Part of apartheid involved destroying people’s aspirations,” says Thebe Medupe, a South African astronomer. “Imagine being a black child and all the time reading about other peoples’ histories and other peoples’ way of doing things. You start having doubts about whether you played any role in human history.”

Medupe grew up in a rural village in northwest South Africa. When he was 13, he built a telescope. “I remember the first night I pointed the telescope toward the Moon,” he says. “It was amazing to see the craters, the valleys, and the mountains. Since that time I knew that my career was going to be in astronomy.”

Today, Medupe, 32, who earned a PhD in physics at the University of Cape Town, is a researcher at the South African Astronomical Observatory. On top of his research on variable stars, Medupe explores cultural astronomy and historical scientific activity in Africa. In the 2003 documentary film Cosmic Africa, Medupe visits indigenous peoples across the continent to learn about the form and significance that astronomy takes in their cultures. His latest project involves scouring ancient manuscripts from Timbuktu, Mali, for references to science and math.
physicstoday.org

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chávez is spending billions of dollars of his country’s oil windfall on pet projects abroad, aimed at setting up his leftist government as a political counterpoint to the conservative Bush administration in the region.

Mr. Chávez has been subsidizing samba parades in Brazil, eye surgery for poor Mexicans and even heating fuel for poor families from Maine to the Bronx to Philadelphia. By some estimates, the spending now surpasses the nearly $2 billion Washington allocates annually to pay for development programs and the drug war in western South America.

The new spending has given more power to a leader who has been provocatively building a bulwark against what he has called American imperialistic aims in Latin America. Mr. Chávez frequently derides Mr. Bush and his top aides. In March, he called Mr. Bush a “donkey,” a “drunkard” and a “coward,” daring him to invade the country.

But with the biggest oil reserves outside the Middle East, Mr. Chávez is more than an irritant. He is fast rising as the next Fidel Castro, a hero to the masses who is intent on opposing every move the United States makes, but with an important advantage.

“He’s managed to do what Fidel Castro never could,” said Stephen Johnson, a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “Castro never had an independent source of income the way Chávez does. Chávez is filling a void that Castro left for him, leading nonaligned nations.”

It remains unclear exactly how much the government has spent, because the state oil giant, Petróleos de Venezuela, has not made detailed financial records public, and its balance sheets have been shielded from independent audits. Mega-projects, like Mr. Chávez’s utopian plan of building a gas pipeline through the Amazon from Venezuela to Argentina, are not likely to materialize.
nytimes.com

Yeah pet projects like delivering home fuel to poor people, teaching people to read, medical care…Just because in the US mind, ‘pet project’ amounts to self-indulgent pork barrel doesn’t mean every outlay of cash for projects is suspicious. But this is the usual Times’ take on Chavez, and reveals their role as government shill.

LIMA, Peru, April 3 — In another move against foreign oil companies, Venezuela’s populist government said Monday that it had taken control of fields operated by two European energy giants after they challenged new rules that give the state extensive control over 32 mostly marginal fields that, until now, had been managed by foreign multinationals.

The action, which happened Saturday, takes over fields from Total of France and Eni of Italy and it came just days after Venezuela’s energy minister, Rafael Ramírez, publicly said that Exxon Mobil was not welcome in Venezuela after a dispute over the company’s stake in the minor Quiamare-La Ceiba field.

To avoid new terms that gave the state a majority stake in the field, Exxon Mobil sold its stake to Repsol of Spain, though Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, still holds a 42 percent stake in a much larger heavy-oil project at Cerro Negro.

Last week, the National Assembly, which is completely controlled by President Hugo Chávez, approved a system governing how the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, will control projects that account for about one-fifth of Venezuela’s oil production. The system, which gives the state at least a 60 percent stake in projects where foreign oil companies were once paid production fees, was signed on Monday by 16 companies that include Petrobras of Brazil, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell.

But Total and Eni, the third- and fourth-largest European oil companies, were unable to reach deals with the government before Friday’s deadline, prompting Venezuela to announce it had taken control of their fields.
nytimes.com

JAKARTA, Indonesia, April 2 — Titus Natkime, 31, the son of a tribal leader who encountered the first Americans to walk into the wilderness of Papua nearly 50 years ago, was clearly upset with his employer the American mining company, Freeport-McMoRan.

For generations, Mr. Natkime’s clan has laid claim to much of the land in Papua, the Indonesian province where Freeport mines some of the world’s largest copper and gold reserves. Now it was time for a payback, he said.
nytimes.com

The eruption of the Indian and Chinese economies could shift the balance of power sharply in favour of capital in the rich world.

A piece of conventional wisdom about the world dear to economists is that the share of national income going to workers stays pretty stable. Karl Marx disagreed; he argued that labour-saving capital investment would limit demand for labour, while also bankrupting small-scale producers, in agriculture for example. They would swell the labour supply, creating a permanent “reserve army of labour” that would prevent real wages growing as fast as labour productivity. Workers would thus spend an increasing proportion of working time producing profits for capitalists – a falling share for labour or a rising rate of exploitation, in Marx’s terminology.
guardian.co.uk

The bizarre scuffle Wednesday between Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) and an unnamed U.S. Capitol Police officer is winning the spirited congresswoman few new friends in her caucus. In fact, some Democrats are trying to distance themselves from her.

