionist enemy,” Abbas told a rally in the south Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis, a hotbed of militants.

It was Abbas’s first known resort to the language of radicals sworn to Israel’s destruction. Abbas, 69, long known as a relative moderate, has raised peace hopes since Arafat’s death by condemning militant violence in favor of talks with Israel.

Full Article:reuters.myway.com

Well geez: see what 50 years of murderous occupation does to ‘moderates.’

U.S. military and intelligence sources are denying print and broadcast reports that terrorist Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi has been arrested in Iraq, MSNBC reported Tuesday.

MSNBC said senior U.S. military and intelligence sources told it the reports are not true. A newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, al-Bayane, reported in its Tuesday edition that the Jordanian-born terrorist had been arrested in Baqouba, Iraq. Iraqi Kurdistan radio also reported the arrest of al-Zarqawi.

The U.S. military in December said al-Zarqawi likely is in the Baghdad area.

x x x x x

URGENT: ‘TARGET #1’: al-Zarqawi reportedly arrested in Iraq
Tue Jan 04 2005 09:49:47 ET

DUBAI, January 4 (Itar-Tass) – Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, whom the US occupation authorities declared to be the “target number one” in Iraq, has been arrested in the city of Baakuba, the Emirate newspaper al-Bayane reported on Tuesday referring to Kurdish sources. Al-Zarqawi, leader of the terrorist group Al-Tawhid Wa’al-Jihad, was recently appointed the director of the Al-Qaeda organisation in Iraq.

The newspaper’s correspondent in Baghdad points out that a report on the seizure of the terrorist, on whom the US put a bounty of 10 million dollars, was also reported by Iraqi Kurdistan radio, which at one time had been the first to announce the arrest of Saddam Hussein.

There have been no official reports about the arrest of the terrorist. Al-Zarqawi, 38, a Jordanian, whose real name is Ahmad al-Khalayleh, aims to turn Iraq into a “new Afghanistan”. According to Arab press data, Al-Tawhid Wa’al-Jihad group has divided Iraq into several emirates. The group’s independent subdivisions at a strength of 50 to 500 militants operate in the cities of Al-Falluja, Al-Qaim, Diala, and Samarra.

The personnel of the group is on the whole 1,500-strong and includes Iraqis and citizens of Arab and Islamic countries. There are demolition experts and missilemen among them.

The group has depots of weapons and explosives in various parts of the country. It intends to frustrate the upcoming parliamentary elections that are scheduled for the end of this month. Al-Tawhid Wa’al-Jihad threatens to do away with Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and members of the interim government.

Developing…
drudgereport.com

By Kathleen Christison
We need to be very clear on one vital point about Palestinian-Israeli relations, particularly in this time of promised movement toward peace: there will be no real Palestinian state anytime in the foreseeable future, and this will not be the Palestinians’ fault. Despite all the Cheshire-cat optimism in the media and among politicians around the world since Yasir Arafat’s death, despite the sanctimonious hopes that Palestinian “terrorism” will end now that Arafat is gone, despite the patronizing visions of Palestinian “reform,” despite the demise of the Palestinian bogeyman who supposedly stood as the only obstacle to peace, we must not lose sight of the fact that there will be no Palestinian independence, and therefore no peace and no justice, anytime soon, for the simple reason that Israel does not want it.
Full Article: counterpunch.org