by Paul Craig Roberts
What are we to make of the news reports that Baghdad is to be encircled and divided into smaller and smaller sections by 40,000 Iraqi and 10,000 US troops backed by US air power and armor in order to conduct house to house searches throughout the city to destroy combatants?

Is this generous notice of a massive offensive a ploy to encourage insurgents to leave the city in advance, thus securing a few days respite from bombings?

Is the offensive a desperate attempt by the Bush regime and the Iraqi government to achieve a victory in hopes of reviving their flagging support?

Or is it an act of revenge?

The insurgency has eroded American support for Bush’s war. A majority of Americans now believe Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a mistake and that Bush’s war is not worth the cost. The insurgency has proved the new Iraqi government to be impotent both as a unifying agent and source of order.

US frustration with a few hundred insurgents in Fallujah resulted in the destruction of two-thirds of the former city of 300,000 and in the deaths of many civilians. Are we now going to witness Baghdad reduced to rubble?

Considering reports that 80% of Sunnis support the insurgency passively if not actively, it looks as if extermination of Sunnis will be required if the US is to achieve “victory” in Iraq.

If this Baghdad offensive is launched, it will result in an escalation of US war crimes and outrage against the US and the new Iraqi “government.”

Obviously, the Americans are unwilling to take the casualties of house to house searches. That job falls to the Iraqi troops who are being set against their own people.

If insurgents remain and fight, US air power will be used to pulverize the buildings and “collateral damage” will be high.

If insurgents leave and cause mayhem elsewhere, large numbers of innocent Iraqis will be detained as suspected insurgents. After all, you can’t conduct such a large operation without results.

As most households have guns, which are required for protection as there is no law and order, “males of military age” will be detained from these armed households as suspected insurgents.

The detentions of thousands more Iraqis will result in more torture and abuses.

Consequently, the ranks of the active insurgency will grow.

Neocon court historians of empire, such as Niall Ferguson, claim that the US cannot withdraw from Iraq because the result would be a civil war and bloodbath.

However, a bloodbath is what has been going on since the ill-fated “cakewalk” invasion.

Moreover, the planned Baghdad Offensive is itself the beginning of a civil war. The 50,000 troops represent a Shi’ite government. These troops will be hunting Sunnis. There is no better way to start a civil war.
Full: counterpunch.org

Entebbe – Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has ordered his government to reduce its dependence on foreign aid and lashed out at “paternalist” donors who he said want to impose their values on his country.

In a speech to international investors in this town on the shores of Lake Victoria late on Wednesday, Museveni demanded rich nations stop conditioning their assistance on democratic reforms and warned Uganda would forsake such aid if they continued.

“The so-called donor countries must get out of the habit of dictating the management of our countries because this has and will lead to failures,” he said.

“I do not accept someone telling me how to run Uganda because I know Uganda better,” said Museveni, who has come under mounting criticism for the slow pace of reforms and his intention to amend the constitution to seek a third term.

“This paternalism of running other countries must stop. It is not acceptable and it must stop completely,”
Full: news24.com

by Lee Sustar
…setbacks for U.S. imperialism in Latin America have only put more pressure on Washington to turn the heat up on Venezuela. The upcoming Summit of the Americas, set for Buenos Aires in November, has effectively given Washington a deadline to try to recapture momentum in its own “backyard.”

But the dynamics of Venezuelan politics and the debate on socialism highlight the fact that the opposition to Washington and neoliberal free-market economics goes far beyond the policies that have so far been pursued by the center-left governments.

The debate in the Latin American left is moving from what the labor and social movements are against–free trade deals, privatization and “flexible” labor policies–to what it is for: an economic and political system based on genuine democratic control by workers and the poor.
Full: counterpunch.org

WASHINGTON, May 27 – The Justice Department on Friday rejected Venezuela’s request for the arrest of a Cuban exile wanted for an airplane bombing as a preliminary to his extradition, saying it had not provided proper supporting evidence.

A State Department official said the Venezuelans were told that their request, which called for the arrest of Luis Posada Carriles to prevent his escape as a first step to extradition, did not contain sufficient information regarding the facts and circumstances of his involvement in the 1976 bombing. The midair explosion of a Cuban airliner off the coast of Barbados killed 73 people, including several Venezuelans.

“The provisional arrest request as submitted by the government was clearly inadequate,” the official said. The ruling does not preclude a formal extradition request.

Mr. Posada is in American custody. He escaped a Venezuelan jail in 1985 while awaiting trial on charges he planned the bombing. Now 77, he reappeared on May 17 in Miami.

