Street violence and media hostility today underlined the obstacles to peace in the Middle East, a day after Israeli and Palestinian leaders declared a ceasefire in the four-year conflict.

…”Maybe this time,” read the headline in today’s Maariv Israeli daily over a picture of Sharon and Abbas smiling and shaking hands.

But Arab commentators were sceptical, saying Israel took more than it gave at the meeting. Newspapers across the Middle East criticised Tuesday’s summit at Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh resort for harming – not helping – the Palestinian cause.

“The whole world classifies him (Sharon) as a war criminal, and yet he was welcomed and given a place at a round table as if his hands were clean of Palestinian blood,” wrote Abdul-Wahab Badrakhan of the widely read pan-Arab Al Hayat daily.

Lebanon’s leftist As-Safir newspaper ran the headline: “Sharm el-Sheik summit crowns Sharon a man of peace … for nothing.”
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

WASHINGTON (AP) – Spending restraints in President Bush’s budget proposal would mean deep cuts to environmental protection, community development, veterans benefits and other programs through the end of the decade, a liberal think tank said Wednesday.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said its calculations, made using budget information provided to congressional committees, reveal future spending cuts that the White House wants but didn’t detail in the 2006 budget it sent to lawmakers Monday.

“They did real budgeting, they just decided to hide it,” said Richard Kogan, a budget analyst at the center. “I don’t fault them for budgeting, I fault them for hiding it.”

By proposing annual lids on government spending without giving program-by-program details of potential program cuts in 2007 through 2010, the report said, the White House sidestepped a debate on policy trade-offs.

“It is difficult to assess the impact of the proposed caps when one does not know what types of cuts the administration is planning to achieve them,” the report concluded.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

WASHINGTON (AP) – Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told lawmakers Wednesday that while progress on a nuclear waste project in Nevada will be delayed, the government is “very focused and committed” to building the facility.

Bodman was questioned about the Bush administration’s commitment to the program two days after the Energy Department said it would ask for only $651 million for the Yucca Mountain program for the budget year that begins in October.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, noted that until recently, it had been anticipated that beginning next year the department would need more than $1 billion a year to keep the program on track so it could begin accepting high-level waste from nuclear power plants by 2010.

Department officials have delayed plans to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the project and acknowledged the new target date for opening the facility – if it gets an NRC license – is 2012.

Potential problems that could delay programs, Bodman said, are court rulings that strike down the proposed radiation safety standards for the site and problems in preparation of the license application. But that “is not to suggest any less enthusiasm for Yucca Mountain,” Bodman told the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Well of course not. What’s a little lethal radiation among friends?

As many as one out of six people on earth is an illegal squatter. In Shadow Cities, journalist Robert Neuwirth describes his travels through the megalopolises of Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, and Nairobi to discover what life is like for that 1 billion. What he finds defies many of the stereotypes of grime- and crime-ridden Third World slums.

The improvised shanties he visits on hillsides and along train tracks, though constructed illicitly, are often well tended. Neuwirth finds the “law-abiding outlaws” who inhabit them to be for the most part upstanding and neighborly. “People may be poorer here,” a woman tells him in one of Rio’s favelas. “But they pay their bills.”

Squatting is not simply trespassing, contends Neuwirth, but an inevitable phase of urbanization. “All cities,” he writes, “start in mud”: New York’s Upper East Side began as a shantytown, and Paris and London once teemed with the semi-homeless.

City governments should learn from this history, he argues. Instead of ignoring (or bulldozing) slums, they should provide squatters a fair stake in their de facto homes. Ultimately, Neuwirth has faith that the most daunting aspect of squatter cities — their size — will be their salvation, as their residents discover the sheer power of numbers.
Full Article: motherjones.com

One third of the candidates in Iraq’s January 30 elections are women, and women have been guaranteed 25 percent of the seats in the country’s new national assembly. But even with such provisions in place, the status of women in Iraqi society after Sunday’s vote remains uncertain. Women are facing a growing backlash, according to Manal Omar, the director of Women for Women International’s program in Iraq. “It’s been really difficult coming to terms with how bad the situation has become,” she says. “We’re seeing women’s rights leap backwards.”

The precarious position of Iraqi women is outlined in a recent report (PDF) by the WWI, which is based in Washington, D.C., and assists women in post-conflict countries. It paints a bleak picture: Iraqi women are under siege from all sides, and they’re losing their access to civil society in the process. Much of the blame lies with the bloody insurgency and the strictures of religious conservatives, but the report also criticizes the U.S.-led coalition and the interim Iraqi government for ignoring — and at times undermining — women’s concerns. A WWI survey found that while Iraqi women overwhelmingly want opportunities for education, work outside the home, and political participation, their most basic needs are not being met. Ninety-five percent said their families did not have adequate electricity; only five percent said the government had done something to improve their lives in the past year. Omar criticizes the U.S. for supporting policies on paper — such as the 25-percent representation rule — without creating the conditions that would make those changes stick once a new government takes over. “The Kodak moment has been more important than the reality,” she says.
Full Article: motherjones.com

