Developments in Iraq, March 18
* KIRKUK - The U.S. military said in a statement that the head of the Iraqi armed forces was in a convoy struck by a roadside bomb near Kirkuk on Thursday, but escaped injury. In the initial report on Thursday, Iraqi police said General Babakir Zebari, Iraq's chief of staff, was not in the motorcade, although it was comprised of vehicles he normally used. Three Iraqi soldiers were wounded in the attack, the U.S. military said on Saturday.
BAGHDAD - The bodies of 16 victims of shootings were found in different areas of the capital, police said.
BAQUBA - Two gunmen were killed and 18 suspects arrested when the Iraqi army launched a search operation near Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, the Iraqi military said.
DUJAIL - Two civilians were found dead inside their car near Dujail, 50 km north of Baghdad on Saturday. The bodies of two brothers were also found in the same area on Friday, police said.
BAIJI - A police officer and his brother were killed by gunmen in Baiji, 180 km north of Baghdad, police said.
TIKRIT - Two U.S. soldiers were killed and another wounded in an attack northwest of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, on Thursday, the U.S. military said.
BAGHDAD - Five Iraqi soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Three policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in northern Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Two pilgrims walking to the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala were killed and eight wounded by a roadside bomb in southern Baghdad, police said.
alertnet.orgBombs, bullets meet Shiite pilgrims in Iraq BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Muslim pilgrims' road to the holy city of Karbala was a highway of bullets and bombs for Shiites on Friday.
Drive-by shootings and roadside and bus bombs killed or injured 19 people, ratcheting up the sectarian tensions gripping Iraq.
Security forces, including U.S. armored reinforcements, girded for more bloodshed leading up to Monday's Shiite holiday. And north of Baghdad, in the Sunni Triangle, a two-day-old operation involving 1,500 U.S. and Iraqi troops swept through an area near Samarra in search of insurgents.
It was in Samarra that the insurgent bombing of a Shiite shrine last month ignited days of violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. More than 500 people died.
Authorities had feared new attacks as tens of thousands of Shiites, many dressed in black and carrying religious banners, converge on Karbala, 50 miles south of the capital, for Monday's 40th and final day of mourning for Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson.
The U.S. military announced this week it was dispatching a fresh battalion of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, about 700 troops, to Iraq from its base in Kuwait to provide extra security for Shiite holy cities and Baghdad during this period.
Friday's bloodshed in Baghdad began as groups of faithful, many of them parents with children in tow, trekked down city streets headed for the southbound highway to Karbala.
Four U.S. Soldiers Die, Four Others Wounded in Explosion in Iraq
rootsie on 03.19.06 @ 08:22 AM CST [
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Saturday, March 18th
Eduardo Galeano: Abracadabra, Uruguay's Desaparecidos Begin to Appear
Every 14 of March Uruguayans who were prisoners of the dictatorship celebrate the Day of the Liberated.
It's something more than a coincidence.
The disappeared, who are beginning to appear, Ubagesner Chaves, Fernando Miranda, call us to struggle for the liberation of memory, which continues to be imprisoned.
Our country wants to stop being a sanctuary of impunity, the impunity of murderers, the impunity of thieves, the impunity of liars, and we're turning this direction, at last, after so many years, taking the first steps.
This is not the end of the road. It is the beginning. It was costly but we are beginning the hard and necessary transit to the liberation of memory in a country that seemed to be condemned to a state of perpetual amnesia.
All of us who are here share the hope that sooner, rather than later, there will be memory and there will be justice because history teaches us that memory can stubbornly survive all its prisons and that justice can be more powerful than fear when people give it aid.
The dignity of memory, the memory of dignity.
In the unequal combat against fear, in that combat that each one of us fights every day, what would become of us without the memory of dignity?
The world is suffering an alarming disparagement of dignity. The undignified, those who rule in this world, say that the undignified are the prehistoric, nostalgic, romantic, those who deny reality.
Every day, everywhere, we hear the eulogy to opportunism and the identification of realism with cynicism; the realism that requires elbowing and forbids the embrace; the realism of screw everything and fix it as you can and if not screw you.
The realism, too, of fatalism. This is the worst of the many ghosts seen today in our progressive government, here in Uruguay, and in other progressive governments of Latin America. The fatalism, perverse colonial inheritance, which forces us to believe that reality can be repeated, but it can't be changed, that what was is, and will be, that tomorrow is nothing more than another name for today.
But could it be that they weren't real, these men and women who have struggled and who struggle to change reality, those who have believed and believe that reality doesn,t demand obedience? Aren't they real, Ubagesner Chaves and Fernando Miranda and all the others who are arriving from the bottom of the earth and time to testify to another possible reality? And all those who hoped and wished with them, weren't they, and don't they continue to be, real? Were the hangmen not real, were the victims not real, were the sacrifices of so many people in this country that the dictatorship turned into the greatest torture chamber of the world not real?
Reality is a challenge.
We are not condemned to choose between the same and the same.
Reality is real because it invites us to change it and not because it forces us to accept it. Reality opens spaces of freedom and doesn't necessarily enclose us in the cages of fatalism.
The poet has well said that a single rooster doesn't weave the morning.
This Creole with a strange name, Ubagesner, wasn't alone in life nor is he alone in death; today he is a symbol of our land and our people.
This militant worker embodies the sacrifice of many compatriots who believed in our country and our people and risked their lives for this faith.
We have come to tell them it was worth the effort.
We have come to tell them that, dead, they will never die.
We are gathered today to tell them that the tangos we hear tell us that life is short but there are lives that are startlingly long because they continue in others, in those who will come.
Sooner or later we, walkers, will be walked on by the steps of others, just as our steps are taken in the footprints other steps left behind.
Now when the owners of the world have forced us to repent of all passion, now when style makes life so cold and barren, now is a good time to recall that little word that we all remember from childhood tales, "abracadabra," the magic word that opened all the doors, that word, abracadabra which meant in ancient Hebrew, "Send your fire to the end."
Today, more than a funeral, this is a celebration. We are celebrating the living memory of Ubagesner and all those generous men and women who, in this country, sent their fire to the end; those who continue to help us to not lose our way and not to accept the unacceptable and not to ever resign ourselves and never to step down from the beautiful little horse of dignity.
Because in the most difficult hours, in those days of enmity, in the years of the grime and fear of the military dictatorship, these people knew how to live and give themselves entirely and they did so without asking for anything in exchange, as if their lives sang that old Andalucian copla that said, and still says and will always say, "My hands are empty, but they are mine."
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 10:18 AM CST [
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Latin America Unchained
For decades the International Monetary Fund (IMF) served as one of the key pillars of the "Washington Consensus." Dominated by the White House, the Fund allowed successive administrations to control the economic policy of poorer countries in this hemisphere and beyond. Those nations wishing to buck a U.S. agenda of corporate globalization risked having their access to international loans cut off. The brutish IMF not only handled its own funds but also played gatekeeper for money from other creditors, such as the regional development banks. This power made the institution as hated throughout the global South as it was celebrated inside the Beltway.
Maybe it's not surprising, then, that an increasingly progressive Latin America is starting to say good riddance.
tompaine.com
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 10:14 AM CST [
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Cuba Demands America Return Guantanamo Bay
ON February 7, 1901, [Cuban] President Tomás Estrada Palma [] signed the agreement ceding Cuban territory to the United States in order for it to construct a naval base in Guantanamo.
Guantanamo Bay is one of the country's deepest and largest bays. Christopher Columbus discovered it during his second voyage to the New World on April 30, 1494. It has some very special natural characteristics: it is extremely deep, it is secure and it has the capacity to receive large ships.
For centuries, it was virtually abandoned, as the Spanish colonizers were incapable of appreciating its virtues.
After an attempt by the British to occupy the Bay in July, 1741, in the hope of establishing a base of operations there, the colonial government finally understood the site's strategic importance.
U.S. REFOCUSSES ON CUBA
In the early 19th century, when it realized the value of the island's geographic location, natural resources, its historical, economic and social characteristics, as well as those of its population, the United States publicly expressed its interest in taking over Cuba.
Attempts to buy the island from Spain were made in 1805, 1807 and 1808, but according to the Central Report of the First Congress of the Communist Party, "if Spanish obstinacy ever served Cuba's cause, it was in its systematic refusal to agree to the buying and selling that the United States had repeatedly proposed during the last century."
In 1823, John Quincy Adams, the U.S. secretary of state, articulated the "ripe fruit" thesis, holding that Cuba would inevitably fall into U.S. hands as soon as it was no longer a Spanish colony. And that same year, President James Monroe developed the doctrine that bears his name, warning the European powers that America was reserved solely and exclusively "for the Americans." At the same time, for years his country obstructed and discouraged attempts by the Cuban people to achieve independence.
In 1895, U.S. investments on the island totaled some 50 million pesos, particularly in the sugar and tobacco industries, along with iron, chrome and manganese deposits.
Thus, in 1898, the Americans understood that the imminent end of Spanish colonial rule and before the unstoppable advance of the Liberation Army was a propitious time to intervene in the Spanish-Cuban war.
Taking advantage of the growing sympathy among North Americans for Cuba's cause, the U.S. Congress in April 1898 approved a Joint Resolution that brought about the Northern giant's intervention in the conflict.
The Spanish-Cuban-U.S. War, described as the first imperialist war of pillage, was centered primarily in the eastern provinces of Cuba and the Guantanamo region. On July 16, 1898, the terms of surrender were signed, and on December 10 of that same year, the Treaty of Paris was signed. The United States took control of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam; Cuba remained as "special territory," from which the Americans were to withdraw after the "appeasement."
The administrative government, with General Leonard Wood at the head, convened a Constituent Assembly charged with drawing up the Constitution for the future republic. But in order to firmly establish relations between Cuba and the United States, the occupying forces brought heavy pressure to bear and imposed the notorious Platt Amendment, with two clauses that atrociously encroached on Cuba's national sovereignty and which had serious implications for the nascent republic's self-determination.
Clause 3 of the Amendment reserved the right of the United States to intervene for the preservation of Cuba's independence and the support of a government appropriate to its interests, while Clause 7 forced Cuba to cede part of its territory for the establishment of naval bases or coaling stations [for the loading of coal into rail cars].
Historian Miguel D'Estéfano Pissani, in his book Derecho de Tratados (Treaty Law), explains: "The Platt Amendment became a Sword of Damocles, whose edges were the naval and coaling concessions. The strength of the Constitutional appendix was based, precisely, on the military base clause."
On November 8, 1902, the U.S. government asked for a permanent lease of land in the bays of Nipe, Honda, Cienfuegos and Guantanamo. But due to the violent reaction of the people, it was limited to the Honda and Guantanamo Bays.
One of the most outstanding individuals of our independence struggle, Juan Gualberto Gómez, made his voice heard, warning that Articles 3 and 7 of the Platt Amendment "... were the same as handing the keys of our house over to the Americans, so that they could come in at any hour ... day or night, with good or bad intentions ..." and that "... its purpose is none other than to reduce the power of future Cuban governments and the sovereignty of our Republic."
Finally, after a series of negotiations, on December 10, 1903, the United States took possession of the territory for its naval base in Guantanamo. Via a supplementary agreement signed on July 2, 1903, the U.S. government promised to pay 2,000 pesos per year in U.S. gold (about $4,085 at today's prices), a laughable sum that Washington would continue to deposit, but which Cuba has refused to accept or cash since the triumph of the Revolution in 1959.
According to Doctor Fernando Alvarez Tabío, in his article "La Base Naval de Guantanamo y el derecho Internacional" (The Guantanamo Naval Base and International Law"), the leasing contract for the naval base lacks legality and juridical validity because it is marred in its essential elements: ... due to the inability of the Cuban government to cede a piece of its national territory in perpetuity ... and because the consent was snatched via irresistible and unjust moral violence...
Rejecting Honda Bay, the United States concentrated on Guantanamo. That choice was due to a strategic objective. Because of its exceptional value and geographic characteristics, it made it possible to assure military predominance in the Caribbean and fix its eyes on Panama's inter-ocean canal, for which it had obtained the construction rights that year as well, in 1903.
A CENTURY OF INFAMY
During its century of existence, the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo has been the scene of shameful episodes and events.
Once the base was established, U.S. capital investment rose, first with the construction of the base's vital water supply, and then in the sugar industry, railroads and electrical power. Gambling, prostitution and contraband proliferated with the arrival of the Marines, and became lucrative businesses for the national bourgeoisie.
The enclave's presence also had repercussions on the region's political life. In 1917, 1919 and 1922, the Marines were sent out from the base to "protect" the sugar mills and other U.S. economic interests in response to the revolt by the Partido Independiente de Color (Colored Independence Party), the Chambelona uprising and that of the liberals against the Menocal government.
During the final liberation war led by Fidel and the Rebel Army, the base was used as a supply point for the Batista dictatorship's air force, which indiscriminately bombed and fired on farmers and other civilians in the liberated zones. The base was also a launching point for U.S. troops invading other countries, like Haiti in 1915 and the Dominican Republic in 1918.
After the revolutionary triumph in January 1959, the base became a refuge for the old regime's murderers and torturers, and has been used as a platform for aggression against Cuba, including infiltration by enemy agents; the protection of counterrevolutionary bands; pretexts for justifying direct aggression against the island; a center of radio-electronic espionage and a point of concentration for ships and planes enabling sudden naval blockades to be imposed on the island.
Throughout these years, the military enclave has been the center of provocations and violations of our nation, and against the Border Guards responsible for patrolling the outer perimeter. According to official figures, from 1962 to August 1992, more than 13,000 such incidents have been registered, including shots fired with rifles and pistols (taking the lives of two Cuban Border Guards); aiming with machine guns, tanks and cannons; the throwing of objects; obscene gestures; breaking through the border fence and violating air and maritime space with ships, planes and helicopters.
The most recent ugly episode in the base's history is its use as a prison, where more than 500 detainees accused of being terrorists or having links to terrorism have been held and subject to physical and psychological torture, without the right to legal assistance or a decent trial. The world has been shaken by the spine-chilling images of chained men being subject to extreme degradation and force fed after waging a hunger strike to protest conditions in the prison, where they are denied access to their lawyers, humanitarian organizations or the United Nations.
The Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, approved by the people on February 24, 1976, says in Article 11 that our country "... rejects and considers null and void the treaties, pacts or concessions agreed to under unequal or unknown conditions or that diminish its sovereignty or territorial integrity."
Thus, Cuba demands the return of that territory because, as Fidel affirmed, "... That base is in their possession against the will of our people ... it is a dagger thrust into the heart of Cuba's land ..."
watchingamerica.com
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 10:11 AM CST [
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Two U.S. Soldiers Die in Honduras Accident
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - A speeding bus crashed into a small van carrying a group of U.S. soldiers in northern Honduras, killing two and injuring one, authorities said Thursday.
The accident happened Wednesday near the village of Agua Caliente, on the Atlantic coast 220 miles north of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, Transport Police Commissioner Jose Luis Flores said.
The U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa declined to confirm the identities of the victims pending notification of next of kin.
Flores said the driver of the bus was speeding before he crashed into the van carrying the soldiers. The soldier driving the van was unable to avoid the collision.
The bus driver was uninjured but was immediately detained by police.
The soldiers were traveling from La Ceiba to the industrial city of San Pedro Sula, Flores said. They had been participating in joint military exercises with their Honduran counterparts for the past month.
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 10:05 AM CST [
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Not '68, but French Youths Hear Similar Cry to Rise Up
PARIS, March 16 — Once again, students are on the barricades in France, evoking comparisons to the uprising of May 1968. But this is not a revolt. It is not 1968 revisited.
Certainly, students are taking to the streets and shutting down universities, and tear gas penetrated the heart of Paris.
On Thursday, hundreds of thousands of protesters, most of them students, filled the streets and marched in cities throughout France. With teachers, workers, labor union leaders, the jobless, even retirees beginning to join in, an even larger nationwide protest is planned for Saturday.
And the images of cheering students occupying the 17th-century Sorbonne, the birthplace of the 1968 revolt, last Friday night called forth memories of that exhilarating, romantic leftist youth movement 38 springs ago.
But the students' goal this time is far more modest. They want the abolition of a new law, the First Employment Contract, which aims to increase hiring by allowing employers to fire new workers without cause in their first two years.
"We're not back there in '68," said Nadjet Boubakeur, a 26-year-old history major at a public university here and a leader of the student movement UNEF. "Our revolt is not to get more. It's to keep what we have."
nytimes.com
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 10:00 AM CST [
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The time for accounting
Tony Blair's announcement that he will henceforward account only to God for the Iraq war makes perfect sense. Every secular reason he has concocted for the catastrophe has turned out to be the reverse of the truth: there were no weapons of mass destruction, we are less safe from terrorism, the Iraqi people themselves do not want us in their country. No more of his excuses for this epic man-made disaster stand an earthly chance of being believed.
As the third anniversary of the calamity draws close, the final argument used by what little remains of the brave army of pro-war punditry that set out with the prime minister in 2003 has gone belly up. Far from preventing a civil war, the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq is provoking one. It is doing so through its divide-and-rule strategy, which has entrenched and inflamed the Sunni-Shia divide beyond anything in Iraq's history, and through its refusal to afford Iraqis the unfettered exercise of national sovereignty, which is the only framework for overcoming such differences.
There is scarcely even a pretence that Iraq is permitted such sovereignty at present. Both Jack Straw and the US ambassador to Baghdad have recently been instructing the Iraqis as to what sort of government they must form - three months after the supposedly decisive national elections took place.
And all this to the accompaniment of unabated violence. Reliable estimates for violent civilian deaths under the occupation range well over 100,000. Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, has had to flee the country after revealing that more than 7,000 people had been killed, often after torture, by officers of the US-supervised interior ministry. The carnage continues: more families will be burying their dead this morning after yesterday's 50-warplane assault on Samarra by the US - the biggest yet and clearest possible demonstration of the occupation's brutality and failure.
It defies common sense to suppose that the only torture and degradation of civilians carried out by US and British troops has been that caught on camera at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. No wonder Iraqi local authorities now refuse to deal with the British army in the south.
The pledge that all this suffering would at least assist a solution to the Palestinian question has proved painfully hollow, with the Israelis ram-raiding a Palestinian prison in Jericho - just like British troops in Basra. But still the war junkies seem to believe one more hit - this time against Iran - will lead to the breakthrough to the docile Middle East they desire. Straw's assertion that it is "inconceivable" has found no echo in Washington or Jerusalem. Almost every Iranian agrees that aggression will consolidate support for the regime in Tehran. It will certainly cost many more lives and inflame Muslims everywhere.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 09:57 AM CST [
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Poll: Americans slightly favor plan to censure
A new poll finds that a plurality of Americans favor plans to censure President George W. Bush, while a surprising 42% favor moves to actually impeach the President.
A poll taken March 15, 2006 by American Research Group found that among all adults, 46% favor Senator Russ Feingold's (D-WI) plan to censure President George W. Bush, while just 44% are opposed. Approval of the plan grows slightly when the sample is narrowed to voters, up to 48% in favor of the Senate censuring the sitting president.
Even more shocking is that just 57% of Republicans are opposed to the move, with 14% still undecided and 29% actually in favor. Fully 70% of Democrats want to see Bush censured.
More surprising still: The poll found fully 43% of voters in favor of actually impeaching the President, with just 50% of voters opposed. While only 18% of Republicans surveyed wanted to see Bush impeached, 61% of Democrats and 47% of Independents reported they wanted to see the House move ahead with the Conyers (D-MI) resolution.
The poll, taken March 13-15, had a 3% margin of error.
rawstory.com
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 09:52 AM CST [
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The Israel Lobby
For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.
Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.
Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.
Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for military purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel is allowed to use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence industry. It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the US opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. Moreover, the US has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel’s side when negotiating peace. The Nixon administration protected it from the threat of Soviet intervention and resupplied it during the October War. Washington was deeply involved in the negotiations that ended that war, as well as in the lengthy ‘step-by-step’ process that followed, just as it played a key role in the negotiations that preceded and followed the 1993 Oslo Accords. In each case there was occasional friction between US and Israeli officials, but the US consistently supported the Israeli position. One American participant at Camp David in 2000 later said: ‘Far too often, we functioned . . . as Israel’s lawyer.’ Finally, the Bush administration’s ambition to transform the Middle East is at least partly aimed at improving Israel’s strategic situation.
This extraordinary generosity might be understandable if Israel were a vital strategic asset or if there were a compelling moral case for US backing. But neither explanation is convincing. One might argue that Israel was an asset during the Cold War. By serving as America’s proxy after 1967, it helped contain Soviet expansion in the region and inflicted humiliating defeats on Soviet clients like Egypt and Syria. It occasionally helped protect other US allies (like King Hussein of Jordan) and its military prowess forced Moscow to spend more on backing its own client states. It also provided useful intelligence about Soviet capabilities.
Backing Israel was not cheap, however, and it complicated America’s relations with the Arab world. For example, the decision to give $2.2 billion in emergency military aid during the October War triggered an Opec oil embargo that inflicted considerable damage on Western economies. For all that, Israel’s armed forces were not in a position to protect US interests in the region. The US could not, for example, rely on Israel when the Iranian Revolution in 1979 raised concerns about the security of oil supplies, and had to create its own Rapid Deployment Force instead.
The first Gulf War revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a strategic burden. The US could not use Israeli bases without rupturing the anti-Iraq coalition, and had to divert resources (e.g. Patriot missile batteries) to prevent Tel Aviv doing anything that might harm the alliance against Saddam Hussein. History repeated itself in 2003: although Israel was eager for the US to attack Iraq, Bush could not ask it to help without triggering Arab opposition. So Israel stayed on the sidelines once again.
Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, US support has been justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist groups originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by ‘rogue states’ that back these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is taken to mean not only that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the US should go after countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are America’s enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.
‘Terrorism’ is not a single adversary, but a tactic employed by a wide array of political groups. The terrorist organisations that threaten Israel do not threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them (as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or ‘the West’; it is largely a response to Israel’s prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits.
lrb.co.uk
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 09:49 AM CST [
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Braids of Faith at Baba's Temple: A Hindu-Muslim Idyll
VARANASI, India — They came to banish ghosts, find a cure for eczema, seek succor for a cheating husband or an unruly child. Their feet bare, their heads covered, the believers, both Hindu and Muslim, entered the shrine in droves, stopping only to kiss each stair.
That was the scene March 9 at the tomb of Hazarat Syed Baba Bahadur Shahid, a Muslim, two days after homemade bombs tore through a Hindu temple and a railway station here in Hinduism's holiest city, raising the specter of Hindu-Muslim violence.
But such violence did not come to pass. Indeed, the scene at the Bahadur Shahid shrine served as a reminder of a fact often obscured by the spasms of ruthless sectarian violence that strike India: that after living cheek by jowl here for so many centuries, Hindus and Muslims often find themselves quietly braided together in worship as in daily life.
nytimes.com
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 09:43 AM CST [
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US-Iraqi assault seeks out rural rebels, but finds few
...Pentagon officials said the air assault, part of Operation Swarmer, was the largest since April 2003 when the 101st Airborne Division launched an air assault from Iskandiriya to Mosul, shortly after the US-led invasion of Iraq.
On Friday, US and Iraqi troops could be seen purposefully moving through fields sown with winter wheat, searching isolated farm buildings US officials say may harbor scores of insurgents, including foreign fighters linked to Al-Qaeda.
While 48 people were detained and six weapons caches found, no insurgents have yet been encountered, US forces said.
But the deputy governor of Salaheddin province, Abdullah Hussein, suggested at least one key insurgent leader, whom he named as Jaish Mohammed, had been apprehended.
"The rebels in the area are a mix of local nationals and foreign fighters," Hussein added. "We have their voices recorded along with their names and pictures."
"There has been no contact with the insurgents," admitted Major John Calahan of the 101st Airborne Division, a unit specializing in helicopter-borne air assaults that spearheaded the sweep.
"The aim of the operation is to dissuade anti-Iraqi forces from taking sanctuary here," he said, adding that 60 helicopters were involved in the operation.
bakutoday.netCrazy crazy crazy AL-SADR FORMS SHADOW GOVERNMENT IN BAGHDAD STRONGHOLD Erbil, 16 March (AKI) - A Kurdish source in Baghdad has told a Kurdish national daily that the Mahdi Army, the militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, " has set up a shadow government in Sadr City in the centre of Baghdad". The source told the Aso daily: "this group was tasked with carrying out the affairs of the city in the place of the Iraqi government and institutions." The source explained that the Mahdi Army, accused of kidnappings and sectarian killings, has transformed the rundown Sadr city into an independent district with its security forces and its own courts which do not only judge local residents but also Shiites from other areas of the capital.
The source alleged that "the health and transport ministers, which both are headed by minsiters from the Sadr faction, have been completely monopolised by followers of this movement" adding that "in Sadr City the police forces, for example the local police, take their orders from Moqtada al-Sadr and not from the interior ministry."
The Cultural Network of Iraq, an internet site which publishes news on the Shiite community, has said that "the peoples courts in Sadr City have condemned to death terrorists who carried out massacres in the city."
The former government of Iyad Allawi and the movement of al-Sadr,. who has headed two lengthly revolts against the US-led coalition forces, clashed over these courts, which have special police forces and prisons. When the authorities in Baghdad tried to close them down and disband the militias they failed.
The power of Sadr's militia and his huge constituency of loyal Shiite voters have made him a growing force in Iraq.
America Switches Sides in Iraq War While President Bush was threatening Iran on Monday, he blamed the Iraqi Shiites and Iran for the insurgency. According to the AFP, Bush said that:
"Tehran has been responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-coalition attacks by providing Shia militia with the capability to build improvised explosive devices in Iraq."
I know what you're thinking: President Bush is so stupid that giant mistakes like this should just be taken with a grain of salt. Even if he's lashing out at Iran for intervening in the affairs of the Iraqi Shia, surely he's not blaming the "improvised explosive devices" that are killing American soldiers and Marines in Iraq on the Shia. ... Wrong. That's exactly what he was doing.
"Asked about the linkage to Shiite forces, two US officials who declined to be named pointed to previously reported ties between the government of Iran and radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr."
The first problem is that the next day General Pace said he had no evidence whatsoever to back up the president's false assertions and Secretary Rumsfeld just dissembled. The second is that the last time al-Sadr's Mahdi Army was in violent conflict with the US was back in August of 2004 and the roadside bomb was not their tactic, those have been the tool of the home-grown Sunni insurgency which is led by the ex-Ba'athists and the recently under fire foreign fighter jihadist types.
Though al-Sadr has openly threatened war if America were to bomb Iran, he had been known as the leader of the least Iran-loyal faction among the Iraqi Shia, denouncing the federalism in the new constitution, and insisting on Iraqi nationalism regardless of religion and ethnicity. Recently, his political fortunes have been said to be on the rise, and though that may be in conflict with some genius's plan to spread the war, a leader of the Iraqi insurgency he is not.
The U.S.'s natural allies would be Saddam's Baathists, of course. Did the glorious liberators of 3 years ago ever seriously believe that the Shia would just curl up and hand the country over to Americans, of all people? Of course not. Maybe this Iran scenario was on the drawing board then.Seven days in Iraq An American hostage is murdered. Car bombs kill 58 at a street market. Police discover 29 bodies in a mass grave. And the US launches its biggest assault since the invasion. On the eve of its third anniversary, Audrey Gillan pieces together just another week in a war zone.
Sectarian violence leads to displacement in capital BAGHDAD, 16 March (IRIN) - Dozens of families in the capital, Baghdad, have been displaced from their neighbourhoods due to the sectarian violence that has come in the wake of the Samarra shrine bombing in February and subsequent attacks.
"The explosions at the Samarra mosque and the attack on a market in the Sadr district [of Baghdad] have frightened minority communities in some neighbourhoods," said Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) spokeswoman Ferdous al-Abadi. "They're afraid they could become victims of sectarian violence."
On 22 February, the bombing of a revered Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, about 100 km northwest of the capital, left more than 75 people dead and sparked sectarian reprisal attacks countrywide.
On Thursday, the Ministry of Interior announced that at least 630 people had been killed as a result of sectarian violence since the Samarra bombing.
Many families in Baghdad, lacking essential supplies, have preferred to camp outside their neighbourhoods rather than risk being killed in their homes by armed sectarian groups.
According to the IRCS, more than 300 families from different areas of the capital have been displaced, many of them Sunni residents of majority Shi'ite neighbourhoods.
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 09:30 AM CST [
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Kurds Destroy Shrine in Rage at Leadership
HALABJA, Iraq, March 16 — For nearly two decades, Kurds have gathered peacefully in this mountainous corner of northern Iraq to commemorate one of the blackest days in their history. It was here that Saddam Hussein's government launched a poison gas attack that killed more than 5,000 people on March 16, 1988.
So it came as a shock when hundreds of stone-throwing protesters took to the streets here Thursday on the anniversary, beating back government guards to storm and destroy a museum dedicated to the memory of the Halabja attack.
The violence, pitting furious local residents against a much smaller force of armed security men, was the most serious popular challenge to the political parties that have ruled Iraqi Kurdistan for the past 15 years. Occurring on the day the new Iraqi Parliament met for the first time, the episode was a reminder that the issues facing Iraq go well beyond fighting Sunni Arab insurgents and agreeing on cabinet ministers in Baghdad.
Although Kurdistan remains a relative oasis of stability in a country increasingly threatened by sectarian violence, the protests here — which left the renowned Halabja Monument a charred, smoking ruin — starkly illustrated those challenges even in Iraq's most peaceful region.
nytimes.comKurds take out anger on Halabja monument ...Just two years ago, the then top US administrator in Iraq L Paul Bremer stood at the Halabja Monument with Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, who is now president of Iraq.
Mr Bremer said the town served as proof that the US-led invasion of Iraq was justified, and that the coalition would establish a $1m fund for Halabja. Mr Talabani urged people to "come to Halabja to see how mass destruction arms (were) used."
Now, the people of the town are saying that officials have used the atrocities for their own political ends, but they have seen little in return.
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 09:15 AM CST [
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In the heart of Pipelineistan
TEHRAN - Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki may have captured all the headlines when he announced that Iran would not use the oil weapon in the event it was slapped with sanctions by the UN Security Council. But in the world of Pipelineistan, the nuclear row waged by the US, the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany), the United Nations and Iran is just a detail.
The heart of Pipelineistan itself has been transposed to Tehran for the International Conference on Energy and Security: Asian
Vision, organized by the Institute of International Energy Studies and the Institute for Political and International Studies. There could not be a better place to meet and discuss oil-and-gas geopolitics with an array of scholars and executives from Iran, China, Pakistan, India, Russia, Egypt, Indonesia, Georgia, Venezuela and Germany.
And their overall message is unmistakable: the interdependence of Asia and "Persian Gulf geo-ecopolitics", as an Iranian analyst put it, is now total; the nuclear row should be solved diplomatically in the next few months; and Asian integration has everything to gain from Pipelineistan linking the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, South Asia and China.
It's a gas, gas, gas
The heart of Iran's gas strategy lies in the gigantic South Pars field, responsible in itself for 50% of Iran's and 8% of the world's natural-gas reserves. South Pars is strategically located between Bushehr to the west (where Russia is helping Iran to build its first civilian nuclear power station) and the Persian Gulf port of Bandar Abbas to the east.
atimes.com
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 09:08 AM CST [
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India, Iran, Pakistan's talks end with no deal on pipeline
TEHRAN (AFP) - Talks between India, Iran and Pakistan on building a new gas pipeline to Southeast Asia ended without any agreement and a new round of negotiations scheduled for late April.
"Iran made a proposal on the price (of gas) that we must examine," India's Petroleum Secretary M.S. Srinivasan told reporters in televised remarks on Thursday.
Iran's state news agency confirmed Tehran had proposed a price for gas, but India and Pakistan said they needed time for consultations.
The next round of talks are scheduled for Islamabad on April 30, state television reported.
The sides had hoped to settle on the framework for the project that would see Iranian gas travel by pipeline through Pakistan to India. They have yet to sign a memorandum to set the long- stalled project in motion.
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 09:03 AM CST [
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China Pays Dearly for Kazakhstan Oil
ALMATY, Kazakhstan — China, which for more than a century turned its back on Central Asia, has reached out to Kazakhstan, Central Asia's biggest country, for one major reason: oil.
In 2005, the China National Petroleum Corporation bought Petrokazakhstan, a Canadian-run company that was the former Soviet Union's largest independent oil company, for $4.18 billion and spent another $700 million on a pipeline that will take the oil to the Chinese border.
Petrokazakhstan was the largest foreign purchase ever by a Chinese company, in this case a state-owned one. Chinese oil producers were already operating four smaller oil fields in Kazakhstan.
"China is being increasingly dependent on Middle East oil and it wants a supply that would be blockade-proof in case of a conflict over Taiwan," said Thierry Kellner, a specialist in China's relations with Central Asia at the Free University of Brussels.
But the Chinese are paying a high price.
Shortly after the sale, Kazakhstan forced the Chinese company to resell a third of its new acquisition to KazMunaiGaz, the state oil company and industry regulator — and be paid in future revenue. A spokesman for KazMunaiGaz, Mikhail Dorofeyev, has said the deal is expected to be completed by the end of March.
Kazakhstan authorities are also believed to be easing the way for Lukoil of Russia to acquire the other half of Turgai Petroleum, which it now jointly owns with Petrokazakhstan. In addition, a local court recently awarded Lukoil a $200 million judgment against Petrokazakhstan in a dispute over how to share the oil in a common deposit. Both developments are unmistakable signals that Chinese ownership is no guarantee of a smooth ride.
nytimes.com
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 09:00 AM CST [
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Quenching Mexico City's thirst
With a population of more than 20 million people, and dwindling water supplies, the Mexican capital is a stark example of the severe water supply issues facing many of the world's rapidly developing mega-cities.
The parched ground crunches beneath your feet as you walk through the Texcoco area on the outskirts of the city. The bleached, cracked terrain stretches out in all directions. Nothing can grow here.
It is very difficult to imagine that, just 70 years ago, this area was filled with water. This was one of five lakes that used to enrich the Mexico City valley.
Today, in a prime example of what more than a century of water mismanagement can do, they have all but disappeared.
Population growth, the over-exploitation of subterranean aquifers, and a failure to recycle limited water supplies have turned a once-fertile region into a barren desert.
Many of Mexico City's inhabitants get by on just one hour of running water per week.
And, most people consider the city's tap water to be undrinkable - though water officials say it is now safe to drink - so Mexico has become the second-highest consumer of bottled drinking water in the world.
bbc.co.ukThe world's water hotspots
rootsie on 03.18.06 @ 08:55 AM CST [
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Friday, March 17th
Evo Morales: Bolivia, a Homeland for All
Today our government celebrates its first month, the first 30 days of the democratic and cultural revolution that we are heading, with the overwhelming popular mandate of December 18, 2005, when Bolivians from the countryside and cities decided to turn the page on a history full of injustice and discrimination.
We have named a cabinet that is representative of the social movements, business owners, the middle classes, indigenous peoples, intellectuals and women. We are dealing with a cabinet never before seen in Bolivian history that tries to fully express a multicultural, dignified, sovereign Bolivia. I want to say, with a lot of pride, that this is the first cabinet formed as a result of an autonomous decision, without pressure from international bodies.
We have named a military high command that is a break with the past of the subordination of our armed forces to external interests. Instead, it privileges professionalism, discipline and the respect of our sovereignty as a country. We need to recuperate our sovereignty in the heart of the state, in the security bodies, in the military institutions and in the policing bodies.
For some it has been novel that this president begins work at 5am — like the majority of Bolivian workers and campesinos [peasants] — and that he has renounced 57% of his wage. However this measure has been a marker defining the spirit of our government: I am president, not to win more money, but to work more for the homeland. With this measure [which reduced the wages of other elected officials, who cannot be paid more than the president] the executive power has saved 13.9 million bolivianos [US$1.7 million], which will be our contribution towards obtaining 3500 new items in the education area, a sector that received for the first time in years a 7% increase in salaries, without marches, blockades nor other acts of pressure.
axisoflogic.com
rootsie on 03.17.06 @ 08:46 AM CST [
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Widening Minority Wealth Gap
Recently released data from the Federal Reserve provide a stark reminder of the extent of racial and ethnic economic gaps in our economy, particularly regarding wealth.
The Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances allows us to compare both income and net worth (assets minus debts) between white (non-Hispanic) and non-white families (the sample sizes are too small to break non-whites into component groups). The data in the report reveal that in 2004, minority incomes were about 56% that of whites. However, a far larger gap exists when we compare net worth: minorities' net worth was about 27% of whites, about half the size of the income ratio .
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 03.17.06 @ 08:43 AM CST [
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Ecuador tries to control growing Indian protest
QUITO, Ecuador, March 15 (Reuters) - Ecuador struggled to contain growing protests by Indians demanding the government abandon U.S. free-trade talks and accused protest leaders of trying to oust President Alfredo Palacio on Wednesday.
Thousands of Indians have blocked roads with burning tires and rubble in nine central provinces since Monday to demand the government end free-trade talks with the United States. The protests have crimped the Andean nation's economy.
"Their demands are not possible to address, so it appears that what they want is to destabilize democracy," presidential spokesman Enrique Proano told reporters.
alertnet.orgIndigenous revolution in Ecuador? It appears that Ecuadorians are about to explode again against their government’s renewed involvement in the U.S.-spawned, “Free Trade Agreement”. All of the central mountain chain running through Ecuador and all Ecuadorian Amazonia are paralyzed by the mobilizations of indigenous people against the Free Trade Agreement. The capital city of Quito has been brought to a standstill. The Interior Minister has already resigned in the face of social protest, destabilization and repression currently ruling throughout the country.
President Palacio wants to sign the Free Trade Agreement with the US instead of calling for a Constituent Assembly as he promised a year ago. The indigenous peoples have paralyzed 11 or 22 provinces and are marching on Quito. Teachers and public employees are on strike. They all want Occidental Petroleum (OXY) out of the country. The President of the Congress indicated that the government could fall, stating that the country is approaching a “true convulsion”. The powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, CONAIE is heading this movement, refusing to compromise on the government’s negotiations with the United States. President Alfredo Palacio has threatened to meet the protests with “maximum authority”
Rebelión reports that new provinces and students added their weight to the indigenous protests with blockades of the highways. These same tactics were used to overthrow the government of Bolivia last summer, leading to the election of Evo Morales as the first indigenous president of that Latin American nation. Wilfrido Lucero, President of the Congress stated that the country is facing a 'true convulsion'. In the Amazon province of Pastaza, television news shows strong clashes between soldiers and demonstrators when they tried to block petroleum exploitation of the foreign company Agip Oil and occupy it by the force. The protest in Pastaza is primarily motivated by the demand for the government to deliver economic resources to the people.
rootsie on 03.17.06 @ 08:40 AM CST [
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Feds Schedule $385 Million Concentration Camp To Be Built By Halliburton Subsidiary
...Then your eye falls on a barely-noticed article in a local Southern California newspaper. You call the reporter, and he guides you to his reputable source. And the stomach-tickling fears start all over again, especially when--coincidentally--a Germanophile friend researching in the archives digs up the following from a Munich newspaper dated 1933.
First, the American news item:
The federal government has awarded a $385 million contract for the construction of 'temporary detention facilities' inside the United States as part of the Immigration Service's Detention and Removal Program. The contract was given to Kellogg, Root & Brown, a subsidiary of Halliburton. The camps would be used in the event of an "emergency", said Jamie Zuieback, an Immigration service official.
The following article appeared in a Munich newspaper in 1933 to mark the "grand opening" of Dachau, Germany's first concentration camp. This month marks the 73d anniversary:
Münchner Neueste Nachrichten,
Tuesday, March 21, 1933
A Concentration Camp for Political Prisoners in the Dachau Area
In a statement to the press, Himmler, Munich's Chief of Police announced:
On Wednesday the first concentration camp will be opened near Dachau. It has a capacity of 5000 people. Here, all communist and-so far as is necessary- Reichsbanner and Marxist officials, who endanger the security of the state, will be assembled. In the long run, if government administration is not to be very burdened, it is not possible to allow individual communist officials to remain in court custody. On the other hand, it is also not possible to allow these officials their freedom again. Each time we have attempted this, the result was that they again tried to agitate and organize. We have taken these measures without concern for each pedantic objection encountered, in the conviction that we act to calm the concerns of the nation's people, and in accordance with their aims.
Himmler gave assurance that in each individual case, preventive custody will not be maintained longer than necessary. It is obvious, however, that the astonishingly large quantity of material evidence seized will take a long time to be examined. This police will only be delayed, if they are continually asked when this or that person in preventive custody will be released. The incorrectness of rumors frequently spread regarding the treatment of prisoners is shown by the fact that for those prisoners who requested it, for example, Dr. Gerlich and Frhr. v. Aretin, counseling by priests is supported and approved without hesitation.
counterpunch.orgA Cell for Kissinger and Haig ...Of course, if one listens to Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger--two architects of the last major US foreign disaster in Vietnam--they might think that the only way to get out of Iraq is by blowing the country and its inhabitants to hell. Indeed, Mr. Haig, who was a general, Secretary of State under Reagan, and an advisor to Richard Nixon (even serving as his Chief of Staff during the final months of Nixon's presidency), told an audience of a conference on the Vietnam War at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, ``Every asset of the nation must be applied to the conflict to bring about a quick and successful outcome, or don't do it." This is from a man, who helped engineer (among other things) the Christmas bombings of 1972, the mining of Haiphong harbor and the bombing of Hanoi and the dikes of northern Vietnam, and the invasion of Cambodia. What does he suggest the US do in Iraq? Break out some tactical nuclear weapons? The mindset that Haig represents seriously believes that the US military was restrained in Vietnam and that a similar situation exists in Iraq. This is despite the fact that more ordnance has been dropped on those two countries than on any other country in history.
His fellow panel member, Henry Kissinger, would probably like that idea. After all, it was Mr. Kissinger who considered the use of nuclear weapons against northern Vietnam in 1969, but was convinced such an idea might be a bad move after hundreds of thousands of US residents filled the streets of DC and several other cities on November 15, 1969 in a national mobilization to end the war in Vietnam.
Both of these men should be in adjoining cells in the Hague. Instead, they are guests of honor at the JFK Library. It's not that they were besmirching Kennedy's legacy by being there. Indeed, Mr. Kissinger said he admired the Kennedys--a statement that should not surprise any serious student of US history given Kissinger's tenure as a consultant on security matters to various U.S. agencies from 1955 to 1968. Indeed, Kissinger's treatise on nuclear weapons and foreign policy was a major influence on the strategic policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Given that treatise's emphasis on the use of tactical nuclear weapons together with conventional forces and the current discussion of just such a policy, one could say that Kissinger's influence continues to steer US war policy.
rootsie on 03.17.06 @ 08:28 AM CST [
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U.S. Seeks Reversal of Moussaoui Ruling
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - Fighting for a death penalty in a 9/11 case, prosecutors are beseeching a federal judge to reconsider her decision to exclude half the government's case against confessed al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.
They acknowledge their only hope of obtaining the death penalty for the 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent is to persuade U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema she punished the government too harshly for tampering with trial witnesses and lying to defense attorneys.
Brinkema did not immediately respond to the motion for reconsideration that prosecutors filed Wednesday evening. But she had indicated earlier she had time available Thursday to hear such a motion if it were filed.
The jury has been sent home until Monday to give prosecutors time for their next step.
Brinkema barred prosecutors from submitting any witnesses or exhibits about aviation security. Prosecutors responded in their motion that this evidence ``goes to the very core of our theory of the case.''
At the very least, the prosecutors argued, they should be allowed to present a newly designated aviation security witness who had no contact with Carla J. Martin, the Transportation Security Administration lawyer responsible for the government's misconduct. This would ``allow us to present our complete theory of the case, albeit in imperfect form.''
``The public has a strong interest in seeing and hearing it (aviation security evidence), and the court should not eliminate it from the case, particularly not ... where other remedies are available,'' they wrote Brinkema.
Brinkema ruled Tuesday that Martin violated federal rules when she sent trial transcripts to seven aviation witnesses, coached them on how to deflect defense attacks and lied to defense lawyers to prevent them from interviewing witnesses they wanted to call. The judge said Martin's actions and other government missteps had left the aviation evidence ``irremediably contaminated.''
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.17.06 @ 08:24 AM CST [
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US backs first-strike attack plan
The US will not shy away from attacking regimes it considers hostile, or groups it believes have nuclear or chemical weapons, the White House has confirmed.
In the first restatement of national security strategy since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US singles out Iran as the greatest single current danger.
The new policy backs the policy of pre-emptive war first issued in 2002, and criticised since the Iraq war.
But it stresses that the US aims to spread democracy through diplomacy.
The new strategy also highlights a string of other global issues of concern to the US, such as the spread of Aids, the threat of pandemic flu and the prospect of natural and environmental disasters.
National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley is due to make a speech launching the new strategy on Thursday.
Other key points include:
-Stressing US preference for "transformational diplomacy" and coalition building, but not necessarily within United Nations or Nato frameworks
-Criticising the lack of democratic freedoms in Russia and China
-Branding Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a "demagogue" aiming to destabilise the region
-Urging Palestinian radical group Hamas to recognise Israel, renounce violence and disarm.
