…The chronic famine that a number of countries face, like Ethiopia or Eritrea, the food insecurity, is just a symptom of the larger issue of the growing disparities between this wealthy minority represented by the G8, the leaders who will meet in Scotland next month, and the vast majority of the world, as indicative of the plight facing so many Africans on the continent. When you have this rich minority in a position of absolute control over the institutions of global governance, like the World Bank or the I.M.F., the U.S. being allowed to appoint the president of an international institution like the World Bank, the Europeans have their pick in appointing the president of the I.M.F. Then you understand that we live in political economy of essentially global apartheid, international minority rule, where this tiny minority of rich states are dictating economic rules, political rules that the rest of the world must follow if it’s going to have access essentially to financing for development. But, again, this issue of how famine in Africa is manipulated by the Bush administration to show its compassionate side, that’s exactly what yesterday’s press conference was all about. It appeals to the worst of American ignorance to this racist preconception of Africa as a continent just of starving people and, gee, isn’t the United States generous in giving more food assistance, as a way of denying the real role of the United States and other rich countries in impoverishing Africa and in dictating the economic terms, whether it’s trade, whether it is investment, whether it is access to development resources.
Full: democracynow.org

by Naomi Klein
Gordon Brown has a new idea about how to “make poverty history” in time for the G8 summit. With Washington so far refusing to double its aid to Africa by 2015, the chancellor is appealing to the “richer oil-producing states” of the Middle East to fill the funding gap. “Oil wealth urged to save Africa,” reads the headline in the Observer.

Here is a better idea: instead of Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth being used to “save Africa”, how about if Africa’s oil wealth was used to save Africa – along with its gas, diamond, gold, platinum, chromium, ferroalloy and coal wealth?

With all this noblesse oblige focused on saving Africa from its misery, it seems like a good time to remember someone else who tried to make poverty history: Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was killed 10 years ago this November by the Nigerian government – along with eight other Ogoni activists, he was sentenced to death by hanging. Their crime was daring to insist that Nigeria was not poor at all but rich, and that political decisions made in the interests of western multinational corporations kept its people in desperate poverty. Saro-Wiwa gave his life to the idea that the vast oil wealth of the Niger delta must leave behind more than polluted rivers, charred farmland, rancid air and crumbling schools. He asked not for charity, pity or “relief”, but for justice.
Full: guardian.co.uk
(more…)

A millionaire British businessman, Friedhelm Eronat, was named last night as the purchaser of oil rights in the Darfur region of Sudan, where the regime is accused of war crimes and where millions of tribespeople are alleged to have been forced to flee, amid mass rapes or murders.

The disclosure was greeted with outrage by human rights campaigners. “From a moral point of view these people are paying a government whose senior members may end up in front of the international criminal court for war crimes,” Simon Taylor, director of Global Witness, said yesterday.
Full: guardian.co.uk
See here’s the thing–with one hand the Brits are launching this crudely emotionalist reptilian-brain-
stimulating campaign to ‘save’ Africa, and with the other the rape continues. ‘Save’ Africa in British bank accounts, right?

George Bush yesterday nominated Robert Tuttle, a Beverly Hills car dealer, presidential friend and fundraiser, as the next American ambassador to Britain.
Full: guardian.co.uk

The Palestinian leadership yesterday accused Israel of setting it up to fail by withholding information crucial to a successful transfer of control of the Gaza Strip when Jewish settlers are withdrawn this summer.
Mohammed Dahlan, the chief Palestinian negotiator on the pullout, said the Israeli government was “employing tricks” over the handover.

“I believe the Israelis want to delay all the decisions to the eleventh hour and for disengagement not to be successful and later blame the Palestinians for the failure,” he said.

“The Israelis are trying to make sure the occupation remains in the Gaza Strip with our cooperation and agreement. This is a means to repackage the occupation but the occupation will remain.”
Full: guardian.co.uk

Gee, you think?

A fictional crime drama based on the premise that the Bush administration ordered the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington aired this week on German state television, prompting the Green Party chairman to call for an investigation.
“I think absolutely nothing of the conspiracy theory that has been hawked in this series. I hope this particular TV movie will be discussed very critically at the next supervisory board meeting of ARD [state television],” said Green Party Chairman Reinhard Buetikofer, who acknowledged that he had not seen the show.
Sunday night’s episode of “Tatort,” a popular murder mystery that has been running on state-run ARD-German television for 35 years, revolved around a German woman and a man who was killed in her apartment.
According to the plot, which was seen by approximately 7 million Germans, the dead man had been trained to be one of the September 11 pilots but was left behind, only to be tracked down and killed by CIA or FBI assassins.
The woman, who says in the program that the September 11 attacks were instigated by the Bush family for oil and power, then is targeted, presumably to silence her. The drama concludes with the German detectives accepting the truth of her story as she eludes the U.S. government hit men and escapes to safety in an unnamed Arab country.
As ludicrous as it may sound to most Americans, the tale has resonance in Germany, where fantastic conspiracy theories often are taken as fact.
Many Germans think, for example, that the 1969 moon landing was faked, and a poll published in the weekly Die Zeit showed that 31 percent of Germans younger than 30 “think that there is a certain possibility that the U.S. government ordered the attacks of 9/11.”
Full: washtimes.com

by Nicole Colson
The flights almost always land at night–and the wounded are brought off planes in the dark. Kept away from the news cameras, the nightly parade of the injured who arrive at Maryland’s Andrews Air Force base from U.S. Army medical facilities in Germany are driven–sometimes in vans or school buses converted into ambulances–to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., the nation’s top military hospitals.

