Suspected Pentagon Spy Reportedly Served in Israel
netscape.cnn.comWASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Pentagon analyst suspected of passing classified information to Israel served as a U.S. Air Force reservist in Israel, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
The newspaper quoted a former colleague at the Defense Intelligence Agency who said the analyst may have been based at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, but was never permanently assigned there.
Quoting unnamed officials and others familiar with the inquiry, the Post said an FBI investigation had been broadened in recent days to include interviews at the State and Defense departments and with Middle Eastern specialists outside government.
Officials at the Justice and Defense departments declined comment on the report.
U.S. government sources said on Friday the FBI is investigating whether the analyst gave classified documents to Israel via the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington.
Israeli officials denied the allegations on Saturday and insisted Israel had not spied on the United States since an espionage scandal involving U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard, who was arrested in 1985 outside the Israeli embassy.
The Post said the probe was focused on a career analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency who specializes in Iran and had risen to the rank of colonel in the Air Force Reserve.
Early in the Bush administration, the analyst moved to the Pentagon's policy branch headed by Undersecretary Douglas Feith, where he continued his work on Iranian affairs, the newspaper said.
It was unclear whether the case would result in espionage charges or lesser charges such as the improper release of classified information or mishandling of government documents, the report said.
As if Israel needs a 'spy' in the Pentagon to give them intel on Iran.
What's going on here?
rootsie on 08.29.04 @ 10:44 PM CST [
link]
In Western Iraq, Fundamentalists Hold U.S. at Bay
by John F. Burns and Erik Eckholt
New York TimesBAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 28 - While American troops have been battling Islamic militants to an uncertain outcome in Najaf, the Shiite holy city, events in two Sunni Muslim cities that stand astride the crucial western approaches to Baghdad have moved significantly against American plans to build a secular democracy in Iraq.
Both of the cities, Falluja and Ramadi, and much of Anbar Province, are now controlled by fundamentalist militias, with American troops confined mainly to heavily protected forts on the desert's edge. What little influence the Americans have is asserted through wary forays in armored vehicles, and by laser-guided bombs that obliterate enemy safe houses identified by scouts who penetrate militant ranks. Even bombing raids appear to strengthen the fundamentalists, who blame the Americans for scores of civilian deaths.
American efforts to build a government structure around former Baath Party stalwarts - officials of Saddam Hussein's army, police force and bureaucracy who were willing to work with the United States - have collapsed. Instead, the former Hussein loyalists, under threat of beheadings, kidnappings and humiliation, have mostly resigned or defected to the fundamentalists, or been killed. Enforcers for the old government, including former Republican Guard officers, have put themselves in the service of fundamentalist clerics they once tortured at Abu Ghraib.
full articleThis article reflects the disastrous situation. It also fails to make explicit the difference between these Sunni fundamentalists and al Sadr, who is neither Sunni nor particularly fundamentalist. The press is fond of calling him a 'firebrand' and 'rebel' and 'radical' a la Hugo Chavez, but the fact is that at the end of the day, he is viewed as a heroic freedom-fighter by the large majority of Iraqis, who are not a fundamentalist people by and large. The alliance between the former Republican Guards and the fundamentalists is a toxic mix, and apparently while everyone was focusing on Sadr and Najaf, this crew gained control of a large part of the country.
rootsie on 08.29.04 @ 11:55 AM CST [
link]
How new Africa made fools of the white mischief-makers
by Raymond Whitaker
Independent UKThe days when white mercenaries could walk into small African countries and take them over appear to be gone. The coup plot against Equatorial Guinea, with its cast of old Etonians, adventurers and shady money men, failed because of its leaders' incompetence - and because of a new spirit of co-operation among Africans.
"Things have changed in Africa over the past few years," said a friend of Simon Mann, the old Etonian now awaiting sentence in Zimbabwe for attempting to buy arms illegally. "The days are gone when you could recruit a bunch of moustaches, load up some ammunition and take over a country - especially if you are a white man."
full articleAw shucks.
rootsie on 08.29.04 @ 11:36 AM CST [
link]
Magazine: U.S. Soldier Says Torture Encouraged
netscape.comBERLIN (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier expected to plead guilty to charges of abusing Iraqi prisoners told a German magazine he deeply regretted his actions but said the abuses were encouraged by military intelligence services.
Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick told the weekly Der Spiegel conditions in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail were a "nightmare" with no clear line of command and conflicting demands placed on junior soldiers with insufficient training.