The substance of the revised strategy focuses on the challenges facing the cUS in the wake of the Iraq war.
In a nod to previous high-level foreign policy statements, which singled out individual countries as potential enemies of the US, the new document highlights seven "despotic" states.
They are: North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus, Burma and Zimbabwe.
The policy of the US, according to the opening words of the 49-page document, is "to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world".
bbc.co.uk
rootsie on 03.17.06 @ 08:17 AM CST [
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Rice steps up rhetoric against ‘troubled state’ Iran
Condoleezza Rice on Thursday raised the diplomatic temperature over the nuclear stand-off with Iran, accusing the country of lying about its activities and again calling it a “central banker to terrorism”.
The US secretary of state was speaking in Sydney at the start of a three-day official visit to Australia, which will include talks with Canberra and Japan over the vexed Iranian issue.
Ms Rice described Iran as a “troubled state” where an “unelected few repress the desires of its population”.
ft.comah sweet irony...
rootsie on 03.17.06 @ 08:10 AM CST [
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Afghan Taliban chief vows "unimaginable" violence
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar vowed a ferocious offensive against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, saying on Thursday they would soon face unimaginable violence.
An insurgency that has killed more than 1,500 people since the start of last year has intensified in recent months with a wave of suicide bombings, including at least 12 this year.
Ten U.S. troops have been killed in combat this year and U.S. commanders have said they expect violence to increase in coming months as the weather warms, snow on mountain passes melts, and Afghanistan's traditional fighting season begins.
"With the arrival of the warm weather, we will make the ground so hot for the invaders it will be unimaginable for them," Omar said in his message, read by Taliban spokesman Mohammad Hanif over the telephone from an undisclosed location.
The fugitive Taliban leader, who carries a $10 million reward, also said a stream of young Afghans were volunteering for suicide missions, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency said.
reuters.com
rootsie on 03.17.06 @ 08:07 AM CST [
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Iraq's Turn for the Worse Brings U.S. and Baathists Closer
...The ongoing dialogue between the U.S. and the Sunni insurgency is based on a shared wariness about the influence of Iran and its supporters in Iraq. U.S. officials are now saying bluntly that it's time to bring back the Baath Party, excluding only those that are guilty of specific crimes. That reflects a growing acceptance among U.S. officials that the military and bureaucratic know-how in the Sunni community is badly needed, even to help run the security forces that the U.S. is standing up.
Senior Baathist insurgent commanders are responding positively to the U.S. outreach on the political and military level. One senior commander I spoke to praised the U.S. for the release of some key Baathist officers who had been imprisoned, and later, when I asked a senior U.S. intelligence officer about the releases, he said the men had been freed as part of a calculated effort to demonstrate good faith in dealing with the insurgents. Of course, both sides share the objective of avoiding a civil war.
time.comyeah of courseU.S. launches largest air assault since invasion of Iraq BAGHDAD, Iraq — In a well-publicized show of force, U.S. and Iraqi forces swept into the countryside north of the capital in 50 helicopters today looking for insurgents in what the American military called its "largest air assault" in nearly three years.
The military said the assault — Operation Swarmer — detained 41 people, found stolen uniforms and captured weapons including explosives used in making roadside bombs. It said the operation would continue over several days.
There was no bombing or firing from the air in the offensive northeast of Samarra, a town 60 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. All 50 aircraft were helicopters — Black Hawks, Apaches and Chinooks — used to ferry in and provide cover for the 1,450 Iraqi and U.S. troops.
Residents in the area reported a heavy U.S. and Iraqi troop presence and said large explosions could be heard in the distance.
Operation Swarmer came as the Bush administration was attempting to show critics at home and abroad that it is dealing effectively with Iraq's insurgency and increasingly sectarian violence.
rootsie on 03.17.06 @ 08:04 AM CST [
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U.S. Votes Against U.N. Human Rights Council
UNITED NATIONS -- The U.S. stood nearly alone today as it voted against the creation of a new U.N. Human Rights Council, saying the reform did not go far enough in keeping abusers off the panel.
However, U.S. officials did not carry through on a threat to block the new body's funding, and pledged to work with other nations to make the council "as strong as it can be."
Jan Eliasson, president of the General Assembly called the vote "a historic moment for human rights" as 170 member-states backed the new council. Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau joined the U.S. in voting against, while Iran, Venezuela and Belarus abstained.
After the applause faded in the General Assembly hall, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said that the assembled diplomats had missed an historic opportunity to help those most in need.
latimes.com
rootsie on 03.17.06 @ 07:56 AM CST [
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Warmer Seas Creating Stronger Hurricanes, Study Confirms
...In the 1970s, the average number of intense Category 4 and 5 hurricanes occurring globally was about 10 per year. Since 1990, that number has nearly doubled, averaging about 18 a year.
Category 4 hurricanes have sustained winds from 131 to 155 mph. Category 5 systems, such as Hurricane Katrina at its peak, feature winds of 156 mph or more. Wilma last year set a record as the most intense hurricane on record with winds of 175 mph.
While some scientists believe this trend is just part of natural ocean and atmospheric cycles, others argue that rising sea surface temperatures as a side effect of global warming is the primary culprit.
According to this scenario, warming temperatures heat up the surface of the oceans, increasing evaporation and putting more water vapor into the atmosphere. This in turn provides added fuel for storms as they travel over open oceans.
livescience.com
rootsie on 03.17.06 @ 07:53 AM CST [
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Kauai has six times more rain than usual for all of March
Four back-to-back storms over the last three weeks have dumped more rain on parts of the islands than they normally would have seen in months, and drenched Kauai with up to six times more rain than normal for all of March, the National Weather Service said yesterday.
...Over the last three weeks, Mount Waialeale has seen more than 106 inches, and Lihue Airport has gotten 28.9 inches.
"Kauai has taken the brunt of the most widespread, excessive rainfall," the weather service said. "Even the normally drier leeward sides have been much wetter than normal."
On Oahu, Poamoho saw the biggest rainfall total over the three-week period, with 63 inches. Wilson Tunnel got 39.1 inches -- a far second, but a more than six-fold increase from 2005. Punaluu, Luluku and the Waihee Pump rounded out the top five rainfall totals for Oahu.
Waiakea Uka and Glenwood topped the totals for the Big Island, getting 43.6 inches and 42.9 inches, respectively -- up to four times higher than normal. Mountain View saw 37.8 inches, compared with 4 inches last year.
starbulletin.com
rootsie on 03.17.06 @ 07:49 AM CST [
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Canadian baby boomers prefer television over sex: poll
A new study suggests Canadian baby boomers are more likely to fall asleep watching television than after having sex with their partner at night.
The Ipsos-Reid survey published Thursday found Canadians between 40 and 64 years old dedicate an average of just 15 minutes a day to sex and romance.
They said they were too stressed or too tired or simply did not have enough time for a romp in bed.
But, the protagonists of the 1960s sexual revolution said they spent about four or five hours per day watching television or surfing the Internet, more than 30 hours per week in total.
Almost half found sex intimate and tender, maybe a bit predictable now, but 80 percent agreed it made them feel "loved and appreciated" and said it deepened intimacy in their relationship.
A majority also said sex is no less enjoyable now than in their twenties. Only 28 percent of those surveyed said their sex life was not as "wild and hot" or less fun.
breitbart.com
rootsie on 03.17.06 @ 07:43 AM CST [
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Thursday, March 16th
AFRICA'S NEW OCEAN
Normally new rivers, seas and mountains are born in slow motion. The Afar Triangle near the Horn of Africa is another story. A new ocean is forming there with staggering speed -- at least by geological standards. Africa will eventually lose its horn.
Geologist Dereje Ayalew and his colleagues from Addis Ababa University were amazed -- and frightened. They had only just stepped out of their helicopter onto the desert plains of central Ethiopia when the ground began to shake under their feet. The pilot shouted for the scientists to get back to the helicopter. And then it happened: the Earth split open. Crevices began racing toward the researchers like a zipper opening up. After a few seconds, the ground stopped moving, and after they had recovered from their shock, Ayalew and his colleagues realized they had just witnessed history. For the first time ever, human beings were able to witness the first stages in the birth of an ocean.
PHOTO GALLERY: HIGH-SPEED GEOLOGY IN AFRICA
service.spiegel.de
rootsie on 03.16.06 @ 08:19 AM CST [
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Howard Zinn 1991: Machiavellian Realism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Means and Ends
Interests: The Prince and the Citizen
About 500 years ago modern political thinking began. Its enticing surface was the idea of "realism." Its ruthless center was the idea that with a worthwhile end one could justify any means. Its spokesman was Nicolo Machiavelli.
In the year 1498 Machiavelli became adviser on foreign and military affairs to the government of Florence, one of the great Italian cities of that time. After fourteen years of service, a change of government led to his dismissal, and he spent the rest of his life in exile in the countryside outside of Florence. During that time he wrote, among other things, a little book called The Prince, which became the world's most famous hand book of political wisdom for governments and their advisers.
Four weeks before Machiavelli took office, something happened in Florence that made a profound impression on him. It was a public hanging. The victim was a monk named Savonarola, who preached that people could be guided by their "natural reason." This threatened to diminish the importance of the Church fathers, who then showed their importance by having Savonarola arrested. His hands were bound behind his back and he was taken through the streets in the night, the crowds swinging lanterns near his face, peering for the signs of his dangerousness.
Savonarola was interrogated and tortured for ten days. They wanted to extract a confession, but he was stubborn. The Pope, who kept in touch with the torturers, complained that they were not getting results quickly enough. Finally the right words came, and Savonarola was sentenced to death. As his body swung in the air, boys from the neighbor hood stoned it. The corpse was set afire, and when the fire had done its work, the ashes were strewn in the river Arno.
In The Prince, Machiavelli refers to Savonarola and says, "Thus it comes about that all armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones failed."
Political ideas are centered on the issue of ends (What kind of society do we want?) and means (How will we get it?). In that one sentence about unarmed prophets Machiavelli settled for modern governments the question of ends: conquest. And the question of means: force.
Machiavelli refused to be deflected by utopian dreams or romantic hopes and by questions of right and wrong or good and bad. He is the father of modern political realism, or what has been called realpolilik. "It appears to me more proper to go to the truth of the matter than to its imagination...for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather learn to bring about his own ruin than his preservation."
It is one of the most seductive ideas of our time.
informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 03.16.06 @ 08:12 AM CST [
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American security contractor briefly held in Iraq
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi police detained an American private security contractor working at a U.S. military base in northern Iraq for several hours on Tuesday, a U.S. military spokesman said.
The spokesman said the man was arrested at a checkpoint in the northern town of Tikrit. He denied initial reports that explosives were found in the car, but said two AK-47 assault rifles were in the vehicle.
"He was picked up by Iraqi police after being detained at a checkpoint in Tikrit," the spokesman said, adding police later released him. "We are looking at why he left the base unescorted."
Abdullah Jebara, deputy governor of Salahaddin province, earlier told Reuters the man was arrested in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit on Monday and that U.S. forces removed him from the provincial government building on Tuesday.
The man was stopped by police for violating a daytime curfew in Tikrit, a security source said. American security personnel rarely travel alone.
A spokesman for the major crimes unit in Tikrit said he was first brought to their headquarters but they refused to take him into custody, adding police were told to take the man to the provincial council building.
yahoo.comA pretty euphemism, calling a paid mercenary a 'security contractor.'Mass grave find fuels sectarian tension in Iraq Iraq moved closer to sectarian civil war as police found the bodies of 87 men killed in Baghdad, many of them showing signs of torture. The dead appear to be Sunni Muslims killed in retaliation for the bombs that slaughtered 58 people and wounded 200 when they exploded in crowded markets in the strongly Shia area of Sadr City.
Some 29 dead men were found yesterday buried in a pit in a playing field. "Some children were playing soccer and they smelt something strong and the police were notified," said a police spokesman. Members of a Shia militia dug in a pit to unearth the bodies. They found that the men had been gagged and bound and were in their underwear. Many of them had been tortured before being shot dead.
The Interior Ministry spokesman, Lt-Col Falah al-Mohammedawi, said that the men appeared to have been killed in Kamaliyah, a mostly Shia district in east Baghdad, about three days ago. Local residents offered sheets to cover the bodies as they were dragged from the earth.
A photographer for the Associated Press agency who took pictures of the grave was warned not to publish them. The location of the grave suggests that the dead men were Sunni.
The fear now in Baghdad is that the bombs detonated by Sunni insurgents in Shia neighbourhoods are leading to immediate retaliation against Sunnis.
Until a bomb attack destroyed the holy Shia shrine in Samarra on 22 February, Shias had been restrained in their reaction to repeated attacks on them since 2003. They were also cautioned against being provoked into seeking vengeance by influential Shia clerics such as the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Since the Samarra bomb the Shia willingness to heed his calls for patience is much reduced.
In another atrocity, 15 bodies of men who had been strangled were found in an abandoned minibus parked between two Sunni districts in west Baghdad. In Sadr City, a further four men were shot in the head and their bodies hanged from electricity pylons. Elsewhere in Baghdad another 40 bodies, both Shia and Sunni, were found said Lt-Col Mohammedawi.
..."May God damn you," said Mr Sadr of Mr Rumsfeld. "You said in the past that civil war would break out if you had to withdraw, and now you say that in face of civil war you won't interfere."
Humanitarian situation remains critical in Kirkuk as ethnic tensions rise BAGHDAD, 14 March (IRIN) - The oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq has been the scene of ongoing displacement and rising ethnic tensions in the past six months, according to local officials.
"The humanitarian situation in the city is very bad and thousands of innocent people are still displaced," said Nuri al-Salihi, a spokesman for the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS). "But nothing has been done to help them because of a recent increase in sectarian violence that has delayed the work of many local NGOs."
According to IRCS officials in Kirkuk, located some 255 km north of Baghdad, little aid has come from the main IRCS branch in the capital in the past eight months. This, they say, is due to major displacements in the western Anbar governorate and recent flooding there that forced thousands of residents to flee their homes.
Ahmed Mashhdanny, a senior Kirkuk governorate official, said that more than 200,000 Kirkuk residents have been displaced since 2003 and more than 300 have been killed in ethnic fighting over land. "The return of the Kurds to the city left thousands of Arabs displaced in deteriorating conditions and has increased ethnic aggression between the two groups," he said.
Under an "Arabisation" programme initiated under the former regime of Saddam Hussein, tens of thousands of Kurds and other non-Arabs were driven out of the city, to be replaced with pro-government Arabs from the impoverished south. After Hussein's ouster by coalition forces in April 2003, however, Kurds began returning to the area to reclaim their property.
This, in turn, led to the displacement of thousands of Arabs, Mashhdanny explained. "Thousands of displaced people from different ethnic groups – mainly Arabs – can now be seen in improvised camps on the outskirts of Kirkuk, as well as in abandoned government buildings and schools," he said. "Kurds, Arabs and Turcomans are suffering because measures haven't been taken to secure their rights."
Iraqis say US raid on home killed 11 family members TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - Eleven members of an Iraqi family were killed in a U.S. raid on Wednesday, police and witnesses said. The U.S. military said two women and a child died during the bid to seize an al Qaeda militant from a house.
Television pictures showed 11 bodies in the Tikrit morgue -- five children, two men and four women. A freelance photographer later saw the bodies being buried in Ishaqi, the town 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad where the raid took place.
The U.S. military said in a statement its troops had attacked a house in Ishaqi early on Wednesday to capture a "foreign fighter facilitator for the al Qaeda in Iraq network".
"Troops were engaged by enemy fire as they approached the building," U.S. spokesman Major Tim Keefe said. "Coalition Forces returned fire utilising both air and ground assets.
"There was one enemy killed. Two women and one child were also killed in the firefight. The building ... (was) destroyed."
Keefe said the al Qaeda suspect had been captured and was being questioned.
US 'may want to keep Iraq bases' he United States may want to keep a long-term military presence in Iraq to bolster moderates against extremists in the region and protect oil supplies, the army general overseeing US operations in Iraq has said.
While the Bush administration has downplayed prospects for permanent US bases in Iraq, General John Abizaid told a House of Representatives subcommittee on Tuesday he could not rule that out.
Abizaid said that policy would be worked out with a unified, national Iraqi government if and when that is established, "and it would be premature for me to predict".
Many Democrats have pressed President George Bush to firmly state that the United States does not intend to seek permanent military bases in Iraq, a step they said would help stem the violence there.
Abizaid also told the Appropriations subcommittee on military quality of life that while an Iraqi civil war was possible, "I think it's a long way from where we are now to civil war".
Electricity Hits Three-Year Low in Iraq BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Electricity output has dipped to its lowest point in three years in Iraq, where the desert sun is rising toward another broiling summer and U.S. engineers are winding down their rebuilding of the crippled power grid.
The Iraqis, in fact, may have to turn to neighboring Iran to help bail them out of their energy crisis - if not this summer, then in years to come.
The overstressed network is producing less than half the electricity needed to meet Iraq's exploding demand. American experts are working hard to shore up the system's weaknesses as 100-degree-plus temperatures approach beginning as early as May, driving up usage of air conditioning, electric fans and refrigeration.
If the summer is unusually hot, however, ``all bets are off,'' said Lt. Col. Otto Busher, an engineer with the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division.
rootsie on 03.16.06 @ 08:02 AM CST [
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Russia warns US on Caspian buildup
Moscow, March 14 - Russia cautioned the United States on Tuesday against raising its military presence in the strategic Caspian sea region bordering Iran, saying buildup of forces from "outside" would destabilize the region, Itar-Tass news agency said.
Russia "is opposed to the presence of third-party military forces on the Caspian," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at the start of a meeting among representatives of the five countries that border the sea: Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
His comments were seen as directed at the United States, which has stationed military advisors in Azerbaijan and is helping that country upgrade its naval forces and two powerful radar stations.
Itar-Tass also quoted Lavrov however as saying that Russia was not calling for withdrawal of all military forces from the Caspian sea region, which is known to hold vast oil and gas resources.
iribnews.ir
rootsie on 03.16.06 @ 07:44 AM CST [
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Israel starts work on new settlement
The Israeli government has begun to develop facilities for what eventually could be the largest settlement project in the West Bank since 1967.
On Monday, Israeli officials confirmed that Israel was building a police headquarters and "other facilities" in what it calls the E-1 area, extending from East Jerusalem to the settlement of Maali Adomim, the largest in the West Bank.
In addition to 3550 settler units, the planned development would include a road network, six hotels and a park.
Non-Jews would not be allowed to live or buy land in the settlement.
aljazeera.net
rootsie on 03.16.06 @ 07:40 AM CST [
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Abbas condemns Israel raid as unforgivable crime
JERICHO, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday condemned Israel's raid on a West Bank prison and seizure of a militant leader as a crime that would not be forgiven.
Across the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Palestinians went on strike over an Israeli operation that has boosted interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ahead of March 28 general elections.
Israeli security forces were on high alert after Ahmed Saadat's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Islamist militant group Hamas promised retaliation.
Israeli forces used tanks and bulldozers to tear apart the Jericho jail on Tuesday to grab Saadat, accused by Israel of overseeing the 2001 assassination of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi claimed by the PFLP.
Speaking at the destroyed jail, Abbas accused British and U.S. monitors supervising the incarceration of Saadat and five other militants who were detained of complicity with Israel.
"What happened is an ugly crime which cannot be forgiven and a humiliation for the Palestinian people and a violation of all the agreements. Their arrest by Israel is illegal," Abbas said.
The United States and Britain, citing security concerns, withdrew the monitors on Tuesday and Israeli forces moved in minutes later. Both Washington and London denied cooperating with Israel.
reuters.comBlair defends withdrawal of monitors from Jericho jail Tony Blair today laid the blame squarely at the door of the Palestinian Authority for yesterday's outbreak of violence across the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of British monitors from a prison in Jericho.
The prime minister told the Commons that he had personally warned the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, that the British personnel would be withdrawn unless security agreements were met.
During prime minister's questions, Mr Blair said there could be no long-term peace in the region until the Palestinian authorities were able to maintain law, and the incoming Hamas government recognised Israel's existence and put an end to violence.
"If people want progress towards a two state solution, which we have championed in this country - an independent viable Palestinian state living side by side with Israel - then the security within the Palestinian area is of prime concern," Mr Blair said. "We have done everything we can to support them. But we need some help back."
Just answer the question, Mr. Blair.U.S. may veto bid for UN condemnation of jail siege The threat of a U.S. veto hovers over planned closed-door deliberations Wednesday over Qatar's bid for a UN Security Council to condemn Israel's Jericho jail siege and its capture of the killers of former cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi.
A draft statement by Qatari Ambassador Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, representing Arab nations, would have condemned "Israel's violent incursion" in besieging the Jericho jail, and would have demanded that Israel return the prisoners it seized "and to return the situation to that which existed prior to the Israeli military attack."
Security forces went on high alert Tuesday fearing Palestinian reprisal attacks after Israel Defense Forces troops laid siege to the Jericho prison and arrested six wanted inmates.
A tense, gunfire-punctuated nine-hour IDF siege of a Jericho prison complex ended after dark on Tuesday with the abrupt surrender of Ahmed Sa'adat and five other Palestinian militants.
Sa'adat, leader of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine, is believed to have ordered the assassination of cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi in a Jerusalem hotel in 2001.
One of the other militants was Fuad Shobaki, the alleged mastermind of an illegal mass weapons shipment to the Palestinian Authority in 2002.
The six arrested wanted militants are to be held in prison in Israel, officials said.
The PFLP threatened
that "Israel will pay a heavy price for the operation."
rootsie on 03.16.06 @ 07:36 AM CST [
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Fox Announces Major Mexico Oil Find
VERACRUZ, Mexico - President Vicente Fox climbed aboard a drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday to formally announce a new deep-water oil discovery he said could eventually yield 10 billion barrels of crude oil.
An exploratory well dubbed Noxal 1 was drilled at a depth of 3,070 feet below the water, and is seeking a depth of 13,125 feet.
"With Noxal we will begin a new era of oil exploration in our country," Fox said aboard the "Ocean Worker 6 Britania" platform.
Government estimates say the find could exceed reserves at the giant offshore field Cantarell, Mexico's largest oil field, which has seen its production decline but is still expected to yield 1.9 million barrels a day this year.
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 03.16.06 @ 07:26 AM CST [
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Chalmers Johnson: Coming to Terms with China
...The major question for the twenty-first century is whether this fateful inability to adjust to changes in the global power-structure can be overcome. Thus far the signs are negative. Can the United States and Japan, today's versions of rich, established powers, adjust to the reemergence of China -- the world's oldest, continuously extant civilization -- this time as a modern superpower? Or is China's ascendancy to be marked by yet another world war, when the pretensions of European civilization in its U.S. and Japanese projections are finally put to rest? That is what is at stake.
tomdispatch.com
rootsie on 03.16.06 @ 07:22 AM CST [
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Russian Communist leader sees U.S. behind bird flu outbreak
MOSCOW. March 14 (Interfax) - Russian Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov has blamed the United States for the spread of avian influenza, or bird flu, in a number of European countries, including Russia.
"The forms of warfare are changing. It's strange that not a single duck has yet died in America - they are all dying in Russia and European countries. This makes one seriously wonder why," Zyuganov said at a press conference at the Interfax main office on Tuesday.
Zyuganov said that he has good knowledge of war gases as he dealt with them during his army service.
"I tested all kinds of war gases at a range myself," he said.
Asked to be more precise as to whether he believes the bird flu outbreak could be a deliberate attack by the U.S., Zyuganov answered positively.
"I not only suggest this, I know very well how this can be arranged. There is nothing strange here," he said.
interfax.ru
rootsie on 03.16.06 @ 07:18 AM CST [
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Dominican Rep. Seeks $80M for U.S. Dumping
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Dominican Republic is looking to Washington for help recovering at least $80 million in damages from a U.S. utility it accuses of dumping thousands of tons of coal ash on the country's beaches, sickening residents and harming the tourism industry.
The Dominican government has hired a Washington lawyer to attempt to open settlement talks with the company, AES Corp., or failing that, to file a lawsuit in U.S. courts against AES before a two-year statute of limitations expires late next week.
The government says 82,000 tons of coal ash were shipped from an AES plant in Guayama, Puerto Rico, and left on beaches in Manzanillo and the Samana Bay port town of Arroyo Barril between October 2003 and March 2004 without proper government permits.
``It's had a devastating impact upon the economy of these two communities. Their tourist traffic is off 70 percent in Samana and down sharply in Manzanillo as well,'' said Bart Fisher, the Washington attorney hired by the Dominican government. ``It's had a devastating impact on the health of the people living near the toxic dumps in terms of respiratory problems and asthma, and some have died in fact.''
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.16.06 @ 07:14 AM CST [
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Feingold Accuses Democrats of 'Cowering'
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold accused fellow Democrats on Tuesday of cowering rather than joining him on trying to censure President Bush over domestic spying.
''Democrats run and hide'' when the administration invokes the war on terrorism, Feingold told reporters.
Feingold introduced censure legislation Monday in the Senate but not a single Democrat has embraced it. Several have said they want to see the results of a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation before supporting any punitive legislation.
Republicans dismissed the proposal Tuesday as being more about Feingold's 2008 presidential aspirations than Bush's actions. On and off the Senate floor, they have dared Democrats to vote for the resolution.
''I'm amazed at Democrats ... cowering with this president's numbers so low,'' Feingold said.
nytimes.com
rootsie on 03.16.06 @ 07:10 AM CST [
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Tuesday, March 14th
"You Have Left Home to Come Home": Memories of Ali Farka Touré
by Corey Harris
I first heard Ali Farka Touré perform at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1994. At that time many North American audiences were beginning to learn about the man and his music, often through Ry Cooder, one of his early American collaborators. I remember crowds flocking to hear their set, the fans talking about some African guy who plays with Ry Cooder. Seeing the two perform onstage together, it was immediately obvious who was the teacher and who was the student. Cooder, thrilled to play with Ali Farka, backed him up dutifully, supporting each song with carefully placed licks and riffs tossed from his slide guitar like small bombs. In his long boubou, Ali Farka carried himself like the royalty that he was, striking to behold yet immensely approachable. With his easy smile and humble, gracious manner, he was at home in the world.
After his performance, he attended a question and answer session. American audiences had heard of this African bluesman and repeatedly asked him questions about his encounters with blues music and how he began to play. His responses often surprised, like when he answered that blues meant nothing to him, since it is only a color. Even though he was continually typecast as the Malian bluesman who learned guitar listening to John Lee Hooker, this was far from the truth. In fact, Ali Farka's music sounded like blues because it came way before the blues, spirituals, slavery, and the European conquest of the Americas. He embodied the deep roots of centuries of African music; many couldn't see the tree for the leaves, fixated as they were on the record company's marketing of him as the African John Lee Hooker. When asked about his main profession, he would simply say that he was a farmer. To him, music seemed to be something one did anyway, in addition to living one's life and going to work. Many recognized him as a great musician, but it was not his music that made him great, but rather his commitment to others, his town, his country, and his roots which made him great. Even his middle name, Farka, evokes the donkey that carries everyone's burdens on his back. Ali was always ready to help his fellow man, or to make a stranger feel welcome in his desert home. This star did not shine in some far away galaxy, but right here among us, as one of us.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 07:58 AM CST [
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Bolivia: A revolutionary process that is different
by Hugo Blanco
I was in Bolivia when the presidential mandate was transferred to Evo Morales. I was invited by comrade Evo. An atmosphere of revolutionary process floated in the air and imbued the people. It could be seen by the numbers who assembled and by the revolutionary fervour of people on the occasion of the big rallies.
You felt it on the occasion of the fighting speeches of Evo, who referred to Che and to the expression of Sub-commandant Marcos: "command by obeying". Evo spoke clearly against neo-liberalism. This atmosphere is also reflected in the fact that the Ministry of Justice is headed by a woman domestic servant who suffered physical, psychological and sexual abuse, which are a sort of "custom" in our countries.
It can be seen by the fact that the Ministry of Labour, is occupied by a trade unionist, it is expressed by the fact that a large number of generals have been dismissed, etc.
Here, I want to concentrate on only one aspect: the type of revolution.
Obviously, we greatly respect the Cuban Revolution and its principal instrument, the guerrilla army. In the same way we greatly respect the Venezuelan process. There we had an officer who made a coup d’etat against a corrupt government and who subsequently won against the bourgeois parties in the elections, faced with these parties that had disgusted people.
We recognize that what they did is good and that it was the right road to follow.
The Bolivian revolutionary process is completely different. It is marked by a rise of progressive and combative popular struggles, without a centralized organization. Part of the combatants decided to organize in order to conduct the struggle on the enemy’s terrain: the elections. This fraction built a party: the Political instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (IPSP). Since the government set legal traps against this party being registered, this fraction decided to enter an organization which had a legal status: the MAS. That is why today we refer to the MAS-IPSP.
In the Bolivian revolutionary movement, including in the MAS, there is a great diversity of points of view. It is in a completely natural way that people express differences with Evo. But there are no expulsions, as there are in the PT in Brazil. Evo affirms: "I can make mistakes, but I won’t betray". He adds: "If I stop, push me!"
Cuba and Venezuela each have their commander. Not Bolivia. Evo systematically speaks of the re-founding of Bolivia. He mentions that during the first founding of Bolivia, the indigenous populations were excluded from it.
In this re-founding, these populations will be present. But not only they will be present, the entire Bolivian people will also be present.
axisoflogic.com
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 07:54 AM CST [
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Opening Space for Popular Movements: A Conversation with Samba Boukman and Samba Mackandal
...SJC: We wanted to ask a few questions about the elections that just happened. A number of officials and the top electoral monitors [from the Canadian government] have described this election as being the best that Haiti has ever had. What is your response to that?
SB: As the popular movement of poor disenfranchised people known as Lavalas, we have always had only one weapon: the Democratic Weapon, which is one man, one vote.
After 200 years of independence, on Dec 16th,1990, Haiti held the first democratic election in its entire history. That is when we, the people from poor neighbourhoods, got to elect Jean Bertrand Aristide, the poor priest, as a president who could represent us. So in 1991 there was a clear threat to democracy when some countries like France, United States and Canada joined to a minority of people - who now have organized themselves as the Group 184 – who organized a coup against Aristide and all of the people of Haiti. But because of the support and help of real friends of Haiti, what we call Bon Blans, the people had a chance to get through it [when Aristide was returned to power in 1994]. So with the solidarity from the Black Caucus, the Clinton administration, and the mobilization of people here in Haiti, the people finally got the return of the president they had elected.
So the return of democracy helped relieve a lot of problems in poor neighbourhoods because it gave us access to food, health care, potable water, and different other basic needs. But that didn’t stop the international community and also a minority of the wealthy people in Haiti, from again organizing a coup [in 2004] against the needs of Haiti, causing suffering in the poor neighbourhoods, and bloodshed all over again.
As a people descended from African slaves, we believe in the democratic way. We believe that there is one way to take power, and this is by voting someone that we trust in. So after the coup of Feb 29 we have been mobilizing for a very long time, protesting in the streets peacefully, in order to call for the respect of our vote.
But we have been mobilizing also against exclusion, the social exclusion that people in poor neighbourhoods are victims of. Because when we talk about social exclusion, it’s because the wealthy people in Haiti – joined with some of the wealthy countries – they wanted to have elections but without the people of the poor neighbourhoods.
So when we say that the wealthy countries and the wealthy people in Haiti tried to stop the people in poor neighbourhoods from voting, that’s clear because we have a lot of evidence of it. They committed killings very often in the poor neighbourhoods, so that the people would move away. They didn’t have polling centers in the poor neighbourhoods so people would be discouraged from voting. They called our neighbourhoods no-man’s-lands so that people would not visit and find out about our suffering and our struggles. Many people here do not have food to eat and potable water to drink but they do have the idea that their votes should be respected. They remember September 16th 1990 and they wanted this to occur again through the new elections that just happened.
For us, the vote of February 7th 2006 has a real meaning: it is a clear answer to the coup of 2004. We wanted to show to the wealthy people, who organized themselves as the Group 184, that we will not let them exclude us from the political decision making process and that they cannot take everything for themselves. We wanted to show that we are still part of the country. It was a slap in the face of the defacto Gerard Latortue/Boniface Alexander government to have so many poor people vote.
But compare this slap in the face to the repression that we have been subjected to. We have been imprisoned just because of our political affiliation. We have been victims of different massacres, but we still decided to organize against all of this oppression.
Some people seem to think that the people who live here are all illiterate and that we don’t deserve to have the same vote as everyone else. So that is why we gave them this response – to show that we know what we need and we know how to get it. So while people may say that we are illiterate and that we don’t know anything about democracy, our vote was a clear response to tell them that we know politics better then they do. It was quite a lesson for them because it was above their understanding, what the people accomplished on Feb 7th. Even part of the international community shares the opinion of the elite here – thinking that people in poor neighbourhoods are just dumb and crazy and don’t know what to do.
So our vote on February 7th was a clear response to them too. Our vote was a vote for the release of all political prisoners. We voted for a real national reconciliation through a dialogue of the people which will allow us to move towards peace in Haiti. The vote was not the only step. We will be voting again for the senate so that Preval will be in a strong position to help the people. We will also be mobilizing for a general amnesty which will help the country get the reconciliation that it needs so that we can move against the social exclusion that is going on right now in Haiti.
haiti.nspirg.org
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 07:50 AM CST [
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La Via Campesina women occupy a farm in South Brazil
About 2000 women from La Via Campesina occupied the plantation of Aracruz Celulose, in Barra do Ribeiro, Rio Grande do Sul (sur de Basil), early this wednesday morning. The purpose of the mobilization is to denounce the social and environmental impact of the growing green desert created by eucalyptus monocuture. The Barba Negra farm is the main production unit of seedslings of eucalyptus and pines of Aracruz. It also has a laboratory for seedlings cloning.
"We are against green deserts, the enormous plantations of eucalyptus, acácia and pines for cellulose, that cover t housandas of hectares in Brazil and Latin América. 'When the green desert advancesm biodiversity is destroyed, soils deteriorate, rivers dry up. Moreover cellulose plants pollute air and water and threaten human health", say the woman protestors.
zmag.org
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 07:45 AM CST [
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Rest Easy, Bill Clinton: Slobo Can't Talk Any More
Slobodan Milosevic is characterized in the obituaries as the "Butcher of the Balkans." If that is the story you want to read about, please go to almost any other media outlet and read it again and again. Some are now suggesting that death is Milosevic's final revenge, that he "ended up cheating history" by dying before judgment was passed. But the world has already passed judgment on Milosevic and what is being cheated by his death is history itself.
What the corporate media overwhelmingly ignores in Milosevic's death is what they ignored in his life as well--his intimate knowledge of US war crimes in Yugoslavia. While Milosevic was undoubtedly a war criminal who deserved to be tried for his crimes, he was also the only man in the unique position of being able to expose and detail the full extent of the US role in the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In fact, that is precisely what he was fighting to do at his war crimes trial when he died.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 07:40 AM CST [
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Moussaoui Death Penalty Case May Be Tossed
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - The federal judge in the Zacarias Moussaoui case is considering ending the death-penalty prosecution of the al-Qaida conspirator after learning that a federal lawyer apparently coached witnesses on upcoming testimony.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said Monday it was "very difficult for this case to go forward" after prosecutors revealed that a lawyer for the Transportation Security Administration had violated her order barring witnesses from any exposure to trial testimony.
Brinkema sent the jury home until Wednesday while she considers her options.
If she bars the government from pursuing the death penalty, the trial would be over and Moussaoui would automatically be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of release. The government likely would appeal that ruling.
A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday to determine the scope of the problem. The TSA lawyer, Carla Martin, and most of the seven witnesses — past or present employees of the Federal Aviation Administration who received e-mails from Martin — are expected to testify.
The judge said she had "never seen such an egregious violation of a rule on witnesses," and prosecutor David Novak agreed that Martin's actions were "horrendously wrong."
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 07:35 AM CST [
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Robertson Finds Radical Muslims 'Satanic'
Television evangelist Pat Robertson said Monday on his live news-and- talk program "The 700 Club" that Islam is not a religion of peace, and that radical Muslims are "satanic."
Robertson's comments came after he watched a news story on his Christian Broadcasting Network about Muslim protests in Europe over the cartoon drawings of the Prophet Muhammad.
He remarked that the outpouring of rage elicited by cartoons "just shows the kind of people we're dealing with. These people are crazed fanatics, and I want to say it now: I believe it's motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it's time we recognize what we're dealing with."
breitbart.com
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 07:28 AM CST [
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More Pro-Israel Than Israel
In a letter to the editor of The New York Times last week, retired Israeli general Shlomo Gazit could not have been more clear: "This is not the time for politicians from your country or ours to offer knee-jerk counterproductive declarations or legislation to cater to their electorates."
Gazit is not your run-of-the-mill retired general. He was Israel's first coordinator of government operations in the Palestinian territories and served afterward as head of military intelligence. And he says: This is not a time for posturing. This is a time to "wait and see what unfolds within the Hamas-led Palestinian government."
Come Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Tom Lantos and offer a bill that was almost surely on Gazit's mind when he wrote, a bill that could be a poster-child for knee-jerk reaction. Ros-Lehtinen is chair of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia of the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives, and Lantos is its ranking minority member.
What they have offered, and what at least 70 of their colleagues have by now endorsed, is a draconian measure that would forbid any and all contact between the American government and Hamas — and similarly, between the United States and any Palestinian government in which any member of Hamas has any part at all. According to the language of the bill, for example, if the Palestinian Authority were to employ a postman who is a member of Hamas, any and all relationship between any American government agency and the P.A. would have to cease. No contact.
The bill, as written, is a piece of meddlesome foolishness, but it's exactly the sort of thing that most members of Congress are reluctant to oppose for fear of seeming "anti-Israel." That's been the case in Congress for many years now, and the result has done Israel no service at all.
forward.com
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 07:25 AM CST [
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Syria, Iran to set up oil pipeline across Iraq
(MENAFN) Syria and Iran are intending to set up an Iranian strategic oil pipeline across Iraq, the official al-Thawra newspaper reported.
According to an official, the pipeline will run across Iraq, Syria to the Mediterranean Sea.
Syrian-Iranian Joint Committee have discussed ways to improve work on building an oil pipeline in cooperation with the Iraqi government, said the paper, adding that Syria, Iran and Iraq would all benefit from the project.
The deal was under a MOU inked between the Syria and Iran in the field of oil, gas and petrochemicals in a bid to continue and develop cooperation in this regard, according to the paper.
The committee also discussed the possibility of building a strategic gas line across Iraq and Syria to link it to the Arab Gas Line which is under construction to transport the Egyptian gas through Syria and Jordan.
The oil pipeline project comes amid Syria and Iran are boosting bilateral economic ties recently, marked by high-level officials visits between the two countries.
menafn.com
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 07:21 AM CST [
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Revealed: UK develops secret nuclear warhead
BRITAIN has been secretly designing a new nuclear warhead in conjunction with the Americans, provoking a legal row over the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The government has been pushing ahead with the programme while claiming that no decision has been made on a successor to Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent. Work on a new weapon by scientists at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire has been under way since Tony Blair was re-elected last May, and is now said to be ahead of similar US research.
The aim is to produce a simpler device using proven components to avoid breaching the ban on nuclear testing. Known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), it is being designed so that it can be tested in a laboratory rather than by detonation.
“We’ve got to build something that we can never test and be absolutely confident that, when we use it, it will work,” one senior British source said last week.
timesonline.co.ukFocus: Britain's secret nuclear blueprint Two weeks ago a group of Britain’s brightest young physicists gathered at the US nuclear test site in the Nevada desert and headed for Control Point 1. There they waited for a test codenamed Operation Krakatoa to erupt.
A thousand feet beneath the desert scrub, components for a new British nuclear warhead were ready for detonation. Though it was not to be an earthquaking full nuclear blast — since Britain is a signatory to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty — the physicists were about to witness only the second “sub-critical” test Britain has conducted in nearly a decade.
The controlled detonation, measuring the effect of conventional explosives on a small piece of plutonium, was ostensibly to help ensure that the UK’s nuclear warheads, deployed on Trident submarines, remain effective. But that was only half the story.
As The Sunday Times reveals today, the data produced by the test were part of a much wider, secret research programme to build a new nuclear weapon that some experts say will breach the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT).
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 07:18 AM CST [
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Nuclear expert: Too late to stop Iran
A former top UN and US arms inspector on Iraq has said it may be too late to stop a nuclear-weapons determined Iran, noting that there is no consensus on taking military action against Tehran.
"I'm afraid that we probably are past the point where there is any meaningful alternative other than military action to stop the Iranians if they are determined to go ahead. And I don't see that as a possibility," David Kay, who led the US search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq following the 2003 invasion, said on Sunday.
aljazeera.netMcCain: If Iran Gets Nukes, U.S. 'In Trouble' Where Iran is concerned, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, believes President Bush was right in keeping military leverage on the table and considering U.N. sanctions.
"Iran may be the greatest single threat to America since the end of the Cold War,"McCain told an audience at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis, Tenn. "If the Iranians acquire nuclear weapons, then my friends, we are in trouble.”
Bush ties Iran to roadside bombs in Iraq US President George W. Bush directly linked Tehran to roadside bombings against US forces in Iraq, stepping up his criticisms of Iran amid a tense standoff over its nuclear program.
"Tehran has been responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-coalition attacks by providing Shia militia with the capability to build improvised explosive devices in Iraq," Bush said in a speech.
He cited recent congressional testimony from John Negroponte, the US director of national intelligence.
The president's comments came as he launched a public relations offensive to bolster support for the war in Iraq some three years after he ordered the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Bush also charged that "some of the most powerful IEDs we are seeing in Iraq today include components that came from Iran."
U.S. denies asking for Iranian help in Iraq BAGHDAD, March 12 (Reuters) - The U.S. ambassador in Baghdad denied on Sunday seeking Iran's help to calm violence in Iraq and said there were still concerns about the Islamic Republic's links with militias in Iraq.
Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said journalists in Tehran had been shown a letter by a senior Iranian intelligence agent that was purportedly from U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, and which invited Iran to send representatives to talks in Iraq.
The newspaper said the letter was written in Farsi, which the Afghan-born ambassador speaks.
Khalilzad told CNN there had been no meetings between Iranian and U.S. officials.
"We have concerns about their relations with militias and extremists," said Khalilzad.
Earlier, the U.S. embassy denied such a letter existed.
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 07:12 AM CST [
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Detainee in Photo With Dog Was 'High-Value' Suspect
When Army Sgt. Michael J. Smith faces a court-martial today on charges that he used his military working dog to harass and threaten detainees, one of the prime examples of that alleged misconduct will be a photograph of Smith holding the dog just inches from the face of a detainee. It is one of the notorious images to emerge from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Although officials characterized the other detainees who appeared in the Abu Ghraib photographs as common criminals and rioters, the orange-clad detainee seen cowering before the dog was different. Detainee No. 155148 was considered a high-value intelligence source suspected of having close ties to al-Qaeda. According to interviews, sworn statements from soldiers and military documents obtained by The Washington Post, Ashraf Abdullah Ahsy was at the center of a military intelligence "special project" designed to break him down, and was considered important enough that his interrogation was mentioned in a briefing to high-ranking intelligence officials at the Pentagon.
Although Ahsy -- also identified in documents by the tribal last name of al-Juhayshi -- was described without his name in an Abu Ghraib military investigation as a "high value" detainee, he has largely remained a mystery. Ahsy's story, and his months of intense interrogations, contrast with statements by U.S. officials that the images of abuse at Abu Ghraib depicted malfeasance of a few soldiers randomly selecting victims on the night shift.
Ahsy could become a central figure in Smith's trial because attorneys for the Abu Ghraib dog handlers have said that military intelligence (MI) directed the soldiers to use their animals as part of an interrogation regimen, one that top officers approved in December 2003. Unlike others implicated in the Abu Ghraib abuse, the dog handlers can point directly to approvals of the technique in question from top commanders.
In a Jan. 25 sworn statement to investigators after he was granted immunity, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who ran the Abu Ghraib operation, said he approved the use of dogs for a few detainees in the days before the picture of Ahsy was taken, though he said he did not remember signing off on using dogs with Ahsy. Army officials confirmed that Ahsy is the one in the photograph.
"The preponderance of the evidence suggests the photo was the only photo [depicting Abu Ghraib abuse] which had anything to do with interrogations because the detainee was considered a high-value detainee," an Army official said Friday in response to questions about the case. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is part of an ongoing court-martial.
Ahsy was interrogated dozens of times by military intelligence soldiers, civilian contractors, and members of other government agencies (OGA), a common euphemism for the CIA, according to the documents. The newly discovered accounts reveal that the military working dog in the photograph was being used in conjunction with a coordinated effort to get Ahsy to talk, an effort that continued for months.
Smith, who has been charged with dereliction of duty and maltreatment of detainees, is scheduled to be tried at Fort Meade this week. He is also accused of using his dog to threaten two other detainees and for allegedly engaging in a contest to make detainees urinate and defecate out of fear. Smith's military attorney declined requests to comment.
