The oil giant Royal Dutch Shell was considering pulling out of the volatile Niger Delta region yesterday after heavily armed militants stormed one of its facilities and killed at least 17 people.

The attack early on Sunday, the latest during an upsurge of violence in the oil-rich swamp area, came only days after the kidnap of four foreign oil workers. Militant groups demanding local control of oil wealth warned Shell to withdraw immediately from the world’s eighth largest oil exporter.

The Anglo-Dutch company has already pulled out 330 employees after gunmen in speedboats overran the Benisede flow station on Sunday. “The attackers invaded the flow-station in speed boats, burnt down two staff accommodations, damaged the processing facilities and left,” Shell said in a statement yesterday.

At least 17 troops died in the attack as well as an unknown number of militants and Shell employees, said Brigadier General Elias Zamani, commander of a task force deployed by the government to try to contain spiralling violence in Nigeria’s oil-rich southern delta.

A group calling itself the the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) claimed responsibility for the recent spate of attacks in the region, including a raid on 11 January at Shell’s EA offshore platform in which four foreigners were kidnapped, and a subsequent explosion that ruptured a major oil pipeline. The group advised oil workers to leave the delta, which produces almost all Nigeria’s 2.5 million barrels a day of oil.

“It must be clear that the Nigerian government cannot protect your workers or assets. Leave our land while you can or die in it,” the group said in an e-mail statement. “Our aim is to totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil.”
indepedendent.co.uk

He began first grade even before turning five. In ninth grade, he began attending a school for gifted students. He loved physics, and thought of pursuing the subject at the university level, but his mother thought he would be better off learning a more “social” profession, one in which he would have contact with people. In 1999, when he was 17, he decided to enroll in the faculty of medicine at Al Quds University at Abu Dis for three reasons, he says: He was awarded an academic scholarship, the studies are held in English, and the campus is close to home–an hour or an hour and a half by car.

Ahmed al-Najjar, soon to be 24, and in his last year of medical school, smiles bashfully as he says “close to home.” He does not elaborate, allowing the listener to imagine the meaning of “close to home” to someone who for the past five years has not seen his family or frien! ds. Al-Najjar, who was born in Jabalya, the refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, also allows the listener to imagine how it was to be caught that same morning, Saturday, January 7, by a Border Policeman.

He tells the story: “As I do every day, I jumped off the wall to the roof of one house, and from there to the roof of a second house, then I made my way through the alleys, heading for the bus that would take me to Al-Hilal [the women’s hospital operated by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem]. But today a soldier got on the bus and checked ID cards. Luckily, he knows me. `This is the second time that I’ve caught you,’ he said. `What can I do?’ I answered. `I have to get to work at the hospital.'”

Even during his first year of medical school, when the “safe passage” between Gaza and the West Bank was still open, he made only three or f! our visits home: It was possible to take the safe passage only on Mond ays and Wednesdays, meaning not on weekends, when there are no classes. Registration was required a week in advance, and the trip–including the long wait at the checkpoints–took hours.

In October 2000, even the safe passage option was cancelled. Since then, he has seen his widowed mother twice. She developed skin cancer, and on two occasions, and with a great deal of effort, she was issued a permit to go to the West Bank for treatment.
counterpunch.org

LAST WEEK, at the annual meeting of the American Economic Assn., we presented a new estimate for the likely cost of the war in Iraq. We suggested that the final bill will be much higher than previously reckoned — between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, depending primarily on how much longer our troops stay. Putting that into perspective, the highest-grossing movie of all time, “Titanic,” earned $1.8 billion worldwide — about half the cost the U.S. incurs in Iraq every week.