McKinney has been aggressively publicizing the incident, calling press conferences on each of the past two business days and even attracting a mention on the front page of The New York Times, something that the dozens of House and Senate Democrats combined couldn’t match when they unveiled their homeland-security plan last week.

Now, with McKinney facing a possible arrest warrant, the media frenzy is set only to escalate. The U.S. Capitol Police referred the issue to the U.S. District Attorney’s office for prosecution yesterday.

All of the attention has some Democrats concerned that McKinney is drawing the limelight away from their policy goals and Republicans’ ethical missteps to focus on a momentary, disputed encounter in a Capitol Hill hallway.

“There’s been a lot of eye-rolling,” said an aide to a moderate Democrat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The national attention it’s been getting has been unfortunate. It’s becoming a distraction.”

A Democratic strategist concurred.

“This isn’t the view of Democrats that we want to project in the tough races, one of victims and race-baiting,” the strategist said.

McKinney often elicits strong opinions, even within her own caucus. She has a history of making controversial statements that delight progressives while irking moderates, yet even some of the caucus’s more progressive members have had disagreements with her.

She and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) no longer speak, not even to exchange greetings when encountering each other in the Capitol hallways, said two House Democratic sources. Pelosi twice turned down McKinney’s request to regain her seniority after she was defeated and then reelected in 2002 and 2004. McKinney first came to Congress in 1992.
thehill.com

She questioned the official story of 9-11, was a lone voice against this war, lost her seat, and won it back again. All without the help of the Democratic Party. She sure doesn’t need them now. The view they want to project…please.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Bush administration wants to bury tens of thousands more tons of nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain dump in Nevada than is now allowed – part of a package of new proposals meant to spur development of the long-delayed dump.

Legislation unveiled by Energy Department officials Tuesday proposes lifting the 77,000-ton storage cap on the dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and allowing as much waste as the mountain can safely hold. That figure has been estimated by federal environmental impact studies at 132,000 tons; but in a letter to the Senate to introduce the bill, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said it could rise even higher.

Some 55,000 tons of nuclear waste are already waiting at utility sites around the country. Lifting the waste cap would postpone indefinitely the need for the Energy Department to find a site for a second nuclear waste dump, the department said.
guardian.co.uk

WASHINGTON: Charles McArthur Emmanuel, son of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, has been arrested in Miami, days after his father was handed over to a war crimes tribunal in West Africa.

Mr Emmanuel, a US citizen, led Liberian forces responsible for Taylor’s security until he went into exile in 2003, according to an affidavit filed in the Federal Court in Miami.

Mr Emmanuel, 29, also known as Charles “Chuckie” Taylor Jr, was on a UN list of Liberians whose travel was restricted. He served his father in Liberia for the duration of Taylor’s rule, from 1977 until August 2003, the affidavit said, citing an interview with Mr Emmanuel’s mother.
theaustralian.news.com.au

Wow. He must have been an amazing baby.

Taylor finally takes the stand in Sierra Leone to deny war crimes
Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, has appeared in the dock at a UN-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone in a historic precedent for Africa.

It is the first time a former African president has been brought to trial to face charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes on a continent notoriously reluctant to judge its own leaders.

Oh brother. Well rest assured, the Europeans will step in to judge them.

Peshawar, Pakistan — A pickup packed with fundamentalist fighters rolls through Wana, a troubled town in Pakistan’s northern tribal belt. Some fearful residents call the vehicle “Azrael” — the Angel of Death.

“It moves freely through the bazaar; nobody dares stop it. They use it to kill people accused of being American spies or anti-Islamic elements,” said Lateef Afridi, a tribal lawyer and opposition politician in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier province.

The dramatic rise of the self-described Pakistani Taliban in recent months has triggered alarm among Pakistan’s leaders and marked a significant setback in the American-driven war on Islamic militancy.
sfgate.com

Nine die in Waziristan incidents
Nine people have been killed in three separate incidents in Pakistan’s restive Waziristan tribal area, near the Afghan border, officials say.
Four people, including two women, were killed when their vehicle struck a landmine in Dattakhel near North Waziristan’s Miranshah town.

Two militants were killed in a clash with security forces in Mirali town.

And a woman and two children were killed in a blast at their South Waziristan home. The cause was unclear.

United Nations aid organizations are warning that the Gaza Strip is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster due to a lack of money and food.

David Shearer, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told Foreign Ministry officials that if there is no significant change in the situation, Gaza will face a humanitarian crisis as bad as the one in Kosovo.

A report by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) warns of a lack of basic food supplies due to the frequent closures of the Karni crossing that are preventing goods from reaching Gaza from Egypt. The report also said there has been a significant increase in the number of hungry people since financial aid has been halted.

World Bank statistics show that if there is no dramatic change, 75 percent of Palestinians will be below the poverty line within two years. The current rate is 56 percent, compared to 22 percent in 2000.
haaretzdaily.com