Smith told abuse investigators in 2004 that military intelligence and military police requested Marco, his black Belgian shepherd, for use in interrogations and to control detainees, and that he complied.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 07:02 AM CST [
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IRAQ: NGO warns of rise in violence against women
According to the study, released on 9 March, the most worrying trend was the large number of kidnappings of women, many of whom reported being sexually abused or tortured. While such occurrences were largely unknown during the Saddam Hussein regime, more than 2,000 women have been kidnapped in Iraq since April 2003, the report noted.
"Money has become more important than lives, and kidnapping women – easy targets because of their weakness – is a quicker way to get a good ransom," said Muhammad.
The report also noted that many Iraqi Women were also being sold as sex workers abroad, mainly to the illicit markets of Yemen, Syria, Jordan and the Gulf States. Victims usually discover their fate only after they have been lured outside the country by false promises.
alertnet.org
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 06:59 AM CST [
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Shia cleric blames US forces for Sunday massacre
BAGHDAD: Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr held the US forces responsible on Monday for the bombings in Sadr city, one of the poorest districts of Baghdad, that claimed over 40 lives.
"I hold the occupying forces responsible for orchestrating this event," Muqtada told a press conference in Najaf.
He said terrorists carried out the bombing "under US air cover" arguing that the halt of telephone connections before the incident was proof of the cooperation between the terrorists and the occupier to "destabilise the security of this Shia region.
indiatimes.com Iraq: Permanent US Colony Why does the Bush Administration refuse to discuss withdrawing occupation forces from Iraq? Why is Halliburton, who landed the no-bid contracts to construct and maintain US military bases in Iraq, posting higher profits than ever before in its 86-year history?
Why do these bases in Iraq resemble self-contained cities as much as military outposts?
Why are we hearing such ludicrous and outrageous statements from the highest ranking military general in the United States, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace, who when asked how things were going in Iraq on March 9th in an interview on "Meet the Press" said, "I'd say they're going well. I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they're going very, very well from everything you look at."
I wonder if there is a training school, or at least talking point memos for these Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because Pace's predecessor, Gen. Richard Myers, told Senator John McCain last September that "In a sense, things are going well [in Iraq]."
General Pace also praised the Iraqi military, saying, "Now there are over 100 [Iraqi] battalions in the field."
Wow! General Pace must have waved his magic wand and materialized all these 99 new Iraqi battalions that are diligently keeping things safe and secure in occupied Iraq. Because according to the top US general in Iraq, General George Casey, not long ago there was only one Iraqi battalion (about 500-600 soldiers) capable of fighting on its own in Iraq.
During a late-September 2005 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Casey acknowledged that the Pentagon estimate of three Iraqi battalions last June had shrunk to one in September. That is less than six months ago.
I thought it would be a good idea to find someone who is qualified to discuss how feasible it would be to train 99 Iraqi battalions in less than six months, as Pace now claims has occurred.
rootsie on 03.14.06 @ 06:55 AM CST [
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Monday, March 13th
Morales gives Rice coca leaf-inlay guitar
VALPARAISO, Chile (Reuters) - Condoleezza Rice knew coca would top the agenda in her meeting with Bolivia's new president, but she likely wasn't expecting to get the real thing.
At the end of their 25-minute meeting, President Evo Morales presented the U.S. secretary of state with an Andean guitar that bore a coca-leaf inlay.
"The gift was well received. We will just have to check with our customs to see what rules apply. We certainly hope we can bring it back (to Washington)," said a senior State Department official who attended the meeting.
Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, came to prominence as a leader of coca farmers who want more freedom to grow coca, which is the main ingredient in cocaine but is also used legally for traditional medicines and in teas.
The fight against cocaine is the main source of bilateral friction between the United States and Bolivia, the world's third-biggest cocaine producer.
Rice told Morales, "I'm a musician you know," and strummed the instrument, a typical Bolivian lacquered handicraft with five pairs of strings.
It was unclear whether she immediately realized what adorned it.
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 03.13.06 @ 10:26 AM CST [
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Paramilitaries Forgo Guns In Colombia
BOGOTA, Colombia, March 10 -- The last large Colombian right-wing paramilitary force gave up its guns Friday as part of a peace deal negotiated with the government.
Rodrigo Tovar, alias "Jorge 40," the paramilitary leader on Colombia's Caribbean coast, led 2,500 of his troops in the demobilization ceremony.
About 28,000 right-wing fighters have accepted the government's offer of reduced jail terms for such crimes as massacre, torture and cocaine smuggling.
The ceremony in the northern town of La Mesa was attended by indigenous leaders whose people have been caught for decades in the cross-fire between the paramilitary fighters and left-wing rebels.
The paramilitaries have committed some of the worst atrocities of Colombia's guerrilla war, in which they have collaborated with members of the army to fight the rebels.
Opposition politicians and human rights groups say the demobilization is a smokescreen that allows the paramilitaries to secure benefits from the government without being forced to dismantle their cocaine-smuggling and extortion networks.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 03.13.06 @ 10:22 AM CST [
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Watching the Detectives
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, James Risen, Free Press, 256 pages
James Risen’s State of War has opened a Pandora’s Box for the Bush administration that no amount of howling, scowling, or bogus terrorist-attack warnings will be able to close. Risen’s revelations on pervasive National Security Agency warrantless spying on Americans shred the final pretenses to legality of the Bush administration. Now the debate is simply whether, as Bush and his supporters claim, the president is effectively above the law and the Constitution during a time of (perpetual) war.
Risen has been a national security reporter for the New York Times for many years. He was not one of the Times reporters who simply recycled hokum from the White House Iraq Group. In October 2002, he wrote a piece shooting down the Bush administration’s claims that Mohammad Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague, one of the favorite neocon justifications for attacking Iraq.
Risen had the story on NSA wiretapping before the 2004 election, but the Times, under pressure from the administration, sat on the piece for at least 14 months. The paper’s timidity may have awarded George W. Bush a second term as president. After the Times finally published Risen’s story in mid-December, Bush seized upon the exposé to portray himself as heroically rising above the statute book to protect the American people. The administration has been boasting about its “terrorism surveillance program” ever since.
Bush announced that “the NSA program is one that listens to a few numbers called from the outside of the United States and of known al Qaeda or affiliate people.” Except that the program also listens to calls from inside the United States to abroad. And, in some cases, it has wiretapped calls exclusively within the United States. No one knows how flimsy the standard may be that the administration is using for associating people with terrorist suspects—consumption of more than a pound of hummus a week?
Risen revealed that the “NSA is now eavesdropping on as many as five hundred people at any given time” in the United States. Bush’s “secret presidential order has given the NSA the freedom to peruse ... the email of millions of Americans.” The NSA’s program has been christened the “J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Vacuum Cleaner.”
In 1978, responding to scandals involving political spying on Americans in the name of counterespionage, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The act prohibited wiretapping of domestic phone calls without a warrant. The special FISA court, however, sets a much lower standard for securing search warrants than is required by other federal courts.
The FISA court has approved almost every one of the more than 17,000 search warrant requests the feds have submitted since 1978. Federal agencies can even submit retroactive requests up to 72 hours after they begin surveilling someone. The number of FISA-approved wiretaps has doubled since 2001. Yet the Bush administration whines that FISA makes the U.S. government a helpless giant against terrorists.
Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claim that the warrantless wiretaps are based on Congress’s authorization to use military force against the people who attacked the United States. But if that measure actually nullified all domestic limits on the president’s power, then Americans have been living under martial law since Sept. 18, 2001, when Congress passed the resolution. Bush and Gonzales also assert that the president has inherent power to tap phone calls, thanks to Article II of the Constitution. This is the same “commander-in-chief override” that Gonzales invoked after the Abu Ghraib scandal to justify the Bush administration ignoring the federal Anti-Torture Act.
americanconservativemag.com
rootsie on 03.13.06 @ 10:19 AM CST [
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Heart failure blamed but former Serb leader said doctors were killing him
The death of Slobodan Milosevic was shrouded in mystery and deepening controversy last night as Dutch pathologists examined his corpse and it emerged that he had claimed he was being slowly killed by doctors.
Milosevic's body was removed from the detention centre at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague to the Netherlands forensic institute for a postmortem examination and toxicological testing.
Last night a preliminary postmortem report said that he had died of heart failure. His remains were to be released to his family today.
Yesterday the 64-year-old former Serbian and Yugoslav president's lawyer revealed a six-page letter - dated last Friday, 24 hours before his death - that Milosevic wrote to the Russian government alleging he was being deliberately administered the wrong drugs for his illnesses.
"Persons that are giving me the drug for the treatment of leprosy surely cannot be treating me. Especially those persons against whom I have defended my country in the war and who also have an interest in silencing me can likewise not be treating me," Milosevic said in a handwritten letter to the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.
Milosevic had a long history of heart disease, hypertension and high blood pressure. He was also found to be ignoring Dutch medical advice while on trial for the past four years and to be taking drugs other than those prescribed. His family has a history of suicide; his parents and a favourite uncle killed themselves.
Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor in The Hague, said yesterday that Milosevic, found dead in his cell on Saturday morning, might have killed himself. "According to our valuations, [the trial] would have ended with a verdict requesting he be shut away for life. Perhaps he wanted to avoid all that," Ms Del Ponte told the Italian paper, la Repubblica. But tribunal sources said the most likely explanation for his death was natural causes.
While Milosevic claimed in his letter that he was being deliberately administered the wrong medicine, he also has a record of taking unprescribed drugs and refusing treatment advised by his Dutch doctors.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.13.06 @ 10:09 AM CST [
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Ousted PM eyes revenge as Orange Revolution sours
Fifteen months after he was denied high office by the youthful protesters of Ukraine's Orange Revolution, Viktor Yanukovich is on the brink of an extraordinary comeback.
The pro-Moscow candidate, whose presidential ambitions were dashed after the disputed December 2004 poll, scents victory in the parliamentary elections in two weeks. Arguing that Ukraine made a terrible mistake by turning its back on its traditional ally, Russia, to woo the European Union, his Party of the Regions looks set to win the most seats - making him the king-maker in an expected new coalition government.
Mr Yanukovich, who was acting prime minister from November 2002 until December 2004, is too cautious to lay claim openly to the office again, but his message is clear: he is back.
"We aim to get power and overcome Ukraine's crisis and stabilise the country with a team of able and talented people," he said at his campaign headquarters, a 19th-century mansion in the Ukrainian capital.
In a swipe at President Victor Yushchenko, who seeks links with the EU and Nato, he said: "The government talks about European integration and the benefits that it will bring at a time when many people in Ukraine wonder why their standards of living are deteriorating. The country is living in a state of permanent crisis."
telegraph.co.uk
rootsie on 03.13.06 @ 10:04 AM CST [
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Israel’s new iron man plans ‘axis of hope’ in Middle East
THE man likely to become Israel’s next defence minister does not shy away from talking about his past.
“I killed many Arabs, probably more than Hamas fighters killed Jews, and more than anybody else, but all in order to secure Israeli lives,” said Admiral Ami Ayalon, the Labour party’s candidate for the most difficult portfolio in Israeli politics.
There are two weeks before the general election, and victory for either Labour or the Kadima party is expected to ensure that the former commando and head of Shin Bet, the internal security service, will take over from Shaul Mofaz, the incumbent, in a coalition.
Ayalon is considered a dove despite his 32 years of military service and his near five-year stint at the helm of the intelligence agency. He is a straight talker, and wants a comprehensive peace settlement with the Palestinians even under a Hamas leadership.
“I’d be willing to negotiate with Hamas if the organisation accepts the idea of a two-state solution,” he said in an interview last week.
Ayalon, 61, is regarded as a fresh thinker: he believes Israel should establish an “axis of pragmatism” with the regional countries that have full diplomatic relations with Israel — Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey.
“This is the whole idea — to create this pragmatic axis which will be supported by the European Union and the international community,” he said. It is part of his strategy to woo the Palestinians from the more extremist policies of Hamas. “Seventy per cent of those who voted for Hamas were not Hamas believers but voted against the corruption in the Palestinian authority,” he said. “If we establish this axis it will break Hamas and we will see the pragmatist forces among the Palestinians.”
Ayalon is also open-minded on the controversy over the division of Jerusalem, which he envisages as an “open city” and capital of two states. Jerusalem should be shared between Arabs and Jews. “Arab neighbourhoods will come under Palestinian sovereignty, Jewish ones under Israeli sovereignty,” he said. He has even suggested that if a common solution could be agreed with Hamas on the future of the West Bank, the hated security wall currently under construction could be taken down.
timesonline.co.ukPeretz: We'll pass law to pay settlers to leave voluntarily Labor Chairman Amir Peretz declared Saturday that a government controlled by his party would not waive the negotiating stage of West Bank withdrawal, and would begin its term by passing a law that would pay West Bank settlers who volunteer to leave the territories, in order to reduce the number of settlers prior to any evacuation plan.
Peretz was responding to an interview in Friday's Haaretz with Acting Prime Minister and Kadima head Yossi Olmert, who promised to draw permanent borders for the state.
"In contrast to Olmert, we do not intend to waive the negotiations stage," Peretz said. "Kadima and Olmert say that Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas] is irrelevant and sanctify unilateralism. We prefer to hold negotiations and to use unilateralism as a last resort. A unilateral step on the West Bank will not achieve international support either, since there won't be a return to the 1967 borders and the world will view it as an attempt to set boundaries unilaterally."
Peretz emphasized that a government led by him would bring about the rapid evacuation of the illegal West Bank outposts and the completion of the separation fence. In parallel, it would pass an "evacuation-compensation" law to pay settlers who leave the West Bank voluntarily. The idea is to thin out the settler population even before a disengagement plan is approved.
Police: Hamas is seeking control of East Jerusalem villages Hamas is attempting to turn the Arab villages in East Jerusalem into "Hamas villages," according to Jerusalem police.
Police officials said Hamas is seeking to increase its control of these villages in order to hold coordinated demonstrations there, among other things. This is only one of a series of measures being taken by the organization in order to heighten its presence in the capital in light of its election victory.
The Jerusalem police are already planning to counter Hamas intentions to establish an "alternative Orient House" in the Arab eastern city. Orient House, which had served as a Palestinian Authority government center, was closed by the Israeli government a few years ago for breaking the law.
"Hamas is a terror organization," Jerusalem Police Chief Ilan Franco said last week. "It is still classified as a terror organization, and that is how the Jerusalem Police relates to it. Hamas' activities in general, and in Jerusalem in particular, are prohibited."
Franco said the police would not permit the reestablishment of Orient House or the creation of Hamas villages in East Jerusalem.
rootsie on 03.13.06 @ 09:59 AM CST [
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Kurdish conference opens in Turkey under tight security
ISTANBUL (AFP) - Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals have gathered under tight security for a major conference to discuss a peaceful resolution to the 22-year-old Kurdish conflict in the country's southeast.
Police imposed strict security measures after nationalists threatened to disrupt the two-day event, designed to promote ways of ending a conflict that has long impeded Turkey's efforts to join the European Union.
Officers searched participants at the entrance of the venue Saturday, the private Bilgi University, and several dozen riot police were on guard outside the campus.
More than 45 Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals, politicians and journalists of various political convictions were taking part in the conference, entitled "The Kurdish question in Turkey: ways for a democratic settlement".
Organizers said the conference could adopt a final declaration on Sunday, appealing to the government for more reforms to resolve the conflict, which has claimed some 37,000 lives since the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) began fighting for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast in 1984.
The conflict has led to allegations of gross human rights violations on both sides, ravaged the already meager economy of the region and forced hundreds of thousands of already poor peasants to migrate into urban slum areas.
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 03.13.06 @ 09:50 AM CST [
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As Syria's Influence in Lebanon Wanes, Iran Moves In
BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 6 — Nearly a year ago, not long after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, who was twice prime minister of Lebanon, Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon, unleashing a wave of patriotism here that prompted many to say that the Lebanese might finally be able to take control of their destiny.
But the intensity of the moment and the rush of emotions eclipsed at least one important and largely unanswerable question: With Syria gone, or at least its troops gone, who would fill the power vacuum?
At the time, Iran did not appear to be the answer. But that is what is happening, according to government officials, political leaders and political analysts here.
Iran, long a powerful player in Lebanon, has been able to increase its influence, partly through its ties to the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. That has given Tehran a stronger hand to play in its confrontation with the United States and Europe over its nuclear program.
Should the nuclear showdown go badly for Iran, the government could rely on its surrogates in Lebanon as well as its influence in Iraq, or use oil for a weapon. In Lebanon, the Iranians could contribute to the kind of retribution they have promised as a payback, from a strike across the border into Israel, to a more forceful flexing that could paralyze the Lebanese government, political analysts and government officials said.
nytimes.comThe Times is war pimpin'.Syria ignores US sanction on its bank Syria on Friday brushed aside the U.S. decision to sever links to the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria (CBS).
The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday barred American financial institutions from opening or maintaining an account for or on behalf of CBS because the bank "has been used by terrorists" to move funds and has laundered money from the "illicit sale of Iraqi oil".
In a statement to the official SANA news agency, CBS Director General Dureid Dorgham said the U.S. decision "was taken for political reasons to affect Syria" without "logical evidence".
Dorgham pointed out that it has been a "binding decision" to the U.S. banks even before the official announcement.
Meanwhile, he expressed confidence in some other friendly banks which had rejected the U.S. decision to sanction the Syrian bank, noting that these banks would not submit to it.
"Those banks consider the U.S. decision as a political one and is binding to the U.S. banks," he said.
Syria switched state institutions' foreign currency from U.S. dollar to the euro for all transactions a month ago in case Washington imposes more sanctions on it, Dorgham said.
Regarding money laundering, Dorgham said that the bank has formed a specialized committee for this matter and applied all procedures accredited in different countries of the world.
On the Iraqi money, Dorgham said: " The bank has performed its work in this regard and we consider that the Iraqi official circles are the only authorized party to discuss such issue for they are careful on their interests."
Washington seeks explanation for Spain's Syria talks MADRID (AFP) - Washington is demanding to know why Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos held a meeting in Damascus with his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Mouallem.
El Pais quoted "diplomatic sources" as saying US ambassador in Madrid Eduardo Aguirre and another high-ranking US diplomat, Shirin Tahir Kheli, had expressed concern about the rare visit by a senior member of a Western government to Syria.
The Spanish government responded by saying it was "opposed to the strategy of isolating Damascus", El Pais reported Saturday.
"Washington seeks explanation...Washington is demanding to know why..."
rootsie on 03.13.06 @ 09:46 AM CST [
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Bomb kills 4 US soldiers in Afghanistan
ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Four U.S. soldiers were killed on Sunday after a blast ripped through their armoured vehicle in Afghanistan, the U.S. military said.
The soldiers were killed during a patrol in the eastern province of Kunar, which lies close to the border with Pakistan, in an attack claimed by Taliban insurgents.
"The extremists that initiated this senseless attack create a significant danger and threat to the Afghan people," said Major General Benjamin C. Freakely for the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
The attack marked the U.S. military's single biggest loss in a day in the country for several months and brought to 10 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year.
reuters.comAfghan president survives suicide attack A FORMER Afghan president who heads a government commission seeking to encourage Taliban defections has survived a suicide car bomb attack today that killed two bombers and two civilians, officials said.
Sibghatullah Mojadidi, who also chairs the upper house of parliament, or senate, was in a car being driven on a busy main road when attackers detonated a car laden with explosives near his vehicle.
"The aim of the attack was Mr Mojadidi," Zalmai Oryakhel, the senior police officer for the area, said.
Witnesses said two vehicles in Mojadidi's convoy were damaged but an official of President Hamid Karzai's office said Mojadidi was not injured.
Pakistan accused of Afghan terror attack The head of the upper-house of the Afghan parliament has accused the Pakistani secret service of being behind a suicide bombing which injured him and killed four other people in Kabul. The attack came during a weekend of violence in which four US servicemen died in the deadliest roadside bomb attack on Americans in a month and six Afghan policemen were killed, two of them beheaded, after being abducted from their homes. Elsewhere an armed gang abducted four Albanians working for a German company and their four Afghan bodyguards.
The charge against Pakistan by Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, a former president of the country, who is now leading a reconciliation programme with the Taliban, is the latest round in bitter feud between the two countries over insurgent attacks in Afghanistan.
President Hamid Karzai has claimed that senior Taliban figures, including the former head Mullah Mohammed Omar, are living in Pakistan and using the country as a base to infiltrate fighters across the border. His officials accuse the Pakistani intelligence serevice, ISI, of recruiting and training suicide bombers.
Pakistan Army Kills 30 Militants on Border ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani soldiers backed by helicopter gunships attacked a suspected militant hideout in Pakistan's volatile tribal region near the Afghan border and killed about 30 fighters, an army spokesman said Saturday.
But residents and hardline clerics disputed the military's claim, saying most of the dead were local villagers, including women and children.
rootsie on 03.13.06 @ 09:33 AM CST [
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Developments in Iraq, March 12
* BAGHDAD - At least 40 people were killed and 95 wounded in three car bombs that exploded almost simultaneously in two markets in the Shi'ite Sadr district of Baghdad on Sunday. Police dismantled a fourth bomb in the same area, they said.
* LATIFIYA - Gunmen ambushed and killed a local football player (Mohammad Najah) in Latifiya 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, local police said.
* BAGHDAD - Two civilians were killed and four wounded when a mortar round landed on a paint shop in central Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Eight bodies were found with their hands tied and gun shot wounds to the head in Rustamiya, a suburb in eastern Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Six people were killed and 14 wounded, including policemen, when a roadside bomb exploded as a U.S convoy passed by in southern Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed two police officers in separate incidents in Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Two soldiers were killed and four wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in central Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Five soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol in eastern Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad received at least twenty bodies overnight, some with gun shot wounds, a source in the hospital said.
DHULUIYA - Gunmen killed two army officers who work in the Joint Coordination Centre in Dhuluiya, 40 km (25 miles) north of Baghdad, the Joint Coordination Centre of Dhuluiya said.
alertnet.orgExplosion rocks market in Shiite slum, killing at least 39 in Baghdad; parliament to convene Thursday BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A suicide bomber and a car bomb ripped apart a market Sunday in a Shiite slum in Baghdad, killing at least 39 people and wounding more than 100. The carnage came shortly after Iraqi politicians decided to convene parliament three days earlier than planned, suggesting some progress in efforts to form a unity government.
The death toll in Sadr City was sure to rise as residents, many firing Kalashnikov rifles into the air, raced to and fro to collect charred corpses from among burning vehicles and shops.
Angry residents kicked the head of the suicide bomber, apparently an African, as it lay in the street of the al-Hay market in the east Baghdad neighborhood.
US vows no permanent bases in Iraq BAGHDAD (AFP) - US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said that his country did not want permanent military bases in Iraq and that he was willing to talk to Iran about the war-torn country's future.
"We want Iraq to stand on its own feet, we have no goal of establishing permanent bases here," he said in an interview with Iraq's Ash-Sharqiya television, according to a transcript obtained by AFP.
"Our goal is a working, a workable government, so that we can leave Iraq and let Iraqis handle all their circumstance themselves. That's our goal, and were very serious about this, we mean it," he said.
LiarsU.S. Has No Immediate Plans to Close Abu Ghraib Prison WASHINGTON, March 9, 2006 – The United States always has planned to transfer authority for all detention facilities in Iraq to the Iraqis, but announcements regarding the imminent closure at the Abu Ghraib prison are premature, defense officials said today.
News reports that the U.S. military intends to close Abu Ghraib within the next few months and to transfer its prisoners to other jails are inaccurate, officials said.
There's no specific timetable for that transfer or for closure of the Baghdad prison, they said. Decisions regarding Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq will be based largely on two factors: the readiness of Iraq's security forces to assume control of them and infrastructure improvements at the facilities.
The War Dividend: The British companies making a fortune out of conflict-riven Iraq British businesses have profited by at least £1.1bn since coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein three years ago, the first comprehensive investigation into UK corporate investment in Iraq has found.
The company roll-call of post-war profiteers includes some of the best known names in Britain's boardrooms as well many who would prefer to remain anonymous. They come from private security services, banks, PR consultancies, urban planning consortiums, oil companies, architects offices and energy advisory bodies.
Among the top earners is the construction firm Amec, which has made an estimated £500m from a series of contracts restoring electrical systems and maintaining power generation facilities during the past two years. Aegis, which provides private security has earned more than £246m from a three-year contract with the Pentagon to co-ordinate military and security companies in Iraq. Erinys, which specialises in the same area, has made more than £86m, a substantial portion from the protection of oilfields.
The findings show how much is stake if Britain were to withdraw military protection from Iraq. British company involvement at the top of Iraq's new political and economic structures means Iraq will be forced to rely on British business for many years to come.
rootsie on 03.13.06 @ 09:18 AM CST [
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Sunday, March 12th
Wailers' bassist sues Marleys for '£60m royalties
Would Bob Marley have made it without his distinctive bouncy basslines? The question will be put to a judge this week as a protracted legal wrangle between the Marley family and the bassist in his backing band, the Wailers, finally comes to the High Court.
Aston 'Family Man' Barrett is suing the Marleys and the Universal Island record label, claiming that neither he nor his deceased brother Carlton, the band's drummer, have received any royalties since Marley's death in 1981. If he is successful, Barrett, now in his sixties and father to 52 children, could receive a payout of up to £60 million.
Barrett claims that he and his brother signed a contract, alongside Marley, with Island in 1974, which entitled them to royalties as 'partners' in the group. Barrett also co-wrote several songs with Marley, for which he claims he was never paid publishing fees.
Lawyers for Universal Island and the Marley family, headed by the singer's widow Rita, are expected to argue that Barrett gave up his right to royalties when he signed a legal settlement for several hundred thousand dollars in 1994.
observor.guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 11:15 AM CST [
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Pinochet-Era Police Center to Become Allende Museum
SANTIAGO, Chile -- The mansion was used as a domestic spying center by the feared secret police of former dictator Augusto Pinochet. Now it will house artwork and be dedicated to the Marxist foe overthrown by the general's bloody 1973 coup.
The Salvador Allende Solidarity Museum, due to open next month, will exhibit work by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Roberto Matta and Joan Miro.
"This is Salvador Allende's revenge," said Jose Balmes, the Spanish-born director of the museum.
The remodeling of the mansion was a journey through the inner workings of the shadowy agency responsible for many of the dictatorship's worst abuses. Workers found passports, papers with instructions to agents, and diagrams of places under surveillance or targeted for operations.
"In the basement, we found a communications center used to tap telephones around the country," Balmes said. "There was evidence many phones were tapped."
Some of the rooms in the big, two-story house in a middle-class neighborhood near downtown Santiago were used for interrogating detainees, although the place was not a jail, Balmes said.
The mansion served as the Spanish Embassy in the 1950s but then stood empty until the secret police took it over in 1973.
Another large house, Villa Grimaldi, served as a detention and torture center. That site, in a southern suburb of the capital, has been turned into a memorial to victims. Among those held there were Chile's incoming president, Michelle Bachelet, and her mother, Angela Jeria.
The mansion converted into the Allende museum was purchased and remodeled with financial support from the Chilean government and European countries including Spain, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden.
Spy equipment found there is being left untouched, as a reminder of what the house was before, said Balmes, 79, who came to Chile in 1939 to get away from Francisco Franco's dictatorship in Spain. "The place is a memorial," he said.
Documents that the workers found were turned over to Hugo Dolmetsch, one of several judges investigating human rights abuses under Pinochet.
Many of the artworks to be exhibited come from a museum established by Allende in 1972. Artists and intellectuals from around the world, such as Ecuadoran painter Oswaldo Guayasamin and Argentine author Julio Cortazar, contributed.
After the coup, the art disappeared. It was not until civilian rule was restored in 1990 that the collection was traced to a basement at another Santiago museum.
washingtonpost.comO'Higgins the Liberator Is Reclaimed From the Military SANTIAGO, Chile, March 9 — Not long after seizing power in 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet built an Altar of the Fatherland and had the remains of Bernardo O'Higgins, the hero of Chilean independence, moved there. Chilean democrats have been struggling ever since to wrest O'Higgins from the military and restore his legacy to the entire nation, and on Thursday they finally succeeded.
In an emotional one-hour ceremony at a downtown square just off a boulevard named for O'Higgins and barely a stone's throw from the presidential palace, President Ricardo Lagos symbolically reclaimed "the Father of the Nation" for Chile's 15 million people.
He did so, he said, in the name of "Chile re-encountering its democratic values and traditions" and establishing "a new relationship between civilians and the military."
After delivering speeches beneath a statue of O'Higgins on horseback, Mr. Lagos and Gen. Emilio Cheyre, the armed forces commander, visited the new mausoleum, still smelling faintly of fresh paint and damp granite before it opens to public visits. It was as if the tomb of George Washington were returned to Mount Vernon after being sequestered at the Pentagon for 30-odd years.
The restoration of O'Higgins's tomb to civilian control is the culmination of a series of symbolic gestures that Mr. Lagos, a Socialist who leaves office on Saturday, has made during his six years in office. He began by reopening a side entrance to the palace that had often been used by Salvador Allende, the only other Socialist to govern Chile, and allowed the public to move through the main entrance and courtyard.
Then, just before the 30th anniversary of the Pinochet coup, a statue of Mr. Allende was unveiled on the main square that is just behind the palace, known as La Moneda, where he committed suicide on Sept. 11, 1973, after air force planes bombed it. As a parting gesture, Mr. Lagos plans this week to dedicate a small plaque inside the palace to officials killed with Mr. Allende in the coup.
"A lot of my friends died, either there or a few days later," Mr. Lagos said during an interview last weekend, asked about his fondness for such symbolic acts. The common thread, he said, is "to be able to recover a piece of the nation's history" but in a way that "does not divide Chileans again, but unites them."
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 11:10 AM CST [
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Haiti's Preval Calls on Brazil-Led Forces to Stay
March 10 (Bloomberg) -- Haitian President-elect Rene Preval called on Brazil-led peacekeeping forces to remain in the country to help provide security as it restores democracy and order.
Preval, speaking at a news conference in Brasilia, said Brazilian troops have also helped provide education and health to Haiti's poor population. He said the Caribbean country will need time to reinforce its own police and justice system.
``Our justice system and police are extremely frail,'' Preval, a former ally of ousted leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide, said. ``The presence of the forces should continue and be renewed.''
Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest county, is trying to reorganize a government two years after a rebellion drove Aristide from power and the country into chaos, calling for the United Nations to send forces to help restore security.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim on Feb. 16 said Brazil will maintain support for Haiti, though he declined to say how long Brazil plans to keep its 1,222 soldiers there, where the UN has about 9,000 troops.
Haiti's daily average income is about $1.
bloomberg.com
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 11:04 AM CST [
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Peru president gives poll warning
Peru's president has warned against damaging the country's stability, ahead of presidential elections in April.
"If you are not interested in building economic, political, legal stability then we will not have investment," Alejandro Toledo told the BBC.
His warning came amid polls showing rising support for nationalist former army officer Ollanta Humala.
In January Peru withdrew its ambassador to Venezuela after "interference" by President Hugo Chavez in its election.
Peruvian authorities were outraged when Mr Chavez praised Mr Humala and hit out at the conservative front-runner in the poll, Lourdes Flores, who he said was the candidate of the Peruvian oligarchy.
The diplomatic row erupted when Mr Humala attended a news conference in Caracas with the Venezuelan leader and Bolivia's President-elect Evo Morales.
Mr Chavez praised Mr Humala for "joining the battle" against the Free Trade Area of the Americas backed by Washington and a number of countries in the region.
bbc.co.uk
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 11:01 AM CST [
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U.S. More Intent on Blocking Chavez
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is stepping up efforts to counter leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as he builds opposition to U.S. influence in Latin America.
U.S. diplomats have sought in recent years to mute their conflicts with Chavez, fearing that a war of words with the flamboyant populist could raise his stature at home and abroad. But in recent months, as Chavez has sharpened his attacks — and touched American nerves by increasing ties with Iran — American officials have become more outspoken about their intention to isolate him.
Signaling the shift, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Congress last month that the United States was actively organizing other countries to carry out an "inoculation strategy" against what it sees as meddling by Chavez.
U.S. officials believe Chavez uses his oil wealth to reward governments that share his anti-American views and to foment change in those that don't.
"We are working with other countries to make certain that there is a united front against some of the things that Venezuela gets involved in," said Rice, who called Venezuela a "sidekick" of Iran.
Rice leaves today on an eight-day trip to Latin America, Indonesia and Australia, including a stop in Chile for the inauguration of President-elect Michelle Bachelet. Rice said pointedly Thursday that she did not plan to see Chavez, who is expected to attend the inauguration Saturday.
As part of the administration's new view of Venezuela, U.S. defense and intelligence officials have revised their assessment of the security threat Venezuela poses to the region. They say they believe Venezuela will have growing military and diplomatic relationships with North Korea and Iran, and point with concern to its arms buildup. Of equal worry to them is Venezuela's overhaul of its military doctrine, which now emphasizes "asymmetric warfare" — a strategy of sabotage and hit-and-run attacks against a greater military power, much like that used by Iraqi insurgents.
latimes.com
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 10:57 AM CST [
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Nigeria: Militants Kill 13 Soldiers
The Nigerian Armed forces yesterday recorded heavy casualties in two separate battles with Ijaw militias along the waterway of Warri, Delta State with 13 soldiers feared dead.
This comes as the Chief of Naval Staff (CNS), Vice Admiral Ganiyu Adekeye, yesterday advised the Federal Government to adopt a proactical political measure to the current crisis threatening to tear down the Niger Delta region.
Defence Headquarters, however, confirmed the death of four of its personnel in yesterday's renewed hostilities with militants in the region.
Speaking with THISDAY in Abuja, Acting Director of Defence Information, Group Captain Eniola. O. Akinduro, said, "Four soldiers were killed and an unspecified number of militants were equally killed in the exchange of firearms in the Niger Delta yesterday."
Akinduro, who could not disclose the actual cause of yesterday's shoot out, however, assured Nigerians that, "investigations is currently being carried out to determine the possible cause of the shooting."
He denied claims that the military was re-enforcing troops in the region, stating that, "Movement of military troops from one end of the area to the other are often construed to mean military re-enforcement. But I can tell you that there is no military re-enforcement in the area now."
allafrica.comJoin The ExxonMobil War Boycott - Buy Citgo - ExxonMobil has been selected for boycott because of its apparent active involvement in U.S. policy in the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular, and its power to help change these policies.
Campbell Soup, Carlson Companies (Radisson Hotels, TGI Friday's), Corning Inc., Metlife, Novartis, Pfizer, Verizon, Wells Fargo and Wyeth are also selected for boycott because these firms can influence ExxonMobil through board members they share in common with ExxonMobil.
When governments and/or corporations perpetrate gross injustice and war - or do nothing to stop it - we, the people, must take action to end the violence and exploitation.
Through the power of information and boycott, Consumers For Peace offers you a non-violent way, every day, to act on behalf of justice and peace. Our focus is the Iraq War.
We propose a boycott of ExxonMobil Corporation products and the products and services of nine firms that are in a position to influence ExxonMobil through its board of directors to achieve these goals:
Immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries from Iraq; and reparations for the loss of Iraqi lives and property.
Impeachment of George W. Bush; and criminal prosecution of executive branch officials who have lied to congress about the war and/or have commited war crimes and crimes against humanity.
What about Angola and Nigeria?
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 10:54 AM CST [
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The Israeli Wall, the Javits Center and the Bullying of an Architect
Richard Rogers, the noted British architect, was recently summoned to the offices of the Empire State Development Corp. to explain his connection to a group called Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine. Empire State is overseeing the redesign of New York's $1.7-billion Javits Convention Center, and Rogers is the architect on the job.
According to media reports, Rogers has sparked the anger of various New York politicians and Jewish organizations for what he now claims was only a fleeting association with Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine. The group has taken the "outrageous" position that Israel's West Bank barrier (sometimes referred to euphemistically as a "security fence") is, well, problematic--because most of it is built not on Israel's 1967 border but within the West Bank; because it violates international law; because it separates farmers from their land, one town from another, people from their doctors, children from their schools; and because it generally wreaks havoc on Palestinian life.
Members of the group have proposed a boycott of Israeli architects and construction companies working on the barrier, saying their involvement in such a project makes them "complicit in social, political and economic oppression" and is "in violation of their professional code of ethics."
Apparently anyone associated with such a position--in other words, anyone taking a principled stand in favor of human rights and international law--may have to count himself out of a contract for the Javits Center.
This is only the most recent example of Israel's American defenders--who will not tolerate any criticism of Israel--using their political clout to punish or silence dissident voices. Last month, the New York premiere of a play based on the words of Rachel Corrie, a young American who was crushed by an Israeli Army bulldozer while protesting the demolition of a Palestinian home, was indefinitely postponed for fear that some might find her words "offensive."
Naturally, Rogers has been desperately trying to distance himself from anything that might stand in the way of his retaining the Javits project, including severing his ties with the group and stating that he does not back a boycott.
Israel's barrier is fine, Rogers now says. In fact, he's now in favor of it. Further, "Hamas must renounce terrorism," he told the New York Post. "Hamas must recognize Israel's right to exist. Just making a statement is not enough. They have to back it up."
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 10:47 AM CST [
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West Bank tours reveal the grim reality of Israeli occupation
On the top floor of a commandeered Palestinian home in the West Bank city of Hebron, Yehuda Shaul, a former Israeli soldier, stood at the centre of a group of rapt German tourists and told them about the time he unleashed his grenade launcher on local gunmen.
"I was trained with the grenade gun. That was my mission," he said. "But we were shooting at houses 800 metres away, so of course you hit innocent targets too."
When Mr Shaul talks about innocent targets, he means Palestinian civilians. Yet he is not afraid to tell stories from his 14 months service in the Israeli army in Hebron.
"Could we fire grenades at areas where Palestinians lived? Sure. Why not?" he asked, describing many Israeli army actions breaking the army's own rules of engagement. "It was fun. It was cool. Could we shut 2,000 Palestinian shops with a curfew on a whim? Why not?"
In the past nine months, Mr Shaul and the Breaking the Silence group he founded has led more than 40 groups totalling 1,200 people around the divided city of Hebron, where 500 Jewish settlers live at the heart of a Palestinian population of more than 100,000.
The tourists pay nothing bar transport costs, but they are given a no-holds-barred insider view of the effect that Israel's Hebron settlements - and the hundreds of combat troops which protect them - have on the city's Palestinian population.
telegraph.co.uk
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 10:43 AM CST [
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India links Pakistani-based terror group to shrine blasts
NEW DELHI -- Indian intelligence agencies have identified terror outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba as the prime suspect behind the Varanasi blasts.
The Indian Express newspaper said Friday the intelligence agencies told the cabinet committee on security, a key security committee of the federal government, that the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba militant outfit was the prime suspect in the Varanasi blasts and had most probably used operatives from Bangladesh and local elements to carry out the bombings.
"The status report presented to the CCS pointed out that the evidence collected so far indicated that LeT was the mastermind behind the bomb blasts though LeT men were not on the ground to personally set off the bombs. For that, the LeT is believed to have used Bangladeshis living illegally in Uttar Pradesh," said a news report quoting an unidentified Indian intelligence official.
The official said in both cases, pressure cookers with timer devices were used to store improvised explosive devices which were triggered in the evening, when people crowd market places and religious shrines.
wpherald.com
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 10:35 AM CST [
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India, Iran, Pakistan to meet on pipeline
NEW DELHI (AFP) - Officials from India, Pakistan and Iran will meet in Tehran next week to discuss a pipeline project for the export of Iranian natural gas to South Asia, an Indian oil ministry official said.
The 2,600-kilometre (1,600-mile) pipeline, valued at over seven billion dollars, was first proposed in 1994 but progress has been slowed by tensions between India and Pakistan, neighbours and nuclear-armed rivals.
"Petroleum Secretary M.S. Srinivasan will lead the Indian delegation, which will arrive in Iran on Monday for three days of official talks," the official said on Friday.
India, which imports 70 percent of the oil it consumes, is keen to import natural gas to meet growing energy needs.
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 10:31 AM CST [
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Angry US says Iran must end nuclear program in two weeks
THE United States is pushing the United Nations Security Council to give Iran a two-week deadline to halt nuclear work that could be related to the making of weapons.
The ultimatum to Iran to step down from its nuclear defiance or face sanctions could come as soon as Friday when the 15 members of the Security Council meet in New York.
A draft text prepared for the council by European nations yesterday said Iran should "without delay re-establish full, sustained and verifiable suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing [for plutonium] activities" with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Prime Minister John Howard has said Iran's program should be referred to the UN and it would be a test of the UN's effectiveness. But he believes it is too early to talk of sanctions.
With Russia and China opposing direct action, the Security Council is unlikely to rush into sanctions. It is likely first to urge Iran to accept IAEA demands that it halt all uranium enrichment work.
But the US is increasing the pressure to force Iran to step back from its refusal to co-operate with the IAEA.
smh.com.au
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 10:28 AM CST [
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America Anesthetized
The new Zogby poll gauging the opinions of American troops in Iraq has drawn attention mostly because it finds that 72 percent believe the United States should withdraw in a year or less and only 23 percent favor George W. Bush’s plan to “stay the course.”
But the poll also illustrates the power of propaganda.
Shockingly, 85 percent of the troops questioned believe they are fighting in Iraq “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks” – one of the key Iraq War myths built by Bush’s frequent juxtaposition of references to Osama bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein.
This subliminal message has stuck with the vast majority of U.S. troops even though Bush eventually acknowledged publicly that there is no evidence linking Saddam to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
In other words, more than eight in 10 of the U.S. soldiers and Marines in Iraq think they are there avenging the 3,000 people killed on Sept. 11, even though the U.S. government lacks evidence of the connection.
The poll also found that 77 percent think that a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al-Qaeda in Iraq” – another myth nurtured by the Bush administration even though Hussein’s secular government was a bitter enemy of al-Qaeda’s Islamic fundamentalists.
Traitorous Troops?
Despite this confusion over the reasons for the war, the poll exploded another myth promoted by the administration and its media allies – that Americans are unpatriotic if they criticize Bush’s policies, because to do so would damage troop morale.
It turns out the troops want the war brought to a quick end because they have concluded it’s unwinnable based on their own experiences, not from the carping of home-side naysayers, often denounced as “traitors” by Bush’s supporters.
It seems somehow that 72 percent of the U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq have become “traitors,” too.
consortiumnews.com
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 10:23 AM CST [
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Developments in Iraq, March 11
FALLUJA - Three civilians, one Iraqi soldier and a U.S. soldier were killed when a suicide car bomb detonated near the western city of Falluja on Friday, the U.S. military said.
BAGHDAD - The body of American hostage Tom Fox was found with gun shot wounds and his hands tied behind his back near a railway line in western Baghdad on Thursday, police said on Saturday.
BAGHDAD - A director of Al-Iraqiya state owned television Amjad Hameed was killed and his driver wounded when gunmen ambushed his car in western Baghdad, police said.
BALAD - A roadside bomb exploded near a mosque killing two people and wounding one in the small town of Yathrib near Balad 85 km (55 miles) north of Baghdad on Friday, police said on Saturday. In a separate incident a U.S. military unit raided a house and killed a 25-year-old man in al-Thuluya near Balad on Friday, police said on Saturday.
alertnet.orgNo One Knows How Many Iraqis Have Died BAGHDAD, Iraq - Three years into the war, one grim measure of its impact on Iraqis can be seen at Baghdad's morgue: There, the staff has photographed and catalogued more than 24,000 bodies from the Baghdad area alone since 2003, almost all killed in violence.
Despite such snapshots, the overall number of Iraqi civilians and soldiers killed since the U.S.-led invasion in spring 2003 remains murky. Bloodshed has worsened each year, pushing the Iraqi death toll into the tens of thousands. But no one knows the exact toll.
President Bush has said he thinks violence claimed at least 30,000 Iraqi dead as of December, while some researchers have cited numbers of 50,000, 75,000 or beyond.
The Pentagon has carefully counted the number of American military dead — now more than 2,300 — but declines to release its tally of Iraqi civilian or insurgent deaths.
The health ministry estimates 1,093 civilians died in the first two months of this year, nearly a quarter of the deaths government ministries reported in all of 2005.
The Iraqi government, however, has swung wildly in its casualty estimates, leading many to view its figures with skepticism.
At the Baghdad morgue, more than 10,000 corpses were delivered in 2005, up from more than 8,000 in 2004 and about 6,000 in 2003, said the morgue's director Dr. Faik Baker. All were corpses from either suspicious deaths or violent or war-related deaths — things like car bombs and gunshot wounds, tribal reprisals or crime — and not from natural causes.
By contrast, the morgue recorded fewer than 3,000 violent or suspicious deaths in 2002, before the war, Baker said. The tally at the Baghdad morgue alone — one of several mortuaries in Iraq — thus exceeds figures from Iraqi government ministries that say 7,429 Iraqis were killed across all of Iraq in 2005.
Stop your meddling, Iraqi minister tells US AMID rising American frustration with the political deadlock in Iraq, the National Security Minister, Abdul Karim al-Enzy, has rebuked Washington for interfering in Iraq's domestic affairs.
In a remarkable broadside against the US, Mr Enzy charged that it was deliberately slowing Iraq's redevelopment because of a self-serving agenda that included oil and the "war on terror".
The attack came as the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told a Senate inquiry in Washington that Iraq's political leaders needed "to recognise the seriousness of the situation and form a government of national unity that will govern from the centre, and to do it in a reasonably prompt manner".