Like the iceberg that hit the Titanic, the full costs of the war are still largely hidden below the surface. Our calculations include not just the money for combat operations but also the costs the government will have to pay for years to come. These include lifetime healthcare and disability benefits for returning veterans and special round-the-clock medical attention for many of the 16,300 Americans who already have been seriously wounded. We also count the increased cost of replacing military hardware because the war is using up equipment at three to five times the peacetime rate. In addition, the military must pay large reenlistment bonuses and offer higher benefits to reenlist reluctant soldiers. On top of this, because we finance the war by borrowing more money (mostly from abroad), there is a rising interest cost on the extra debt.

Our study also goes beyond the budget of the federal government to estimate the war’s cost to the economy and our society. It includes, for instance, the true economic costs of injury and death. For example, if an individual is killed in an auto or work-related accident, his family will typically receive compensation for lost earnings. Standard government estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death are about $6 million. But the military pays out far less — about $500,000. Another cost to the economy comes from the fact that 40% of our troops are taken from the National Guard and Reserve units. These troops often earn lower wages than in their civilian jobs. Finally, there are macro-economic costs such as the effect of higher oil prices — partly a result of the instability in Iraq.
latimes.com

The CIA’s recent botched attempt to kill al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman Zawahiri, in Pakistan illustrates why the Bush administration’s overly aggressive “war on terror” actually motivates terrorists to attack the United States. Certainly, capturing or killing the brains behind al Qaeda is an important goal. Unfortunately, in the U.S. method of warfare—which unduly emphasizes attrition, heavy firepower and sophisticated weaponry, even against guerrillas and terrorists—the technology of killing has outstripped the quality of human intelligence needed to hit the correct targets. The CIA’s unmanned Predator drone fired missiles that killed many Pakistani civilians, including women and children, but apparently not Zawahiri.

Making things even worse, the killing of women and children continues to spark public outrage all across Pakistan, leading to mass protests in all of Pakistan’s major cities and the trashing and burning of a U.S.-supported aid organization. Such public ire will make it even less likely that the United States will receive accurate future intelligence about where Zawahiri and his boss, Osama bin Laden, are hiding, even though the prices on their heads are substantial.

And to shore up the popularity of his war on terror at home, which has been dragged down by an incongruous, unnecessary, now unpopular war in Iraq, President Bush has combined these reckless military actions with cowboy rhetoric, which only further stoke the flames of anti-U.S. hatred among radical Islamists. Bringing back the “clash of civilizations” rhetoric used during the Cold War against the “godless Communists,” the administration is now implying that those with “too much god of an alien kind” are trying to build a worldwide empire that could again threaten the United States. The president has cast the war on Islamic terrorism as a contest between the men in white hats who advocate freedom and those with black headgear who want to create “a totalitarian Islamic empire reaching from Spain to Indonesia.”

Yet bringing back the caliphate—the political and spiritual leader of Sunni Islam who ruled a united Islamic world—is a long-term objective of even moderate Muslims. As a result, to the Muslim world, the president’s war on terror looks much like a war on Islam that threatens to make the clash of civilizations a self-fulfilling prophecy.
informationclearinghouse.info

L.A. Times: The Pakistan predicament
A quarter of a century ago, the U.S. funded and armed Islamic extremists in Pakistan to cross the border and fight the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan; when the Soviets left, the U.S. lost interest in the region. Pakistan supported the Taliban after it took over Afghanistan and gave sanctuary to Al Qaeda. After 9/11, Musharraf claimed to have reversed course and threw in his lot with the U.S.

Washington has rewarded Pakistan with a five-year, $3-billion aid package. Musharraf promised to close the madrasas — fundamentalist schools that foment anti-Americanism — but progress has been slow. And the problem doesn’t just lie with the private madrasas. The nation’s public schools use textbooks promoting violent battles against infidels. The province where Friday’s apparently botched attempt to kill Zawahiri occurred now has a pro-Taliban government, making it harder for Islamabad to search for Al Qaeda. But difficulty is not impossibility.