by Earl Ofari Hutchinson
President Bush wasted no time in dispatching his newly designated gangbuster, wife Laura, to the mean streets of Philadelphia. That city, like other big cities, continues to be plagued by gang killings. Laura’s mission, as Bush made it clear in his State of the Union speech, is to help halt that violence. In addition to tapping Laura as his gang czar, Bush says that he’ll shell out $150 million to youth education and violence prevention programs. But in the past Bush’s flashy, new initiatives, unveiled with much public fanfare, have fizzled out due to lack of money, lack of political will to push them through, or lack of practicality. Bush’s gang initiative may suffer the same fate. The money will be spread out over three years. That adds up to about $1 million for each state. That paltry sum will barely by hoops for one inner city youth recreation center. That is, if the money is ever appropriated. Bush has said that he will meat ax dozens of federal programs to cut the mountainous federal deficits that he created by piling on billions to wage war and reconstruction in Iraq, and his disastrous tax cuts that mostly benefit the corporate rich. The dollars would be dribbled out to Bush’s pet faith based groups to push his morals and values message.

But increased dollars, Laura’s inner-city treks, and Bush’s moral finger wag, will do little to stop the killing. Many of the young men that tuck guns in their waistbands and shoot-up their neighborhoods feel that no one cares whether they live or die. Their belief that their lives are devalued fosters disrespect for the law and forces them to internalize anger and displace aggression onto others.
Full Article: commondreams.org

Calif. Police Kill Suspected Gangster, 13
LOS ANGELES – A 13-year-old suspected gang member driving a stolen Toyota was killed by police early Sunday after a pre-dawn chase in which he rammed an LAPD (news – web sites) patrol car, authorities said.

The vehicle was moving erratically and police began their pursuit after suspecting the driver was drunk, said LAPD spokeswoman Kristi Sandoval.

The driver stopped and a passenger, described as another suspected gang member, fled on foot.

The driver ignored commands from police, then shifted the 1992 red Toyota into reverse and rammed a black-and-white cruiser, prompting police to open fire, Sandoval said.

She could not say how many officers opened fire, or how many shots were fired.

The driver died at the scene. Sandoval did not know how many times the youth was hit by bullets, or where.
news.yahoo.com
Excuse me, police kill CHILD, age 13

The film Seven Days In May is one of my all-time favourites. The gripping 1964 drama, starring Burt Lancaster, depicts an attempted coup by far rightists in Washington using a top-secret Pentagon anti-terrorist unit called something like “Contelinpro.”

Life imitates art. This week, former military intelligence analyst William Arkin revealed a hitherto unknown directive, with the Orwellian name “JCS Conplan 0300-97,” authorizing the Pentagon to employ special, ultra-secret “anti-terrorist” military units on American soil for what the author claims are “extra-legal missions.”

In other words, using U.S. soldiers to kill or arrest Americans, acts that have been illegal since the U.S. Civil War.
Full Article: commondreams.org

 BAGHDAD, Feb. 5 (Xinhuanet) — Iraq’s influential Sunni religious leadership on Saturday put the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country as a condition to participate in the constitution-writing process.

    Spokesman of the Committee of Muslim Scholars Omar Ragheb revealed it to reporters after Hareth al-Dhari, head of the committee, met with Ashraf Qazi, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special envoy in Iraq.

    ”Qazi asked the committee to take part in drafting the constitution,” said Ragheb, adding “we told him that we had conditions and one of them is to reach a consensus with all partiesover a timetable for the withdrawal of the foreign troops from Iraq”.
Full Article: xinhuanet.com

Haiti to have local elections on 9th October and presidential and parliamentary elections on 13th November  

The elections will fill the gap in Haiti since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced from power last year in the most blatant example of political interference and intrusion by the United States of America in the region since the failed coup d’etat in Venezuela.

As the elections are announced, members of Aristide’s party, the Lavalas Family Party, complain that their senior members are being detained without trial (a practice with which Washington has been connected elsewhere).

In fact, the recent history of Haiti is a study in Washington’s interference against a progressive, democratically-elected government. From the time when Aristide was elected in 2000, the USA launched an economic aid embargo, funded opposition groups, and provided support for coup plots.
Full Article: pravda.ru

Venezuela is today’s US fourth oil supplier, but this could drastically change in the short term. As the relationship between neo-conservative Washington and leftist Caracas deteriorates day after day, the government of Hugo Chavez is looking for new oil partners in China, Russia, India, Iran and Argentina, as advanced by PRAVDA.Ru.

In the last months, Chavez moved quickly to accomplish his strategy by signing bilateral deals with these countries. More recently, rumours about selling American oil-refining operations used to process Venezuelan crude for the U.S. market, came to confirm what looks to be a trend.

Venezuela is world’s fifth oil exporter and responsible for 15 percent of the US imports. Much of that comes through its Houston-based subsidiary, Citgo, which is owned by the Venezuelan state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). This is the unit Wall Street expects to be sold by Caracas, which could mean a huge operation as Citgo is the ninth-largest refiner in the US.
Full Article: pravda.ru

Buy Citgo.