To that end, US diplomats have demanded a more generous sharing of key portfolios among Iraq's religious and ethnic populations than the dominant Shiite religious parties are willing to concede.
In particular, they are urging the dismissal of the hardline Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr.
But in an interview with the Herald, Mr Enzy snapped: "The last time I checked, Bayan Jabr was Interior Minister of Iraq - not of the US or the UN. He is one of our best and this is interference in our business."
Mr Enzy argued that if the US-led coalition in Iraq had been more serious about rebuilding the country's security forces in the first year of the occupation, it could now be making substantial cuts in foreign troop numbers in Iraq. "We don't want foreign forces here, but it's impossible for them to leave now, because we're on the edge of civil war," he said.
"The truth is the Americans don't want us to reach the levels of courage and competence needed to deal with the insurgency because they want to stay here.
"They came for their own strategic interests. A lot of the world's oil is in this region and they want to use Iraq as a battlefield in the war on terror because they believe they can contain the terrorism in Iraq."
Iraqi Shi'ite cleric calls U.S., Britain and Israel a 'Triad of Evil' In a television interview Friday night, radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr described the United States, Israel and Britain as a "Triad of Evil".
Speaking on state-run Iraqiya television, the anti-American al-Sadr also said last month's attack on a Shi'ite shrine in the central city of Samarra was carried "in collusion with the occupiers and the Zionist Entity of Israel," meaning for the U.S. and Israel. Hundreds of Iraqis died in the subsequent sectarian violence, much of which Sunni Muslims said was the work of al-Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army.
The Triad of Evil reference was an obvious play on words U.S. President Bush used in his 2002 State of the Union address, when he labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea an "axis of evil."
Al-Sadr, whose militia launched two uprisings against U.S. troops in 2004, refused to name any group that he believed was behind the bombing of the Askariyah shrine in Samarra but hinted at members of Saddam Hussein's former regime or Sunni Muslim extremists.
"Those who carry arms could be takfiri extremists, Saddamists or others. But those who control arms are the Triad of Evil that are Israel, America and Britain," said the black-turbaned cleric during the one-hour interview.
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 10:19 AM CST [
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Donald Rumsfeld makes $5m killing on bird flu drug
Donald Rumsfeld has made a killing out of bird flu. The US Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (£2.9m) in capital gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in massive amounts by Governments to treat a possible human pandemic of the disease.
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 10:07 AM CST [
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Alaska hit by 'massive' oil spill
An oil spill discovered at Prudhoe Bay field is the largest ever on Alaska's North Slope region, US officials say.
They estimate that up to 267,000 gallons (one million litres) of crude leaked from a corroded transit pipeline at the state's northern tip.
The spill was detected on 2 March and plugged. Local environmentalists have described it as "a catastrophe".
In 1989, the Exxon Valdez shipping disaster spilled 11m gallons (42m litres) of oil onto the Alaskan coast.
"I can confirm it's the largest spill of crude oil on the North Slope that we have record of," Linda Giguere, from Alaska's state department of environmental conservation, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.
The estimate is based on a survey conducted several days ago at the site where the leak was discovered, officials say.
The spill covers about two acres (one hectare) of the snow-covered tundra in the sparsely populated region on Alaska's north coast, some 1,040km (650 miles) north of the state's biggest city, Anchorage.
bbc.co.uk
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 10:02 AM CST [
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Death of the world's rivers
The world's great rivers are drying up at an alarming rate, with devastating consequences for humanity, animals and the future of the planet.
The Independent on Sunday can today reveal that more than half the world's 500 mightiest rivers have been seriously depleted. Some have been reduced to a trickle in what the United Nations will this week warn is a "disaster in the making".
From the Nile to China's Yellow River, some of the world's great water systems are now under such pressure that they often fail to deposit their water in the ocean or are interrupted in the course to the sea, with grave consequences for the planet.
Adding to the disaster, all of the 20 longer rivers are being disrupted by big dams. One-fifth of all freshwater fish species either face extinction or are already extinct.
The Nile and Pakistan's Indus are greatly reduced by the time they reach the sea. Some, such as the Colorado and China's Yellow River, now rarely reach the ocean at all. Others, such as the Jordan and the Rio Grande on the US-Mexico border, are dry for much of their length.
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 03.12.06 @ 09:58 AM CST [
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Saturday, March 11th
An Interview with Subcomandate Marcos
...Marcos: We always turn to look towards the bottom, not only in our own country, but in Latin America particularly. When Evo Morales presented this invitation for his presidential inauguration, we said that we were not turning our gaze upwards, neither in Bolivia nor in Latin America, and in that sense, we don't judge governments, whose judgment belongs to the people who are there. We look with interest at the Bolivian indigenous mobilization, and the Ecuadorian one. In fact, they are mentioned in the Sixth Declaration.
The struggle of the Argentine youth, fundamentally, this whole piquetero movement, and of the youth in general in Argentina, with whom we strongly identify with. Also with the movement to recover memory, of the pain from what was the long night of terror in Argentina, in Uruguay, in Chile. And in that sense, we prefer to look at the bottom, exchange experiences and understand their own assessments of what is happening.
We think, fundamentally, that the future story of Latin America, not only of Mexico but for all of Latin America, will be constructed from the bottom--that the rest of what's happening, in any case, are steps. Maybe false steps, maybe firm ones, that's yet to be seen. But fundamentally, it will be the people from the bottom that will be able to take charge of it, organizing themselves in another way. The old recipes or the old parameters should serve as a reference, yes, of what was done, but not as something that should be re-adopted to do something new.
Bogado: What can men do, for example, to increase the representation of women anywhere in the world--from families to cultural centers and beyond?
Marcos: In that respect, well, for us and for all organizations and movements, we still have a long way to go, because there is still a really big distance between the intention of actually being better, and really respecting the Other--in this case women--and what our realistic practice is.
And I'm not only referring to the excuse of "this is how we were educated and there's nothing we can do ..." which is often men's excuse--and of women too, who obey this type of thinking and argue for it one way or another among other women.
Something else that we've seen in our process is that at the hour that we [insurgents] arrived in the communities and they integrated us as part of them, we saw significant, unplanned changes. The first change is made internally among the relationship between women. The fact that one group of indigenous women, whose fundamental horizon was the home, getting married quite young, having a lot of children, and dedicating themselves to the home--could now go to the mountains and learn to use arms, be commanders of military troops, signified for the communities, and for the indigenous women in the communities, a very strong revolution. It is there that they started to propose that they should participate in the assemblies, and in the organizing decisions, and started to propose that they should hold positions of responsibility. It was not like that before.
But in reality, the pioneers of this transformation of the indigenous Zapatista woman are a merit of the women insurgents. To become a guerrilla in the mountainous conditions is very difficult for men, and for the women, it is doubly or triply difficult--and I'm not saying that they are more fragile or anything like that: it's that in addition to the hostile mountainous conditions, they also have to be able to put up with the hostile conditions of a patriarchal system of our own machismo, of our relationships with one another.
[Another difficulty that the women face] is the repudiation of their communities which sees it as a bad thing for a woman to go out and do something else. [After passing their training] a group of insurgent women are now the ones who are superior, and when they head back down to the communities, they now are the ones who show the way, lead, and explain the struggle. At first this creates a type of revolt, a rebellion among the women that starts to take over spaces. Among the first rebellions is one that prohibits the sale of women into marriage, which used to be an indigenous custom, and it gives, in fact (even though it's not on paper yet) the women the right to pick their partner.
We also think that while there is an economic dependence from women on men, it will be very difficult for anything else to develop. Because in the end, the women can be very rebellious, and very capable and all of that, but if she depends on a man economically, she has few possibilities. So in that sense, in the communities of the Autonomous Rebellious Municipalities, and in the Councils of Good Government, the same women that are already authorities with responsibilities at the municipal level, or on the Councils of Good Government, open spaces, projects, and economic organization for women in such a way that they construct their economic independence, and that gives more substance to [the women's] other independence.
Nevertheless, we're still lacking a lot in the area of domestic violence from men against women. We have gained some in other areas, for example, girls who were not going to school are now going to school. They weren't going before because they were women, and because there weren't any schools, and now there are schools and they go, regardless of whether they are men or women. And women are already in the highest posts of civil authority--because in the military authority, in the political organizing, we can say that women need to be included--but in matters of civil society, we [insurgents] don't hold authority, we only advise. So in reality, the women in the communities now reach the civil authority and autonomous municipal posts, which was unthinkable for a woman to reach before. [They reach those positions] through their own struggle, not through the authority of the EZLN.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 09:23 AM CST [
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US found guilty of violating Shoshone human rights
...The United States was urged to "freeze", "desist" and "stop" actions being taken or threatened to be taken against the Western Shoshone Peoples of the Western Shoshone Nation, in a Friday decision by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). The U.S. has until July 15, 2006 to provide the UN committee with information on the action it had taken.
This action challenges the US government's assertion of federal ownership of nearly 90 percent of Western Shoshone lands.
"The mines are polluting our waters, destroying hot springs and exploding sacred mountains-our burials along with them--attempting to erase our signature on the land," says Lalo. "We are coerced and threatened by mining and Federal agencies when we seek to continue spiritual prayers for traditional food or medicine on Shoshone land."
According to Lalo, "We have endured murder of our Newe people for centuries, as chronicled in military records, but now we are asked to endure a more painful death from the U.S. governmental agencies -- a separation from land and spiritual renewal."
The decision expressed particular concern that the U.S.' basis for claiming federal title to Western Shoshone land rests on a theory of "gradual encroachment" through a "compensation" process in the Indian Claims Commission.
speroforum.com
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 09:17 AM CST [
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The Coming Resource Wars
It's official: the era of resource wars is upon us. In a major London address, British Defense Secretary John Reid warned that global climate change and dwindling natural resources are combining to increase the likelihood of violent conflict over land, water and energy. Climate change, he indicated, “will make scarce resources, clean water, viable agricultural land even scarcer”—and this will “make the emergence of violent conflict more rather than less likely.”
Although not unprecedented, Reid’s prediction of an upsurge in resource conflict is significant both because of his senior rank and the vehemence of his remarks. “The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur,” he declared. “We should see this as a warning sign.”
Resource conflicts of this type are most likely to arise in the developing world, Reid indicated, but the more advanced and affluent countries are not likely to be spared the damaging and destabilizing effects of global climate change. With sea levels rising, water and energy becoming increasingly scarce and prime agricultural lands turning into deserts, internecine warfare over access to vital resources will become a global phenomenon.
Reid’s speech, delivered at the prestigious Chatham House in London (Britain’s equivalent of the Council on Foreign Relations), is but the most recent expression of a growing trend in strategic circles to view environmental and resource effects—rather than political orientation and ideology—as the most potent source of armed conflict in the decades to come. With the world population rising, global consumption rates soaring, energy supplies rapidly disappearing and climate change eradicating valuable farmland, the stage is being set for persistent and worldwide struggles over vital resources. Religious and political strife will not disappear in this scenario, but rather will be channeled into contests over valuable sources of water, food and energy.
Prior to Reid’s address, the most significant expression of this outlook was a report prepared for the U.S. Department of Defense by a California-based consulting firm in October 2003. Entitled “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security,” the report warned that global climate change is more likely to result in sudden, cataclysmic environmental events than a gradual (and therefore manageable) rise in average temperatures. Such events could include a substantial increase in global sea levels, intense storms and hurricanes and continent-wide “dust bowl” effects. This would trigger pitched battles between the survivors of these effects for access to food, water, habitable land and energy supplies.
“Violence and disruption stemming from the stresses created by abrupt changes in the climate pose a different type of threat to national security than we are accustomed to today,” the 2003 report noted. “Military confrontation may be triggered by a desperate need for natural resources such as energy, food and water rather than by conflicts over ideology, religion or national honor.”
tompaine.comSounds like the neo-con Utopia...
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 09:14 AM CST [
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Europe and the US decide the winner before the vote
Would you expect a European leader who has presided over a continual increase in real wages for several years, culminating in a 24% rise over the past 12 months, to be voted out of office? What if he has also cut VAT, brought down inflation, halved the number of people in poverty in the past seven years, and avoided social tensions by maintaining the fairest distribution of incomes of any country in the region?
Of course not, you would say. In Bill Clinton's famous phrase, "it's the economy, stupid". Unless there are overriding issues of political or personal insecurity - incipient civil war, ethnic cleansing, mass arrests, pervasive crime on the streets - most people will vote according to their pocketbooks. And so it is likely to be in Belarus in nine days' time.
Why, then, are western governments, echoed by most western media, developing a crescendo of one-sided reporting and comment on one of Europe's smallest countries? Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, last year called it an "outpost of tyranny". Stephen Hadley, the US national security adviser, recently complained that "there is not enough outrage and international attention on Belarus". As if on cue, we now have thundering editorials and loaded reports in America and Europe claiming the imminent election is a farce and the regime deeply unpopular.
We saw similar conformism little more than a year ago in Ukraine, when one side was glorified to the skies, as if only a tiny minority of benighted Sovietera automatons did not support the pro-western candidate, Viktor Yushchenko. His opponent actually got 44% of the vote, and may even emerge with the highest number of votes in Ukraine's parliamentary elections in two weeks.
guardian.co.ukwhy? My guess would be...pipeline between Black Sea and Baltic Sea.
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 09:08 AM CST [
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India: The terrible price paid for economic progress
ndia's economic success is a modern miracle. But the dark side of the boom has been its tragic cost to the subcontinent's most vulnerable people.
...It was dawn on 2 January 2006 when the quiet morning rituals of Kalinganagar, a village in eastern India, were drowned in a noise like the end of the world: a stream of bulldozers and excavators and khaki-painted lorries containing more than 400 armed police came grinding into the village.
...Now a group of villagers walked towards the bulldozers. Their plan, the survivors said later, was to persuade the drivers to stop, if necessary by lying down in front of them. What happened next is disputed: some of the protesters say the first injuries were caused when one of them tripped a string attached to a buried charge of dynamite or even a landmine. Enraged now, more protesters came running towards the police lines shouting abuse (the police claim they also fired arrows). And the police opened fire with tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds. The villagers ran screaming in all directions. The police kept up the firing until the ground was strewn with bodies.
By the time silence fell again on the site, 12 local people had been shot dead and 31 injured. One policeman had been killed by the protesters. Several of the villagers had been shot in the back. Some of the casualties were a long way from the field of action. A 14-year-old boy standing outside his home was shot in the chest and killed. A 27-year-old woman was killed by a bullet on her way to bathe in the village pond.
...The uranium for India's bombs came from Jaduguda, in Jharkhand, the only uranium mine in the country (though several more are now being opened up). The mine is located in the middle of a cluster of tribal villages. Not close to a village, with high barbed wire fences keeping the peasants well away, but in its midst. The pond at Jaduguda, we learnt, where the hazardous waste is dumped and allowed to settle, can be accessed by the men, women, children, dogs, cats and cows of the village. (The mine's boss claims that the pond was closed to the public, and some reports suggest that villagers may have cut their way through the perimeter fence.) In the summer the pond dried out, and some villagers used it as a short cut to get home. The village children played tag on it. The mine produced no stink, no clouds of filthy smoke, did not tear up the countryside and dye everything black like an open-cast coal mine. A uranium mine was, it seemed, the sort of mine you could live with.
Then the first deformed children began to be born in the village. People of the village and the cattle they had washed regularly in the water of the pond began dying prematurely of cancer. A child was born with only one eye and one ear, mentally handicapped as well, unable to walk, and he grew bigger but no heavier. Women became infertile and their husbands abandoned them, and they began to be persecuted as witches, the true aim being to steal their land. The Uranium Corporation of India Ltd maintained that none of the village's health problems were connected to their activities.
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 09:01 AM CST [
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Four Characters in Search of a Prosecutor: Miller, Boykin, Cambone and Feith
...Four: Feith
Nor has there been a solitary twitter about the role of the enigmatic Douglas Feith, though he deserves it as much as Cambone. Until he left in early 2005, Feith was Cambone's opposite number at Defense as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD-P), a post Cambone himself held earlier.
If Cambone had the means to tamper with intelligence-gathering and interrogation, Feith had the motive.
A vocal advocate of regime change in the Middle East long before 9-11, a hard-line Zionist hawk and member of ZOA (Zionist Organization of America), Feith's publicly expressed views are incendiary. He has stated that Oslo should be repudiated and the West Bank and Gaza reoccupied even if "the price in blood would be high" as "a necessary form of detoxification." (10)
And his actions in government match. In 1982, he was investigated over allegations that he had handed over secret documents to the Israeli embassy and left the National Security Council under a cloud. Later, he was hired back by Richard Perle. On leaving the Pentagon in 1986, he promptly started a law firm in Israel. His partner at the time, Marc Zell, is a spokesman for the Jewish settlers' movement on the occupied West Bank. Yes--those settlers. (11) The ones several parasangs to the right of Ariel Sharon. Naturally--that would have nothing whatsoever to do with any opinions Feith might hold on Arabs, Iraq, or the proper way to chat with a manacled Muslim.
In 2001, with the US economy in recession and financial crisis looming in the markets and neo-conservatives ensconced in power, friends began helping friends: Wolfowitz as Deputy Secretary of State brought Feith in at DOD, while Feith brought Perle to the Defense Policy Board and hired another favorite ideological hit man, Michael Ledeen, who also has a documented history of siphoning classified information to Israeli intelligence and selling sensitive military technology to China. Ledeen was hired by Feith at OSP to handle material requiring high-level security clearance. (12)
And what does this cozy arrangement have to do with Abu Ghraib? Well--for a start, it blows a hole in the theory that rounding up a few Semitic goat-herds and housewives has anything to do with national security--at least in the common meaning of that term, to wit., refraining from selling out the interests of the nation-state to which one belongs by accident of birth, choice, or lack of initiative. Because it's quite clear from the action-packed resumes of the crew of transnational wheelers and dealers above, that national--or even international- security is the last thing on their minds.
Feith has also been up to more institutionalized shenanigans:
First, he was active in the controversial Defense Policy Board, whose former head Richard Perle resigned when conflicts of interest between his board duties and his business affairs came to light. Then, he was also boss at the Office of Special Plans, which "stove-piped" un-vetted or raw intelligence on Iraq directly (outside the normal channels, that is) to the White House. The objective was to buttress the administration's flimsy case for war. Which means that Feith was grasping for any wisp of straw when it came to intelligence. And so, had every incentive to get it for us whole-sale where he could most easily--on the Iraqi street. (13)
And an important point. OSP, set up by Wolfowitz, had direct responsibility for detainee operations in Iraq. By dismissing the advice of Middle Eastern experts at the State Department on post-war planning, it contributed hugely to the failure of prison policy. OSP also oversaw reconstruction contracts--with all their outrageous bid-rigging and profiteering. And it did all of this through an institutional end-run around government.
Yet, at the Senate Hearings, Cambone swore up and down that Feith was in the dark about Abu Ghraib and the Taguba report, although when the report actually came out, here's what Daniel Dunn, the top computer security officer in Feith's office had to say in an urgent email memo to Pentagon staff:
"Information contained in this report is classified; do not go to FOX News to read or obtain a copy." (14)
Sounds like at least one person knew that Feith had something to fear.
And Feith himself quietly resigned last year, some say, because of yet another scandal--the Larry Franklin case. Franklin, convicted of espionage this year, worked for Feith at OSP in 2002 and 2003 and was sent abroad on sensitive missions--involving Iran-Contra figures-- aimed at pushing through the Iraq WMD hustle. Franklin pleaded guilty in January to passing information to Israel about U.S. policy towards Iran through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying organization in the U.S. (15)
So there you have it.
Take two rancid Christian zealots and a half-pint of frothing Zionist fanaticism. Add to it a well-curdled neo-conservative ideologue and stir until bubbling in a Middle Eastern cauldron. Top with a generous helping of psycho-sexual sadism. And voila, Torture Imperial. Serves several thousands at a time.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 08:52 AM CST [
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From AIPAC to Check Point
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) held its Policy Conference in Washington this week. There were long speeches and discussions about the problems of the day (nuclear proliferation, Iran, and the rise of Hamas), as well as about the “strong alliance” between Israel and the US.
As in the past, this strength was seen in the impressive presence of senior administration official and Congresspersons, including Vice President Richard Cheney, who praised Israel’s contribution to US security interests, and promised reciprocation in the form of constant support.
However, mingling in the crowded hallways of the Washington convention center that hosted the event gave one the impression that the threat of a mushroom cloud in Middle Eastern skies in the coming years bothered the thousands of participants far less than the clear and present danger to AIPAC: the pending trial of two senior officials, Steven J. Rosen, who was responsible for foreign affairs and was a strong figure in the lobby, and Keith Weissman, a former Middle East analyst.
Rosen and Weissman are suspected of “receiving classified information” without being authorized to do so, and passing it onto Israeli and other diplomats, as well as other crimes. They are not actually being charged with espionage, but these are still crimes could put them into federal prison for many years.
In an act of self-preservation, AIPAC fired the two men last year, shortly after they were exposed as supporting actors in a bureaucratic drama about the leak of information in the Bush administration, known as the “Pentagon mole affair”. The mole was Defense Department Iran analyst Lawrence Franklin, who leaked to Rosen and Weissman juicy details from a presidential document about Iran and the threat that Iranian agents might kill Israelis in northern Iraq.
globes.co.il
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 08:43 AM CST [
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'US not doing enough to stop Iran'
The United States has until now not done enough to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, a senior Defense Ministry official has told The Jerusalem Post while expressing hope that Wednesday's referral of the Iranian issue to the United Nations Security Council would prove to be effective.
"America needs to get its act together," the official said. "Until now the US administration has just been talking tough but the time has come for the Americans to begin to take tough action."
The only real way to stop Teheran's race to obtain the bomb apart from military action was through tough economic sanctions that caused the Iranian people to suffer. "Once the people understand that their government is bringing upon them a disaster will they realize that the [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's regime needs to be replaced," the official said.
jpost.comYeah we see how that worked in Iraq. This is crap anyway.
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 08:38 AM CST [
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Feds Order U.S. Banks to Sever Syria Ties
WASHINGTON — Acting to crack down on terrorist financing, the Treasury Department on Thursday ordered all commercial banks in the United States to end their relationships with two Syrian banks.
The order covers the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria and its subsidiary, the Syrian Lebanese Commercial Bank.
The department said that all U.S. banks must close any accounts they have with the two banks.
"Today's action is aimed at protecting our financial system against abuse by this arm of a state-sponsor of terrorism," said Stuart Levy, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
"The Commercial Bank of Syria has been used by terrorists to move their money and it continues to afford direct opportunities for the Syrian government to facilitate international terrorist activity and money laundering," Levy said.
chron.com
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 08:34 AM CST [
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O'Reilly: Blowing Iran "off the face of the earth ... would be the sane thing to do"
On the March 8 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly stated: "You know, in a sane world, every country would unite against Iran and blow it off the face of the earth. That would be the sane thing to do." O'Reilly made the remark during a discussion of Iran's recent threat to cause "harm and pain" to the U.S. if it pursues sanctions against Iran in the U.N. Security Council because of Iran's developing nuclear program.
As Media Matters for America has documented, O'Reilly recently declared that "it's just a matter of time ... before we have to bomb" Iran.
From the March 8 edition of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:
O'REILLY: And let's do the No-Spin News. In Vienna, Iran has threatened the U.S.A. with, quote, "harm and pain" for its role in trying to get the United Nations to discipline Iran over the nuke issue. OK. It's the usual saber-rattling. You know, we'll hurt you, we'll do this, that, and the other thing. Now, what Iran is doing is they perceive that America is weakened because of the conflict in Iraq and the division at home, OK? So they're saying, "Hey, we'll just push the envelope as far as we can push it and see what happens. So we think that Bush is a damaged president, his approval ratings are low, Iraq is chaos -- we're helping that out, by the way." Iran is helping Iraq to be in chaos by allowing the terrorists to go through that country and arming them and teaching them how to make bombs and all of that.
mediamatters.org
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 08:29 AM CST [
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Madrid bombing probe finds no al-Qaida link
MADRID, Spain - A two-year probe into the Madrid train bombings concludes the Islamic terrorists who carried out the blasts were homegrown radicals acting on their own rather than at the behest of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, two senior intelligence officials said.
Spain still remains home to a web of radical Algerian, Moroccan and Syrian groups bent on carrying out attacks — and aiding the insurgency against U.S. troops in Iraq — a Spanish intelligence chief and a Western official intimately involved in counterterrorism measures in Spain told The Associated Press.
The intelligence chief said there were no phone calls between the Madrid bombers and al-Qaida and no money transfers. The Western official said the plotters had links to other Islamic radicals in Western Europe, but the plan was hatched and organized in Spain. “This was not an al-Qaida operation,” he said. “It was homegrown.”
msnbc.msn.com
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 08:24 AM CST [
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Vatican accused of helping radicals by backing Islamic hour in schools
The Vatican has disconcerted Italian politicians - and some of the Roman Catholic church's most senior prelates - by endorsing a proposal by radical Muslims for a weekly "Islamic hour" in schools with a strong Muslim presence.
"If in a school there are 100 Muslim children, I don't see why their religion shouldn't be taught," said Cardinal Renato Martino, a minister in the Vatican's government, the Roman Curia.
The speaker of the Italian senate, Marcello Pera, who has launched a movement for the defence of Europe's Christian values, said the suggestion was "the diametric opposite of any kind of attempt at integration". In a note posted on the internet, he said it "tended, on the contrary, to reinforce the idea of an autonomous Muslim community inside the Italian state".
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 08:21 AM CST [
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Karen Armstrong: We can defuse this tension between competing conceptions of the sacred
...Many have been alarmed by the increase of the Muslim population in Europe, which seems inimical to western values. They are naturally defensive and apprehensive; the cartoons can be seen as an expression of this anxiety and as a blow for freedom. But they also revealed the darker side of the culture they purported to defend, and have a grim precedent. Historically, Europe has found it extremely difficult to tolerate minorities; one member of the AoC group recalled that before the Shoah, in preparation for what was to come, Nazi propagandists encouraged the publication of anti-semitic cartoons in the German press.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an indispensable member of our AoC group, spoke from personal experience of the abiding pain felt by people who see their traditions consistently scorned and ridiculed by an imperialist power. When people hurt in this way, he said, it only takes a little thing to push them over the edge. When Islam was a major world power and Muslims were confident, they could take insults about their religion in their stride. But today, fearful of the hostility in Europe and bombarded with images from Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, many experienced the gratuitous vilification of their prophet by the Danish cartoonists as the last straw.
Hatred of the west is a relatively recent prejudice in the Islamic world. A hundred years ago, every single leading Muslim intellectual, with the exception of the proto-fundamentalist Al-Afghani, saw western modernity as deeply congenial and, even though they hated European colonialism, many wanted their countries to look just like Britain and France. Relations soured not because of an inherent "clash of civilisations", but because of western foreign policy, which continues to fuel the crisis.
How do we move forward? Washington's threatening posture towards Iran can only lead to an increase in hostility between Islam and the west, and we must expect more conflicts like the cartoon crisis. Instead of allowing extremists on both sides to set the agenda, we should learn to see these disputes in historical perspective, recalling that in the past aggressive cultural chauvinism proved to be dangerously counterproductive. The emotions engendered by these crises are a gift to those, in both the western and the Islamic worlds, who, for their own nefarious reasons, want the tension to escalate; we should not allow ourselves to play into their hands.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 08:18 AM CST [
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How the telephone company listens in on your calls and what they tell the government.
Two months after the New York Times revealed that the Bush Administration ordered the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless surveillance of American citizens, only three corporations--AT&T, Sprint and MCI--have been identified by the media as cooperating. If the reports in the Times and other newspapers are true, these companies have allowed the NSA to intercept thousands of telephone calls, fax messages and e-mails without warrants from a special oversight court established by Congress under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Some companies, according to the same reports, have given the NSA a direct hookup to their huge databases of communications records. The NSA, using the same supercomputers that analyze foreign communications, sifts through this data for key words and phrases that could indicate communication to or from suspected terrorists or terrorist sympathizers and then tracks those individuals and their ever-widening circle of associates. "This is the US version of Echelon," says Albert Gidari, a prominent telecommunications attorney in Seattle, referring to a massive eavesdropping program run by the NSA and its English-speaking counterparts that created a huge controversy in Europe in the late 1990s.
So far, a handful of Democratic lawmakers--Representative John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and Senators Edward Kennedy and Russell Feingold--have attempted to obtain information from companies involved in the domestic surveillance program. But they've largely been rebuffed. Further details about the highly classified program are likely to emerge as the Electronic Frontier Foundation pursues a lawsuit, filed January 31, against AT&T for violating privacy laws by giving the NSA direct access to its telephone records database and Internet transaction logs. On February 16 a federal judge gave the Bush Administration until March 8 to turn over a list of internal documents related to two other lawsuits, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, seeking an injunction to end the program.
alertnet.org
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 08:07 AM CST [
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Soldiers Back From Iraq, Unable to Get Help They Need
...In Texas, a group of veterans staged a protest march covering the distance to the nearest VA hospital: 250 miles.
"[It takes] four-and-a-half to five hours .. one way," said Vietnam War vet Polo Uriesti.
Uriesti said his father, a veteran of World War II, suffers a greater hardship. But he said the headaches and flashbacks of post-traumatic stress still flare up without warning.
"I just … it chokes me up," said Uriesti.
The VA acknowledged some veterans suffer those problems but said most do not.
"Last year, 97 percent of veterans who came to us for a primary care appointment got that appointment within 30 days, and 95 percent of those who came for an acute care appointment got it within 30 days," said R. James Nicholson, secretary of Veterans Affairs.
Audit: VA Fudged Reports
But an inspector general's audit found real problems with the way the VA has come up with those numbers. The audit found that some VA staff, feeling "pressured," actually fudged the numbers, and error rates were as high as 61 percent.
In Atlanta, one veteran who the VA said got an appointment within a week actually waited nearly a year.
abcnews.go.com
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 08:04 AM CST [
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Stop force-feeding inmates, doctors tell US
The United States authorities are facing demands by doctors from around the world to abandon the barbaric method of force-feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay.
More than 250 medical experts are launching a protest today against the practice - which involves strapping inmates to "restraint chairs" and pushing tubes into the stomach through the nose. They say it breaches the right of prisoners to refuse treatment.
The United Nations has demanded the immediate closure of the US detention camp in Cuba after concluding that treatment such as force-feeding and prolonged solitary confinement could amount to torture.
Doctors from seven countries, including the best-selling author Oliver Sacks, call for disciplinary action against their US counterparts who force-feed detainees. About 80 prisoners are understood to be refusing food, including a UK resident, Shaker Aamer, a Saudi national who is married to a British woman and has four children.
Since August they have been routinely force-fed, an excruciatingly painful practice that causes bleeding and nausea. The doctors say: "Fundamental to doctors' responsibilities in attending a hunger striker is the recognition that prisoners have a right to refuse treatment.
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 07:58 AM CST [
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FBI: No Credible Threat, but Be Vigilant
WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI said Friday there is no specific, credible threat of a terror attack aimed at college basketball arenas or other sports stadiums, but acknowledged alerting law enforcement to a recent Internet posting discussing such attacks.
The FBI and Homeland Security Department distributed an intelligence bulletin Friday to state and local law enforcement nationwide describing the online threat against sporting venues, said Special Agent Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman in Washington.
``We have absolutely no credible intelligence or threats pertaining to this issue,'' Kolko said.
With conference tournaments taking place this weekend, and the NCAA tournament scheduled to begin Thursday, the bulletin was sent ``out of an abundance of caution,'' Kolko said.
``We have been in touch with Homeland Security and the FBI about this issue,'' said NCAA spokesman Erik Christiansen.
``We do not believe there is an imminent threat,'' he said. ``We are in constant communication with the local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including Homeland Security and the FBI. This is not new; we are in regular contact with all these law enforcement agencies at every level.''
The online message described a potential attack in some detail, calling it an efficient way to kill thousands of people using suicide bombers armed with explosives hidden beneath their winter clothing, said a federal law enforcement official who read the bulletin.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 07:54 AM CST [
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Norton to End 5-Year Tenure at Interior
Gale A. Norton, who as secretary of the interior reopened Yellowstone National Park to snowmobiles and pushed for greater energy development on public land, announced yesterday that she will relinquish her post by the end of the month.
Norton won plaudits from business leaders but earned the enmity of many environmentalists during her often contentious five-year tenure. She said she has no immediate plans but expects to work in the private sector and spend more time in the West.
"I look forward to visiting a national park and not holding a press conference in there," said Norton, who turns 52 today and has served at the Interior Department longer than all but six of her predecessors. "I look forward to being able to contemplate the wilderness without having reporters and their notebooks following me."
Norton's resignation comes as a federal criminal task force continues to investigate former GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with her department. The task force is examining, among other issues, former deputy secretary J. Steven Griles's discussions with Abramoff at a time when the lobbyist was seeking departmental actions on behalf of his tribal clients. Abramoff has pleaded guilty to federal charges of political corruption.
Norton said the probe did not play a role in her decision to step down and added later: "I want to return to having a private life again."
washingtonpost.comA little down time before jail...
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 07:51 AM CST [
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Lawmakers: Wal-Mart threatens US payment system
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of lawmakers on Friday said an industrial bank owned by Wal-Mart (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's largest retailer, could threaten the stability of the U.S. financial system and drive community banks out of business.
In a highly critical letter to the acting chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., obtained by Reuters, a group of more than 30 Congress members asked the bank regulator to reject Wal-Mart's application to open a bank in Utah.
"Wal-Mart's plan, to have its bank process hundreds of billions in transactions for its own stores, could threaten the stability of the nation's payments system," the lawmakers wrote.
"Given Wal-Mart's massive scope and international dealings, it is not possible to rule out a financial crisis within the company that could damage the bank and severely disrupt the flow of payments throughout the financial system."
The congressmen said the losses to the FDIC, which insures deposits at banks and thrift institutions, could be staggering if Wal-Mart begins to have financial troubles that bleed into its bank's business.
today.reuters.com
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 07:46 AM CST [
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Bush Touts Grants to Religious Charities
President Bush said yesterday that the federal government gave more than $2.1 billion in grants to religious charities last year -- a 7 percent increase from the prior year and proof, he said, that his administration has made it easier for faith-based groups to obtain taxpayer funds.
Speaking to a White House-organized conference of 1,200 charity leaders from across the country, Bush said the administration is creating "a level playing field" for religious organizations to compete with secular groups to run drug treatment programs, homeless shelters and other social services.
Government's role is "to fund, not to micromanage how you run your programs," he said. "I repeat to you, you can't be a faith-based program if you don't practice your faith."
The speech, accompanied by a blizzard of statistics on federal grants, was partly an appeal to religious supporters and partly a response to rising criticism.
In recent months, a broad array of religious leaders, from Reform rabbis to evangelical ministers, have complained that the president's proposed budget cuts would fall primarily on the backs of the poor by restricting food stamps, Medicaid and other social spending, while preserving long-term tax cuts.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 03.11.06 @ 07:42 AM CST [
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Friday, March 10th
Venezuela Leads the Way: Welfare Mothers and Grassroots Women are the Workers for Social Change
There is screaming, hugging, chanting, and many shhhs; the group takes a momentary pause in their celebration to hear the news. A delegation of 70 women from all over the world, including, India, Uganda, Guyana, the UK, and the US stand together in the community of La Padera, Venezuela, awaiting the details.
Juanita Romero, also known as Madre, explains that President Hugo Chávez has just given the news that we have all been waiting for: the implementation of Article 88 of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Constitution.
This diverse group, which makes up the Global Women’s Strike, has been visiting the grassroots projects that are the foundation of the Bolivarian Revolution. After three exhausting days of visiting medical clinics, land committees, food program houses, and educational missions, the Global Women’s Strike has been overwhelmingly reaffirmed, that it is the grassroots women who are building this process.
"Women are the ones that are leading the projects. They are always there and they are always the majority." says Nicola Marcos from Guyana.
The Global Women’s Strike was formed to win economic and social recognition for unwaged caring work. Since the addition of Article 88 in the Bolivarian Constitution (1999), the Global Women’s Strike has built many relationships with grassroots communities in Venezuela.
Article 88 declares:The State guarantees equality and equity between men and women in the exercise of their right to work. The State recognizes work in the home as an economic activity that creates added values and produces social welfare and wealth. Housewives are entitled to Social Security.
upsidedown.org
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 09:13 AM CST [
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Bolivia Proposes Taking Back Control of Former State-Owned Firms
Bolivia's government plans to study how to buy back majority stakes in public service companies - including oil companies Chaco and Andina - that were partially privatized in the 1990s, development minister Carlos Villegas said in his ministry's newsletter.
The government will search for a means to obtain 51% stakes in the privatized firms so it can name their board members, Villegas said.
The government of President Evo Morales is seeking to take control of 10 companies partially privatizedover the past decade, local press reported.
The companies include national carrier Lloyd Aereo Bolivia (LAB) and telecoms operator Entel.
Petrolero Chaco is currently controlled by Argentine firm Pan American Energy, in turn controlled by the UK's BP (NYSE: BP) and Argentina's Bridas, while Petrolero Andina is controlled by Spanish oil company Repsol YPF's (NYSE: REP) local unit.
rigzone.com
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 09:09 AM CST [
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No Business As Usual in El Salvador as CAFTA Takes Effect
There was little fanfare and much protest on March 1 as The Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) went into effect in El Salvador. The country is the first Central American nation to honor CAFTA and for the second straight day, thousands marched and traffic was snarled throughout San Salvador. Five other signatory nations have failed to meet US requirements necessary to join the agreement.
The day before, Salvadoran President Tony Saca proclaimed the start of CAFTA by announcing to George Bush (who was not present), "Come with your basket empty and take it home full."
Today’s march started at the "Salvador del Mundo Plaza" and streamed for blocks to the Civic Plaza, in the heart of downtown San Salvador. Vendors of pirated CD’s and small farmers took to the streets next to unionists, students, and anarchists. All declared their opposition to CAFTA, or the "TLC," as it is known in Spanish.
upsidedownworld.orgPresident-elect Chooses Free Trade Over Democracy Oscar Arias, Costa Rica’s president-elect, has vowed to do everything in his power to push CAFTA through Congress despite widespread public opposition.
"You should not have the least doubt that in this, we will not cede," said Arias, who won the election by a mere 1.1 percent against a candidate who ran on an anti-CAFTA platform.
The Bush administration breathed a sigh of relief with Arias’ narrow victory and it is hoped that he "can be a counterbalance against leftist movements springing up in South America."
CAFTA opponents from different sectors of civil society have promised strikes and protests against the largely unpopular trade agreement.
"We are going to follow the strategy of the referendum of the streets," said Albino Vargas, leader of the main public employees' union.
upsidedownworld.com
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 09:04 AM CST [
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Nature Conservation or Territorial Control and Profits?
"But the greatest doubt - considering that over half of all Garifuna communities are located in protected areas or their respective buffer zones - is if the dedication to environmental protection work really exists or if it can be reduced to a formula for territorial control, so that later the protected areas can be raffled off among the same old sorcerers as always." (The Fraternal Black Order of Honduras)
On October 11, 2005, the day before the infamous October 12 anniversary commemorating 513 years of imperialism, colonialism and pillage in Latin America, the Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) published a communiqué denouncing the ridiculous findings of an Environmental Impact Assessment Study, which proclaimed that the Los Micos Beach & Golf Resort—an enclave of a global tourist complex, which includes an 18-hole golf course, set inside a national park—is, in fact, sustainable. Although ridiculous, the distortion is far from surprising.
For decades, plans have been in the works for a luxury resort complex in the Tela Bay, located in the department of Atlántida on Honduras' Caribbean coast. Over the years, the legal obstacles in its way began to disappear, while repression against Garifuna leaders and communities working to defend their communal territory, resources and culture from the destructive mega-project continues.
upsidedownworld.org
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 09:01 AM CST [
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Rural rights activists wreck Brazilian plantation
A group of about 2,000 rural activists invaded a eucalyptus plantation in southern Brazil this week causing millions of pounds damage to one of the country's biggest paper producers.
The protesters, linked to Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (MST), ransacked the grounds of Aracruz Celulose in the early hours of Wednesday, tearing up bulbs and destroying 15 years of genetic research, according to the company.
Yesterday, as Brazilian authorities condemned the attacks as "vandalism" and "banditry", those responsible said they were opening up a new front in the fight for justice in rural areas and against multinational agricultural businesses.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 08:58 AM CST [
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Indigenous Want Autonomy in Chile
The Mapuche, Chile's largest indigenous population, is forming a political party in an effort gain autonomy and self-government.
The Wallmapuwen (party) hopes to be legally recognized later this year so that it has the time to organize and prepare to field candidates in the 2008 municipal elections.
The group plans to "restore the Mapuche nation as a political and administrative entity, under a statute of territorial autonomy that enshrines the rights of its native people, and establishes Mapuzugun as an official language."
upsidedownworld.org
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 08:54 AM CST [
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Peru's dynasty-in-waiting prepares to deliver another anti-US president
One of Latin America's most extraordinary political families is poised to produce another of the continent's Left-wing authoritarian leaders with no love for Washington.
Ollanta Humala is one of two favourites to become Peru's next president, a role for which, to believe his mother, he has been groomed from birth.
Ollanta Humala: ‘I am a nationalist and anti-imperialist’
"We have been preparing our children to take power since they were born," Elena Tasso has said of her eight progeny. "If the boys are not successful this time, then it will be the turn of the girls."
In fact two of her sons, Ollanta and Ulises, are standing as rivals in next month's presidential election and a third, Antauro, is running for parliament.
Faced with not one but two sons to support, the head of the family, Isaac, backs Ulises.
But the father's real enthusiasm is for the eccentric philosophy of "Etnocacerismo".
This racist creed, which Isaac founded, calls on indigenous Americans, whom he calls "coppers", to take on the "whites", and their sidekicks the "blacks", and keep the "yellows" at a safe distance.
"Isaac Humala should be investigated by child care agencies," said a former interior minister, Fernando Rospigliosi. "God only knows what he put into his children's heads during their formative years."
telegraph.co.uk
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 08:50 AM CST [
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Ecuador fights to recover oil output after strike
QUITO, Ecuador, March 8 (Reuters) - Petroecuador said on Wednesday it expected to bring oil production to near normal levels in three or four days after troops fired tear gas to clear out strikers who have cut crude output at Ecuador's state oil firm by nearly half.
Production was down to 96,360 barrels of oil per day -- a slight improvement from earlier on Wednesday when the ongoing strike slashed output by nearly three-quarters. Petroecuador normally produces around 200,000 bpd.
Petroecuador said in a statement it expects production to rise to 190,000 bpd in about four days as troops gradually clear striking contract workers from its oil infrastructure and wells.
A company official said Petroecuador could hire replacement employees to start operations.
"It will be difficult because of the number of workers, but we can sign new contracts with the same sub-contracting companies and they can hire other workers," Jaime Crow, head of Petroecuador production division, told Reuters.
The roughly 4,000 contract workers walked off the job to demand full-time jobs and delayed payments. Strike leaders vowed to continue with the protest.
"Neither Petroecuador nor the government has given us an answer to our demands," said Luis Ubidia, a union leader, by telephone. "The strike will continue for the moment."
The strike is the latest dispute to hit Ecuador's oil industry and embattled President Alfredo Palacio. Last month, protesters forced a cut in exports after briefly shutting two pipelines to demand a bigger share of oil revenues.
alertnet.org
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 08:47 AM CST [
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Nigeria militants report fight with army
LAGOS, Nigeria - A Nigerian militant group holding three foreign oil workers hostage said its fighters clashed Wednesday with army troops in this West African nation's oil-rich delta region.
The militants said in an e-mailed statement that one of their vessels was attacked on the Escravos River by four Nigerian navy patrol boats, sparking a 45-minute gunbattle they claimed left seven government soldiers dead.
The reported skirmish could not be independently confirmed and military officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
"The Nigerian government and military should note that we have sufficient firepower in that vicinity to repel any attack," the militants said.
Ethnic Ijaw militants took nine foreign oil workers hostage Feb. 18 and released six of them last week. The remaining three include two Americans and a Briton.
The militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta claims to be fighting to win a greater share of oil wealth on behalf of the Niger Delta's impoverished inhabitants, who have remained poor despite the fact that most of Nigeria's oil is being pumped from the swampy region. The government characterizes the militants as criminals and oil thieves.
thestate.com
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 08:38 AM CST [
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UN: Israel wall forcing Palestinians out
A UN expert has said that East Jerusalem is undergoing major changes because of a new wall through Palestinian neighbourhoods aimed at reducing the number of Palestinians in the city.
John Dugard, special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a report to the UN Human Rights Commission on Wednesday that the Israeli-built separation wall was causing major humanitarian problems.
"The character of East Jerusalem is undergoing a major change as a result of the construction of the wall through Palestinian neighbourhoods," Dugard said.
"The clear purpose of the wall in the Jerusalem area is to reduce the number of Palestinians in the city by transferring them to the West Bank.
"This causes major humanitarian problems: Families are separated and access to hospitals, schools and the workplace are denied."
Dugard recalled that the wall between Israel and Palestinian territories - described by Israel as a security measure - had gone ahead despite a 2004 ruling by the International Court of Justice.