These soldiers have gone from the front lines to the back door–brought back to the U.S. under the cover of darkness to keep them hidden from the media and the public.

According to the Pentagon, the soldiers arrive at night because “operational restrictions” at a runway near the military’s main hospital in Germany, where the wounded from Iraq are brought first, affect the timing of flights.

But Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of Operation Truth, an advocacy group for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, told Salon reporter Mark Benjamin that there is a different reason. “They do it so nobody sees [the wounded],” Rieckhoff said. “In their mindset, this is going to demoralize the American people. The overall cost of this war has been…continuously hidden throughout. As the costs get higher, their efforts to conceal those costs also increase.”

For the nearly 4,000 U.S. troops wounded in Iraq who have been brought through the doors of Walter Reed as of March, the personal cost of the war is staggering. Despite the Bush administration’s repeated claims of reaching a “turning point” in the occupation of Iraq, the 250 beds at Walter Reed have been filled to capacity since the invasion–and before that, since the early days of the war on Afghanistan in 2001.

In late 2003, press accounts reported that medical staff at Walter Reed staff were working 70- to 80-hour weeks to handle the influx of patients. Overcrowding was so bad, in fact, that a number of the less seriously wounded were sent to stay in hotels near the hospital–transported during the day to Walter Reed for outpatient treatment. The situation is no better today–though it is more hidden than ever because of the media blackout that the Pentagon has tried to throw over Walter Reed.

Among the patients, the number of seriously injured–suffering from burns, amputations, brain damage, infection and combat stress–show anything but a “turning point” in Iraq.

Ironically, the main reasons for the overflow of seriously injured are improvements in body armor and the use of better medical technology on the battlefield. Because of this, many soldiers today are surviving with more severe injuries than in previous wars.

According to Pentagon statistics, approximately 6 percent of the more than 12,000 troops wounded by bombs or bullets in Iraq or Afghanistan have required amputation–three times the rate in Vietnam. About 20 percent have head or neck injuries, and many more have suffered breathing and eating impairments, blindness or severe disfiguration. Dr. Roy Aaron of Brown Medical School in Rhode Island told the Boston Globe in December that the Veterans Affairs system “literally cannot handle the load” of amputees.
Full: counterpunch.org

by Dave Lindorff
At this stage, it seems almost pointless to say it, but once again, the corporate media in America have been exposed as a cowardly mass of toadies who cannot bring themselves to publish or air anything remotely critical of the administration unless compelled to do so by cattle prods…or a reporter from a foreign news organization doing what reporters are supposed to do routinely.

The current example of this pathetic behavior is the page-one treatment finally accorded–after a fashion–to the damning memorandum delivered to British PM Tony Blair back in the summer of 2002 by his chief of intelligence, informing him of a meeting with U.S. officials, where he learned that the US planned to invade Iraq, and that the reasons for doing so, and the intelligence would be “fixed” to justify the action.

Although this devastating memo surfaced in the UK nearly a month and a half ago, and has been the lead story in Britain for some time, where it has thoroughly destroyed whatever credibility the prime minister still had, it has been largely buried in the U.S. media if it was mentioned at all, and in every case it has been presented not as evidence of President Bush’s criminal behavior in lying to the American public to create a war, but as a problem for Blair.
Full: counterpunch.org

COMPTON, Calif. (AP) – Thirteen sheriff’s deputies will be disciplined for firing more than 100 shots at an unarmed driver last month, an incident that sparked outrage in the community and prompted some deputies to apologize.

One deputy will be suspended for 15 days. The others will receive shorter suspensions or written reprimands, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said Thursday.

While some community members hailed the announcement, others said they were disappointed. Lolitha Jones, who held a sign protesting the shooting, said the deputies should have faced tougher measures.

“An ordinary citizen going down the street on a rampage like that would have gone straight to jail,” she said.

Winston Hayes, 44, was struck by four bullets in the May 9 shooting, which was captured on videotape following a brief pursuit of Hayes’ sport utility vehicle. The vehicle matched the description of one thought to be involved in a previous shooting. It was later determined that Hayes was not involved in that incident.

Hayes was hospitalized for about two weeks and now faces charges of evading police and driving under the influence of drugs. One deputy was also slightly wounded.

The shooting spurred anger in Compton, where bullets smashed through windows and hit houses. Distrust of law enforcement runs deep in the community known for its street violence and gangster rap.
Full: guardian.co.uk

Well the gangster rap justifies 200 shots.

Bono took the African aid campaign to Brussels today, warning European leaders due to decide next week on a plan to double EU aid to the continent over the next 10 years: “Don’t blow it.”
The U2 singer said his message also applied to the world leaders who will meet next month at the G8 summit in Scotland.

After meeting the European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, Bono argued that perhaps one of the reasons people had rejected the European constitution was because they did not feel connected to the vision of Europe promoted by politicians.

The singer, who spoke at a news conference alongside Mr Barroso after the two had met privately for half an hour, said helping Africa was a way for European people to feel such a connection.
Bono said: “I think perhaps that one of the reasons there is not support for the European constitution, the European dream, is because a lot of people don’t share it.

“I am in a band and we travel around Europe and around the world, and what we pick up from our audiences is a lack of vision from Europe. People don’t ‘feel’ Europe.”

Bono said the problem of Africa represented a chance for politicians and Europeans to “redescribe” themselves and their capabilities.
Full: guardian.co.uk

Check the imperialist discourse: the ‘problem’ of Africa exists to exalt Europe.