Iraq Interior Minister Okayed Torture: Ex-General
BAGHDAD, January 16, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Iraq’s Interior Minister Bayan Jabr Solagh and senior officials at his ministry have condoned torture and abuses of detainees, a ministry’s whistle-blower who was in charge of the special forces unit said in new statements.

Muntazar Al-Samarrai, who fled Iraq for Jordan last year, said an interior ministry squad has been set up at Solagh’s orders, which intimidated Iraqis, mostly Sunnis, and arrested scores without court warrants, Reuters reported Sunday, January 15.

“The squad was receiving orders from Solagh directly and were interrogating people without court approval,” Samarrai, a Sunni Arab with a long career in the military, told the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya news channel.

He noted that the random arrests and crackdowns were also carried out under the watchful eyes of the ministry’s senior officials.

WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Republican and Democratic senators said on Sunday the United States may ultimately have to undertake a military strike to deter Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but that should be the last resort.

“That is the last option. Everything else has to be exhausted. But to say under no circumstances would we exercise a military option, that would be crazy,” Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said there are sensitive elements of Iran’s nuclear program, which, if attacked, “would dramatically delay its development.”
alertnet.org

Iran crisis talks expose west’s split with China

Iran Has an ‘Inalienable Right’ to Nuclear Energy
Iran has an “inalienable right” to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes such as the production of electric energy, and the enrichment of uranium for its nuclear reactors. Could it be that Iran’s plan for an oil exchange trading in Euros is the real issue? Or is it Israel?

Or is it the unfolding of the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ scenario?

Spain is a wonderful country, and Madrid a great capital. In Christmas and New Year’s the city is a feast in itself where traditions have a particular charm. One of them is the King’s Cake.

Centuries ago, Louis XIV of France, who was famous among other reasons for saying “I am the state,” told his Spanish pastry chef to make him a special cake. And the Spaniard pleased His Majesty. He made a very light dough, smothered it with an exquisite cream and topped it with fruit to make something fit for angels and for meigas, the witches that roam the streets of Galicia. But he added a special treat: he hid a gold coin as prize for whomever had that particular piece of the cake.

Two days before the Magi came, on January 6, when the cake is made and sold, “Evo Morales took the King’s Cake,” as many Spaniards and Latin Americans commented in the cafés and plazas of Madrid.

That’s because when Morales visited Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, president of the government, decided to condone a large part of the Bolivian debt, approximately 90 million euros (some $120 million). There was one condition, that the sum be used, among other things, to eradicate illiteracy. Zapatero also decided to give some 60 million euros to assist in the modernization of the agricultural sector and the irrigation infrastructure.

Besides the good will of Zapatero’s administration, this “Cake” is also meant to sweeten Morales a bit, for his future policies are of great concern to Spanish businessmen due to the promise of nationalization. Several Spanish corporations have large investments in Bolivia. The oil giant Repsol-YPF, with $800 million, controls 33% of the reserves of the country’s natural gas, and Iberdrola distributes over 40% of the electric power used by Bolivians.

Evo Morales and his MAS party (Movement towards Socialism) received 54% of the votes in the December election under the banner of recovering the wealth – after Venezuela, Bolivia has the second largest reserves of natural gas in the continent.

“We want partners, not bosses,” Morales said before and after the elections. And he added that he would enforce the laws against those that have broken the rules in the energy sector. In Bolivia many foreign corporations in the oil industry have broken the law with the complicity of previous governments.
axisoflogic.com

More black students than ever are getting the boot from public schools. Things are so bad that the NAACP plans to hold public hearings nationally on the racial disparities in school discipline. It’s none to soon. In a report on school discipline, the U.S. Dept. of Education in 1999 found that while blacks made up less than twenty percent of the nation’s public school students they comprised nearly one out of three students kicked out of the schools.