The report to the UN was immediately condemned by the Israeli UN envoy to the UN rights panel, who said the document was pursuing "manifest political ends".
Meanwhile, a report by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said the Israeli army had increased the number of roadblocks and barriers in the West Bank by 25% since last summer.
The number of road obstacles rose to 471 in January, from 376 last August at the time of Israel's Gaza pullout, OCHA said, and they tightened travel restrictions for Palestinians and made it harder for them to reach properties, markets and medical services.
aljazeera.netThe two state solution, a cruel joke Israel’s current delusional, myopic policies in the occupied territories will render its people even more profoundly insecure, for a state cannot live in peace and security by denying it to others.
The interminable torment inflicted on the Palestinian people by Zionism is in the active phase of yet another disastrous historical culmination. The Palestinians’ role in this karmic dialectic is as the obscenely oppressed victims who progressively lose land, life, and livelihood. 1948 represents the mega catastrophe, preceded by decades of unrelenting militant Zionist intrusion protected by the reigning colonial power of the time. 1967 was of much lesser proportions in terms of its collective consequences, but the decades since have led to that singular Zionist goal supported by the superpower of the day: dispossession of Palestine.
Today, we are witness to an unfolding disaster of gigantic proportions in what is left of historic Palestine and its people. The Israeli goal under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his successors, short of another 1948 or 1967-like event that would provide cover for further mass expulsions, is the complete political and social annihilation of Palestinian will and society, leaving it fragmented, pauperized, disoriented, and demoralized, severely dividing it along geographical, local, factional, and ideological fault lines, destroying its social cohesion, its demographic and geographic continuity, its national identity, its nationalist response.
Death of two boys in airstrike stirs anger in Gaza, soul-searching in Israel An Israeli missile obliterated a vehicle in crowded Gaza City, killing two Palestinian militants inside — a common sight these days. But the attack also killed three boys, provoking grief and rage among Palestinians and criticism from Israelis.
Second Historic Mission to Iran Anti-Zionist Orthodox Rabbis visited Iran
A delegation of of Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish Rabbis visited the Islamic Republic of Iran, March 2006, where they met with clerics, Imams, and Government Officials.
"...Orthodox Jews the world over, are saddened by the hysteria which has greeted the recent stated desire of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to see a world free of Zionism. This desire is nothing more than a yearning for a better, more peaceful world. It is a hope that with the elimination of Zionism, Jews and Muslims will live in harmony as they have throughout the ages, in Palestine and throughout the world."
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 08:34 AM CST [
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Quake survivors beat the winter
The race to save hundreds of thousands of Pakistani earthquake survivors from the harsh Himalayan winter has been won, the United Nations said yesterday.
"There has been no second wave of deaths, no massive population movement down the mountains, no severe malnutrition, and no outbreak of epidemics," said Jamie McGoldrick, the deputy humanitarian aid coordinator in Islamabad.
Five months ago yesterday about 87,000 people died when a 7.6 magnitude quake shook Kashmir and North-West Frontier province. Another 1,300 died in Indian-occupied Kashmir.
But fears of a second wave of deaths were averted by a milder than expected winter and a helicopter-led aid effort. By this week an international air fleet, including US and British military helicopters, had flown more than 27,400 trips ferrying food, tents and medicine.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 08:19 AM CST [
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Abizaid apprised of Afghan plot
RAWALPINDI: President Musharraf presented the US Commander Gen John P Abizaid intelligence information on a conspiracy some Afghan government leaders hatched against Pakistan.
Musharraf called for greater coordination and sharing of actionable intelligence in real time to achieve desired objectives of catching "big fish". The US Central Command chief called on the president here on Wednesday.
The US general flew in Rawalpindi as a follow-up to US President Bush visit to Pakistan for sharing intelligence information on al-Qaeda suspects and the mini-crisis emerged following the unsubstantiated and non-sense charges hurled on Pakistan by the Afghan government of President Karzai.
The president told the US commander that the Afghan information was outdated, as only real time information could help nab "big fish." General Abizaid’s meeting with President Musharraf lasted for nearly two hours. Abizaid is expected to share the information and perceptions of Pakistani leaders with the Afghan government leaders.
Following Bush visit, relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan became strained when the Karzai government leaked information to the press, levelling allegations on Pakistan for not acting against terrorists.
President Musharraf termed all these charges rubbish and non-sense and called the US leaders for greater coordination and sharing an actionable intelligence in real time to achieve the objectives.
jang.com.pk
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 08:14 AM CST [
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Congress of Arab parties voices support for Iran's nuclear right
The fourth session of the General Conference of Arab Parties here Tuesday voiced support for Iran's right to acquire peaceful nuclear technology.
Secretary-General of the Congress of Arab Parties Abdul Aziz al-Seyyed told reporters at a press conference held at the end of the three-day session that Iran was being targeted by big powers because it was a regional power with policies that did not please these powers.
Arab countries treat Iran as a Muslim brother state, the official said, and added that Arab states desired good relations with members of the Islamic world. "And that is why we are trying to establish sustainable relations with Iran."
irna.irSabotage not ruled out after Iran pipeline blaze TEHRAN (AFP) - A crude oil pipeline in Iran's restive southwestern province of Khuzestan has been hit by a fire, state media said, with officials not ruling out the possibility of sabotage.
Local oil official Abdolreza Asadi said the pipeline linking the city of Ahvaz to a refinery in Abadan was ablaze overnight Tuesday, with Ahvaz fire chief Abdol Hamid Talebzadeh saying the "major fire" was put out after 10 hours.
A state television report said sabotage had not been ruled out and that an investigation was underway.
"The repair on the damaged pipeline has started and it will soon resume transporting oil," Asadi said, adding that Iran's biggest oil refinery at Abadan was in the meantime being fed by different pipelines.
In October last year, two major fires along oil and gas pipelines in Khuzestan were also reported and sabotage also deemed a possibility.
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 08:10 AM CST [
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Developments in Iraq, March 9
* BAGHDAD - A car bomb exploded near a mosque in New Baghdad on the eastern side of the city, killing three people and wounding 10 others, police said.
NEAR FALLUJA - Three bodies of unidentified civilians with gunshot wounds to the head, chest and limbs were found on a main road in a village just south of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, a police official said.
BAGHDAD - Two civilians were killed and at least seven wounded when a car bomb apparently targeting Iraqi soldiers exploded in front of a hospital in central Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - An Oil Ministry official said three of the 18 men found bound and strangled on Tuesday were employees of the state oil pipeline company in Dora in the south of the capital. There was still no information on the other 15 bodies.
BAGHDAD - Six civilians were killed and eight wounded when a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol in western Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.
FALLUJA - A U.S. Marine was killed in combat on Wednesday in Anbar Province, the U.S. military said.
BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed two people employed in the Green Zone, home to the Iraqi government and foreign embassies. The two were on their way to work when they were attacked in the western Mansour district, police said.
alertnet.orgDaniel Pipes Finds Comfort in Muslims Killing Muslims One of the abiding myths about the War on Iraq is that the neocons were too stupid to realize that they would confront an unrelenting, indigenous resistance to their occupation of Iraq. Unwittingly, the story line goes, they led the U.S. into a conflict which has now produced a civil war. But this simply does not fit the facts. The neocons clearly anticipated such an outcome before they launched their war as Stephen Zunes documents in Antiwar.com:
"Top analysts in the CIA and State Department, as well as large numbers of Middle East experts, warned that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could result in a violent ethnic and sectarian conflict. Even some of the war's intellectual architects acknowledged as much: In a 1997 paper, prior to becoming major figures in the Bush foreign policy team, David Wurmser, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith predicted that a post-Saddam Iraq would likely be "ripped apart" by sectarianism and other cleavages but called on the United States to "expedite" such a collapse anyway."
Yet the line persists that the neocons had no idea what they were getting into. This cannot be correct as they think a lot about what they do and they plan carefully. Not only is that charge absurd on the face of it, but it is arrogant on the part of those who level it. And it is the worst political mistake possible underestimating your adversary.
Now the neocons are beginning to advocate for civil war in Iraq quite openly. The clearest statement of this strategy as yet comes from pre-eminent neocon and ardent Zionist Daniel Pipes. In a recent piece in the Jerusalem Post, Pipes spills the beans. He writes:
"The bombing on February 22 of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq, was a tragedy, but it was not an American or a coalition tragedy. Iraq's plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility, nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shi'ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic one."
"The Country Has Already Collapsed" SPIEGEL ONLINE: Headlines from Iraq seem to be getting progressively worse. Not only are suicide attacks and bombings a daily occurrence, but particularly after the February attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra -- a Shiite holy site -- deadly sectarian violence has increased. Are we witnessing a country falling apart?
Marina Ottaway: At this point in Iraq, you do not have a central government -- so you don't have a legitimate authority running the country. You don't have a government with the power to establish or maintain order. What you have is a nominal government that can only stay in power because the Americans are there. The government is supposed to have derived legitimacy from the constitution and the elections. But I think the government we end up with, won't have much legitimacy either.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why not? After all, the Iraqis went to the polls and chose their representatives. That seems pretty legitimate, does it not?
Ottaway: It is now almost three months after the elections and there is still no government. The Iraqis continue postponing the opening of parliament because according to the constitution, after they open parliament, they only have two months to form the government. They don't think they can form a government that quickly. A government that takes over five months to form is not a government that is going to have very much legitimacy in the end. The country has already collapsed. Now the challenge is figuring out a way to deal with this fact.
U.S. Sets Plans to Aid Iraq in Civil War The U.S. military will rely primarily on Iraq's security forces to put down a civil war in that country if one breaks out, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told lawmakers yesterday.
Sectarian violence in Iraq has reached a level unprecedented since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and is now eclipsing the insurgency as the chief security threat there, said Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, who appeared with Rumsfeld.
"The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to occur, to have the . . . Iraqi security forces deal with it to the extent they're able to," Rumsfeld told the Senate Appropriations Committee when pressed to explain how the United States intended to respond should Iraq descend wholesale into internecine strife.
If civil war becomes reality, "it's very clear that the Iraqi forces will handle it, but they'll handle it with our help," Abizaid said later when asked to elaborate on Rumsfeld's remark.
Night-time knock on door heralds secret assassins The cars may be back on the streets of Baghdad, but the shuttered homes of Street Number 60 provide a grim reminder that the sectarian violence that flared after the destruction of the Golden Mosque continues under cover of darkness.
Each house in this street in the southern neighbourhood of Dora once housed a family. Now most lie empty, their owners having fled after armed groups warned Shia in this predominately Sunni area to leave or die.
"It is like a gangster film," said one resident too frightened of reprisals to give his name or even profession.
"Darkness comes and then people with masks set up checkpoints.
"There is a knock on the door and those who answer are either abused or killed.
"Those abused are not expected to wait to be warned twice. I see them pack their car and leave."
Every day brings killings and kidnaps in Baghdad and no one knows the culprits.
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 08:05 AM CST [
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Charting the lost innovations of Islam
It is the thread that links cars, carpets and cameras and is also responsible for three-course meals, bookshops and modern medicine.
The Islamic civilisation, according to the curators of a national exhibition that opened this week, has made an enormous but largely neglected contribution to the way we live in the west.
The project, 1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage of Our World, supported by the Home Office and the Department for Trade and Industry, uncovers the Islamic civilisation's overlooked contribution to science, technology and art during the dark ages in European history.
It lifts the veil on hundreds of innovations - from kiosks and chess through to windmills and cryptography - that are often popularly associated with the western world but originate from Muslim scholarship and science.
Based on more than 3,000 peer-reviewed academic studies, the exhibition charts Islamic innovations during ten decades of "missing history" spanning from the 6th to the 16th century and covering an area stretching from China to southern Spain.
guardian.co.ukNone of this history has been 'lost' or 'missing' to Muslims, or to anybody else who cares enough to know.
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 07:53 AM CST [
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Psych Drugs Used To Manufacture Insanity
"Susan's case is a perfect example of the vicious cycle that develops when doctors prescribe drugs for unapproved uses. She was given Provigil to counter the sedating effects of Klonopin, which was prescribed to counter the side effects of Paxil."
Many experts say the wide-spread epidemic of mental health problems in the US is man-made. The case of Susan Florence is a testament to this theory of man-made insanity.
While mania, psychosis, anxiety, agitation, hostility, depression, and confusion may be signs of mental illness, these same "symptoms" are referred to as side effects on the labels of the most commonly prescribed psychiatric medications used to treat mental illness.
Once Susan Florence was placed on medication, whenever she experienced a side effect from one drug, her doctor simply prescribed another until she ended up in a drug-induced frenzy for which it would have been impossible to distinguish which drug, or combination thereof, was causing the adverse reactions.
mediamonitors.net
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 07:48 AM CST [
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Gallup: More Than Half of Americans Reject Evolution, Back Bible
NEW YORK A Gallup report released today reveals that more than half of all Americans, rejecting evolution theory and scientific evidence, agree with the statement, "God created man exactly how Bible describes it."
Another 31% says that man did evolve, but "God guided." Only 12% back evolution and say "God had no part."
Gallup summarized it this way: "Surveys repeatedly show that a substantial portion of Americans do not believe that the theory of evolution best explains where life came from." They are "not so quick to agree with the preponderance of scientific evidence."
The report was written by the director of the The Gallup Poll, Frank Newport.
Breaking down the numbers, Gallup finds that Republican backing for what it calls "God created human beings in present form" stands at 57% with Democrats at 44%.
Support for this Bible view rises steadily with age: from 43% for those 18 to 29, to 59% for those 65 and older. It declines steadily with education, dropping from 58% for those with high school degrees to a still-substantial 25% with postgraduate degrees.
editorandpublisher.com
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 07:44 AM CST [
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The Meritocracy Myth
Lani Guinier became a household name in 1993 when Bill Clinton appointed her to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and then, under pressure from conservatives, withdrew her nomination without a confirmation hearing. Guinier is currently the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard University where, in 1998, she became the first black woman to be tenured at the law school.
Guinier's latest book, Meritocracy Inc.: How Wealth Became Merit, Class Became Race, and College Education Became a Gift from the Poor to the Rich, will be published in 2007. This past summer, she offered a glimpse of her upcoming book in this interview with D&S intern Rebecca Parrish.
Rebecca Parrish: What is meritocracy? What is the difference between the conventional understanding and the way you are using the term in Meritocracy, Inc.?
Lani Guinier: The conventional understanding of meritocracy is that it is a system for awarding or allocating scarce resources to those who most deserve them. The idea behind meritocracy is that people should achieve status or realize the promise of upward mobility based on their individual talent or individual effort. It is conceived as a repudiation of systems like aristocracy where individuals inherit their social status.
I am arguing that many of the criteria we associate with individual talent and effort do not measure the individual in isolation but rather parallel the phenomena associated with aristocracy; what we're calling individual talent is actually a function of that individual's social position or opportunities gained by virtue of family and ancestry. So, although the system we call "meritocracy" is presumed to be more democratic and egalitarian than aristocracy, it is in fact reproducing that which it was intended to dislodge.
Michael Young, a British sociologist, created the term in 1958 when he wrote a science fiction novel called The Rise of Meritocracy. The book was a satire in which he depicted a society where people in power could legitimate their status using "merit" as the justificatory terminology and in which others could be determined not simply to have been poor or left out but to be deservingly disenfranchised.
dollarsandsense.org
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 07:40 AM CST [
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US has 727,304 homeless people nationwide: report
Last year, the United States found 727,304 homeless people nationwide, meaning about one in every 400 Americans were without a home, according to the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2005 issued by the Information Office of China's State Council Thursday.
The figures came from The USA Today published on Oct. 12, 2005.
"The Los Angeles County has become 'the homeless capital of America,' with the average number of vagabonds or people in shelters hitting 90,000 a day, including 35,000 people chronically homeless," the report quotes an article of The Los Angeles Times on June 16, 2005 as saying.
"The United States dubs the world's richest country, however, it maintains the highest poverty rate among developed countries," the report says, given a study of eight advanced countries by London School of Economics in 2005, which found that the United States had the worst social inequality.
On the one hand, the report says, in recent years the fortunes of the rich have continued to rise in the United States. According to two new studies by Spectrem Group, a Chicago-based wealth-research firm, and the Boston Consulting Group, millionaire households (excluding the value of primary residences) in the United States controlled more than 11 trillion in assets in 2004, up more than 8 percent from 2003.
Meanwhile, the income of ordinary employees in the United States has seen a sharp decline, causing the increase of poor population. The data issued by the U.S. Census Bureau said that the nation's official poverty rate rose from 12.5 percent in 2003 to 12.7 percent in 2004, with the number of people in poverty rising by 1.1 million from 35.9 million to 37 million, which means one in every eight Americans live in poverty. Poverty rates in cities such as Detroit, Miami and Newark exceeded 28 percent.
These problems indicate that poverty, hunger and homelessness are quite serious in America, worker's economic, social and cultural rights are not guaranteed, the report says.
english.people.com.cn
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 07:35 AM CST [
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Billionaires are dime a dozen on Forbes rich list
There was good news for rich people yesterday, when an annual listing of the world's billionaires showed there were more of them than ever.
The 793 billionaires making the 2006 list published by Forbes magazine is an increase of 102 on last year. And the rich keep getting richer, with their total net worth up 18%. The combined value of their billions is put at $2.6 trillion, a fraction less than the US federal government's entire budget proposal for next year.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 07:31 AM CST [
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U.S. Annual War Spending Grows
WASHINGTON -- As the U.S. enters its fourth year in Iraq this month, the annual cost of military operations is growing -- even as the Pentagon assumes the number of troops there will shrink.
Monthly expenditures are running at $5.9 billion; the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan adds roughly another $1 billion. Taken together, annual spending for the two wars will reach $117.6 billion for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 -- 18% above funding for the prior 12 months.
That escalation reflects the fact that America's military today is a higher-cost war machine than the one that fought in Vietnam decades ago. But it has also produced bipartisan concern in Congress that "emergency spending" for Iraq has become a way for the Pentagon to meet other needs.
wsj.com
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 07:28 AM CST [
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US trade deficit widens to record $68.5bn
The US trade deficit ballooned to a record $68.5bn in January, far surpassing expectations and raising the prospect of a large drag on economic growth in the first months of the year.
The sensitive bilateral trade deficit with China climbed to $17.9bn in January from $16.3bn, a figure that is likely to hinder administration efforts to contain mounting frustration in Congress over the rising deficit, and create a tense backdrop for the official visit of Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, next month.
With President George W. Bush facing a revolt from congressional Republicans over the Dubai ports deal, the administration could find itself in a weakened position in its long-standing efforts to stave off punitive trade legislation against China. The Republican chairman of the Senate finance committee said last month he would begin drawing up a bill to deal with the growing array of US trade frictions with China.
“The American people need a Congress and an administration that will get tough on trade policy to rein in these runaway deficits,” said Benjamin Cardin, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives subcommittee on trade. “When you look at trade deficits in the context of growing foreign ownership of our national debt, you see that we’re increasingly beholden to the very countries whose markets we’d like to open to American goods. Unless we reverse this dangerous trend, we’ll soon find ourselves without negotiating leverage to promote our trade agenda.”
news.ft.comChina rejects US rights 'hypocrisy' China has rejected US criticism of its record on human rights in an official rejoinder which says racial discrimination and crime are still rife in America.
The State Council, China's cabinet, denounced America on Thursday for what it called rampant violence and widespread discrimination against minorities, especially blacks, in its annual response to the US state department's report on human rights worldwide.
"As in previous years, the state department pointed the finger at human rights situations in more than 190 countries and regions, including China, but kept silent on the serious violations of human rights in the United States," the Chinese report said.
rootsie on 03.10.06 @ 07:24 AM CST [
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Thursday, March 9th
New York Asks Help From Poor in Housing Crisis
The New York City Housing Authority, landlord to more than 400,000 poor New Yorkers, is facing a budget shortfall of $168 million and has proposed narrowing the gap by charging residents new fees and increasing old ones for everything from owning a dishwasher to getting a toilet unclogged.
The authority says its operating deficit stems from enormous increases in energy and pension costs while its federal financing for public housing has been cut. Since 2001, the agency says, it has spent $357 million from its reserves to close repeated budget gaps; this year, for the first time, it no longer has enough reserves to cover the shortfall.
So it has proposed charging tenants $5.75 a month to run a washing machine, $5 a month to operate a dishwasher, $10 a month for a separate freezer. Parking fees will rise to $75 from $5 a year on April 1.
The authority plans to raise existing fees for dozens of services, like fixing damage to apartments beyond normal wear and tear, and to charge, for the first time, for things like rescuing lost keys from elevator pits after hours. The authority would like to put the fee changes other than for parking into effect around May 1.
nytimes.com
rootsie on 03.09.06 @ 08:26 AM CST [
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Something must be right with Bush…
By Juárez Polanco; Translated into English by the author and revised by Nancy Almendras.
Ever since George W. Bush was given his first imperial leadership of the northern country (by people placed in the Supreme Court by his own father), I don’t know if I should laugh, scream or cry whenever I discover what he’s been doing and saying to the planet over which he reigns.
Yes, that is right: We laugh so hard that it hurts when we’re talking about the creator of bushisms, those brilliant thoughts worthy of anthology that are destined to live forever. The examples speak for themselves: “The future will be better tomorrow”; “It’s time for mankind to enter the solar system”; or among the most erudite, “More and more of our imports are coming from abroad”; and “A low number of voters is an indication that less and less people are voting”. The land trembles, sky eclipses and winds sing a triumphal march: he’s the Great Architect of a shadowy and illogical century, full of contradictions, deaths, and mostly, stupidities.
Bush’s latest came this week. Now it seems he told Bill Sammon, a The Washington Times correspondent, that Bin Laden helped him to win the November 2004 elections against John Kerry. This is in reference to the video broadcast aired four days before those elections, in which the leader of Al-Qaeda criticized Bush and reminded the US people about the 9/11 attacks, still fresh in North Americans’ collective memory. According to The Examiner, Mr. George said, “I thought it was going to help. I thought it would help remind people that if Bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.”
His logic and wisdom surpasses me by far. I’m thinking about the Latin-American dictators of bloody hands: using bushistic logic, the opposition of our people was an irrefutable indication that something had to be right with those dictators. I’m thinking about the Nicaraguan case (the country from which I come): the fact that Sandino didn’t want anything to do with the invading yankees, meant that something had to be right with those invaders. What a great judgment!
What’s right with Bush? His imperial conquests in Afghanistan, Iraq and now probably Iran? His colonizing trail disguised under a Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that will create in Central America and Dominican Republic more of what’s happening in Mexico, something called by his own ally, Mr. Fox, “inevitable poverty zones”? His telescopic sight of destruction aiming to Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and any other country that won’t say Sir, yes, sir?
Neither do I understand the logic of North American voters, because it’s clear that they’re alone too, under the aquiline tunic of their President. He has kept silence about multimillionaire bankrupts like Enron. New Orleans was erased from the map only because Bush didn’t want to do anything before, during and after Katrina. Thousands of jobs were cut as was, Medicare, Medicaid and education, simply to fatten even more the military spending for an invasion of a country. The costs have reached exorbitant and offensive numbers (US$ 244,577,928,372.00 is the cost of this war as of the moment I’m writing this article, according to nationalpriorities.org), causing the worst national US debt in recent years.
However, I do have an idea of why North Americans voted for Bush; they were motivated primarily by fear.
Whenever one is guided by fear, the irrational and rational blend easily. Fear alone could have given Bush an election that was already in Kerry’s hands, and there is no doubt that there was fear pervading US soil the day of elections. Both Bin Laden’s video and the continuous reiterations by the mass media of attacks and destructive images, along with those anthrax attacks that came and vanished, so effective and at the same time so ephemeral, helped build an atmosphere adequate not only for Bush’s win, but also allowing him to pass the National Security laws; the most far reaching and illegal laws of US history. Today, these laws squash human and civil rights, to include home privacy, freedom of speech, of religion, and academic freedom.. As an example,, in his recent State of the Union, Mr. Bush made public a plan that allows telephone and mail interventions without prior judicial warrant, as declared by US laws. Nevertheless, Bush is only formalizing what was previously being done. It’s no surprise that Chavez ironically calls him “Mr. Danger”.
This “Mr. Danger” who led his citizens into a war by claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, later acknowledging that he knew that they did not exist. This “Mr. Danger” who created lunar craters in Afghanistan in search of a “never found” Bin Laden. This “Mr. Danger” who has sent young soldiers to kill and be killed in an absurd war. This “Mr. Danger” who has suspicious oil businesses, and also has friends with suspicious oil businesses. There is so much to talk about him, that in my huge ignorance I can’t find what’s that right with him that he claims to have.
What Bush doesn’t know, or maybe knows too well to say it, is that polls show that the North American majority don’t believe in him anymore (in regards to financial and economical leadership, the handling of the situation in Iraq, and the war as the right road to fight terrorism). Bush knows he is a chosen (p)resident of the White House thanks to his dad’s friends and the influence of his brother Jeb Bush (Governor of Florida, state that technically gave him the victory in 2000). He also knows he was then elected as a product of fear, confusion and hate, and he’s so pissed off that he has no idea about what to say or do to hide it.
Like Umberto Eco said, we should not pretend that governments are led by philosophers and erudite people, but may rightly expect people with good sense and lucid ideas. Bush demonstrates that is easier and easier for leaders to gain the citizenry’s support by means of fear, distrust and hate, and more and more difficult to attain it through sincerity.
Among the minority who still believe that something is right with Bush, the most avid activist is he. We who are a minority according to him but a majority according to simple mathematics, those who live south of the imperial border (maybe in their own belly, as we have been swallowed so long ago), have and breathe another reality, a reality not waiting any magical bushism to camouflage the misery to which we have been directed.
We, Latin-Americans, confirm that something must be right with Mr. George Walker Bush, for in the end, and without him wanting it, he has united more and more people around the globe in solidarity and given them (given us) the clarity to know that Earth should not and will not be annexed to his Majesty Bush’s Empire, and that its inhabitants, I mean, us (and the US people excluded and forgotten), deserve and demand respect.
Yes, something must be right with Bush, something wonderful and prodigiously beautiful. The increasing union of people around an achievable hope is the best testimony.
axisoflogic.com
rootsie on 03.09.06 @ 08:17 AM CST [
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After February 7th: Haiti’s Election ‘Provides Space’ to Poor Organizations
The second anniversary of the coup of elected Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide occurred in the midst of la carnival, a popular yearly cultural festival. Tens of thousands of Haitians from neighbourhoods all over the capital came out for the celebration, which included a performance by Haitian hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean. Last year, the planned festival was all but cancelled in Port-au-Prince amid political demonstrations and violence by the Haitian National Police, who shot and killed three participants in a peaceful demonstration protesting Aristide’s removal. This year, in the aftermath of the Rene Preval’s landslide win in the February 7th Haitian elections, the climate is noticeably calmer, even within some of the poorest neighbourhoods.
On Thursday, March 2nd, hip-hop star Wyclef Jean lead a delegation of individuals from Yele Haiti, the public works NGO founded by the hip-hop icon, into Bel Air and Cite Soleil, two of the poorest urban slums in the capital of Port-au-Prince. The next morning, Le Matin, a paper owned by Haitian industrialist Reginal Boulos, featured a cover photo of Jean standing arm in arm with Evans and Amaral, two “gang leaders” according to the caption, in Cite Soleil. Many of the artists and musicians accompanying Wyclef into Cite Soleil called for a new spirit of “reunification” of Haiti, presumably within the “troubled” poor neighborhoods surrounding Haiti’s capital.
Such optimism may seem somewhat premature, given the fact that on the same day as Wyclef’s well-publicized visit, the Haitian Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced without explanation that the planned March 19th parliamentary elections would be postponed indefinitely. This announcement echoes the announcements of past delays of the Presidential election, which was delayed at least three times before it was held in a state of massive disorganization on February 7th. The tallying of the votes for this election took more than a full week, and culminated in an explosion of street protests by poor Haitians and supporters of Preval after burned and charred ballots bearing an “x” under Preval’s name turned up in a dumpsite on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. The Provisional Electoral Council’s tally of votes had reduced Preval’s lead from its earlier tally of 61% to 48.7%, below the 50% required to avoid a run-off vote. Preval was declared President soon after by the CEP, under pressure from within and without as the international community began to recognize the fact that none of Preval’s rivals, most of whom taken from Haiti’s wealthy elite, had garnered anywhere near the electoral support that he had.
zmag.org
rootsie on 03.09.06 @ 08:12 AM CST [
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Life in a strong hold of the “Bolivarian Revolution”
Lara, Venezuela- Rito Martinez a former guerilla fighter with flowing white hair and a long white beard stands in the town square of Sanare, a small mountain village. Sanare is located in the state of Lara, a state which lies roughly 200 miles southwest of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. Inspired by the revolution in Cuba Martinez along with thousands of other fighters in the 1960s took to the surrounding mountainside. In response the Venezuelan government pursued these fighters imprisoning or “disappearing” thousands of guerillas and their sympathizers. For 9 years Martínez was held captive in what he describes as “a rodent infested tunnel with prison cages.” Today the sons and daughters of Martinez’s generation carry forth their left wing legacy and earn Lara the reputation of being called the ‘most revolutionary state in the country.’
By utilizing oil money the Chavez government has implemented massive social welfare programs which have in turn caused an explosion of grass roots political activity. This process taken as a whole is referred to simultaneously as 'the revolutionary process,' 'the Bolivarian process,' or 'the process of change.' It is here in Lara, perhaps more so than anywhere else in the country, that ‘the process of change’ has made such dramatic strides. Lara therefore provides a glimpse as to how this process works and where it is taking Venezuela.
zmag.org
rootsie on 03.09.06 @ 08:08 AM CST [
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New militia is potent force in Nigeria's oil-rich delta region
WARRI, NIGERIA – Gunmen dressed in black balaclavas and camouflage flak jackets approach in a boat. As it draws alongside, their voices can be heard singing. The chorus fades and they introduce themselves.
"We are the security men of the Niger delta," says one of the men in the blue speedboat bristling with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. "Nobody is going to hurt you. We are everywhere in the Niger delta."
The singing militiamen are part of the newly organized Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and are the latest expression of local resentment in a region of the country where tens of millions of dollars worth of oil are extracted each day, but most people live on only several hundred dollars each year.
The MEND organization, whose leadership remains a matter of speculation, appears to be better organized, trained, and equipped than any other group to emerge so far from this restive, swampy region.
"The way [the MEND militiamen] have been able to engage [the Nigerian military] in the last one month or so, the sophistication of firepower, it's not child's play," says Kayode Komolafe, managing editor of Nigeria's This Day newspaper. "What we have in this place is something aching. If we are not careful it could explode into greater warfare."
Nigeria is the world's eighth largest oil exporter and the fifth largest supplier of crude to the US. MEND's recent sabotage of pipelines and other oil facilities has so far shut off over a fifth of the country's oil output, steadily driving up world oil prices.
csmonitor.com
rootsie on 03.09.06 @ 08:05 AM CST [
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World Population Growth to be Concentrated in Developing Nations
By 2050, world population is projected to reach nine billion people. That would constitute a 38 percent jump from today's population total of 6.5 billion, and more than five times the 1.6 billion people believed to have existed in 1900. Demographers foresee declining, more aged populations in many industrialized nations, and explosively-growing, ever-younger populations in much of the developing world. VOA's Michael Bowman reports from Washington, both trends are seen as problematic.
If projections hold true, future global population growth will be heavily concentrated in Latin America, Africa and South Asia. Carl Haub is senior demographer at the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau. "All world population growth today is in the developing world. There is no natural population growth in Europe, and even the U.S. is very heavily dependent on immigration," he said.
By 2050, Africa's population, both northern and sub-Saharan, is expected to surge from 900 million to almost two billion, while South Asia's population is projected to swell from 1.6 billion to nearly 2.5 billion. At the same time, Europe's population is expected to shrink from 730 million to 660 million.
voanews.com
rootsie on 03.09.06 @ 08:00 AM CST [
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Top U.S. Bishop Accused of Sex Abuse
SPOKANE, Wash. - A woman has accused the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops of sexually abusing her more than four decades ago when she was a child.
Bishop William Skylstad issued a statement Wednesday categorically denying the accusation, saying he has not violated the vow of celibacy he took 47 years ago.
The claim was filed against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Spokane on Dec. 27 by a woman who said she was under the age of 18 when Skylstad sexually abused her at St. Patrick's Parish and at Gonzaga University from December 1961 to December 1964.
The woman's claim was first reported Wednesday by the Spokesman-Review newspaper of Spokane.
Skylstad, 70, was a student at Gonzaga University from 1962-1966 and taught mathematics to students at Mater Cleri Seminary at Colbert, north of Spokane.
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 03.09.06 @ 07:53 AM CST [
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Ariz. Governor Orders Troops to Border
PHOENIX - Gov. Janet Napolitano on Wednesday ordered more National Guardsmen posted at the Mexican border to help stop illegal immigrants and curb related crimes.
National Guard troops have worked at the border since 1988, but Napolitano signed an order authorizing commanders to station an unspecified number of additional soldiers there to help federal agents.
Once the funding is approved, the troops will monitor crossing points, assist with cargo inspection and operate surveillance cameras, according to the order.
"They are not there to militarize the border," the governor said. "We are not at war with Mexico."
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 03.09.06 @ 07:49 AM CST [
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Loans of Mass Destruction: Wolfowitz's Anti-Corruption Hoax at the World Bank
A few weeks ago, Colin Powell's former chief of staff in the State Department, Lawrence Wilkerson, revealed to a PBS NOW audience something we all knew anyway about Saddam Hussein's weapons arsenal: 'I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council.'
A chief planner of that hoax was Paul Wolfowitz. Is he now carrying out another--telling the world that he's ridding the Third World of corruption?
'I would certainly counsel Paul Wolfowitz to put himself in the hands of the professionals who run the World Bank's external-relations department: he needs an extreme makeover,' former IMF chief economist Kenneth Rogoff advised shortly after his appointment last April.
He got one. By September, a Los Angeles Times editorial remarked, 'Wolfowitz's most valuable contribution to date may simply be his role as a cheerleader. Amid an agency and a US public that is cynical about the value of foreign aid, Wolfowitz has continually pointed out that things are changing for the better in Africa and that the world's contributions are making a difference.'
Commentator Ariana Huffington observed last November, 'Talk about your Extreme Political Makeover. Wolfie has gone from war hawk to the second coming of Mother Teresa--all without having to make any kind of redemptive pit stop in political purgatory or having to apologize for being so wrong about Iraq.'
Added Washington Post journalist Dana Milbank in December: 'Being Wolfie means not having to say you're sorry. Since taking the World Bank job six months ago he has found a second act. He has toured sub-Saharan Africa, danced with the natives in a poor Indian village, badgered the United States to make firmer foreign aid commitments and cuddled up to the likes of Bono and George Clooney.'
There is no question that Wolfowitz quickly learned to talk 'left' about unfair trade subsidies, meagre US aid and corruption. Whether this was merely superficial rhetoric, veiling the sinister agenda of the petro-military complex, would soon be tested.
Last August in Ecuador, the centrist government employed a Keynesian finance minister, Rafael Correa, who renewed Ecuador's long-standing $75 million tax-avoidance complaint against Occidental Petroleum. In addition, a new Ecuadoran law aimed to redirect 20% of an oil fund towards social needs and 10% for national development in science and technology, instead of debt servicing to foreign banks. (The windfall from the oil price rise from $18/barrel when the fund was set up, to $70/barrel in 2005, was being funnelled to Ecuador's creditors.)
Correa aimed to rescind Occidental's control of the oilfields, as the original contract allowed for under conditions of non-performance. But next door to Ecuador, in Colombia, Wolfowitz had helped Occidental defend one of the most productive oil fields in the world, Cano Limon, whose pipeline runs through jungle adjacent to guerrilla controlled territory. The Pentagon established a Colombian 'Pipeline Brigade' with a $150 million grant arranged by Wolfowitz when he was the second-ranking military official.
A senior financier explained in MRzine: 'Wolfowitz's decision provoked a crisis in the government of president Alfredo Palacio who, especially with a weak government, has indicated his reluctance to confront the United States. After discussions with the president, finance minister Correa was obliged to resign and the head of the national petroleum company has been sacked. The new head of the petroleum company, Luis Roman, held the same post in the 1990s and helped Occidental into its current position. In fact, he is a supporter of further privatizing the oil fields.'
A few months later, a seemingly opposite case arose in Africa, namely a redirection of the controversial Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline's funds away from social programmes into the military. As leader of the country tied with Bangladesh for most corrupt in the world (according to Transparency International), Chad's authoritarian president Edriss Déby and the country's parliament amended a 1999 petroleum revenue management law last December in spite of warnings by Wolfowitz.
Bank cofinancing of the $3.7 billion pipeline was the target of a long-running international campaign by community, human rights and environmental groups on grounds it would simply empower the Déby regime, not the people. In 1999, the Bank had responded with revenue legislation to mitigate these concerns.
Hence Déby's 2005 amendment triggered Wolfowitz to withhold any new loans and grants and halt disbursement of $124 million in International Development Association monies. A local group, the Chadian Association for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights, endorsed Bank sanctions because 'new money would mainly be used for military purposes and increasing repression of the Chadian people. But we regret that the Bank did not listen to the warnings of civil society organisations earlier.'
Indeed, as the Bretton Woods Project records, 'Local authorities and the military are known to extort money from villagers when they receive cash compensation from the oil companies. Chadian human rights organisations report that human rights activists trying to defend local peoples' rights often receive death threats and have to flee the region. Pollution is taking a toll on the health and crops of some of the poorest people on earth, but none of the project sponsors are even studying it, let alone resolving the problems.'
Surprisingly perhaps, this case of petro-military alignment was resolved--temporarily--against the World Bank's allies in a repressive regime and multinational oil corporations. Wolfowitz apparently required a dose of public credibility in what was Africa's highest-profile financing dispute. Cynics might add, on the other hand, that the other crucial function of the clampdown was to impose Bank discipline on an errant country, in the process sending a tough lesson to others, that they must obey Washington's orders.
Likewise, the same conflict of objectives arose in Ethiopia and Kenya late last year. In the former, Africa's second most populous country and the world's seventh-poorest, donors announced the suspension of $375 million budget support following severe state repression including a massacre of opposition political protesters and mass arrests. Although this threatened to wipe out fully a third of the country's budget, and although president Meles Zenawi--an ex-Marxist ex-guerrilla--was a favourite of the neoliberals, the Bank complied.
...Dennis Brutus from Jubilee South Africa is in town to launch his fantastic new book, Poetry and Protest (Haymarket Books and UKZN Press). As I talk this dilemma over with him, he offers a very simple proposition: 'It seems to me that both the IMF and Bank are inherently corrupt institutions, because they systematically transfer the wealth of poor countries to the North. While they are asking their clients--dictators and other ruling elites--to clean up their act, our job is still is to demand the abolition of this much more broadly corrupt system.'
This is not theory, Brutus reminds: 'The World Bank Bonds Boycott is still going strong)
But what do you do if you're in Nairobi or Brazzaville or Harare, then? Would it help to have Kibaki or Sassou-Nguesso or Robert Mugabe--who just caused a massive inflation spurt by repaying the IMF long-overdue debt--even more under Washington's thumb?
Brutus replies: 'Each case is different. Ask the progressive movements in those countries, and take the lead from them! Unless you have the mass of the citizens participating in the debate over resource inflows and outflows, you will just see elites being legitimised and empowered. We had this enormously instructive participatory-budgeting example from the Porto Alegre municipality. Limited and truncated as it was, it nevertheless gave a sense of the way we will want to control resources and stop corruption in the future, in Africa and everywhere else.'
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 03.09.06 @ 07:39 AM CST [
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Netanyahu would control more territory
Benjamin Netanyahu said he would move Israel’s security barrier deeper inside the West Bank.
The Likud Party leader was the third of the three candidates in Israel’s March 28 elections to address this year’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of the Kadima Party and Amir Peretz of Labor both said they would cut off a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority but would seek moderates with whom to deal, and Olmert said he was ready to unilaterally withdraw from some West Bank territory. Netanyahu suggested Israel should assume control of more territory, saying a Hamas-controlled West Bank posed dangers to Israel’s population centers and to Ben-Gurion Airport.
jta.orgUNICEF: "Sad day for children of Gaza" GAZA CITY –- UNICEF said Monday was a sad day for the children of Gaza, after five were killed in conflict-related incidents.
In the first incident, two brothers, aged 14 and 15, were killed instantly when they were exposed to an unexploded device in a pond in Bereij, south of Gaza City.
Later in the day, two brothers, aged 11 and 15, and a 14-year-old boy were killed as bystanders during an air attack.
Monday's tragic incidents bring the year's death toll of Palestinian children to conflict-related violence to 11. The organization noted that yesterday's one day toll was very high at a time when overall child casualties were actually going down.
UNICEF said the events of Monday starkly illustrate the how children are impacted in many ways by the conflict. In line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child all efforts should be made to protect children from violence as well as their rights to education, health and play.
rootsie on 03.09.06 @ 07:28 AM CST [
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US demands drastic action as Iran nuclear row escalates
The US called for extraordinary action to get to the bottom of Iran's nuclear programme yesterday as Tehran and Washington moved into confrontational mode in the long-running dispute.
The American ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Greg Schulte, called for "special inspections" by the UN nuclear teams in Iran, in effect giving them carte blanche in their detective work, at the Vienna meeting of the IAEA board that is reporting Iran to the UN security council. The mechanism has been used only once before, unsuccessfully, in North Korea 13 years ago.
Capping a long campaign to take the nuclear row to the security council, Mr Schulte said: "The time has now come for the security council to act ... It should emphasise that Iran will face consequences if it does not meet its obligations."
Iran reacted furiously, squaring up to the US and making implicit threats to use oil as a weapon against it.
"Let the ball roll," said Javad Vaeidi, the deputy head of Iran's national security council, using the words used against Iran at the weekend by the US hawk and ambassador to the UN, John Bolton.
"The United States may have the power to cause harm and pain. But it is also susceptible to harm and pain," he said.
guardian.co.ukElBaradei's swan song? ...Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei has spent more than a year investigating neo-crazy charges that Iran has conducted nuclear activities in furtherance of some military purpose at various Iranian military sites, including Lavizan, Parchin and Kolahduz. On Jan. 27, ElBaradei's deputy even confronted the Iranians with what he characterized as "information" provided him about a military plan to construct a small facility to convert uranium-oxide into uranium-tetrafluoride.
The CIA claims they gleaned this "intelligence" from what they suspect is a "stolen" Iranian military laptop computer. However, ElBaradei has yet to find any "indication" of that or any other use of source or special nuclear materials in furtherance of a military purpose.
And, according to the Iranians, so says ElBaradei's most recent – and final – report, which was circulated last week to the 35 members of the IAEA Board.
Needless to say, that isn't what U.S. officials say, echoed by domestic and international neo-crazy media sycophants.
"We've said that during this time the regime in Iran has an opportunity to change their ways and change their behavior when it comes to the nuclear program," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
And if they don't?
'US Cannot Use Gansi Base for Iran' Kyrgyzstan Minister of Foreign Affairs Alikbek Ceksenkulov said the United States can not use Gansi Military Base for a possible attack on Iran.
It would be a violation of the mutual covenant between the two countries if the US decides to use the Gansi Air Base, close to Manas Airport in Bishkek, against Iran. The base was built to suppress terror in Afghanistan, Ceksenkulov told BBC Monday, adding that the base should not pose a threat to any Asian countries, including Iran.
Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev also told Russian "Komersant" last week that America could only use Gansi for Afghanistan, not for Iran.
The President reminded the US access period would only be extended depending on the stability of Afghanistan.
Israel will have to act on Iran if UN can't BERLIN (Reuters) - If the U.N. Security Council is incapable of taking action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel will have no choice but to defend itself, Israel's defense minister said on Wednesday.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was asked whether Israel was ready to use military action if the Security Council proved unable to act against what Israel and the West believe is a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program.
"My answer to this question is that the state of Israel has the right give all the security that is needed to the people in Israel. We have to defend ourselves," Mofaz told Reuters after a meeting with his German counterpart Franz Josef Jung.
rootsie on 03.09.06 @ 07:21 AM CST [
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Developments in Iraq, March 8
* MOSUL - Hospital and police sources said they received five bodies shot dead by U.S. forces in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad. No details of the incident were available. The U.S. military said it was checking the report.
BAGHDAD - Gunmen attacked the house of Interior Minister advisor Major General Hikmat Moussa Salman in western Baghdad. Police said two of his bodyguards were killed and two wounded.
BAGHDAD - Gunmen wearing Iraqi police commando uniforms seized about 50 employees from the offices of a security company in eastern Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Four civilians were wounded when a car bomb exploded near a U.S. patrol in the western part of Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Two Interior Ministry personnel were killed and five wounded when a roadside bomb went off near minister of interior's convoy in eastern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said.
TAL AFAR - A U.S. soldier was killed and four others wounded on Tuesday when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in Tal Afar northwest of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, U.S. military said in a statement.
BAQUBA - Iraqi army and police arrested 19 suspects in raids in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - The bodies of 18 men, bound and blindfolded, were found on Tuesday night in a minibus in western Baghdad, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.
FALLUJA - Four civilians were killed and two wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in a main road in Falluja, police said.