The Venezuelan government, which said on Sunday that it would consider severing diplomatic ties with Washington if the extradition was denied, responded with a statement, from its embassy in Washington saying it would “present all the necessary documentation to request the extradition.”
Full: nytimes.com

by Robert Parry
One benefit of the new AM progressive talk radio in cities around the United States is that the call-in shows have opened a window onto the concerns – and confusion – felt by millions of Americans trying to figure out how their country went from a democratic republic to a modern-day empire based on a cult of personality and a faith-based rejection of reason.

“What went wrong?” you hear them ask. “How did we get here?”

You also hear more detailed questions: “Why won’t the press do its job of holding George W. Bush accountable for misleading the country to war in Iraq? How could the intelligence on Iraq have been so wrong? Why do America’s most powerful institutions sit back while huge trade and budget deficits sap away the nation’s future?”

There are, of course, many answers to these questions. But from my 27 years in the world of Washington journalism and politics, I would say that the most precise answer can be summed up in one word: fear.
Full: consortiumnews.com

by Jorge Martin
On Monday, May 16th a new wave of mobilisations of Bolivian workers and peasants broke out, which is increasingly raising the question of power once again. The passing of the new Hydrocarbons Law sparked off this latest round of strikes, road blockades, marches and mass demonstrations. This confirms that the revolutionary uprising which overthrew the government of Sanchez de Losada back in October 2003 was not decisively concluded in favour of the workers and peasants, and their main demands (the nationalisation of the gas and oil resources of the country, now in the hands of multinationals) were not met.

Since then, the new president Mesa has tried to manoeuvre between the powerful interests of the multinationals and the radicalised masses of workers and peasants. The problem is that the interests of both cannot be reconciled.

A month ago Mesa made a dramatic broadcast on national TV in which he revealed the real situation. “The multinationals are ruling the country” he explained, and therefore no hydrocarbons law can be passed that does not please them. He was basically saying: if you do not want me, I will resign and then you will have to deal with the national assembly which is even more reactionary than I am. It was a desperate bid to demobilise the workers and peasants and stay in power, a typical Bonapartist trick which seemed to be working, but which only held the situation for a few more weeks.

The hydrocarbons law proposed by Mesa, increases the taxes on multinational companies, leaving royalties at the same level, but falls short of the demand of what was agreed in a referendum one year ago: 50% royalties on gas and oil extraction. This was the proposal put forward by Mesa and supported by Evo Morales, the leader of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), which has its main base of support among the coca-growing peasants in the Chapare regions.

The proposal was in fact an attempt to defuse the demand for nationalisation raised by the Bolivian Workers’ Union (COB) and the workers’ organisations in El Alto, the working class city just outside La Paz which played a key role in the October 2003 uprising. The questions in the referendum were posed in such a way as to push people into voting for that option, and was therefore dubbed the “tramparendum” (trickerendum) by the workers’ organisations.

But even this compromise of imposing 50% royalties on the multinationals is too much for them and they have already made clear that they will not accept it. And as Mesa pointed out, it is they who rule the country! In fact throughout the process of discussion of the Law in the national assembly the multinationals (and the US embassy) made clear their position that any substantial modification of the extremely favourable contracts they got under the previous Losada government would be unacceptable to them. But those contracts were so outrageous (allowing the multinationals to get gas at below market prices and then sell it back to Bolivia at prices well above international market prices) that they were all declared void by the Constitutional Court, as they had not been ratified by parliament.

So, for a year and a half this pushing and shoving between the multinationals, the national assembly (dominated by the parties which backed the Sanchez Losada government), Mesa, and the mass movement has been going on without reaching a conclusion. Now decision time has come.
Full:zmag.org

Here is an ‘insurgency’ that has continued virtually unabated for 500 years.
(more…)

Looking for an easy way to protest Bush foreign policy week after week? And an easy way to help alleviate global poverty? Buy your gasoline at Citgo stations.
And tell your friends.

Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation’s oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela. The President is Hugo Chavez. Call him “the Anti-Bush.”

Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela — not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the US. (Click here http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp to find one near you.) By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela’s democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.

Instead of using government to help the rich and the corporate, as Bush does, Chavez is using the resources and oil revenue of his government to help the poor in Venezuela. A country with so much oil wealth shouldn’t have 60 percent of its people living in poverty, earning less than $2 per day. With a mass movement behind him, Chavez is confronting poverty in Venezuela. That’s why large majorities have consistently backed him in democratic elections. And why the Bush administration supported an attempted military coup in 2002 that sought to overthrow Chavez.

So this is the opposite of a boycott. Call it a BUYcott. Spread the word.
Full: commondreams.org

”THERE APPEARS to be a very unpleasant feeling existing among the native soldiers, who are here for instruction, regarding the grease used in preparing the cartridges,” a young British officer in India, Captain J.A. Wright, wrote to his general in the winter of 1857. ”Some evil disposed persons have spread a report that it consists of a mixture of the fat of pigs and cows,” and the rumor ”has spread throughout India.”