Five years later nothing had changed. In a report the Children’s Defense Fund branded “Educational Apartheid in America’s Public Schools,” it found that black students are still expelled and suspended in disproportionate numbers to whites. And that’s not all. A recent study by the Advancement Project and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund on school discipline procedures in Denver, Chicago and Palm Beach County, Florida found that black students are getting expelled or suspended in high numbers, and many of them also wind up in police stations and courtrooms after being expelled.

In the past year black students have gotten dumped from classrooms or hauled off to jail for using a cell phone, talking in class, or simply calling names. And those being severely punished are getting younger. The arrest and manhandling by police of a five year old in Florida earlier this year ignited a firestorm of protest. The child’s arrest cast an even harsher glare on the stiff punishment school officials routinely dish out to black students who allegedly misbehave.
counterpunch.org

Just days before Sudanese leaders responsible for orchestrating ongoing acts of violence in Darfur host the African Union summit in Khartoum, a new report from Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) reveals, in unprecedented detail, the underreported catastrophic elimination of traditional livelihoods in Darfur, Sudan. The report, Assault on Survival: A Call for Security, Justice and Restitution, spotlights the obliteration of the means of survival and the way of life in three villages by the Government of Sudan (GOS) and its proxy militia, the Janjaweed.

During three trips to the region between May 2004 and July 2005, investigators randomly surveyed dozens of survivors from the villages of Furawiya, Bendisi and Terbeba and documented–with hundreds of photographic images as well as hand-drawn maps–compelling evidence of attacks on lives and livelihoods that PHR has assessed as genocidal.

“Killings, rape, torture and other heinous crimes against non-Arabs in Darfur are well-documented”, said PHR investigator and report author John Heffernan. “But PHR’s in-depth investigation shows that the GOS and the Janjaweed, have in a systematic way attacked the very survival of a people by destroying property, livestock, communities and families , driving victims into a terrain unable to sustain life, and then repeatedly obstructing humanitarian assistance, their only lifeline.”
axisoflogic.com

No doubt many people are glad that Ted Koppel will become a regular voice on National Public Radio. He recently ended 25 years with ABC’s “Nightline” show amid profuse media accolades. But what kind of journalist goes out of his way to voice fervent admiration for Henry Kissinger?

Days ago, NPR announced that Koppel will do several commentaries per month on “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” The Associated Press reported that “he also will serve as an analyst during breaking news and special events.”

There’s some grim irony in the statement issued by NPR’s senior vice president for programming: “Ted and NPR are a natural fit, with curiosity about the world and commitment to getting to the heart of the story. The role of news analyst has been a tradition on NPR newsmagazines and there is no one better qualified to uphold and grow that tradition than Ted.”

But “the heart of the story” about U.S. foreign policy has often involved deceptions from Washington. And since Koppel became a prominent journalist, he has been a fervent booster of one of the most prodigious and murderous deceivers in U.S. history.

“Henry Kissinger is, plain and simply, the best secretary of state we have had in 20, maybe 30 years — certainly one of the two or three great secretaries of state of our century,” Koppel said in an interview (quoted in Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1989). Koppel added: “I’m proud to be a friend of Henry Kissinger. He is an extraordinary man. This country has lost a lot by not having him in a position of influence and authority.”
commondreams.org

Celebrated writer Arundhati Roy on Saturday refused to accept the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award in protest against the Indian Government toeing the US line by “violently and ruthlessly pursuing policies of brutalisation of industrial workers, increasing militarisation and economic neo-liberalisation”.

“I have a great deal of respect for the Sahitya Akademi, for the members of this year’s Jury and for many of the writers who have received these awards in the past. But to register my protest and reaffirm my disagreement — indeed my absolute disgust — with these policies of the Indian Government, I must refuse to accept the 2005 Sahtiya Akademi Award”, Arundhati said in a statement here.

“These essays written between 1998 and 2001 are deeply critical of some of the major policies of the Indian State”, she said. The main area of her disgreement included the government policies of constructing big dams, persuing nuclear weapons, increasing militarisation and economic liberalisation.
commondreams.org