BAGHDAD - Two policemen were killed and six civilians and two policemen wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a police patrol in central Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - The bodies of two people were found, bound and blindfolded, after they were shot dead in eastern Baghdad, police said.
alertnet.org50 security firm workers kidnapped in Iraq BAGHDAD, Iraq — Gunmen in Interior Ministry commando uniforms stormed the offices of a private security company and kidnapped as many as 50 employees today, while U.S. and Iraqi patrols reported the discovery of 24 shot or garroted bodies in the capital.
Iraq's Shiite vice president, meanwhile, signed a presidential decree calling parliament into session, breaking a major logjam that had delayed the creation of a unity government that U.S. officials hope can curb the unrelenting violence so their forces can start going home in the summer.
"He signed the decree today. I expect the first session to be held on Sunday or by the end of next week at the latest," said Nadim al-Jabiri, head of one of seven Shiite parties that make up the United Iraqi Alliance, the largest bloc in parliament.
Unidentified attackers hit the al-Rawafid Security Co. at 4:30 p.m. and forced the workers into seven vehicles, including several white SUVs, said Interior Ministry Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi. The victims, including bodyguards, drivers, computer technicians and other employees, did not resist because they assumed their abductors were police special forces working for the Interior Ministry, al-Mohammedawi said.
Official Says Shiite Party Suppressed Body Count BAGHDAD, March 8 -- Days after the bombing of a Shiite shrine unleashed a wave of retaliatory killings of Sunnis, the leading Shiite party in Iraq's governing coalition directed the Health Ministry to stop tabulating execution-style shootings, according to a ministry official familiar with the recording of deaths.
The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he feared for his safety, said a representative of the Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, ordered that government hospitals and morgues catalogue deaths caused by bombings or clashes with insurgents, but not by execution-style shootings.
A statement this week by the U.N. human rights department in Baghdad appeared to support the account of the Health Ministry official. The agency said it had received information about Baghdad's main morgue -- where victims of fatal shootings are taken -- that indicated "the current acting director is under pressure by the Interior Ministry in order not to reveal such information and to minimize the number of casualties."
rootsie on 03.09.06 @ 07:09 AM CST [
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Wednesday, March 8th
Ali Farka Toure
Ali Farka Toure, who has died of bone cancer in the Malian capital Bamako in his late 60s, was the finest, most influential and best-loved guitarist in Africa. The "godfather of the desert blues", he was the first African musician to show, through his often hypnotic, rhythmic and self-assured playing, that the blues had originated in his home country, out on the edge of the Sahara.
His work certainly echoed the blues - and, in particular, the playing of John Lee Hooker - but it was a comparison that first boosted his career, and then infuriated him. He told me that he played African music, not blues, and that "this music has been taken from here. I play traditional music and I don't know what blues is. For me, blues is a type of soap powder."
Though Toure was the first of a long line of great musicians from Mali to find fame in the west, he insisted that music was not the only interest in his life. He toured the world and won his first Grammy for his 1994 collaboration with Ry Cooder, Talking Timbuktu, then retreated to his home town of Niafunke, on the banks of the Niger river in north-west Mali, where he devoted his time to farming and his role as the local mayor, spending the money he earned from his albums on irrigation and development schemes that transformed the region, making it self-sufficient for food.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 08:49 AM CST [
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Gordon Parks 1912-2006: 'Life' Photographer And 'Shaft' Director Broke Color Barriers
Gordon Parks, a photographer, filmmaker and poet whose pioneering chronicles of the black experience in America made him a revered elder and a cultural icon, died yesterday at his home in New York. He was 93.
His nephew, Charles Parks of Lawrence, Kan., said Parks had cancer and had been in failing health since 1993.
Parks, the son of a dirt farmer, rose from meager beginnings and above recurrent discrimination to walk through doors previously closed to African Americans. He was the first black person to work at Life magazine and Vogue, and the first to write, direct and score a Hollywood film, "The Learning Tree" (1969), which was based on a 1963 novel he wrote about his life as a farm boy in Kansas. He also was the director of the 1971 hit movie "Shaft," which opened the way for a host of other black-oriented films.
Elegant and aristocratic with a trademark mustache, his work traversed a vast landscape from poverty and crime to luxury and high fashion. He was a high school dropout turned award-winning photographer who traveled the world, using his camera with deftness and defiance.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 08:46 AM CST [
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Bolivia to write new constitution
Bolivian President Evo Morales has signed a law convening a special assembly to rewrite the constitution.
Mr Morales said Bolivia would be refounded, with indigenous peoples playing the role that they had been denied for hundreds of years.
Mr Morales also signed a law calling a referendum on greater regional autonomy, which will be held on 2 July.
bbc.co.uk
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 08:42 AM CST [
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This is your life (if you are a woman)
1% of the titled land in the world is owned by women
A baby girl born in the UK is likely to live to 81 - but if she is born in Swaziland, she is likely to die at 39
70% of the 1.2 bn people living in poverty are women and children
21% of the world's managers are female
62% of unpaid family workers are female
9% of judges, 10% of company directors and 10% of top police officers in the UK are women
Women comprise 55% of the world's population aged over 60 years old and 65% of those aged over 80
£970,000 is the difference between lifetime earnings of men and women in the UK finance sector
85m girls worldwide are unable to attend school, compared with 45m boys. In Chad, just 4% of girls go to school.
700,000,000 women are without adequate food, water, sanitation, health care or education (compared with 400,000,000 men)
Women in full-time jobs earn an average 17% less than British men
Women in part-time jobs earn an average 42% less than British men
67% of all illiterate adults are women
1,440 women die each day during childbirth (a rate of one death every minute)
1 in 7 women in Ethiopia die in pregnancy or childbirth (it is one in 19,000 in Britain)
In the US, 35% of lawyers are women but just 5% are partners in law firms
In the EU, women comprise 3% of chief execs of major companies
12 is the number of world leaders who are women (out of 191 members of the United Nations)
Men directed 9 out of every 10 films made in 2004
independent.co.ukUN: Women denied representation, making war on poverty hard to win Millions of women around the world, including those in the UK and other Western countries, are being denied effective representation because of the low numbers of female politicians, judges and employers, the United Nations has warned.
Campaigners say that unless urgent action is taken on the status of women, the Millennium Development Goals on reducing poverty, infant deaths and standards of education will not be met.
To mark International Women's Day, the UN has published a report that says rates of female participation in governments across the developed and developing world are still appallingly low. The report says that for women to be adequately represented in their country, at least 30 per cent of parliamentary seats should have a female representative.
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 08:39 AM CST [
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Temple, Station Attacked in India
NEW DELHI, March 7 -- Bombs exploded in a crowded Hindu temple and a railway station in the holy city of Varanasi on Tuesday evening, killing at least 15 people and raising fears of retaliatory violence against India's minority Muslim population. Authorities appealed for calm and police officers in major cities were placed on high alert.
Even before the blasts, communal tensions had been rising in India. Angry Muslim protests against President Bush, who visited India last week, as well as against cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, first published in a Danish newspaper, have erupted into violence in several cities.
The first blast Tuesday ripped through the Sankat Mochan temple shortly after 6 p.m. as Hindu devotees gathered to make offerings to the monkey god Hanuman, Indian news agencies reported. Among the dead was a bridegroom who had come to seek the deity's blessings, according to the Press Trust of India news service. Tuesday evening is the traditional time for visiting the temple.
The second explosion came minutes later at the railway station. The blast left a foot-deep crater, shattered windows and splattered the station with blood and body parts, the Press Trust reported. Four more unexploded bombs were found at another site next to the Ganges River.
In an interview with the Reuters news agency, Navneet Sikera, senior superintendent of police in Varanasi, put the death toll at 15, with 60 injured. The Press Trust said 20 people had died, including 14 at the train station. [Five people died overnight of injuries, according to a police official cited by the Associated Press.]
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 08:34 AM CST [
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France gets its first black TV presenter after Chirac pressure
Under pressure from President Jacques Chirac, the main French television channel, TF1, has appointed a black journalist as "substitute" presenter of the country's most-watched news bulletin.
From July, Harry Roselmack, 32, will become the first non-white person to present a prime-time, mainstream television news programme on France's most-watched channel, TF1.
During the rioting by multiracial suburban gangs of young people in November last year, French television companies were criticised for their failure to present an ethnically diverse picture of French society.
Although journalists of Arab or African origin, such as Roselmack, have presented the news on minor channels or out of prime time, the main news bulletins have been an all-white preserve.
This was said to reinforce the sense of alienation felt by black and Arab youths in poor, French suburbs.
After the riots, President Chirac urged all the French media, and especially television companies, to make greater effort to hire journalists from ethnic minorities.
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 08:30 AM CST [
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World warned it must do better as 20m face threat of famine in Africa
More than 20 million people in the Horn of Africa are at risk of famine in conditions which the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) described yesterday as the worst in his experience.
James Morris, executive director of the WFP, the UN's food aid organisation, was in London yesterday to warn the international community that millions of people in Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia and the Tanzania are now at risk because of drought.
guardian.co.ukWe cannot tolerate children dying for a glass of water Nobody reading this started the day with a two-mile hike to collect the family's daily water supply from a stream. None of us will suffer the indignity of using a plastic bag for a toilet. And our children don't die for want of a glass of clean water.
Aw I don't know...look what we tolerate already.
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 08:26 AM CST [
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Dutch consider burqa ban to Muslim dismay
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - If the Netherlands becomes the first European country to ban the burqa and other Muslim face veils this month, Hope says she'll resort to wearing a surgical mask to dress in accordance with her religious beliefs.
"I'll wear one of those things they wore during the SARS epidemic if I have to," said the Dutch-born Muslim, one of about 50 women in the Netherlands who wear the head-to-toe burqa or the niqab, a face veil that conceals everything but the eyes.
"I'm very practical," the 22-year-old added.
Last December, parliament voted to forbid women from wearing the burqa or any Muslim face coverings in public, justifying the move in part as a security measure.
The cabinet is awaiting the results of a study into the legality of such a ban under European human rights laws, before making its final decision. The results are expected in the second half of this month.
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 08:17 AM CST [
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Israel adviser switches to top Foreign Office job
The British Foreign Office has appointed a controversial Israeli government adviser to one of its most sensitive posts as head of the legal department.
Advice from Daniel Bethlehem QC in 2002 to the then Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, led Israel to block a UN inquiry into the battle of Jenin. The Israeli refusal to cooperate was widely condemned at the time by various human rights organisations.
Mr Bethlehem, who was Israel's external legal adviser, also took the lead for the Israeli government at the International court of justice in The Hague in 2004 to defend the barrier being built along the West Bank. Israel lost the case.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 08:14 AM CST [
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Report: Israelis in Iran Hunting Nukes
An Israeli special operations team is working undercover in Iran, according to a report Sunday in a British newspaper.
The soldiers are on a mission to prevent the Iranians from succeeding in their bid to develop a nuclear weapon. They are involved in locating uranium enrichment facilities in Iran, according to the British Sunday Times, and are currently based in neighboring northern Iraq.
The United States is supporting the move, says the paper.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made an oblique reference to the operation on Sunday in his video address to the annual AIPAC conference in the U.S. He warned that Israel would not be able to stop the Iranians on its own, adding his hope that the international community, led by the U.S., would impose sanctions on Iran. He said the country is a threat to the modern world.
Defense Minister Sha'ul Mofaz also spoke on Sunday about the issue. He said that Iran poses a major threat to Israel, and that the verbal hostility coming out of Tehran is something that needs to be closely monitored.
israelnationalnews.comPalestinian children killed in Israeli airstrike on Gaza On Monday evening, 6 March 2006, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) carried out another extra-judicial execution in Gaza City, leaving 5 Palestinians, including three children and two members of the al-Quds Brigades, dead. In addition, 12 civilian bystanders, including 6 children, were injured.
This latest attack comes following decisions taken by the Israeli political and military establishments to target Palestinian resistance activists, in response to the launching of locally made rockets from the OPT at Israel.
According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 16:55 on Monday, 6 March 2006, an IOF aircraft launched a missile at a civilian car (white Peugeot) that was travelling on a side road in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood in the northeast of Gaza City. The car was destroyed. Two members of the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad, who had been travelling in the car, and 3 children that had been passing nearby, were instantly killed: Muneer Mohammed Mohammed Sukkar, 29, from the al-Shojaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City; Ashraf 'Ali Shallouf, 25, from the al-Shojaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City; Ra'ed Ahmed al-Batash, 11; Mahmoud Ahmed al-Batash, 17; and Ahmed al-Swaifi, 14.
In addition, 12 civilian bystanders, including 6 children and the father of 2 of the victims, were injured by shrapnel.
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 08:10 AM CST [
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Russia Approves Divisive Pipeline Plan
...Transneft, the state-controlled pipeline operator, is set to build the 2,500-mile pipeline, which would run from Taishet in eastern Siberia to the Pacific coast. With an annual capacity of 80 million tons of crude, it would allow Russia to increase its oil exports to China, Japan and other Asia-Pacific economies.
The $11.5 billion project is a strategic goal of President Vladimir Putin's government, which wants to diversify the country's export network and build Russia into an energy superpower.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 08:01 AM CST [
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Energy, Iran Spur Turkey's Revival of Nuclear Plans
ISTANBUL -- Turkey is reviving its long-deferred quest for nuclear power, pressed both by serious energy shortfalls within its own borders and by strident nuclear ambitions in neighboring Iran that threaten to upset a regional balance of power.
"The rise in oil prices and the need for multiple sources of energy make our need for nuclear energy an utmost priority," Energy Minister Hilmi Guler said last month in announcing plans to build as many as five atomic energy plants. The first, to be located on the Black Sea at Sinop, would come on line in 2012 and ease Turkey's costly dependence on natural gas, 90 percent of which arrives by pipeline from Russia and Iran.
With a rapidly expanding economy, a population of 70 million and scarce petroleum deposits, Turkey appears to be a logical candidate for nuclear power. Guler, who made his remarks while visiting a nuclear plant in Virginia, said the new Turkish reactors could provide about a tenth of the 54,000 megawatts the country expects to need over the next two decades.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 07:57 AM CST [
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John Bolton Does AIPAC
It should be obvious, considering the photo to the left, who John Bolton, the Straussian neocon “representative” to the United Nations, works for—the American-Israel Political Action Committee. “U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, speaking at a convention of Jewish-Americans, said it is too soon for the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran but other countries are talking about doing so and Washington is ‘beefing up defensive measures to cope with the Iranian nuclear threat,’” in other words the Pentagon is preparing to shock and awe Iran, maybe later this month, but probably down the road, sooner before later.
“Bolton reaffirmed that the United States does not see the security council moving quickly to impose sanctions on Iran, but he pointedly noted that ‘many other governments have begun to include the word sanctions in their discourse on Iran,’ implying they may take action outside the security council.” As was the case with the Iraq invasion, the United Nations is considered irrelevant. “Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding or will it be irrelevant?” Bush asked the Security Council in September, 2002, a couple months before his neocon handlers invaded Iraq. Bolton is setting up a re-run.
Recall Condi’s Boy Friday, neocon national security adviser Stephen Hadley, suspected of the vicious outing of Valerie Plame, telling AIPAC last November that the “spread of democracy [i.e., invading various Arab and Muslim countries] will make the Middle East a safer neighborhood for Israel. An American retreat from Iraq, on the other hand, would only strengthen the terrorists who seek the enslavement of Iraq and the eventual destruction of Israel.” In other words, the two thousand plus (and actually closer to 10,000) Americans killed in Iraq were sacrificed to make a “safer neighborhood for Israel.”
kurtnimmo.com
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 07:52 AM CST [
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Iran and US: Diplomacy or war?
The US government says it is mulling all its options - including the military one - in response to an IAEA report that Iran has begun enriching uranium on a small scale and is slowly building up its enrichment capabilities.
The IAEA recently stated it "has not seen any [Iranian] diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons", a charge made by the Bush administration.
However, the nuclear watchdog says there are many outstanding questions about Iran's nuclear programme that the Islamic republic has yet to answer.
Iran plans to set up 3000 enrichment centrifuges later this year.
With talks to resolve the issue appearing less and less likely, the United States and a European Union troika made up of Britain, France and Germany persuaded the watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to report Iran to the Security Council for action.
The current standoff has led to a spate of media stories suggesting the US and/or Israel might be planning a military strike to disrupt Iranian nuclear facilities.
However, Adam Ereli, a spokesman for the US State Department, told Aljazeera.net that a military move "is not something we're looking at right now".
"What we're looking at is diplomatic action with our partners from the international community to prevent Iran from causing trouble which it intends on doing by supporting terrorism and developing a nuclear weapon."
aljazeera.net
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 07:49 AM CST [
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Pro-Taliban Rebel Holdouts Give Pakistanis a Fierce Fight
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 6 -- Pakistani security forces battled pro-Taliban rebels holding out in a town near the Afghan border on Monday, killing 19 of them as the toll from three days of clashes rose to more than 120, the military said.
The rebels launched attacks on government positions in Miran Shah on Saturday as President Bush met Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in the capital. The fighting has raged since.
"Helicopter gunships have been pounding militant positions around Miran Shah," said a resident of the town that serves as the administrative capital of North Waziristan, a tribal region. "The situation is very tense."
The semiautonomous ethnic Pashtun lands along the Afghan border are Pakistan's front line in the war on terrorism.
After U.S. and Afghan opposition forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001, many al-Qaeda militants fled to the area, which was awash in weapons. Taliban supporters among the Pashtun clans offered al-Qaeda a refuge.
Hundreds of people have been killed since late 2004 as Pakistani forces have been trying to clear foreign militants from the border area and subdue their Pakistani allies.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 07:45 AM CST [
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Developments in Iraq, March 7
* KHALIS - A car bomb killed three Iraqi soldiers and wounded one other in the town of Khalis, north east of Baghdad, the Iraqi army said.
* BAGHDAD - Six civilians were wounded when two car bombs parked on the side of the road were detonated in northern and northeastern Baghdad, police said. The target of the explosions was not clear, they said.
* BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb exploded in the New Baghdad district in the east of the capital, police said. There were no casualties.
BAQUBA - Gunmen killed three members of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's office in Baquba, police and hospital sources said. Two other members were wounded.
BAGHDAD - Three mortar rounds landed on the headquarters of the National Dialogue Front, a Sunni Arab party headed by Salih al-Mutlak. No casualties were reported.
KIRKUK - Three students and a soldier were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded as an Iraqi army patrol drove by Kirkuk University in central Kirkuk, 250 km (150 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
HAWIJA - A policeman was killed and another wounded in a drive-by shooting on the Kirkuk-Hawija highway, 60 km (40 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police said.
BAGHDAD - Five civilians were wounded when a car bomb exploded in southern Baghdad, police said. The target of the explosion was not clear.
BAGHDAD - A civilian was killed and his wife was wounded when a car bomb struck at a U.S. patrol in western Baghdad, police said.
BAQUBA - A car bomb killed one civilian and wounded three police officers. The policemen had arrived at the scene after gunmen had killed a policeman on a patrol.
HILLA - Three traffic policemen and four civilians were wounded when a car bomb went off in central Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad. Another car bomb exploded in northern Hilla but no casualties were reported.
BALAD - A policeman was wounded when four mortar rounds landed in and around Balad police station in Balad, 90 km (55 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
BAIJI - Three policemen were killed and four were wounded when gunmen attacked their patrol in the oil refinery city of Baiji, 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
TIKRIT - A Sunni shrine was destroyed on Monday when gunmen planted bombs inside it in the city of Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
alertnet.orgRumsfeld Says Media Exaggerating Iraqi Civilian Deaths Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld today presented an upbeat report of the conflict in Iraq and said he agrees with the commander of the U.S.-led coalition, Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., that the news media has exaggerated the number of civilian casualties in the conflict.
Rumsfeld said that while insurgents are "obviously trying to ignite a civil war," Iraqi security forces have "taken the lead in controlling the situation" and the Iraqi government has taken "a number of key steps that have had a calming effect in the situation."
But the news media in the United States and abroad has misreported the number of Iraqi civilians that have been killed and the number of mosques that have come under attack, Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference.
Iraq Weapons -- Made in Iran?Intelligence Officials Say Weapons Responsible for Increasing U.S. Deaths in Iraq
March 6, 2006 — - U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border.
They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor.
What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures -- certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.
"The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production," says explosives expert Kevin Barry. "So it's the same make and model."
U.S. officials say roadside bomb attacks against American forces in Iraq have become much more deadly as more and more of the Iran-designed and Iran-produced bombs have been smuggled in from the country since last October.
"I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there," says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops."
OH ok. Forget the nukes, let's attack them anyway.US envoy to Iraq: 'We have opened the Pandora's box' The US ambassador to Baghdad conceded yesterday that the Iraq invasion had opened a Pandora's box of sectarian conflicts which could lead to a regional war and the rise of religious extremists who "would make Taliban Afghanistan look like child's play".
Zalmay Khalilzad broke with the Bush administration's generally upbeat orthodoxy to present a stark profile of a volatile situation in danger of sliding into chaos.
Mr Khalilzad told the Los Angeles Times Iraq had been pulled back from the brink of civil war after the February 22 bombing of a Shia shrine in Samarra. However, another similar incident would leave Iraq "really vulnerable" to that happening, he said. "We have opened the Pandora's box and the question is, what is the way forward?" He added that the best approach was to build bridges between religious and ethnic communities.
rootsie on 03.08.06 @ 07:41 AM CST [
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Tuesday, March 7th
Closing Haiti's Open Veins: Rene Preval's Impossible Mission
On February 7, 2006 (and with due homage to the great Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano) the people of Haiti were not to be denied. Few people anywhere have endured more oppression and human misery or for a longer period of time (with all too few periods of relief). In spite of an election process orchestrated, controlled and shamelessly rigged by an interim puppet government (the IGH) and an oppressive occupying force (UN Blue Helmets supposedly there to maintain order and protect them), they overcame overwhelming obstacles and elected Rene Preval for the second time as their President (his first time in office was from 1996-2000). It's no secret that the real power calling the shots in Haiti is not in Port-au-Prince. It's in Washington making policy, giving orders and letting its approved proxies do its bidding, which has been bloody and brutal since US Marines in the dead of night kidnapped and deposed democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide at gunpoint in February, 2004.
In a normal country with a tradition of stability and democracy (or any one for that matter) the election of the peoples' choice would be a cause for celebration. Indeed for the first time in the past 2 years the Haitian people are celebrating and hope finally for an end to the nightmare they've been through. But nothing is ever simple in Haiti, a country that for over 500 years has had very few periods of stability free from the oppressive heel of a foreign occupier or repressive dictatorship. They never had a real democracy until the election of Jean-Bertand Aristide in 1991. Two US led, directed or authorized coups later (both against President Aristide), they have one again at least in the office of president. But do they really have good reason to rejoice?
Before continuing I must point out that until February 7 Jean-Bertand Aristide was still Haiti's democratically elected President. It's a valid argument to say he's entitled to remain so for the remainder of the time he lost, but he graciously never requested it and now calls Rene Preval "my President." The benighted Haitian people loved Aristide, called him their President and want and expect him to return. They now have every reason to feel the oddest combination of joy and fear as they await future events to unfold without knowing what will haappen.
zmag.org
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 09:29 AM CST [
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President Lula: The boy from Brazil is back
Less than six months ago Brazil's President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, appeared down and out. Racked by a campaign funding scandal that enveloped his party, he was trailing in the polls and there would doubts he would even fight for re-election.
Now the man universally known as Lula appears to have bounced back and arrives in London today for a three-day state visit. He has lost 30lbs, foresworn alcohol and been politically reinvigorated by new numbers that show his approval rating has jumped to 53.3 per cent from a low of 47 per cent in November and suggest he could win re-election in October.
Mr da Silva has also gone back on the attack and dropped the defensive tone he adopted at the peak of the scandal.
Speaking during a tour of Brazil's northeastern region, where he was born, he said. "I haven't done everything that needs to be done. But I've certainly already done much more than the elite that governed this country for nearly 500 years and forgot about the poor part of the population."
independent.co.ukBrazil leader begins London visit The Brazilian President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has arrived in London at the start of a three-day state visit.
He will attend a royal banquet at Buckingham Palace on his first evening in London and will meet Tony Blair for talks at Downing Street on Thursday.
The two leaders are likely to discuss the shooting of Brazilian man Jean Charles de Menezes in London last July.
The visit comes as the Crown Prosecution Service considers whether to charge police over the shooting.
The Foreign Office has flatly denied press reports that the Queen will publicly apologise for the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, but diplomats acknowledge the case is likely to be discussed by President Lula and Tony Blair.
British officials have sought to play down the rift caused by his death.
Mr Menezes was killed after being mistaken for a suicide bomber
The Brazilian government has expressed concern that the dead man's family have not seen the report into the killing by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 09:25 AM CST [
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Governor of South Dakota signs abortion ban into law
The governor of South Dakota signed into law on Monday a ban on nearly all abortions in the state, setting up a court fight aimed at challenging the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalised abortion in the United States.
The new law makes it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless the procedure is necessary to save a woman's life and makes no exception for cases of rape or incest. Doctors could get up to five years in prison for performing an illegal abortion.
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 09:20 AM CST [
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Levee fixes falling short, experts warn
NEW ORLEANS - The Army Corps of Engineers seems likely to fulfill a promise by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans's toppled flood walls to their original, pre-Katrina height by June 1, but two teams of independent experts monitoring the $1.6 billion reconstruction project say large sections of the rebuilt levee system will be substantially weaker than before the hurricane hit.
These experts say the Corps, racing to rebuild 169 miles of levees destroyed or damaged by Katrina, is taking shortcuts to compress what is usually a years-long construction process into a few weeks. They say that weak, substandard materials are being used in some levee walls, citing lab tests as evidence. And they say the Corps is deferring repairs to flood walls that survived Katrina but suffered structural damage that could cause them to topple in a future storm.
The Corps strongly disputes the assertion -- by engineers from a National Science Foundation-funded panel and a Louisiana team appointed to monitor the rebuilding -- that substandard materials are being used in construction. Agency officials maintain that the new levees are rigorously inspected at each step. But they acknowledge that much more work will be needed after June 1, the beginning of hurricane season, and that the finished system still will not be strong enough to withstand a storm the magnitude of Katrina.
msnbc.msn.com
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 09:16 AM CST [
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Standing at the Crossroads - Race, Class, and Art
By and large I count myself among those who believe that what is generally promoted as a race discussion usually ends up a waste of time. Now that we’re past Black History Month, during which columnist Clarence Page suggested that his PBS NewsHour viewers might look to the 1852 Uncle Tom’s Cabin for racial guidance, maybe we can also get past sepia-toned reminiscences of slavery and eulogies for Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King to the real grainy Technicolor ways folk live today, or try to. It’s an understatement that the ravishment of the Gulf Coast, destruction of a major American city and dispossession of its majority-black residents have set conditions for more than talk. But that ongoing catastrophe also demands that when we do speak, we better tell it like it is.
Whenever people say things like Hurricane Katrina “ripped the veil off racism and poverty” I am reminded of a line from a song in Craig Brewer’s film Hustle and Flow: “It might be new to you but it’s been like this for years.” In fact, the film pricked my race/class sensibilities more than anything else in the midst of the latest round of race talk.
Shot in the working-class neighborhoods of Brewer’s hometown, Memphis, Tennessee, Hustle and Flow is the story of DJay (played by Oscar nominee Terrence Howard), a pimp having a “midlife crisis.” He’s 35, the same age as his father when he died, and he fears his life will soon be over unless he changes course.
The film’s look, feel and sound are all intimately familiar. From the dirt on the walls of a shotgun house to the hot, wet, sticky red clay-tinted heat of a Southern summer and the ever-present, almost useless dirty portable fan. From the train track separating the haves from the have-nots to the get-by job that gets you to the weekend to the juke joint where anything happens. From the sound of the blues – even in rap music - right down to the neighborhood, language and attitudes, Brewer puts a face on the people that those such as Bill Cosby wish to be invisible. Some of them are even white.
Brewer’s people could be among the 35 percent of blacks currently living below the poverty line in the United States or the poorest 20 percent or so of Louisiana residents. Hustle and Flow reveals what Katrina revealed: those who’ve been left to fend for themselves. In New Orleans almost 40 percent of New Orleans’ households, nearly all of them black, earned less than $20,000 a year.
I have lived in either a predominately black or all-black neighborhood for most of my forty-nine years. It is not an endorsement of segregation; it’s just the way it is. Yet, there are a couple of things to appreciate about longstanding southern black neighborhoods. For one thing, different economic classes still live amongst one another. They intermix and interact. This social interaction is represented in the film by DJay’s relationship with Key, played by Anthony Anderson. Key, an old school friend, has become a middle-class audio technician. In addition, many of us move up and down – on and off the economic ladder throughout our lives. And most demographic data not only bear out that class intermix but also the precariousness of paycheck-to-paycheck living. Moreover, the typical black family doesn’t conform to the 2 parents, 2 kids model. Single women head 62% of black families and 67% of black children are born out of wedlock. Moreover, blacks more readily accept whites into those communities than vice versa, even poor whites, even gentrifying white “pioneers.”
Although there has been racial progress in the United States, for many African Americans life is like ice-skating up hill. According to the most recent American Housing Survey only 49 percent of blacks are homeowners as compared with 76 percent of whites. Even with comparable credit, blacks are 210 percent more likely than whites to be rejected for a mortgage. When black borrowers are fortunate enough to get a non-government home loan, a little less than a third of them will have to bear high-interest sub-prime financing, which usually doesn’t mesh well with a sub-prime car loan and/or the interest on a payday loan. No surprise, the national foreclosure rate for blacks sits right at 50 percent, and half of all African Americans live in unaffordable, inadequate or crowded housing. Among people living on the street or in their cars, 40 percent are black.
Wealth, equity, control over property – these markers of the “American dream” are largely white privileges. At the onset of the last recession, between 1999 and 2001, the net worth of Hispanic and black households fell by 27 percent. As of 2002, the Pew Hispanic Center reports, the median Hispanic household had a net worth of $7,932 and the median black family had $5,998, while the median white family had $88,651. And, almost a third of black households and more than a quarter of Hispanic ones had zero or negative net worth.
The meaning of the numbers is obvious: a sizable number of households and the individuals in them are barely getting by. And those in the middle class are seldom permanently middle class. That is not to say there are no recognizable class lines. Lots of black families lead economically stable lives and have decent credit.
Yet the majority of blacks live under conditions where any little bind affects their whole life. They are the people who lose their sub-prime loan homes, choose between car repair or insurance, gas or taxes, food or medicine, and frequently need an extension on the electric or phone bill. They rent the cheapest place they can find and try to hold on in traditional neighborhoods in the face of just about everything – from economic redlining to strict property code enforcement to urban pioneering to population disbursement or marginalization. They routinely face racial profiling and aggressive, if not brutal, law enforcement, jail and unemployability. A majority is in the South, where 54 percent of blacks still live. Others are concentrated in the ghettos although many cities have driven poor people out of the core of metropolitan areas all across the country. And then there are those holdouts who occupied the waterfront – be it the bayous, the barrier islands, along a lake or river, because that’s where their ancestors fled to – only to have that land taken by developers, or a storm, because it is waterfront.
That’s why Hustle and Flow is such a notable picture. It is not just the story of a pimp in Memphis who needs to make music. It is the story of another city on the Mississippi delta. New Orleans was built on race dating back to the day when the first Africans fled out to the bayous to be free just as a runaway Jim in Huck Finn was attempting to do. It’s that superficial sense of freedom and abandon that still draws tourists to a battered New Orleans, although the benefits of an economy based on the arts and nightlife never will trickle down to everyone. That is, unless you consider the four-man stand-up band that used to live in the Ninth Ward and is now playing and dancing in the street on a weekend night in The French Quarters for the money out-of-towners throw in the collection box as trickle down economics.
hollerif.blogspot.com
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 09:09 AM CST [
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More blacks deciding not to serve
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. -- War. College. A better job. The answers are as numerous as the number of young black people who are deciding against a military career.
Defense Department statistics show that the number of black active-duty enlisted personnel has declined 14 percent since 2000.
The decrease is particularly acute among the troops most active in the Middle East: The number of black enlisted soldiers has dropped by 19 percent and the number of black enlisted Marines has fallen by 26 percent in the same period.
Even in this area near Fort Bragg, where serving in uniform is a family tradition, the drop in Army enlistment by blacks from 2000 to 2005 matches the national average.
Kashonda Leycock is the daughter of a soldier, and the 17-year-old has been a member of the Junior ROTC at Westover High School for more than two years.
She joined to prove to her parents and herself she could do it -- not because she wants to join the military. She doesn't. Her primary objection is the war in Iraq.
"Why are we fighting?" Leycock asked. "Nobody has really said why the war is still going on. I don't think it should be going on because it's not solving anything. ... None of my people want to go there."
The lack of support for the war by blacks -- in uniform or not -- is striking. A poll of Cumberland County residents, commissioned last year by The Fayetteville Observer, showed that 69 percent of whites said the war in Iraq was worth the costs. Only 19 percent of blacks agreed.
news14charlotte.comSupreme Court Upholds Law on College Military Recruiting WASHINGTON, March 6 — The Supreme Court upheld a law today that cuts federal funding from universities that do not give military recruiters the same access to students that other potential employers receive.
The court ruled that the law does not violate the free-speech rights of universities that object to the military's exclusion of gay men and lesbians who are open about their sexual orientation.
The opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was unanimous.
It was a setback, although hardly an unexpected one, to a coalition of law schools that brought the constitutional challenge, as well as to the Association of American Law Schools, which represents nearly all accredited law schools and since 1991 has required adherence to a nondiscrimination policy on sexual orientation as a condition of membership.
Many law schools initially chose to comply with by barring military recruiters completely or by taking such steps as refusing to help the recruiters schedule appointments or relegating them to less favorable locations for meeting with students.
Congress responded with a series of increasingly punitive measures, all known as the Solomon Amendment, culminating in the 2004 statute at issue in the case. It requires access for military recruiters "that is at least equal in quality and scope" to access for other employers, on pain of forfeiting grants to the entire university from eight federal agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Education, and Health and Human Services.
With hundreds of millions of dollars potentially at stake, all but a handful of law schools yielded. Nearly three dozen banded together as the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, with the acronym FAIR, and turned to the courts.
Carl C. Monk, executive director of the Association of American Law Schools, said in an interview today that the association would continue to require its member schools to engage in "significant" activities to counter the impact of the Solomon Amendment, including organizing faculty forums.
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 09:04 AM CST [
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New ID cards defeat for government
The government suffered another defeat on its controversial ID cards bill tonight when peers voted by a sizeable majority in the Lords to ensure the planned identity cards were voluntary.
Accusing the government of introducing compulsory ID cards by "stealth" and breaking a manifesto commitment to implement a voluntary scheme, peers voted 227 to 166, a majority of 61.
Peers warned that under the new law, whenever an individual wished to renew a passport, he or she would have to enter their biometric details on the national identity register.
guardian.co.ukPlan for new nuclear programme approaches meltdown after report Tony Blair's backing for nuclear power suffered a blow yesterday when the Government's own advisory body on sustainable development came down firmly against the building of a new generation of reactors.
Despite the Prime Minister's well-known support for the nuclear industry, the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) concluded that a new nuclear programme was not the answer to the twin challenges of climate change and security of supply. In a hard-hitting report, the 15-strong Commission identified five "major disadvantages" to nuclear power:
* The lack of a long-term strategy for dealing with highly toxic nuclear waste
* Uncertainty over the cost of new nuclear stations and the risk that taxpayers would be left to pick up the tab;
* The danger that going down the nuclear route would lock the UK into a centralised system for distributing energy for the next 50 years;
* The risk a new nuclear programme would undermine efforts to improve energy efficiency;
* The threat of terrorist attacks and radiation exposure if other countries with lower safety standards also opt for nuclear.
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 08:58 AM CST [
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Kurt Vonnegut's "Stardust Memory"
...“Well,” says Vonnegut, “I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president.”
The students seem to agree.
“The only difference between Bush and Hitler,” Vonnegut adds, “is that Hitler was elected.”
“You all know, of course, that the election was stolen. Right here.”
Off to a flying start, Vonnegut explains that this will be his “last speech for money.” He can’t remember the first one, but it was on a campus long, long ago, and this will be the end.
The students are hushed with the prospect of the final appearance of America’s greatest living novelist. Alongside Mark Twain and Ben Franklin, Will Rogers and Joseph Heller and a very short list of immortal satirists and storytellers, there stands Kurt Vonnegut, author of SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE and SIRENS OF TITAN, CAT’S CRADLE and GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER, books these students are studying now, as did their parents, as will their children and grandchildren, with a deeply felt mixture of gratitude and awe.
Nobody tonight seems to think they were in for a detached, scholarly presentation from a disengaged academic genius coasting on his incomparable laurels
“I’m lucky enough to have known a great president, one who really cared about ALL the people, rich and poor. That was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was rich himself, and his class considered him a traitor.
“We have people in this country who are richer than whole countries,” he says. “They run everything.
“We have no Democratic Party. It’s financed by the same millionaires and billionaires as the Republicans.
“So we have no representatives in Washington. Working people have no leverage whatsoever.
“I’m trying to write a novel about the end of the world. But the world is really ending! It’s becoming more and more uninhabitable because of our addiction to oil.
“Bush used that line recently,” Vonnegut adds. “I should sue him for plagiarism.”
Things have gotten so bad, he says, “people are in revolt again life itself.”
commondreams.org
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 08:51 AM CST [
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The Value of George Orwell
George Orwell remains a valuable writer, though he died in 1950. He was a man who was an active participant in his times, and since the new century appears to be going down the same road as the last one, we can still learn from him.
His essay "Politics and the English Language" ought to be read by every journalist and by everyone who reads journalists or listens to the babble on television.
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity," he wrote. "When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."
"In our age, there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia," Orwell wrote. Earlier in the essay he had said, "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."
Our time and his time remain the same. We invade a sovereign nation based on lies, destroy its infrastructure, depose its government and kill 30,000 of its people, and we call that "spreading democracy" or "defending freedom."
The phrase "war on terror" is a phony metaphor. We are not at war. Ninety-nine and 99/100ths percent of the American people are living the same way they've always lived. We have troops in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting an insurrection that our invasions of those countries caused. They are at war – a war of their own country's making – but the rest of us are not. Waving a flag or putting a bumper sticker on one's car cannot be called a war effort.
The "war" is being relegated to the inside pages, and it's a safe bet that no matter what happens in Baghdad, the Academy Awards will receive more coverage and notice than the war. In our nutty society, the choice of a comedian to emcee a Hollywood trade show is considered big, national news.
antiwar.com
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 08:46 AM CST [
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A Second Look at "Crash"
Last night at the Academy Awards "Crash" took home the Oscar for best picture. The film starring Matt Dillon and Terrence Howard (Hustle and Flow) has been acredited with deconstructing the race issue in America by exposing the human frailties of its multi-racial cast of characters.
Indeed at first glance this collision course of incredible coincidence seems to push the limits by painting a provocative and ground breaking picture of race relations in the city of Los Angeles. However when everything is said and done, "Crash" is nearly as safe a flick as "Gone With The Wind."
Just as it has been done for years in Hollywood, the roll of the black male in this movie is quickly reduced to that of weakness and ignorance. At every turn, the black man is portrayed as either powerless or out of control (Howard) while the white man gets away with murder, and more specifically in Dillon's case, saves the day (that is, saves the life of a black women he initially harasses both racially and sexually).
Furthermore Dillon's cop character is classic American myth!
Although it is established early on that he is deeply flawed, it is ultimately suggested that his sins are to be forgiven due to his heroics. Because Dillon's character is never held accountable for his repugnance and moreover in the end romanticized, "Crash" does more to uphold the subconscious structures of white supremacy than destroy them.
If you have seen "Crash" and disagree with this synopsis I challenge you to watch it again and re-analyze what is so different about this movie in regards to race? It may not be as traditional an approach as the "Legend of Bagger Vance," but it does not do much to actually test the underlying themes of racism in hollywood nor America.
In the end, acceptance and accolades for such a cinematic statement could be very harmful if left unchecked.
Think about it.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 08:37 AM CST [
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Defiling the Grave of an American Hero: The Censoring of Rachel Corrie
After all the outcry concerning the intolerance of the Islamic world in their impassioned response to the degrading cartoon depictions of the prophet Mohammed, where is the outrage in response to the silencing of Rachel Corrie by the New York Theater Workshop?
Is there a double standard in western values of free speech? You bet there is. The hypocrisy runs so deep that the vast majority of Americans does not know who Rachel Corrie is and, thanks to the self-imposed gag rule of cultural and media institutions, they never will.
In a year when Hollywood embraced such groundbreaking movies as Goodnight & Good Luck, Syriana, Trans America, Brokeback Mountain and Crash, a New York theater company cancelled a production of the play My Name is Rachel Corrie on the grounds that the public outcry would be unbearable.
The rationale is a lie on its face. As anyone in theater knows, controversy is manna from heaven. It was not public outcry that silenced the voice of a martyr; it was the censorship imposed by Israeli loyalists. It was the promise that generous public funding and contributions would suddenly come up short. It was intolerance for any view, any story, that does not portray Israel as the righteous party in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Who was Rachel Corrie?
She was an all-American girl who was impassioned by the cause of the Palestinian people. In an act of civil disobedience, like the anonymous hero of Tiananmen Square, she stood before an Israeli bulldozer preparing to demolish a Palestinian neighborhood. She stood against injustice and oppression. She stood courageously for the values that all Americans cherish and she was crushed by the heavy and heartless hand of Israeli indifference.
She stood in the way of the “Road Map” to peace. She stood in the way of Ariel Sharon’s new deal for the Palestinians: let them eat dirt and suffer as we assassinate their leaders with American-made precision bombs and reduce their homes to rubble.
Rachel Corrie had the audacity to care and, beyond caring, to act on her convictions. Without regard to any judgments you may impose on the validity of her cause or means, Rachel Corrie was the essence of courage and heroism. She was what every mother’s child should endeavor to be. She chose the ground upon which she would make her stand and paid for it with her life.
dissidentvoice.orgShe was crushed by an Israeli army-manned Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza.
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 08:34 AM CST [
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Accusations of anti-semitic chic are poisonous intellectual thuggery
Attempts to brand the left as anti-Jewish because of its support of Palestinian rights only make it harder to tackle genuine racism.
Variants of this theme have become common since the breakdown of the Middle East peace process, and especially since 9/11. The left is said to be in the grip of what the rightwing American columnist George Will has called an "anti-semitic chic". Instead of declaring its hatred of Jews openly, this new antisemitism is expressed indirectly through criticism of Israel or even opposition to Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. A particularly meretricious version suggests that opposition to American foreign policy, or even criticism of neoconservatives, is really a coded form of anti-semitism.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 08:28 AM CST [
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Israel army kills 5 Palestinians in West Bank raid
NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli troops killed five Palestinians on Thursday during the biggest raid against West Bank militants for months, stoking tension as Hamas Islamists held talks to form a new Palestinian government.
"This is a war crime aimed at continuing the escalation and undermining Hamas efforts to form a government," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri. "We are committed to resistance and the occupation will pay the price for these crimes."
reuters.com/newsIsrael and Hamas united on ditching road map Kadima and Hamas, the ruling parties of Israel and Palestine, united at the weekend in burying the international road map, the blueprint for peace that was previously endorsed by the governments of Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat.
Since Hamas won the Palestinian election and refused to recognise the Jewish state, renounce violence or accept previous agreements, Ehud Olmert, Israel's acting Prime Minister, is no longer even paying lip service to the road map presented by the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia.
Instead, Kadima is drafting a four-year plan to evacuate at least 17 outlying West Bank settlements. If, as the polls suggest, it wins the general election on 28 March, it will unilaterally draw a new border that will keep major settlement blocks under Israeli rule.
In Moscow on Saturday, Khaled Meshal, the exiled head of Hamas's political bureau, rejected a Russian request to accept international terms for a dialogue. Although Hamas is floating the possibility of an extended ceasefire, its long-term objective remains an Islamic state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. "We believe that Israel has no right to exist," said Mr Meshal, the target of a failed Israeli assassination attempt in Amman in 1997.
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 08:21 AM CST [
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Fighting in Pakistan Leaves 100 Dead
MIR ALI, Pakistan (AP) - Authorities imposed a curfew in this tribal region's main town Monday as thousands of people fled a third day of clashes between Pakistani security forces and al-Qaida and Taliban supporters. An official said at least 100 militants may have been killed.
Clerics tried to mediate a cease-fire to the fighting, most of which has been in Miran Shah. Security forces conducted mop-up operations Monday after artillery and helicopter gunships targeted militant strongholds in the town.
More than 100 militants might have died, based on intelligence reports and questioning of injured and arrested fighters, army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said. Security forces had yet to regain control of all compounds in Miran Shah, so he could not give an exact toll. Journalists were barred from the town.
The fighting in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions along the Afghan border is the bloodiest in more than two years and marks an escalation in President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's campaign to crack down on al-Qaida and Taliban militants and their local sympathizers.
It also underscored Islamabad's failure to establish governmental control in the rugged region - a possible hiding place of Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri - where fiercely independent Pashtun tribesmen have resisted outside authority and influence for centuries.
guardian.co.ukBloody, fierce, lawless, tribal...ooga booga boo.