The British had recently introduced a new rifle, the Enfield, that required that the end of the cartridge be bitten off before it was rammed down the rifle’s muzzle. And since good Muslims cannot touch pig grease, nor Hindus the fat of cows, the ”sepoys,” as Indian soldiers in the service of the British were called, perceived a Western assault on their religions.

Wright tried to tell his men that ”the grease used is composed of mutton fat and wax,” but his denial was not enough. The first serious unrest broke in Bengal. A sepoy named Mangal Pande of the 34th Native Infantry incited his brothers to mutiny yelling, ”it’s for our religion,” fired at an English officer, and struck him with a sword. By spring the fire of the great Indian Mutiny had spread across north India, spreading death and insurrection that rocked the British Empire to its core.

I thought of Captain Wright’s denial when I heard Mark Whitaker of Newsweek retract his story of American interrogators flushing a Koran down a toilet — a story which helped fuel deadly riots across the Muslim world. For it is unlikely that Whitaker’s retraction will convince Muslims that their religion is not under attack any more than British denials about the cartridge grease stemmed the mutiny.

Reports of desecrating the Koran have been seeping out of Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq for a couple of years now. In March of 2002, prisoners in Guantanamo staged a hunger strike over mistreatment of the Holy Book. Numerous former detainees have reported similar incidents. Aryat Vahitov told Russian television in June 2004 that ”they tore the Koran to pieces in front of us, threw it into the toilet.” Abdallah Tabarak told Moroccan newspaper in December that Americans had trampled the Koran underfoot and ”throw it in the urine bucket.”

Former detainees may not always be reliable sources, but then the International Committee of the Red Cross also said it had ”multiple reports” of Koran misuse in the early days of Guantanamo. And the Pentagon itself has reprimanded two female guards for acts designed to make prisoners feel unclean and thus unable to pray.

Clearly the Newsweek report was used by people trying to stir up trouble and instigate riot. President Bush might even use Captain Wright’s words to describe them as ”evil disposed persons.”

But the larger point is that neither the Newsweek article nor the greased cartridges 148 years ago were the real reason that the two rumors gained traction. Historians tell us that India was going through a period of great change in the mid-19th century. In the 18th century the British in India often adopted an Indian way of life and culture. But the 19th century saw British customs and mores making themselves felt across the subcontinent in what are now the nations of Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.
Full: boston.com

With the left-leaning governments of South America having derailed the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), the Bush Administration had pinned its free trade hopes on bullying the smallest countries in the hemisphere. A year ago this weekend — on May 28, 2004 — the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) was signed, and forwarded to Congress for what was expected to be rapid approval.
And there it still sits. Activists have convinced a coalition of Democrats and conservative Republicans to come out in opposition to CAFTA. This month, the New Democrats — a moderate Congressional caucus that is historically pro-free trade — announced its opposition, calling CAFTA “flawed” for its lack of an economic development package. Conservative Southern Republicans, seeking to protect the sugar and textile industries in their home states, are opposed. And the original Democratic bloc opposed to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is back for another round.

NAFTA figures large in the debate on CSFTA. In many ways, CAFTA is the most direct referendum Congress has had the chance to engage in on the results of NAFTA, the agreement between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico forged by Bill Clinton in 1993. NAFTA has contributed to the enormous loss in manufacturing jobs in the last decade in the United States, with many of them fleeing for the cheaper labor markets of Mexico. Meanwhile, Mexican agriculture has been decimated by the dumping of cheap North American grain. NAFTA has been a disaster for poor and working class people in all three signatory countries, and Democrats fear that the impact of the even cheaper labor of CAFTA’s signatory countries in Central America and the Caribbean would be even worse.
Full: workingforchange.com

The United States is condoning torture and abuse in the name of the war on terror, setting up a latter-day Gulag and creating a new generation of the “disappeared”, according to Amnesty International.

A report from the human rights group accuses governments from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe of systematic and often brutal erosion of civil rights.

But its most scathing criticism is directed at the US, for using the 11 September attacks as an excuse to ignore international law, and for creating a network of supplicant nations to “sub-contract” illegal detention and mistreatment.

Britain is also criticised for attempting to put its soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond the reach of human rights laws and, on occasion, “blindly following the United States” down the path of abuse.

Amnesty criticises British ministers who have tried to justify the use of evidence in courts obtained through mistreatment. The organisation’s secretary general, Irene Khan, said: “To argue that torture is warranted is to push us back to the Middle Ages.”

The international community failed to answer calls for help when mass abuse was taking place, Amnesty says.
In the Sudanese region of Darfur, the United Nations stopped short of describing the violence against civilians as genocide. Amnesty says the UN was “held hostage” to Russian arms-trade interests and Chinese oil interests when it debated Sudan.
Full:independent.co.uk