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 08:15 AM CST [
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ElBaradei hopeful over Iran solution
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency today said he was optimistic that the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme could be resolved without the intervention of the UN security council.
Speaking as the 35-nation IAEA board prepared to meet, Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters he was hopeful that an agreement could be reached with Iran "in the next week".
The meeting of the UN's nuclear watchdog will forward a report on Tehran's nuclear activities to the security council, which will then have to decide whether to impose sanctions.
EU-led diplomacy has been geared towards persuading Iran to stop making nuclear fuel, but calls for a tougher response have intensified since the country resumed some enrichment work.
Mr ElBaradei did not elaborate on the reasons for his optimism that the crisis could be resolved.
However, diplomats told the Associated Press that Iran's recent talks with Russia and the EU trio of negotiators, France, Britain and Germany, had touched on the possibility of allowing Tehran to run a scaled-down uranium enrichment programme.
guardian.co.ukBolton warns Iran of ‘painful consequences’ WASHINGTON - Iran faces “tangible and painful consequences” if it continues its nuclear activities and the United States will use “all tools at our disposal” to stop this threat, a senior U.S. official said Sunday, ahead of a crucial international meeting on Iran.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, speaking at a convention of Jewish-Americans, said it is too soon for the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran but other countries are talking about doing so and Washington is “beefing up defensive measures to cope with the Iranian nuclear threat.”
Monday’s meeting of the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency governing board is expected to take stock of Iran’s continued defiance of U.S. and European demands to end sensitive weapons-related uranium enrichment activity and then hand the case over to the security council.
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 08:10 AM CST [
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The USS Ronald Reagan deployed in the Persian Gulf
ABU DHABI — The U.S. Navy has deployed its latest aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.
The U.S. Fifth Fleet said the USS Ronald Reagan has been deployed for maritime security operations in the Gulf region. The nuclear-powered surface vessel headed a carrier group that contains a guided missile cruiser, two destroyers and support ships.
The Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was assigned to patrol the Fifth Fleet area of operations, which includes the Arabian Gulf, Red Sea, Gulf of Oman and parts of the Indian Ocean, Middle East Newsline reported. "Our past nine months of training have been in preparation to support our troops on the ground in Iraq and carry out maritime security operations," Carrier Strike Group Seven Commander Rear Adm. Michael Miller said.
Officials said the arrival of the Reagan Carrier Strike Group, which contains more than 6,000 sailors, was part of a routine rotation of U.S. ships in the Gulf. The strike group consists of the USS Reagan; USS Lake Champlain missile cruiser, USS McCampbell and USS Decatur destroyers; USS Rainer fast combat support ship; and Explosives Ordnance Disposal Unit 11 Det 15.
worldtribune.com
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 08:06 AM CST [
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Developments in Iraq, March 6
* MAHMUDIYA - Three people were killed, including two Iraqi soldiers, and five wounded when two car bombs, about 10 minutes apart, one driven by a suicide bomber, detonated in the town of Mahmudiya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.
One civilian was killed and five people were wounded, including two policemen, when a car bomb went off in Mahmudiya earlier in the day, police said.
* BAGHDAD - Mubdir al-Dulaimi, a senior Iraqi Army official, was assassinated while travelling in his convoy in the western Ghazaliya district of the capital, police said.
BAGHDAD - Three policemen were killed and one was wounded when a car bomb went off near their patrol in central Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Three civilians were wounded when a car bomb went off in central Baghdad, police said. The target was not known.
BAGHDAD - Ali Hussein al-Khafaji, the dean of the college of engineering, was abducted by gunmen while going to work in Baghdad, police said.
BAQUBA - A car bomb exploded in a busy market in Baquba northeast of Baghdad on Monday, killing six people, including two girls under four, and wounding 23, police said, adding most of the casualties were children.
BAGHDAD - One civilian was killed and 10 were wounded when a car bomb went off in northern Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - One civilian was wounded when four mortar rounds landed in Sadr city in eastern Baghdad, police said.
ANBAR PROVINCE - A U.S. soldier was killed by "enemy action" on Sunday in western Anbar province, a Sunni insurgent stronghold, the U.S. military said.
BAGHDAD - Two civilians and two policemen were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a bank in Baghdad's Doura district, police said.
BAGHDAD - Two policemen and four civilians were wounded when a car bomb exploded as their patrol passed by in northern Baghdad, police said.
BAQUBA - Three civilians were killed by gunmen in separate attacks in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
alertnet.orgExpert on Iraq: 'We're In a Civil War' "We're in a civil war now; it's just that not everybody's joined in," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a former military commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "The failure to understand that the civil war is already taking place, just not necessarily at the maximum level, means that our counter measures are inadequate and therefore dangerous to our long-term interest.
"It's our failure to understand reality that has caused us to be late throughout this experience of the last three years in Iraq," added Nash, who is an ABC News consultant.
Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News, "If you talk to U.S. intelligence officers and military people privately, they'd say we've been involved in low level civil war with very slowly increasing intensity since the transfer of power in June 2004."
What a stupid semantics game. When 'we' finally decide that this is indeed a civil war, what then? What's different for people on the ground?Hundreds of Iraqi academics and professionals assassinated by death squads Hundreds of Iraqi academics and professionals have been assassinated since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to a petition to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Summary Executions from the European peace group BRussells [sic] Tribunal on Iraq.
The petition has been signed by Nobel Prize winners Harold Pinter, J. M. Coetzee, José Saramago, and Dario Fo, as well as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Cornel West, and Tony Benn. A Green party member of the European Parliament from Britain, Caroline Lucas, has called for support for the investigation.
The exact figure of deaths is unknown; estimates range from about 300 to more than 1,000. According to Iraqi novelist Haifa Zangana, writing in the Guardian last month, Baghdad universities alone have lost 80 members of their staffs. These figures do not include those who have survived assassination attempts.
'14,000 detained without trial in Iraq' US and UK forces in Iraq have detained thousands of people without charge or trial for long periods and there is growing evidence of Iraqi security forces torturing detainees, Amnesty International said today.
In a new report published today, the human rights group criticised the US-led multinational force for interning some 14,000 people.
Around 3,800 people have been held for over a year, while another 200 have been detained for more than two years, the report - Beyond Abu Ghraib: detention and torture in Iraq - said.
"It is a dangerous precedent for the world that the US and UK think it completely defensible to hold thousands of people without charge or trial," Amnesty spokesman Neil Durkin said.
The detainee situation in Iraq was comparable to Guantánamo Bay, he added, but on a much larger scale, and the detentions appeared to be "arbitrary and indefinite".
rootsie on 03.07.06 @ 08:02 AM CST [
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Sunday, March 5th
Adventurous travellers check into Rio slum for £8 a night
Breathtaking views high above Rio de Janeiro's beaches and mountains can be yours for just a few dollars a day - if you skip the pricey hotel favoured by the Rolling Stones and sleep in a slum.
Rio's favelas are infamous for drug and gang violence. But a new hostel called Pousada Favelinha ("the little slum inn"), is attracting adventurous tourists, mainly from Germany, France and the US.
You can only get to the Pousada Favelinha, in the jungle-covered hillside slum of Pereira da Silva, on foot. Most of its 1,900 residents live in unpainted brick hovels they built themselves, but the hostel owners say staying in the slum is safe. It has gained a reputation as one of Rio's calmest favelas since police killed a neighbourhood drug lord in a shoot-out seven years ago. A police squad also trains there, so criminal gangs avoid it.
Even though the tiny inn has no telephone and only accepts reservations by email, its five rooms were booked solid during Rio's famous carnival. Each room in the white, three-storey inn has expansive terraces overlooking Rio's bay.
independent.co.ukThe newest thrill in 'adventure travel': forget the wild; instead, visit exotic and dangerous locales where people actually LIVE. How about spending a few days with an Iraqi policeman? Make sure you have the unique and unforgettable experience of standing in line.
rootsie on 03.05.06 @ 10:03 AM CST [
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Condoleezza displeaza Spike
Firebrand director Spike Lee has found an unlikely new target for his latest spray: the secretary of state.
Says Lee: "I dislike Condoleezza Rice more than [President] Bush. The thing about it is that she's gotten a free ride from black people."
Oh no, he didn't.
"People say, 'She's so successful' and 'Look at her position as a black woman.' She is a black woman who grew up in Birmingham, Ala., and said that she never experienced a day of racism in her life," Lee tells the April issue of Stuff magazine.
"Condi, stop smoking that crack!"
"I know you love your Ferragamo shoes, but come on. While people were drowning in New Orleans, she was going up and down Madison Ave. buying Ferragamo shoes. Then she went to see 'Spamalot.'"
You heard the man, Madame Secretary. Put down the crack pipe.
nydailynews.com
rootsie on 03.05.06 @ 09:56 AM CST [
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Venezuela aims for biggest military reserve in Americas
Around 500,000 Venezuelans will start a four-month military training programme today to turn them into members of the country's territorial guard. They are the first group of a total of 2m Venezuelan civilians who have so far signed up to become armed reservists.
By the summer of 2007, Venezuela is likely to have the largest military reserve in the Americas, which is expected to be almost double the size of that in the United States.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.05.06 @ 09:52 AM CST [
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U.S. Cites Exception in Torture Ban
Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison.
In federal court yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to challenge treatment that the detainee's lawyers described as "systematic torture."
Government lawyers have argued that another portion of that same law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, removes general access to U.S. courts for all Guantanamo Bay captives. Therefore, they said, Mohammed Bawazir, a Yemeni national held since May 2002, cannot claim protection under the anti-torture provisions.
Bawazir's attorneys contend that "extremely painful" new tactics used by the government to force-feed him and end his hunger strike amount to torture.
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said in a hearing yesterday that she found allegations of aggressive U.S. military tactics used to break the detainee hunger strike "extremely disturbing" and possibly against U.S. and international law. But Justice Department lawyers argued that even if the tactics were considered in violation of McCain's language, detainees at Guantanamo would have no recourse to challenge them in court.
washingtonpost.comPro-Israel Lobbying Group Roiled by Prosecution of Two Ex-Officials WASHINGTON, March 4 — The annual gathering of the nation's top pro-Israel lobbying group, which starts here on Sunday, will be addressed by Vice President Dick Cheney and United Nations Ambassador John R. Bolton. Politicians are lined up to warn of the threat from Iran and Hamas. Workshops will offer advice on winning the legislative game on Capitol Hill.
But the official program omits a topic likely to be a major theme of corridor chatter: the explosive Justice Department prosecution of two former officials of the group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, that is ticking toward an April trial date.
The highly unusual indictment of the former officials, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, accuses them of receiving classified information about terrorism and Middle East strategy from a Defense Department analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, and passing it on to a journalist and an Israeli diplomat. Mr. Franklin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12½ years in prison, though his sentence could be reduced based on his cooperation in the case.
The prosecution has roiled the powerful organization, known as Aipac, which at first vigorously defended Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman and then fired them last March. And it has generated considerable anger among American Jews who question why the group's representatives were singled out in the first place.
Aipac would appear to be an unlikely target for the Bush administration; it is a political powerhouse that generally shares the administration's hawkish views on the potential nuclear threat from Iran and the danger of Palestinian militancy.
It doesn't simply 'share' the views, but in large part generates them.Bush Plan Would Raise Deficit by $1.2 Trillion, Budget Office Says WASHINGTON, March 3 — President Bush's budget would increase the federal deficit by $35 billion this year and by more than $1.2 trillion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office reported on Friday.
The nonpartisan budget office said that Mr. Bush's tax-cutting proposals would cost about $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years and that his proposals to partly privatize Social Security would cost about $312 billion during that period.
The office also said Mr. Bush's proposals to save money on Medicare, Medicaid and most nonmilitary programs would offset about one-third of the cost of his other proposals.
rootsie on 03.05.06 @ 09:49 AM CST [
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Task Force Urges Bush To Be Tougher With Russia
The Bush administration should stop pretending Russia is a genuine strategic partner and adopt a new policy of "selective cooperation" and "selective opposition" to the authoritarian government of President Vladimir Putin, a bipartisan task force has concluded.
In a grim assessment of the recent "downward trajectory" under Putin, the Council on Foreign Relations reports that in Russia democracy is in retreat, corruption on the rise and the Kremlin an increasing obstacle to U.S. interests. The goodwill that developed between President Bush and Putin, particularly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has eroded.
"U.S.-Russian relations are clearly headed in the wrong direction," the task force wrote. "Contention is crowding out consensus. The very idea of 'strategic partnership' no longer seems realistic."
washingtonpost.comLeader of Pro-Kremlin Militia Is New Chechen Premier MOSCOW, March 4 -- The leader of a pro-Kremlin militia accused of major human rights violations was confirmed Saturday as the new prime minister of Chechnya, the strife-torn southern Russian republic that has been the scene of two brutal wars in the past 11 years.
Ramzan Kadyrov, 29, the son of an assassinated Chechen president, was unanimously approved by the republic's People's Assembly to replace Sergei Abramov, who was injured in a car accident in Moscow in November and resigned this week. The Chechen president, Alu Alkhanov, immediately signed a decree ratifying the appointment.
As first deputy prime minister, Kadyrov was regarded as the real power in Chechnya. He controlled local security services, disbursement of federal funds that support the republic, and its political institutions, including the newly elected parliament. He is expected to ascend to Chechnya's presidency shortly after he turns 30, the minimum age for the office, in October.
rootsie on 03.05.06 @ 09:40 AM CST [
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Prof. Ilan Pappe, (Haifa Univ.) on the Israel-Palestine conflict
...Q: The supporters of Israel, left supporters of Israel, basically say that the two-state solution is the only real possibility for Israel, and thatâ??s why they push its support in the US. What is your answer to that?
I can see a support for a two-state solution emerging, immediately after the Six-Day war, when Israel did not yet annex the East Jerusalem, did not yet build one Jewish settlement in it. There was a lot of logic of saying that despite, despite the fact that it is only 20% of Palestine could be a basis for a Palestinian state, next to Israel, and that these two states, in the future, would develop in such a way that they might turn it into one state, and even find a way of solving the refugees problem. But this is all water under the bridge.
In 2005, with the number of Jewish settlements, with the Greater Jerusalem becoming one third of the West Bank, and the local, and global, and regional balances of power, I think a two-state solution can only become an indirect way for continuing the Occupation. And as I said before, if we understand that the diplomatic effort has deepened the Occupation, has not brought an end to it, so in the case of the two-state solution we have to liberate ourselves from that paradigm. It can only help the Occupation and the Zionist colonization, and only the beginning of ideas of one-state solution can create a different future there.
informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 03.05.06 @ 09:30 AM CST [
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Iran's Khatami Says Islam Is the Enemy West Needs
TEHRAN, March 4 -- Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, whose foreign policy was defined by a quest for what he called a "dialogue between civilizations," warned Saturday that tensions between the Islamic world and the West are taking the shape of a new Cold War.
Khatami, speaking at a government conference promoting interfaith dialogue, said the West was largely responsible. Islam was being cast as the "enemy of humanity" by governments reverting to the polarized worldview that divided the planet for 50 years after World War II, he said.
The West "needs an enemy, and this time it is Islam," Khatami said. "And Islamophobia becomes a part of all policies of the great powers, of hegemonic powers.
"We are not very far from the era of the Cold War that inflicted a lot of damage on the world."
washingtonpost.comNew US focus on promoting democracy in Iran The US State Department has created an office dedicated to Iran to reflect the Bush administration's new focus on promoting democracy in the Islamic republic, officials said on Thursday.
Establishment of the Office of Iran Affairs follows the request to Congress made by Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, last month for an additional $75m this year to spend on influencing democratic change in Iran. The proposed spending has already triggered an internal struggle over who will control the $50m designated for a new Farsi-language television station.
rootsie on 03.05.06 @ 09:21 AM CST [
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4 intelligence agents killed in bomb blast in S. Afghanistan
KABUL, March 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Four intelligence agents were killed Saturday in a bomb explosion in Afghan southern province of Helmand, a local official said.
"This morning at about 11:00 a.m. (6:30 a.m. GMT) when the intelligence department director of Nawah district traveled in Nadali district with three of his colleagues, their car was blown up by a remote-controlled bomb. All the four persons were killed," Assadullah Shierzad, the provincial intelligence department chief told Xinhua.
"So far no one has been arrested for the accident, and the investigation is still going on," he added.
Helmand, together with Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul, the former stronghold of Taliban, has become the hotspot of the firefight since the beginning of this year.
Eight Taliban militants were killed, 10 of them were arrested, and four Afghan police were injured in a firefight Friday in Helmand.
After the loss, Taliban carried out several attacks to the official in one of which the district chief of Sangin in Helmand was killed by two militants Friday.
xinhuanet.com
rootsie on 03.05.06 @ 09:13 AM CST [
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Dozens die in Iraq sectarian attack
SUSPECTED Sunni militants stormed a small town near Baghdad and executed at least 25 people, including a six-year-old girl, with a single bullet each to the forehead, police said yesterday as a curfew was re-instated in the Iraqi capital.
Most of the victims were poor Shiite labourers at a brick factory in the town of Nahrawan. At least nine others were killed during a gun battle that erupted around Nahrawan power station, which also came under mortar fire.
scotsman.com
rootsie on 03.05.06 @ 09:08 AM CST [
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Dozens die in Iraq sectarian attack
SUSPECTED Sunni militants stormed a small town near Baghdad and executed at least 25 people, including a six-year-old girl, with a single bullet each to the forehead, police said yesterday as a curfew was re-instated in the Iraqi capital.
Most of the victims were poor Shiite labourers at a brick factory in the town of Nahrawan. At least nine others were killed during a gun battle that erupted around Nahrawan power station, which also came under mortar fire.
scotsman.com
rootsie on 03.05.06 @ 09:07 AM CST [
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Saturday, March 4th
Behind the Numbers: Untold Suffering in the Congo
by Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski
The British medical journal Lancet recently took greater notice of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) than all western media outlets combined. A group of physicians reported that about 4 million people have died since the “official” outbreak of the Congolese war in 1998 (1). The BBC reported the war in Congo has claimed more lives than any armed conflict since World War II (2). However, experts working in the Congo, and Congolese survivors, count over 10 million dead since war began in 1996—not 1998—with the U.S.-backed invasion to overthrow Zaire’s President Joseph Mobutu. While the western press quantifies African deaths all the time, no statistic can quantify the suffering of the Congolese.
Some people are aware that war in the Congo is driven by the desire to extract raw materials, including diamonds, gold, columbium tantalite (coltan), niobium, cobalt, copper, uranium and petroleum. Mining in the Congo by western companies proceeds at an unprecedented rate, and
it is reported that some $6 million in raw cobalt alone—an element of superalloys essential for nuclear, chemical, aerospace and defense industries—exits DRC daily. Any analysis of the geopolitics in the Congo requires an understanding of the organized crime perpetrated through multi-national businesses, in order to understand the reasons why the Congolese people have suffered a virtually unending war since 1996.
Some people have lauded great progress in the exposure of illegal mining in DRC, particularly by the group Human Rights Watch (HRW), whose 2005 report “The Curse of Gold” exposed Ugandan officials and multi-national corporations smuggling gold through local rebel militias. The cited rebel groups were the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) and the People’s Armed Forces of Congo (FAPC). The western companies targeted by HRW were Anglo-Ashanti Gold, a company headquartered in South Africa, and Metalor, a Swedish firm. The HRW report failed to mention that Anglo-Ashanti is partnered with Anglo-American, owned by the Oppenheimer family and partnered with Canada-based Barrick Gold described below (3). London-based Anglo-American Plc. owns a 45% share in DeBeers, another Oppenheimer company that is infamous for its near monopoly of the international diamond industry (4). Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, a director of Anglo-American, is a director of Royal Dutch/Shell and a member of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Advisory Board (5). The report also suppressed the most damning evidence discovered by HRW researchers—that Anglo-Ashanti sent its top lawyers into eastern DRC to aid rebel militia leaders arrested there.
Several multi-national mining companies have rarely if ever been mentioned in any human rights report. One is Barrick Gold, who operates in the town of Watsa, northwest of the town of Bunia, located in the most violent corner of the Congo. The Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF) controlled the mines intermittently during the war. Officials in Bunia claim that Barrick executives flew into the region, with UPDF and RPF (Rwanda Patriotic Front) escorts, to survey and inspect their mining interests (6).
George H.W. Bush served as a paid advisor for Barrick Gold. Barrick directors include: Brian Mulroney, former PM of Canada; Edward Neys, former U.S. ambassador to Canada and chairman of the private PR firm Burston-Marsteller; former U.S. Senator Howard Baker; J. Trevor Eyton, a member of the Canadian Senate; and Vernon Jordan, one of Bill Clinton’s lawyers (7).
Barrick Gold is one of the client companies of Andrew Young’s Goodworks International lobbying firm. Andrew Young is the former Mayor of Atlanta, and a key organizer of the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council. Young was chosen by President Clinton to chair the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund in October 1994. Goodworks’ clients—or business partners in some cases—include Coke, Chevron-Texaco, Monsanto, and the governments of Angola and Nigeria (note weapons transfers from Nigeria cited below). Young is a director of Cox Communications and Archers Daniels Midland—the “supermarket to the world” and National Public Radio sponsor whose directors include Brian Mulroney (Barrick) and G. Allen Andreas, a member of the European Advisory Board of The Carlyle Group.
zmag.orgKeep reading, it gets worse...and then worse.
rootsie on 03.04.06 @ 09:48 AM CST [
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WHOSE HEART OF DARKNESS?
Nigeria's civil war: Into the heart of darkness
In the
lawless Niger Delta, armed militants have waged a
brutal war against the oil companies who exploit the region's lucrative resources.
Christian Allen Purefoy reports from Warri
03 March 2006 The Independent (UK)
Deep in the
gloom of the Niger Delta swamp, a motorboat carrying eight men in balaclavas, camouflaged flak jackets, and brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles, sweeps past. Passing abandoned oil installations in the
shadows of the mangroves, they chant: "We dey suffer, suffer, suffer, everyday. We are the Niger Delta security men."
They are patrolling an oily creeks in defiance of the Nigerian government that is nowhere to be seen.After a show of strength, exploding two grenades in the river, the men return to their patrol. Far from the crooked corridors of power the explosions seem lost in the
dense, swamp forest.These are the armed militants who have committed a wave of kidnappings of oil workers and attacks over the past decade, costing 445,000 barrels of oil, a fifth of Nigeria's oil exports, in their fight for a greater share of oil wealth for the impoverished local population. Their pronouncements have shaken the world's oil markets and driven multinationals such as Shell to consider their future in Africa's most populous country.
Militias have blown up pipelines and attacked two of Shell's platforms in recent months. Despite the delta's huge energy reserves, millions of people live in extreme poverty. The militants of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) are still holding two Americans and a Briton who were among a group of foreigners abducted two weeks ago from a barge where they were laying a pipeline for Royal Dutch Shell. In a surprise move on Wednesday, Mend released six hostages, including and and and American, Macon Hawkins, to our party, a welcome gift to Mr Hawkins on his 69th birthday.
As we pull out of Warri port, another militia boat roars past the bow of a passing cargo ship Sardonic Pride, displaying the ease with which they can act. The Nigerian Navy has proved itself ill-equipped and unable to defend oil facilities and ships such as the Sardonic Pride against attacks in territories well known by the militias.
Villages scattered along the river's edge, are swallowed by the third-largest wetland in the world, covering an area the size of Ireland. In the heat and damp of the delta, where the oil flares burn night and day, casting a choking yellow light over the swamp forest, great wealth and poverty lie cheek by jowl.
There are 27 million people living in this black-gold region, 70 per cent of them in poverty. They survive in mud-huts and eke out a living, travelling in the swamps on dug-out canoes to reach the outside world.
In one village, a woman, her feet black and slick with oil, drank, then washed her five-year-old son in contaminated water from a hole dug four feet in the ground. At the local school, four makeshift desks are the only sign of "government development". Mrs Makosi Orjonko says; "When we drink, it gives us pain. It worries us; it's no good. We just manage. We want better water."
But the government's presence is not forgotten; two bomb craters and bullet holes in roofs of their homes, are testimony to the efforts the state use to keep the oil flowing. One enraged villager, Mr Farele, pointing at bullet holes in one of the village's buildings, shouted:"The military helicopter came and shot. We want hospitals and schools."
The horizon is lit by the unnatural orange glow, the flames from massive chimneys flare off the natural gas brought up as a by-product of the region's oil. Beneath the rivers and mud, Nigeria has 35 billion barrels of oil. One-fifth of US oil imports come from the region and and 10 per cent of the UK's natural gas coming is expected to be sourced there within a few years.
But these exports are under increasing threat by resentment felt by the people of the delta against, what they see as the theft of the natural resources. The people say the oil industry has caused environmental devastation, polluting their land and fishing grounds.
Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni campaigner, was the first to launch a movement for social and ecological justice in the Niger Delta in the 1980s. He was executed amid international condemnation in 1995. His public killing drew the world's attention to the role of the oil industry in Nigeria, and forced Western oil companies to adapt their practices, making loud noises about sharing some of the profits with local communities and safeguarding the environment.
Today, the cycle of injustice, poverty and violence continues.
As the sun began to sink behind the dark canopy, three boats of heavily armed men gathered in a creek, circling warily before approaching. In one boat was Mr Hawkins, holding a small plastic bag with his medicine and toothbrush.
One of the spokesmen for the group, armed with a machine-gun, said: "Our interest lies in how to bring the attention of everyone to the issue of the Niger Delta. Let the UN come and intervene, let them set up commissions of inquiry and look into the matter of the Niger Delta, and find out a final solution to the issues."
Five other captives, two Egyptians, two Thais and a Filipino, were also freed. Mr Hawkins stuck both thumbs in the air and grinned. "Oh God," he said. "It was an experience I don't want to do again, but I just had to make the best of it; tried to keep my cool."
The men in the boats waved their weapons and broke into a song; another man shouted angrily about the government. Unlike many of the regions other militias, these 50 men had an eerie, trained order to their actions, handling their weaponry expertly.
In a statement issued yesterday, they warned of more attacks on oil workers in another area of the Niger Delta. Their objective is "totally destroying the ability of the Nigerian government to export crude oil it has stolen from the Niger Delta over the past 50 years."
The identities of the militia are unknown; as with many armed groups in Nigeria, "big men" are often at work behind the scenes. Nigeria is holding national elections next year, and in one of the most corrupt countries in the world, the country's vast oil wealth is at stake. With rumours of President Olusegun Obasanjo attempting to run for a third term, tension and attacks are likely to increase as the elections draw nearer.
John Negroponte, the US director of Intelligence has said: "Speculation that President Obasanjo will try to change the constitution so he can seek a third term is raising political tension and if proven true, threatens to unleash major turmoil and conflict. Such chaos in Nigeria could lead to disruption of oil supply, secessionist moves by regional governments, major flows and instability elsewhere in Africa."
Militias such as Mend are often used to further the political influence of others, despite the ostensible demands for a greater share of the oil wealth to improve their lives.
The Ijaw leader, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, who is calling for independence for the oil-rich region, has been jailed on treason charges. Mend insists it is a separate organisation from Mr Asari's Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force but is campaigning for his release.
The militia leader who had invited the world's media into the swamps to advocate all oil proceeds being kept by the region also threatened oil facilities and "all-out war" on the Nigerian government. His warnings pushed pushed oil prices above the psychological $50 per barrel level. And Mr Asari's calls for the "dismemberment of Nigeria led to the secret police putting him in jail.
There are also the gangs who commit the lucrative siphoning of oil from pipelines, which is sold on the black market and believed to fund the purchase of weapons.
After the fighters of Mend handed over the hostages, they fired a farewell volley into the air for Mr Hawkins, circled, then, opening up the two huge outboard engines on each boat, quickly disappeared into the swamp.
Mr Hawkins, with a heavy Texas drawl, said they had been treated well, eating a lot of canned foods to avoid dysentry, sardines, corned beef, and noodles. Living in "kind of a village", the hostages had been free to roam around, and spent most of the day playing cards. But Mr Hawkins, with high blood pressure and diabetes, had been worried about his health, which may have played a large part in his release.
The American celebrated his 69th birthday in captivity with a "warm Sprite", hours before his surprise release, and was looking forward to cleaning up with a hot shower and shampoo, deodorant and a razor. He bore his captors no ill ill. "I have no animosity toward them at all," he said. "I've seen their little villages; they're dirt-poor, poor as field-mice."
But Mr Farele, still angry, pointed towards the faraway comfort of Escravos oil facility. "We want our village to be like there," he said.
independent.co.ukThe Independent is a 'left' newspaper. If the reader gets past the atmosphere of dread conveyed by the spooky Conrad-like prose of the beginning, they might gain some small appreciation for the situation in the Niger Delta. But the 'brutes' are the oil companies and their cronies in the government, which is carrying out massacres in th villages of the Delta. The government is 'nowhere to be seen??' One would wish. But remarks like this simply feed into false perceptions of Africa, broken governments and blah blah blah.
The story of the Texas hostage undercuts the 'brutality' of the hostage-takers, that's for sure.
But who has time to read entire articles these days? This is the second time in two weeks the Independent has pulled out the 'Heart of Darkness' crap; the last was in an article about DR Congo, of course. Whites are stuck in the groove of this blatantly racist discourse, and perhaps the most dangerous purveyors of it are the 'liberals', under the arrogant delusion of their virtue. They don't get that it's them living in the dismal swamp of their assumption.
rootsie on 03.04.06 @ 09:33 AM CST [
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Bobby Sands and Britain's Own Gitmo, 25 Years On
Why should we be surprised at this violation of the Magna Carta when the nation that wrote the document threw it out a quarter century ago?
The name Bobby Sands is emblazoned on the Irish psyche, 25 years after he began his hunger strike on March 1, 1981. He died 66 days later, on May 5. Nine of his comrades followed him to their graves. It is an irony of history that as we arrive at this anniversary, men have been on hunger strike in Guantanamo, being cruelly force-fed and artificially kept alive. No one wants another Bobby Sands.
Some memories fade, others remain. It was not that long ago that I arrived in Kingston, Jamaica. The first person I met was a combi-taxi driver.
'Where you comin' from, brother?'
'Ireland.'
'Ah, Ireland, Bobby Sands, the IRA is fighting for their freedom!'
I've heard many similar stories over these 25 years. Most have one thing in common: they come from people who have themselves been in struggle in places like South Africa, Palestine, Turkey and Latin America. The example of Bobby Sands still means a lot to such people. When Turkish political prisoners went on hunger strike five years ago, their secret codeword for their plans was 'Bobby Sands'.
zmag.org
rootsie on 03.04.06 @ 09:02 AM CST [
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Hacks And Spooks - Close Encounters Of A Strange Kind
...While it might be difficult to identify precisely the impact of the spooks (variously represented in the press as "intelligence", "security", "Whitehall" or "Home Office" sources) on mainstream politics and media, from the limited evidence it looks to be enormous.
As Roy Greenslade, media specialist at the Telegraph (formerly the Guardian), commented: "Most tabloid newspapers - or even newspapers in general - are playthings of MI5." Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of "one of Britain's most distinguished journals" as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll. And in 1991, Richard Norton-Taylor revealed in the Guardian that 500 prominent Britons paid by the CIA and the now defunct Bank of Commerce and Credit International, included 90 journalists.
In their analysis of the contemporary secret state, Dorril and Ramsay gave the media a crucial role. The heart of the secret state they identified as the security services, the cabinet office and upper echelons of the Home and Commonwealth Offices, the armed forces and Ministry of Defence, the nuclear power industry and its satellite ministries together a network of senior civil servants. As "satellites" of the secret state, their list included "agents of influence in the media, ranging from actual agents of the security services, conduits of official leaks, to senior journalists merely lusting after official praise and, perhaps, a knighthood at the end of their career".
medialens.org
rootsie on 03.04.06 @ 08:58 AM CST [
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Cronyism and Corruption: Wolfowitz at the World Bank
In an article on the eclipsing fortunes of the neocons vis-à-vis Bush foreign policy, the Wall Street Journal said: "In the past year, the ranks of the neoconservatives within the administration, who moulded the American response to 9/11, have grown thin and their influence has ebbed." It mentioned the departure from key policy-making positions of some of the administration's most prominent neoconservatives. Some of them left in disgrace, others left their jobs for other Bush appointments. Perhaps the most interesting of these career changes involves that of former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who was promoted for his role in the Iraq war to president of the World Bank.
From day one, all vice-presidents, directors and staff members of the World Bank were apprehensive in view of his reputation as the "high priest of the hawks" or "The Vulcans"; nicknames for Mr Bush's tight-knit group of security advisors, the architect of the Iraq war, and the driving ideological force behind the decision to invade Iraq. They also wondered about his arrogant dismissal of all misgivings about the war. They remembered his rosy forecasts, his predictions that the Iraqis would greet US soldiers as liberators, with open arms, and his casual dismissal of warnings by Eric Shimseki, former US army chief of staff, that the US would need several hundred thousand troops in Iraq (and who was fired for daring to give his expert opinion). They remembered well his assertion that the "oil revenues of Iraq over the course of the next two to three years would bring in 50 to 100 billion US dollars which could more than finance its own reconstruction." But, to be fair, they were all willing to give him the benefit of the doubt despite the deep moral struggle they are each grappling with; working for a man who is morally and politically responsible for a horrendous war that has shed the blood of thousands of innocent victims in Iraq.
Now, it seems that the honeymoon is over. On the cost of the Iraqi war, it is becoming more and more obvious that Wolfowitz's predictions are, at best, a joke approaching the fanciful, and, at worse, outright intentionally misleading. When White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsay forwarded an estimate (September 2002) of the Iraq war at a higher level of $100-$200 billion, the administration dismissed his analysis as "likely very, very high" and promptly fired him (another person who lost his job because he did it conscientiously and professionally). Now it turns out that even his figures were wildly low. According to Joseph Stiglitz, professor at Columbia University and Nobel Prize winner in economics, and Linda Blimes, a Harvard budget expert, the war in Iraq is likely to cost up to $2 trillion. The American Conservative magazine says: "What is certain is that before hiring him to run the World Bank, someone should have recalled Paul Wolfowitz's prediction that Iraq would fund the operation itself." Normal people under normal circumstances would have been fired, but not "Wolfie!"
However, even with this grim history in mind which they fear will impact on their ability to address their global clients' needs and fulfil their mission of addressing world poverty, World Bank staff have even more immediate worries to contend with. What everybody in the Bank perceives most evidently is the increasing rift between Wolfowitz and his inner cabal of advisors and the staff at large. The problem is manifesting itself on several levels.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 03.04.06 @ 08:55 AM CST [
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CAFTA's Corpse Revived
...Ongoing protests represent more than the untidy aftermath of a completed treaty negotiation. The current controversies around CAFTA implementation signal an escalating debate about the shape of corporate globalization in the Americas. CAFTA's provisions mandating the reduction of specific tariffs are clear. But some of the most dramatic implications of the agreement, like privatization, are not as well defined. In coming years they will be contested in national parliaments, in trade courts and on the streets.
"Neoliberal governments in the region are going to try to use CAFTA to privatize things like water and healthcare," says Stansbury. "That's something that people can stop. It's the new battlefield."
commondreams.org
rootsie on 03.04.06 @ 08:50 AM CST [
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Three Killed at Indian Anti-Bush Protests
Anger at President Bush swept through parts of India on Friday as protesters burned his effigy and carried posters of Osama bin Laden. Three people were killed in clashes, and 18 were injured.
While most Indians look favorably upon the United States, and though the protests have not been as large as expected, anti-Bush demonstrations have been held in various Indian cities by communists and Muslim groups during his visit.
Violence erupted in the city of Lucknow when dozens of armed Muslims tried to force Hindu shop owners to shut their stores to protest Bush's visit, said Senior Superintendent of Police Ashutosh Pandey. The two sides argued, exchanged blows, and finally shot at each other, killing a Muslim teenager, Pandey said.
Television stations showed shrieking people carrying the injured on fruit carts through narrow streets choked with protesters.
In the southern city of Hyderabad, demonstrators burned an effigy of Bush around the time that he arrived there.
Chanting "Bush hands off India" and "Bush go home," several hundred communist and Muslim demonstrators marched through the city, and shops in the Muslim-dominated Charminar neighborhood were closed in protest. Some 40 percent of the city's 7 million people are Muslim.
breitbart.comNot as many as expected Commies and Muslims...ok then.Dinner with George and Manmohan Since World War II, the US has consistently asserted and reasserted itself as the security agency of the global corporate interests, who in exchange sustain the deficit-ridden American (war) economy and the dollar hegemony. In such a situation, the American desperation is natural whenever a potential competitor or troublemaker emerges. In order to preclude such threats it has to continuously refurbish its ranks and partnerships. The American exercise to stabilize its tumultuous economy and hegemony in the post-Cold War situation has wonderfully synchronized with the Indian need to sustain itself as an important market (as the South Asian hegemon), while securing a place for its own expansionist corporate interests in the global market. The joint statement is an epitome of this 'corporatist' synchrony.
It was way back in 1998 the American corporate leaders warned its political protégé about the dire consequences of the sanctions that the US hurriedly imposed on India after the Pokhran blasts--that rival economic interests may take advantage of the American withdrawal. This prefaced Clinton's visit, in order to assure India of the ceremonial nature of those sanctions. Since then, the love affair has continually bloomed and boomed. It has been well supported by the US-India CEOs, who made recommendations for broadening bilateral economic relations, which the Joint Statement vows to implement. The statement indicates towards supporting the corporate world in its endeavor to prosper on the misery of the global majority. The official acceptance of the ideology of establishing "corporate fund" for combating diseases, like, for example, HIV/AIDS, only means towing the interests of the pharmaceutical monopolies against universalizing and cheapening medical facilities and drugs. The Indian state's subservience to this notion is indicative of the keenness of the Indian pharmaceutical companies that have become transnational in recent years to sow the benefits from the global police regime under the US which condemns 'piracy', and violation of 'property rights'.
rootsie on 03.04.06 @ 08:46 AM CST [
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Dubai funds Neil Bush's company
02/27/06 "WorldNetDaily" -- -- Investors from the United Arab Emirates helped fund the $23 million Neil Bush raised for Ignite!, the learning systems company that holds lucrative No Child Left Behind Act contracts in Florida and Texas. The "Cow" is an Ignite! portable computer designed to work in a classroom, providing interactive instruction aimed at improving students' scores on standardized tests. If you loved Billy Carter and "Billy Beer," you're certain to love Neil Bush and the "Ignite! Cow."
informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 03.04.06 @ 08:39 AM CST [
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Terrorist growth overtakes U.S. efforts
Thirty new terrorist organizations have emerged since the September 11, 2001, attacks, outpacing U.S. efforts to crush the threat, said Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism.
"We are not killing them faster than they are being created," Gen. Caslen told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson Center yesterday, warning that the war could take decades to resolve.
Gen. Caslen said that two years ago the Department of Defense had not settled on a clear definition of the nature of the war. Moreover, because each government department had its own perspective, "we all had different strategies," he said.
The Defense Department now has defined the nature of the war, he said. The enemy, he said, is "a transnational movement of extremist organizations, networks and individuals that use violence and terrorism as a means to promote their end." It is not a global insurgency, the general said.
washingtontimes.com
rootsie on 03.04.06 @ 08:35 AM CST [
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Bomb blast hits Iranian oil city
A bomb exploded in the southern Iranian city of Ahwaz, hours after two men were hung for an attack last year, according to Iranian reports.
The percussion bomb shattered the windows of a building in the Kianpars area of the city on Thursday evening, but no casualties were reported.
The attack is the latest in a series to hit the restive Khuzestan Province, at the heart of Iran's oil industry.
Eight people died in bomb attacks on a government office and bank a month ago.
Iran has accused British forces stationed just across the Iran-Iraq border of co-operating with ethnic Arab separatist groups who said they were behind the blasts. The UK has denied any involvement.
bbc.co.ukThe Monolith Crumbles: Reality and Revisionism in Iran It is a well-known fact – except among the American media, the American government, and about 98.7 percent of the American people – that Iran is not a monolithic state where sheep-like masses bray with a single voice in chorus with their demented leaders, but is, on the contrary, a complex society where many conflicting opinions on matters political, religious, social, historical, etc., contend with each other in open debate. True, it does have a government dominated by repressive clerics, who exercise the kind of veto power over secular law that George W. Bush's vaunted "base" dreams of seeing established in the United States; but Iran is far more open than, say, Saudi Arabia or China, just to name two countries where the Bush Family and friends have long engorged their bellies through insider connections with the ruling cliques.
Therefore it must have come as a great shock to the system for Americans this week to hear Iran's former president, Mohammad Khatami, rail against the ignorant Holocaust revisionism mouthed by his successor, the hardline flibbertigibbet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Excerpts after the jump below.) Or rather, it would have come as a shock to the American system to hear Khatami's words – if Americans had actually been told about them. But it serves no interests among America's own ruling cliques to dilute the current line of the day: that Iran is a hellhole of unremitting evil, a new Nazi Germany led by a new Hitler. So Khatami's remarks, reported widely elsewhere in the world, were not allowed to disturb the lie-drugged slumber of the American consciousness.
rootsie on 03.04.06 @ 08:30 AM CST [
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Suicide bomber dies in Afghan attack on Canadians
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber detonated a car bomb near a Canadian armored vehicle in southern Afghanistan on Friday, killing himself but causing no casualties to Canadian troops, the Afghan army said.
The blast occurred in Daman district, about 15 km (10 miles) south of the city of Kandahar and about 10 km (six miles) from the airport, where Canadian troops are based.
ca.reuters,com
rootsie on 03.04.06 @ 08:23 AM CST [
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New leadership crisis as Iraq descends into anarchy
A bomb ripped through a vegetable market in a Shia section of Baghdad and a senior Sunni leader escaped assassination as at least 36 people were killed yesterday in a surge of violence that pushed Iraq closer still to sectarian civil war.
An aide to Ibrahim al- Jaafari, the Prime Minister, meanwhile, lashed out at Sunni, Kurdish and secular political leaders who have mounted a campaign to deny him another term, saying the Shia United Iraqi alliance will not change its candidate.
independent.co.ukShiites in Iraqi city of Basra threaten boycott of oil and goods Basra/Baghdad - The influential Shiite-Islamic Fadhila Party in the southern Iraqi port city of Basra on Friday threatened to halt the traffic of oil and other goods from southern Iraq into the centre of the country.
The threat would be carried out if the party's demands were not taken into consideration in the formation of the future Iraqi government, said Fadhila party leader Sheikh Sabah al-Saedi in his Friday sermon in Basra.
Among the party's demands were that there would be no 'remnants of the old regime' of Saddam Hussein in the new government and that the ministries of the interior and defence would remain in the hands of the Shiite alliance.
Previously cabinet talks had centred on promoting Sunni leadership of at least one of the 'armed' ministries (interior or defence) for the sake of national unity.
Al-Saedi also called for the 'execution' of Saddam Hussein, who persecuted Shiites and is currently standing trial before a special tribunal in Baghdad.
According to observers, the threat to hinder the flow of goods and oil would be an extreme form of pressure, as two thirds of Iraq's oil is found in the south of the country, and production and transport of oil from the north has practically been brought to a standstill by insurgent acts of sabotage.
In addition, Basra is the only sea sea port the country has.
rootsie on 03.04.06 @ 08:15 AM CST [
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Friday, March 3rd
The Murder of George Jackson
Last December, in okaying the execution of Stan Tookie Williams, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger went out of his way to smear a whole history of Black struggle against racism. Schwarzenegger's statement denying clemency claimed that Stan's record of turning his life around must be a lie--because Stan identified with Black revolutionaries of the past and present, dedicating his autobiography to a number.
The most abuse of all was heaped on George Jackson--whose inclusion in Stan's dedication "is a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed," read Schwarzenegger's statement.
Jackson, author of the widely read prison memoir
Soledad Brother, had been thrown in jail for a petty robbery, and became a revolutionary behind bars. He was murdered in August 1971 by guards at San Quentin prison in an alleged "escape attempt."
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 03.03.06 @ 08:50 AM CST [
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Lack of Food Not Main Cause of Child Malnutrition, Study Says
Rampant child malnutrition in poor countries is usually not caused principally by lack of food, nor are large, politically popular programs to feed schoolchildren the right way to tackle a problem stunting the intellectual and physical development of more than 100 million children worldwide, a new World Bank report says.
The irreversible damage malnutrition causes to children occurs by age 2, long before they begin primary school, and the bank contends that efforts to combat this scourge must concentrate on the brief window of opportunity between gestation and age 2, with a focus on teaching mothers to properly feed and care for babies and toddlers.
While many experts would agree with the bank's assessment of the evidence on malnutrition, its policy recommendations are sure to be controversial at a time when the world is pushing to halve poverty in the coming decade and school feeding programs are often seen as part of the solution.
The bank, the largest financier of antipoverty programs in developing countries, maintains in the report released today, "Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development," that countries like India with staggering rates of malnutrition need to change their approach to speed up progress.
Nutritionists at the bank say programs should emphasize changing the behaviors of mothers — for example, to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months of life or seek quick treatment for their children's diarrhea and other common childhood illnesses, rather than directly providing food.
nytimes.comHow insane is this?
rootsie on 03.03.06 @ 08:46 AM CST [
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Peru, Mexico Finds Hint at Women's Roles
WASHINGTON -- Archaeological finds from Mexico and Peru show that, long before Europeans arrived, women served as warriors, governors and priestesses.
An exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery includes little pottery jugs and massive stone images portraying women in a variety of roles in addition to traditional homemakers and care givers.
"Women were not only daughters, wives, mothers and grandmothers, but also healers, midwives, scribes, artists, poets, priestesses, warriors, governors and even goddesses in pre-Columbian society," said Judy L. Larson, director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in announcing the exhibit.
latimes.com
rootsie on 03.03.06 @ 08:42 AM CST [
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South American Gas Pipeline Deemed Costly
WASHINGTON (AP) - A proposed pipeline that would provide Venezuelan natural gas to South America may never materialize because of financing and other problems, an Energy Department official said Thursday.
The comments by assistant energy secretary Karen A. Harbert came as officials from Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina met in Caracas, Venezuela's capital, to lay plans for the project.
Testifying at a House subcommittee hearing, Harbert said the pipeline would take years to complete ``if it ever comes to fruition.''
``There are tremendous technical challenges,'' she said. ``There are tremendous environmental challenges. But most importantly, there are tremendous financial feasibility challenges.''
The same issues were being discussed at the Caracas meeting. Much of the project is expected to be financed from Venezuelan oil revenues.
...She expressed doubt that Venezuela will be able to carry out its agenda for constructing refineries and tankers and producing natural gas because of lack of financing.
The problem, Harbert said, stems from ``the lack of expertise and increasing restrictions on foreign investment in the oil sector.''
guardian.co.ukIn other words, they'll make sure it doesn't get built.
rootsie on 03.03.06 @ 08:35 AM CST [
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Pope's Shooting Laid to Soviets by Italian Panel
ROME, March 2 — Citing new photographic analysis, an Italian parliamentary commission has concluded that top Soviet leaders were behind the failed plot to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981.
"This commission holds, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the leadership of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate Pope Karol Wojtyla," the commission wrote, using John Paul's given name, in a preliminary report released to news organizations this week. The report needs approval by Parliament.
The report has no legal bearing, but reopens a central unanswered question from the cold war era: Whether Bulgarian secret agents, working on behalf of the Soviets, played a role in the shooting in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981, which gravely wounded John Paul.
The report claims that the Soviet leadership saw John Paul as a threat because of his support for the Solidarity trade union, which worked to undermine Soviet control in his native Poland.
nytimes.comoh. okay. Hamas Heads to Moscow in Search for Legitimacy MOSCOW (Reuters) - Hamas embarks on a quest for international legitimacy on Friday with an official visit to Russia, marking the Islamic militant group's first talks with a major power involved in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.
Although it deals a blow to U.S.-led efforts to isolate Hamas since it swept Palestinian elections in January, Russia's mediation is seen by some in the West as a chance to talk the faction into renouncing violence and recognizing Israel.
rootsie on 03.03.06 @ 08:30 AM CST [
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Israeli Leader Promises to Use 'Iron Fist' to Stop Terrorism
JERUSALEM, March 2 — Israel's acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, warned Palestinians today that Israel would use "far-reaching measures" and "an iron fist against any attempt to resume terrorist activity," whether in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Olmert spoke as a new opinion poll showed his Kadima party continuing to slip a month before March 28 elections, but it was still comfortably on course to form a new Israeli government. The Haaretz-Channel 10 poll shows Kadima winning 37 of the parliament's 120 seats, down two seats from last month and down seven seats from a similar poll taken at the end of January.
Mr. Olmert said at a news conference that he has personally ordered airstrikes against Palestinians involved in firing Qassam rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip. "There are no longer any restrictions on the security establishment regarding counterterrorism actions anywhere," he said. "Not a few times terrorists who were about to fire rockets were liquidated before they could fire them and it was based on my orders, sometimes my personal orders."
nytimes.comIsraeli 'ruler-in-waiting' plans to starve Hamas She is already being spoken of as an Israeli leader in waiting. Today the Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni brings to London the campaign to destabilise the incoming Hamas Palestinian government by starving it of cash.
Israel's policy - described by a spokesman as putting "the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger" - has left London feeling squeamish. Tony Blair and Jack Straw will today undoubtedly show solidarity with Israel, saying Britain is not in the business of funding terrorists. But in private there is anguish that the policy will bring malnutrition to innocent Palestinians and punish them for taking part in a democratic election. The Palestinians are completely dependent on foreign aid for their survival and Israel's campaign to put 3.6 million people on starvation rations is foreboding.
...A former Mossad officer, Ms Livni is the daughter of Zionists - classified as terrorists by the British authorities. Her father, Eitan, was the Irgun's head of operations when it blew up the King David hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing 28 Britons, 41 Arabs, 17 Jews and five others. The subsequent wave of terror attacks he led outraged British public opinion, leading the government to abandon the Palestinian Mandate and turn the problem over to the UN, with disastrous consequences for the Palestinians.
Mofaz: Karnei Shomron to be included in Israel's final borders Setting a vision for Israel's permanent borders, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has said that the government plans to retain the settlements of Karnei Shomron, Reihan and Shaked in any future deal with the Palestinians.
Israel, Mofaz said, planned to retain the Ariel, Ma'aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion settlement blocs in addition to the settlements of Shaked, Reihan, Karnei Shomron and Kedumim, whether under a peace plan with the Palestinians or in a unilateral withdrawal.
"When we talk about Israel's permanent or future borders, it includes the Jordan Valley, Ma'aleh Adumim, Gush Etzion, Ariel, Kedumim-Karnei Shomron and Reihan-Shaked," Mofaz said during a meeting with the residents of the settlement of Oranit late Sunday night. The defense minister made no mention of the future of the Ofra-Beit El bloc, Hebron, Itamar or Elon Moreh.
The settlements Mofaz listed went a little farther than a similar list Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert detailed three weeks ago. Olmert began to broadly draw the parameters of where he thought Israel's final border should run earlier in the month in a Channel 2 interview, saying that the Jordan Valley, Gush Etzion, Ma'aleh Adumim and Ariel settlement blocs would remain a part of the country.
"We will separate from the majority of the Palestinian population that lives in Judea and Samaria, and it will obligate us to leave territories where Israel is today," Olmert said. "We will move into central settlement blocs."
rootsie on 03.03.06 @ 08:21 AM CST [
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IAEA says no evidence of Iranian n-weapons plan
03/02/06 "The Hindu" -- -- DUBAI: As the countdown for a crucial meeting on Iran on March 6 gets under way, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has revealed that it has not found any evidence that Teheran had diverted material towards making atomic weapons.
In its report which has been circulated to its 35 board members, the IAEA said that its three years of investigations had not shown "any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices", the Associated Press reported.
informationclearinghouse.infoIran claims Israel has over 200 nuclear warheads MOSCOW. March 2 (Interfax) - Teheran has information suggesting that Israel's nuclear arsenal exceeds 200 warheads.
"Israel's nuclear potential exceeds 200 warheads. The U.S., meanwhile, is pursuing a policy aimed at distracting attention from this problem," Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani told the press in Moscow on Thursday.
India, Pakistan got atomic arms "legitimately": US NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said on Wednesday the way India and Pakistan had obtained nuclear arms was legitimate, in contrast to Iran which he accused of pursuing atomic weapons in violation of its international undertakings.
While Iran is seeking to conceal development of nuclear weapons under the guise of a legitimate program to generate nuclear power, Bolton said, India and Pakistan "did it legitimately."
His comments, made in response to an audience question following a speech to a meeting of the World Jewish Congress, appeared to go farther than the administration of President George W. Bush has previously gone in embracing the two nations' nuclear programs.
rootsie on 03.03.06 @ 08:12 AM CST [
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Iraq: Sunnis, Kurds unite to oppose Shiite premier
BAGHDAD - A political conflict threatened to further exacerbate Iraq's sectarian and ethnic divisions Thursday as Kurdish and Sunni Arab leaders issued a letter demanding that the leading Shiite Muslim coalition withdraw its nomination of interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to head the next government.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to avert attacks today, during the Muslim day of prayer, the government announced a one-day ban on private vehicles in Baghdad and its outskirts. The police and army were instructed to seal off the capital and seize any private vehicles on the roads between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m.
"We had many conflicts with the past government, and for it to continue for the next four years is just unacceptable to us," said Faraj Haidary of the Kurdish Alliance, which has persuaded other political blocs to sign off on the formal letter delivered Thursday.
Politicians with the leading Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, which holds a plurality of seats in the new parliament, warned that efforts to form a "national unity" government, a major U.S. goal, might collapse if the Kurds and Sunnis don't back down.
"Jaafari is the nominee, and the UIA will not be provoked in this way," said Fadhil Shara, a representative of Shiite radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
The political maneuvering followed a spasm of sectarian clashes that left hundreds dead in the past week. The bloodshed continued Thursday, with police reporting that more than 30 people were killed in attacks across the country.
startribune.comMilitia says will defend Baghdad's Sadr city BAGHDAD, March 2 (Reuters) - Militias loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will take a key defence role in Baghdad's Sadr City, a Sadr official said, after a blast in a minibus killed five people there on Thursday.
"Today, the terrorists have targeted Sadr City because it has a Shi'ite majority which tells that the extremists want to fight Shi'ites wherever they are," Hazim Araji told Reuters.
"We are going to coordinate with Iraqi army and police but the Mehdi Army is going to have a key role providing protection."
Police said eight people were also wounded in the blast in Sadr City. Such attacks have been rare inside the slum area, a stronghold of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has promoted solidarity with Sunni Arab insurgents.
Sadr, a youthful nationalist with a following among poor Shi'ites, led two uprisings against U.S. forces in 2004 and has maintained ties with Sunni rebels. But many Sunnis blame his Mehdi Army militia for attacks on Sunni mosques this past week.
Robert Fisk: Somebody is trying to provoke a civil war in Iraq. The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it's Al Qaeda, it's the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities.
rootsie on 03.03.06 @ 08:04 AM CST [
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Armed forces are put on standby to tackle threat of wars over water
Across the world, they are coming: the water wars. From Israel to India, from Turkey to Botswana, arguments are going on over disputed water supplies that may soon burst into open conflict.
Yesterday, Britain's Defence Secretary, John Reid, pointed to the factor hastening the violent collision between a rising world population and a shrinking world water resource: global warming.
independent.co.ukExcuse me??
rootsie on 03.03.06 @ 07:54 AM CST [
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Pentagon develops brain implants to turn sharks into military spies
Military scientists in the United States are developing a way of manipulating sharks by remote control to turn them into underwater spies or weapons.
Engineers funded by the Pentagon have created electronic brain implants for fish that they hope will be able to influence the movements of sharks and perhaps even decode what they are sensing.
Although both Cold War superpowers have trained sea mammals such as dolphins and killer whales to carry out quasi-military duties, this is probably the first time the military have seriously considered using fish.
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 03.03.06 @ 07:49 AM CST [
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Students Testing Worse on Federal Exams
WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation's students do glaringly worse on a tough federal test than they do on state exams in reading and math, raising doubts about how much kids are learning.
The number of children who were proficient or better on state exams was often solid, if not lofty, in 2005. States have wide latitude in deciding what proficiency means.
But on the National Assessment of Educational Progress - the gold-standard measure of achievement in the U.S. - most states don't come close to matching up, a new analysis shows.
The performance gap was often enormous. The number of fourth-graders and eighth-graders who scored proficient or better on state tests was often 30, 40 or 50 percentage points lower on the federal exam - the one the president and Congress use to chart the nation's progress.
The size of that discrepancy raises questions about whether states are setting lower standards. Congress, in fact, has required every state to take part in the federal testing for that very reason - as a way to expose states that otherwise report rosy achievement.
The Education Trust, a nonprofit think tank that tracks state compliance with the No Child Left Behind law, released the comparison of test scores in a report on Thursday.
``There ought to be questions about whether state standards are preparing students for the challenges of college, work and the real world,'' said Daria Hall, senior policy analyst at Education Trust.
Under President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, all children must be proficient in reading and math by 2014.
guardian.co.ukor else what?
rootsie on 03.03.06 @ 07:44 AM CST [
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Thursday, March 2nd
Blast Kills U.S. Diplomat in Pakistan
KARACHI, Pakistan -- An apparent suicide bomber detonated explosives outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi Thursday killing four people, including an American diplomat and a Pakistani security officer, and wounding about 50 others, according to officials.
The attack came two days before President Bush is scheduled to visit Pakistan, following his journey to Afghanistan and India. It also followed what Pakistani officials said was a major assault by the Pakistani military that killed 40 to 45 militants in a tribal region of the country.
Bush, at a news conference in New Delhi, said the attack would not alter his travel plans. "We have lost at least one U.S. citizen in the bombing," he said, "a foreign service officer. And I send our country's deepest condolences to that person's loved ones and families. Terrorists and killers are not going to prevent me from going to Pakistan."
Initial reports from officials said a car bomber was apparently attempting to approach the consulate when he was approached by a Pakistani security guard and a security van, which tried to intercept the vehicle.
It then hit the van and exploded, apparently just as the official was entering the building, according to security officials in Karachi.
The blast ripped through a roadside parking lot of the Marriott Hotel, about 65 feet from the consulate gate, wire services said, shattering windows at the consulate and on all 10 floors of the hotel. Ten cars were destroyed, and charred wreckage was flung as far as 200 yards.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 09:05 AM CST [
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Refugees Check Out of FEMA Hotels, Protest
BEAUMONT, Texas (AP) - Donna Francis pressed a pile of FEMA paperwork and phone numbers to her chest as the minutes slipped away in the lobby of the Best Value Inn.
``Hopefully I can go pull a rabbit out of my hat,'' said Francis, a victim of Hurricane Rita, as she waited to make a plea to her Federal Emergency Management Agency caseworker an hour before six months of government-paid hotel rooms ended.
The single mother was among hurricane refugees in nearly 3,000 hotel rooms nationwide Wednesday who were confronted with a choice they had long dreaded: either remain in their hotel and pay the bill with their own money or other federal assistance, or check out and find a new place to live.
Wednesday's deadline sparked protests in at least one city.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 08:49 AM CST [
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A basket to carry water
In a well-ordered world, Gerard Latortue whould now be sitting quietly in a jail in The Hague, preparing to defend himself against charges of treason, terrorism, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution and, possibly, genocide.
Instead, on Wednesday last week, he was sitting, immaculately tailored, as always, in a conference room at United Nations headquarters, as the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States (OAS) vainly attempted to give a decent burial to US government policies in Haiti.
It was a farce.
Officiating at the obsequies was the Guyanese-born assistant secretary-general of the OAS, chosen, one imagines, because his clean hands distinguished him from a motley gang of bloodstained bureaucrats who have for two years connived at one of the most blatant and infamous rapes of human rights in modern history.
jamaicaobservor.comThe Puzzling Alliance of Chavannes Jean-Baptiste and Charles Henri Baker Imagine in U.S. politics if Cesar Chavez had suddenly endorsed and collaborated with George Wallace in his Presidential campaign, and the
United Farm Workers had joined racist white plantation owners in their last-ditch effort to maintain total apartheid in the U.S. South. This is not an inappropriate comparison to the recent bizarre alliance in Haiti between Chavannes Jean-Baptiste's powerful and genuinely grassroots peasant organization, MPP (Papaye Peasant's Movement) and Charles Henri Baker, the elite owner of a Haitian garment industry sweatshop. Despite years of fighting U.S. economic polices toward Haiti, from the Creole Pig fiasco under the Duvaliers to the disastrous neoliberalism of the past decade, Chavannes and the MPP now uncritically support openly neo-liberalist and Duvalierist members of the tiny, mostly "blanc" (light-skinned, Francophone), Haitian elite, who are in turn supported by U.S. right-wing groups like the IRI (International Republican Institute), funded by USAID.
Perhaps just as bizarre has been the continuing uncritical support (at least until now) by MPP's U.S. funder, Grassroots International. GI consistently takes a strong stand against what it calls the U.S. "death plan," structural adjustment and the whole World Bank neo-liberal program, yet remained silent for years after Chavannes and MPP became closely linked to precisely the U.S. "death plan" agenda, in their growing support for the successful overthrow of the Aristide government, and their close alliance with opposition groups with a neoliberal agenda and worse.
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 08:46 AM CST [
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Secessionist rumblings in Zulia state in western Venezuela
Advertising hoardings promoting “Own direction for Zulia” in the context of “liberal capitalism” appeared in this western state of Venezuela and which was labelled part of a secessionist campaign by local media.
The digital publication Aporrea (www.aporrea.org ) indicated that the “Zulianity” adopted by a section of the opposition is the start of “a new campaign to propel an imperialist coup” against the revolutionary process of President Hugo Chavez.
These hoardings contain a subliminal message about the separation of this state from the rest of Venezuela. Zulia is controlled by the opposition and this campaign is a project previously denounced by Venezuelan authorities.
Advertising hoardings promoting “Own direction for Zulia” in the context of “liberal capitalism” appeared in this western state of Venezuela and which was labelled part of a secessionist campaign by local media.
Analysts confirm that the proposal of a capitalist direction for Zulia is intended to prepare the general public for a violent separation from the rest of Venezuela and the privatization of public services.
Let’s also remember that on “Zulia Day” the US Ambassador in Venezuela, William Brownfield was invited to a local television programme in which he catalogued Zulia as the best state of Venezuela. In 2005, Brownfield visited Zulia some 17 times and this state is also where the war games exercise “Operation Balboa” to invade Venezuela was played out in Madrid in May 2001 by NATO and US commanders.
Authorities and the media had previously alerted about the existence of a secessionist plan for Zulia as part of actions planned against the government of President Chavez.
This state where a great deal of Venezuela’s oil wealth is located, is controlled by opposition governor Manuel Rosales who has been accused of participating in conspiracy meetings with ex military coup mongers and Colombian paramilitaries.
axisoflogic.com
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 08:35 AM CST [
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Notes from the Other Oaxaca
Walking across the central plaza in Oaxaca City time slows down. Stepping into the expanse of cobblestone walkways that weave through trees and flower beds, surrounded by old colonial government buildings and sidewalk cafes, one feels one's hurry diminish like a drop in temperature. Taking a stroll and then leaning back with an espresso seem to be the most natural activities in the world.
And this is no accident, the state of Oaxaca spent 80 million dollars in the past two years renovating the plaza, crafting the image that the Mexican state so dearly loves to export: the perfect balance of an antique culture represented in art and architecture and the conveniences and luxuries of capitalism.
This is the preferred snapshot of the “new” Mexico and the “democratic change” attributed to President Vicente Fox's six years in office. The idyllic colonial plaza equipped with credit-card ready shops and restaurants. The route of the Other Campaign through Oaxaca, however, revealed a different image of this intersection between Mexico's elder culture and its contemporary capitalism: the molded concrete of a prison wall.
Throughout Oaxaca Subcomandante Marcos listened to hours of testimony from family members and co-workers of indigenous activists who have been taken prisoner. The charges range from belonging to the armed Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) to acts of murder and kidnapping. Yet the evidence—when there is any—is reduced to a signed confession, extracted under torture.
zmag.org
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 08:31 AM CST [
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Texan, Five Others Released in Nigeria
WARRI, Nigeria (AP) - Militants released six foreign oil workers, including a diabetic Texan celebrating his 69th birthday Wednesday, taken captive last month to press fighters' demands for a greater share of oil revenues generated in this restive southern state.
But three other hostages - two Americans and a Briton - were kept by militants from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. A militant spokesman said all ``low-value'' hostages taken Feb. 18 had been freed.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 08:28 AM CST [
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Blaming the British
From cabbies to shahs, most Iranians believe political events can be traced back to English interference.
Watching his fellow countrymen observe the annual Shia Islamic mourning ceremony of Ashura, the disaffected Tehran taxi driver voiced a wish to convert to Christianity that may not have been as sincere as it was incongruous. But whatever his true ecclesiastical leanings, his beliefs about the source of the religious tyranny that so irked him about Iran were real.
"It is England that has imposed these mullahs on us," the cabbie mused, resisting all protestations at the notion's absurdity.
The idea that the Islamic revolution was a plot hatched in Whitehall, and that its spiritual leader, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was some sort of heavily disguised 007 in the secret service of Her Majesty's government does indeed seem weird. But not to many Iranians.
Suggestions that the convulsive events of 1979, which ushered in the Islamic republic, were manipulated and orchestrated by the British are widely accepted here as a given. It is a belief held, even before his reign was swept to oblivion in a revolutionary tidal wave, by the last shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
Resentful that the British had deposed his pro-German father during the second world war, the shah commissioned a television drama, My Uncle Napoleon, whose main character's catchphrase was: "The British are behind everything". The shah echoed this mantra during his reign's last desperate days, telling the American ambassador, William Sullivan, that he "detected the hand of the English" behind the street demonstrations raging against him. Sullivan surmised that the teetering monarch had lost his mind and, with it, the will to survive.
But the shah was reflecting a broader mindset. The sun may have long set on British imperial might but in Iran it has been replaced by an enduring mirage of dominance which still shines brightly. If the rest of the world has become accustomed to the American hegemonic age, to Iranians Inglestan still wields the true power, albeit stealthily. Behind events great and small, they are ready to perceive the sleight of a hidden British hand. Belief in the "old coloniser's" diabolic powers unites Iranians in a way matched by no other issue, including the Islamic regime's pursuit of nuclear technology.
guardian.co.ukOh yeah, those crazy Iranians. Let's bomb them.
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 08:25 AM CST [
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Dyer: U.S., India are aligning militarily - but don't tell the Chinese
Chances are you won't hear a single word about U.S.-Indian military links in the mainstream media's reporting about President Bush's first visit to India this week. For months the media in both countries have been encouraged to speculate about whether a deal on U.S.-Indian cooperation on civilian nuclear power would be ready in time for Bush's visit, but that deal is just the quid pro quo.
The actual "quo" was a de facto military alliance between India and the United States, but we don't talk about that in front of the children.
"The largest democracy in the world and the oldest democracy in the world are becoming strategic partners, and that is a very consequential development in international politics," said U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns on Feb. 24 after a visit to New Delhi.
"Consequential" is the right word. The two countries that will have the world's second- and third-largest economies a generation from now have made an alliance against the country that will have the biggest economy, China - but hardly anybody in the media seems to have noticed.
strib.comU.S., India Seal Nuclear Deal NEW DELHI, March 2 -- In a break from decades of U.S. policy, President Bush agreed Thursday to provide nuclear energy assistance to India for the first time in exchange for imposing new safeguards on India's civilian weapons facilities.
Eight years after India startled the United States government by resuming testing of nuclear weapons, Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed off on a pact requiring India to separate its civilian and military nuclear programs to gain U.S. expertise and fuel to satisfy its energy rising needs.
Under the deal, the United States offered India nuclear fuel and technology in return for India agreeing to put a wall between its civilian and military nuclear facilities and place its civilian program under international inspections.
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 08:19 AM CST [
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Bush Says Bin Laden Tape Aided Re-Election
WASHINGTON (Feb. 28) - President Bush said his 2004 re-election victory over Sen. John Kerry was inadvertently aided by Osama bin Laden, who issued a taped diatribe against him the Friday before Americans went to the polls, The Examiner newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Bush said there were ''enormous amounts of discussion'' inside his campaign about the 15-minute tape, which he called ''an interesting entry by our enemy'' into the presidential race.
Bush's comments in the Washington newspaper were excerpts from the new book ''Strategery'' by Bill Sammon, a long-time White House correspondent.
''What does it mean? Is it going to help? Is it going to hurt?'' Bush told Sammon of the bin Laden tapes. ''Anything that drops in at the end of a campaign that is not already decided creates all kinds of anxieties, because you're not sure of the effect.
''I thought it was going to help,'' Bush said. ''I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.''
Yeah, some of us noticed...
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 08:16 AM CST [
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Amira Hass: A nation of beggars
It is not the Palestinians who should be welcoming the European Union's decision to hastily donate another $142 million before the Hamas government is formed. It is Israel that ought to be pleased that the Western states will continue compensating the Palestinians for the economic decline that is a product of the Israeli occupation.
For it is not natural disasters that have transformed the Palestinians into a nation that lives on handouts from the world; it is Israel's accelerating colonialist process. One facet of this is the continued takeover of Palestinian lands (whether "private" or public lands, it is the same thing), expansion of construction only for Jews, and de facto annexation by Israel of extensive tracts of Palestinian territory, while simultaneously breaking up the West Bank into enclaves and enclosures for Palestinians.
Another facet of this colonization is a regime of excessive restrictions imposed by Israel on the movement of Palestinians between their enclosures and enclaves within the West Bank, and between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
haaretz.comIsraelis ask Oscars to drop suicide bomb film JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A group of Israelis who lost children to Palestinian suicide bombings appealed on Wednesday to organizers of next week's Academy Awards to disqualify a film exploring the reasoning behind such attacks.
The bereaved parents said they had gathered more than 32,000 signatures on a petition against the nomination in the best foreign film category of "Paradise Now", a drama about two West Bank friends recruited to blow themselves up in Tel Aviv.
The controversial film was made by an Israeli Arab director and actors working with a Palestinian crew and locations. The producer was a Jewish Israeli and the funding was European.
Yossi Zur, whose teenage son Asaf was killed in a bus bombing, accused the film of sympathetically portraying a tactic hailed by many Palestinians waging a 5-year-old uprising.
"What they call 'Paradise Now' we call 'hell now', each and every day," Zur told reporters. "It is a mission of the free world not to give such movies a prize."
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 08:13 AM CST [
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Syria opposition says US funding counterproductive
DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syria's liberal opposition has said it will not accept money from a U.S. offer to fund democratic groups in the country, saying that its credibility would be damaged if it took the cash.
A group of a dozen parties, known as the Damascus Declaration, said on Monday they had enough resources on their own to press ahead with a campaign for peaceful change to end a 40-year monopoly by the Baath Party on power.
"The Damascus Declaration refuses foreign funding, including the $5 million from the U.S. State Department for the Syrian opposition," a statement by the group said.
The United Sates imposed several sanctions on Syria in 2004, accusing Damascus of supporting "terrorism." Two weeks ago it announced a $5 million grant to fund what it called "democratic reformers" in Syria.
A U.S. State Department official said the money was not aimed at opposition or political groups in Syria.
"The funds are there to help civil society groups interested in promoting democracy at large. It is not a promotion of direct political parties or views," he said in response to whether Washington was disappointed with the Syrian opposition response.
Damascus Declaration founding member Hassan Abdel Atheem told Reuters the United States cannot expect popular support for its policy toward Syria while it maintained sanctions against the country.
"Support by international powers for democratic change in Syria is welcome. This does not include financing because it means subordination to the funding country," he said.
"Our project is nationalist, independent democratic change in Syria, not through occupation or economic pressure as we see the United states doing," he said.
abcnews.go.com
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 08:10 AM CST [
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Iran call for nuclear-free region
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the Middle East to be free of nuclear weapons.
Speaking after talks with Kuwaiti leaders, Mr Ahmadinejad said nuclear weapons were a threat to stability.
He said Iran was a good neighbour, and reiterated that its nuclear programme was for peaceful, civilian purposes.
Gulf Arab states, including Kuwait, have said they want an agreement with Iran to keep the Gulf region free of nuclear weapons.
Mr Ahmadinejad's brief visit to Kuwait was the first by an Iranian head of state since the Islamic revolution of 1979.
bbc.co.uksmartEgypt's Mubarak says he warned the United States not to attack Iran CAIRO, Egypt – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak strongly advised the United States not to attack Iran, warning that military action would create more terrorists in neighboring Iraq, according to comments published Wednesday.
Mubarak also told Egyptian newspaper editors he warned Vice President Dick Cheney that ground troops “will have a hard time” in such a conflict.
“If an airstrike (against Iran) takes place, then Iraq will be turned to terror groups,” Mubarak was quoted as saying by the daily Al-Gomhouria.
He said Shiite Muslims in the Gulf region also could turn against the United States because “Iran generously provides for Shiites in every country and these people are ready to do anything if Iran is attacked.”
“Listen to my advice for once,” he recalled telling Cheney in English. “You have vital interests in the Gulf region, especially oil.”
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 08:05 AM CST [
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Pakistan says forces kill more than 45 militants in strike at Afghan border
MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani security forces backed by helicopter gunships struck a militant hide-out Wednesday in a tribal region near the Afghan border, killing more than 45 fighters including a Chechen commander linked to al-Qaida, officials said.
One civilian and a soldier were also reported dead.
near Saidgi, a village about nine miles west of Miran Shah, army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said.
The assault ''knocked out a den of foreign militants'' and killed more than 45, an army statement said.
newspress.comU.S. soldier killed in Afghan fighting amid predictions of rising violence KABUL (AP) - Fighting between U.S. forces and suspected Taliban rebels Tuesday killed one American service member and wounded two others in southern Afghanistan, the military said.
A military vehicle was damaged by a roadside bomb during the fighting, which left the two wounded service members in stable condition at a nearby base. "We are deeply saddened by the loss of one of our fellow service members," said Maj.-Gen. Benjamin Freakley, a U.S. commander.
The victims' names were withheld pending notification of their families.
The bombing raised the death toll of U.S. personnel in and around Afghanistan to 216 since the U.S. invaded in late 2001.
Military officials in Washington and Afghanistan said Tuesday that insurgent attacks rose sharply last year and are likely to worsen in 2006 as militants step up efforts to hamper the country's gradual transition to democracy.
Good luck with that...
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 08:00 AM CST [
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Pentagon dismisses US troop poll
THE Pentagon has dismissed a poll's finding that 72 per cent of United States troops in Iraq believe the US should pull out within a year or less.
"It shouldn't surprise anybody that a deployed soldier would rather be at home than deployed, even when they believe what they are doing is important and vital work," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
The poll by Le Moyne College and Zogby International found that only 23 per cent believed US troops should stay in Iraq "as long as it takes", as US President George W. Bush has insisted.
Nearly one in three troops said US forces should withdraw immediately.
Another 22 per cent said US forces should be out within six months, and 21 per cent thought they should exit within a year.
"I don't think anybody is getting alarmed over any one poll, if that's what you're asking me," Mr Whitman said.
dailytelegraph.news.com.auFormer US troops rail against war Mr Viges said: “I am a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace. I was with the 82nd Airborne Division as a mortarman when my unit was deployed to Iraq in February 2003.
“I joined up the day after September 11, 2001. I saw action in Falluja and Baghdad. My mortar platoon dropped numerous rounds on the town of Samawa during the start of the invasion. I don’t know how many innocents I killed with my mortar rounds.
“I was so disgusted by the war that, after we came home in January 2004, I filed for conscientious objector status and received that status in December 2004. I’m a Christian. What was I doing holding a gun to another human being?”
"When in Rome," you know...
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 07:53 AM CST [
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30 Killed As Violence Continues in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Bombings in Baghdad killed 26 people, and four others died when mortar rounds slammed into their homes in a nearby town Wednesday, the second day of surging violence after authorities lifted a curfew that briefly calmed sectarian attacks.
A spokesman for the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars criticized the Shiite-led government for failing to protect Iraqis, and he urged Sunnis to defend their mosques.
"All evidence has proven that the government and its security forces are incapable of taking any action," said Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi, a spokesman for the Sunni clerical group.
chron.comShiites told: Leave home or be killed BAGHDAD, Iraq - Salim Rashid, 34, a Shiite laborer in an overwhelmingly Sunni Arab village 20 miles north of Baghdad, received his eviction notice Friday from a man at the door with a rocket launcher.
"It's 6 p.m.," Rashid recounted the masked man saying then, as retaliatory violence between Shiites and Sunnis exploded across wide swaths of central Iraq. "We want you out of here by 8 p.m. tomorrow. If we find you here, we will kill you."
rootsie on 03.02.06 @ 07:45 AM CST [
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Wednesday, March 1st
Workers’ Liberation and Institutions of Self-Management
We live under a system with a series of oppressions woven together: domination and exploitation of workers by elite classes of owners, managers and professionals; a system of gender inequality that disadvantages women; a racial hierarchy that places people of color at the bottom; oppression of gay people by a rigid heterosexist culture. And over it all, protecting elite interests, is a top-down state apparatus, not really controllable by the people even in so-called “democratic countries.”
It doesn’t have to be this way. Humans have the capacity to control their own lives. We can think ahead and develop plans of action, to self-manage our own activity. This is the human potential for self-management. In the plans that we might develop, inspired by our own aspirations, many of the activities would inevitably require the help of others or involve common work for common benefit. Through communication and the back-and-forth process of giving each other reasons for proposed courses of action, we have the ability to coordinate and cooperate with each other, to self-manage together. In fact humans have not only the potential but the need to self-manage their own activities, to fulfill their goals through activities they plan out and control themselves.
But in both the capitalist and Communist countries, working people are forced to work to fulfill the plans of others, exploited for the benefit of elites. This is the denial of our human need for self-management. As class struggle anti-authoritarians, we propose to replace the existing systems of domination by a new arrangement that gives people free scope to develop their potential for self-management, to control their lives. Not only in social production but in all spheres of life. In what follows I focus mainly on eliminating the class system. We need to keep in mind that class is not the whole story about oppression.
zmag.org
rootsie on 03.01.06 @ 08:50 AM CST [
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The Palazzo Feinstein: The Mansion the War Bought
It happens all the time. If the antiwar movement takes on the Democrats for their bitter shortcomings a few liberals are bound to criticize us for not hounding Bush instead. It doesn't even have to be an election year to get the progressives fired up. They just don't seem to get it. "How can you attack the Democrats when we have such a bullet-proof administration ruling the roost in Washington," somebody recently emailed me, "Don't you have something better to do than write this trash?!"
Well, not really. It's too cold in upstate New York right now to do anything other than fume over the liberal villains in Washington. "Why do I write about the putrid Democratic Party?" I responded, "I'll tell you, there's a reason this Republican administration is so damn bullet proof -- nobody from the opposition party is taking aim and pulling the trigger."
And that's why the Dems are just as culpable in all that has transpired since Bush took office in 2000. They aren't just a part of the problem -- the Democrats are the problem.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 03.01.06 @ 08:47 AM CST [
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Racism Thrives
Those who worry that the world's Arab and Muslim populations pose a threat to free speech in Western democracies need not fear. The first Amendment remains intact-particularly, it seems, when it comes to the "right" to inflict racial slurs. Indeed, the last few weeks have witnessed a spate of pundits and politicians exercising their right to freely engage in racist demagoguery against Arabs and Muslims without repercussion.
Celebrity hatemonger Ann Coulter did not disappoint the rabid crowd at the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. last month. The highlight of Coulter's address, sandwiched between speeches by Dick Cheney, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Newt Gingrich, was, "I think our motto should be post-9-11, 'raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'" Journalist Max Blumenthal remarked, "This declaration prompted a boisterous ovation" from the overflow crowd.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 03.01.06 @ 08:43 AM CST [
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Tens of Thousands Protest Bush India Visit
NEW DELHI -- Tens of thousands of Indians waving black and white flags and chanting "Death to Bush!" rallied Wednesday in New Delhi to protest a visit by President Bush.
Surindra Singh Yadav, a senior police officer in charge of crowd control, said as many as 100,000 people, most of them Muslim, had gathered in a fairground in central New Delhi ordinarily used for political rallies.
"Whether Hindu or Muslim, the people of India have gathered here to show our anger. We have only one message _ killer Bush go home," one of the speakers, Hindu politician Raj Babbar, told the crowd.
washingtonpost.comGood Nukes, Bad Nukes Juxtaposed this week are the two poles of the emerging world: India and Iran. They are alpha and omega, the dream and the nightmare. One symbolizes the promise of globalization, the other the threat of global disorder.
What they share, unfortunately, is a passion to be members of the nuclear club. India has nuclear weapons; Iran wants them. Between them stands the United States, trying to set rules that will apply to both -- rewarding the good boy while maintaining an ability to punish the bad one.
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously observed that intelligence "is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time." That has always seemed to me like an argument for enlightened hypocrisy. And maybe it's the best explanation for why we should say yes to India's nukes and no to Iran's. The two cases are different because -- they're different.
The same rules don't apply to both; one has shown that it is benign and the other behaves like a global outlaw.
Why India Should Choose Iran, Not the US Dr Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and one of the leading technical nuclear experts in the United States, believes that even if India gets everything it wants under the US-India civilian nuclear agreement signed by President George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 18, it would still be only a tiny fraction of the oil and gas it could obtain from Iran to meet India's growing energy needs.
It is not, Dr Makhijani argues, therefore worth jeopardizing India's relationship with Iran by voting with the United States against Tehran at the International Atomic Energy Agency.
rootsie on 03.01.06 @ 08:37 AM CST [
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Spy Chief: Iraq May Spark Regional Fight
WASHINGTON - A civil war in Iraq could lead to a broader conflict in the Middle East, pitting the region's rival Islamic sects against each other, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said in an unusually frank assessment Tuesday.
"If chaos were to descend upon Iraq or the forces of democracy were to be defeated in that country ... this would have implications for the rest of the Middle East region and, indeed, the world," Negroponte said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on global threats.
...Still, he told senators he is seeing progress in the overall political and security situation in Iraq. "And if we continue to make that kind of progress, yes, we can win in Iraq," he said.
...At the Senate hearing, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, painted a similarly stark picture of Afghanistan.
While the government has made progress in disarming private militias, Maples said, his agency estimates that violence from the Taliban and other anti-coalition groups in Afghanistan increased 20 percent last year.
"Insurgents now represent a greater threat to the expansion of Afghan government authority than at any point since late 2001, and will be active this spring," Maples said in his written statement.
...On Venezuela, Negroponte said U.S. intelligence expects President Hugo Chavez to deepen his relationship with Cuban President Fidel Castro and "seek closer economic, military and diplomatic ties with Iran and North Korea."
Negroponte said the U.S. is concerned about Chavez's arms purchases, using profits from oil production. "I would say that it's clear that he is spending hundreds of millions, if not more, for his very extravagant foreign policy" at the expense of the impoverished Venezuelan population, he said.
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 03.01.06 @ 08:28 AM CST [
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Multiple Bombings in Baghdad Kill 56
Two explosions hit Shiite targets in northern Baghdad after sundown Tuesday, killing at least 15 people and raising the day's death toll from a series of attacks around Baghdad that killed at least 56 and wounded scores, authorities said.
In the latest attacks, police officials said either a car bomb or a mortar hit the Abdel Hadi Chalabi mosque in the Hurriyah neighborhood, killing 14 people and wounding 62.
Mortar fire at the Imam Kadhim shrine in the Kazimiyah neighborhood on the opposite side of the Tigris River killed one and wounded 10.
A Sunni mosque in the Hurriyah neighborhood had been bombed before dawn Tuesday.
abcnews.go.comSunnis say they're mobilizing to combat Shiites, protect mosques BAGHDAD, Iraq - Sunni Muslims from across central Iraq, alarmed by how easily Shiite Muslim fighters had attacked their mosques during last week's clashes, said Monday that they were sending weapons to Baghdad and were preparing to dispatch their own fighters to the Iraqi capital in case of further violence.
While no central Sunni group appeared to be coordinating the movement of weapons and people, the widespread claims were seen as the first evidence that Sunnis are organizing to combat Shiite militias, which had mustered thousands of armed men to control many Baghdad neighborhoods after last week's bombing of one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines.
rootsie on 03.01.06 @ 08:22 AM CST [
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Marines produce road map to ethnic strife Washington bankrolls separatist groups
The US and Britain have torn apart Iraq and now they want to do the same to Iran. The US military has been studying ethnic and religious tensions in Iran as part of its preparations for war.
The study was commissioned by the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity (MCIA), which specialises in producing intelligence for low ranking soldiers.
This suggests that plans for war are advanced.
According to the Financial Times, the military wants to determine attitudes towards the central government and examine if Iran is prone to the same tensions that are tearing Iraq apart.
As with the planning for the war in Iraq, the Pentagon has recruited exiles to help with its survey. A similar group of Iraqi exiles told the Bush administration that US soldiers would be welcome when they invaded, and fed them false information about weapons of mass destruction.
The US plans for Iraq involved dividing the country into semi autonomous regions dominated by ethnic groups, and distributing government ministries according to sect. The result has been to drive Iraq towards civil war.
Now the White House has asked the US Congress to make available £43 million to fund a propaganda campaign aimed at Iranians.
Among the exile groups surveyed by the military are the Kurdish Democratic Party, who support the occupation in Iraq, and the followers of the deposed Iranian royal family, who hope a US invasion will restore the monarchy.
socialistworker.co.uk
rootsie on 03.01.06 @ 08:16 AM CST [
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UAE gave $1 million to Bush library
A sheik from the United Arab Emirates contributed at least $1 million to the Bush Library Foundation, which established the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University in College Station.
The UAE owns Dubai Port Co., which is taking operations from London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., which operates six U.S. ports. A political uproar has ensued over the deal, which the White House approved without congressional oversight.
The donations were made in the early 1990s for the library, which houses the papers of former President George Bush, the current president's father.
freenewmexican.comIt's a family affair...
rootsie on 03.01.06 @ 08:13 AM CST [
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US shifts diplomatic weight to reflect new world order
The US will send an extra 15 diplomats to China, 15 to Latin America and 12 to India as part of a major rethink of its foreign policy for the next few decades.
US embassies in Europe will lose 38 diplomats, including one in Britain, a reflection that the economic, political and religious frontlines have moved elsewhere.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, who is accompanying George Bush on a visit to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan that begins today, said in January that hundreds of diplomats would be moved from Europe and Washington to Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
guardian.co.ukAll the better to make mischief with, my dear.
rootsie on 03.01.06 @ 08:09 AM CST [
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One dead, three wounded as prison riot resumes
Police fired at prisoners trying to push down a gate at Kabul's main jail as about 2,000 prisoners resumed rioting yesterday after a 24-hour pause.
One prisoner was killed and three injured, police said.
The fighting restarted after negotiations broke down, said Abdul Halik, a prison police commander. He said authorities had urged prisoners to move into a different wing but they refused. "The prisoners have tried to break down the door to their block and the police opened fire," Mr Halik said.
Five people have been killed and 41 injured since violence erupted on Saturday.
guardian.co.ukBritish forces stay away as Afghan opium war begins The convoys are formed, line after line, in the swirling dust of Lashkar Gar airfield - bulldozers, oil tankers and trucks bristling with guns. Afghanistan's opium war is about to begin.
The force to eradicate the poppy fields arrived at the capital of Helmand province from Kabul yesterday, and the programme will be under way in time, it is expected, for the weekend visit of President George Bush.
The policy is emotive and controversial. The poppy crop is the livelihood for many small farmers and their resentment is expect-ed to spark violence.
But Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, a beneficiary of Western largesse, is under pressure from the US and Britain to end his country's opium production, the biggest in the world and the source of much of the West's drugs. Helmand, which produces 25 per cent of the crop, has been chosen as a show of his government's toughness during the US President's visit.
The prospect of the farmers taking up arms and being joined by a resurgent Taliban and their Islamist allies has led to an eradication operation more military than agricultural in nature.
rootsie on 03.01.06 @ 08:05 AM CST [
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World owes Israel USD 23 billion
The debt of foreign countries to Israel stands at USD 23 billion, almost double last year's debt of USD 12 billion, Bank of Israel data revealed.
According to the Bank's statistics, the Israeli economy, which until recently only borrowed money from states abroad, has since 2002 turned
into a lender as well, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Tuesday.
As of today, the world owes the private sector in Israel USD 22.7 billion. The Bank of Israel explained that the Israeli market has attracted investments from abroad during the last year, mainly due to the profitability of the private sector, the reduction in the government's deficit and the acceleration of privatization processes in the economy.
The improvement in the security situation in the country has also contributed to this rise.
ynetnews.com
rootsie on 03.01.06 @ 08:03 AM CST [
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Veterans Report Mental Distress
More than one in three soldiers and Marines who have served in Iraq later sought help for mental health problems, according to a comprehensive snapshot by Army experts of the psyches of men and women returning from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places.
The accounts of more than 300,000 soldiers and Marines returning from several theaters paint an unusually detailed picture of the psychological impact of the various conflicts. Those returning from Iraq consistently reported more psychic distress than those returning from Afghanistan and other conflicts, such as those in Bosnia or Kosovo.
Iraq veterans are far more likely to have witnessed people getting wounded or killed, to have experienced combat, and to have had aggressive or suicidal thoughts, the Army report said. Nearly twice as many of those returning from Iraq reported having a mental health problem -- or were hospitalized for a psychiatric disorder -- compared with troops returning from Afghanistan.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 03.01.06 @ 07:59 AM CST [
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A third of British forces 'not ready for action'
A THIRD of Britain's overstretched armed forces would struggle to be ready for action because of the country's heavy military commitments, a damning parliamentary report has concluded.
Last night, it also emerged that the government has spent £100 million on private security firms in Iraq - prompting calls for the money to be spent instead on the army, air force and navy.
The new report warns of serious or critical weaknesses to peacetime readiness levels in 30 per cent of Britain's armed forces because in five of the last six years troops have had to take on far more work than military planners previously envisaged.
scotsman.com
rootsie on 03.01.06 @ 07:56 AM CST [
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