"I didn't know at all who was actually in charge," he said, according to a German translation of his remarks.
"The battalion wanted one thing from you, the company wanted something else and the secret service had their own ideas. It was just chaos," he said.
The abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib caused worldwide outrage when photographs of the incidents emerged earlier this year.
A special army investigation acknowledged last week that torture had occurred and more soldiers may face trial, although so far only Frederick and six other military police reservists serving at Abu Ghraib have been charged.
Frederick said after a pretrial hearing in Germany last week he would plead guilty to some charges including assault, cruelty and indecent acts at a court martial on October 20.
"I want to apologize to the victims and their families. And in the trial, I will accept responsibility for my actions. But I hope others will follow my example," he said.
He said a notorious incident in which he was involved where naked Iraqi prisoners were photographed piled up into a pyramid occurred after a female U.S. soldier was struck in the face with a stone by a prisoner.
"First we searched them, got them stripped naked and then pushed them into this pyramid -- and then everything got out of control," he said. "One of the methods was to humiliate them so that they would break down and talk."
full article
rootsie on 08.29.04 @ 11:27 AM CST [
link]
Saturday, August 28th
: Responding to Chomsky on the one-state solution
by Noah Cohen
zmag.org[This article was written in response to Chomsky's interview with Shalom and Podur of March 2004. Chomsky has written a rejoinder to Cohen's article as well.]
It’s particularly interesting in the case of Palestine to see where US intellectuals and progressives decide that it’s necessary to be "realistic" and where "principled;" where they choose to accept more or less the general media consensus about "the boundaries of acceptable discourse" and where they reject it. In the case of Palestine, people who are generally on record as calling for forthrightness and honesty in the demand for justice in political discourse, who criticize a false "pragmatism" oriented toward the corporate media and academic political consultants and who question generalizing statements about popular consensus, suddenly become believers in pragmatism and the limits of what the discourse will allow. An interview with Noam Chomsky published on Znet under the title "Justice for Palestine?" (Znet, March 30, 2004) is an exemplary contribution to this genre of left apologetics. Since it contains so many of the arguments generally advanced to legitimize some form of continued existence for an Israeli system of colonialism and Apartheid—and to shore up rear-guard support for it among US progressives—it is worth examining in full. In general, the argument rests on two pillars:
(1) Israel’s history of colonial occupation and expansion must be separated from all other colonial histories as a special case and special consideration must be given to Zionist colonial settlers as a historically vulnerable group;
2) Since this "historically vulnerable group" also has massive military power, nuclear weapons, and U.S. military and economic support, calling for an end to the colonial regime is unrealistic; it only hurts the colonized, and should be redirected to more useful activities.
full article
rootsie on 08.28.04 @ 12:27 PM CST [
link]
Cops bust bike protest
by Derek Rose and Maki Becker
NY Daily NewsManhattan was spin city last night as 5,000 activists on bicycles swarmed city streets and snarled traffic during a protest of the upcoming Republican National Convention.
At least 264 riders were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct for blocking intersections near Madison Square Garden and in the East Village, police said.
The arrests marked the first real confrontation between cops and the thousands of protesters who have descended on New York ahead of the convention, which starts Monday.
"The cops said, 'Get out of here!' and I was trying to get out and I was cuffed," complained one busted bicyclist who identified himself as Keith from Brooklyn.
At first, police seemed willing to allow the protesters to have the run of the road as they zigzagged up and down Manhattan from Union Square.
But as the cyclists blocked the intersection of W. 34th St. and Seventh Ave. at the Garden, police began arresting demonstrators.
Many more were collared later at Second Ave. around E. 10th St., near St. Marks Church, which was hosting an after-party for the bicyclists.
"The cops are coming! Move out!" bicyclists screamed to each other as they made their way down Second Ave., hurling their bikes over the church fence in a desperate bid for sanctuary.
"They just all came to a stop," said Reggie Lakew, 28, a gift coordinator from Roosevelt Island, who saw the cyclists as they approached E. 10th St. "Everyone picked up their bikes over their heads and started cheering. Some sat down in the street. The cops surrounded them in a line and they were picking them off from the back and arresting them."
Some witnesses said the arrests in the Village began when someone tossed some spaghetti at a cop.
"This whole thing is about peace," said one cuffed and disgruntled biker who identified himself as Jesse from Brooklyn. "I don't have a gripe with the police. I have a gripe with the RNC, although the cops were pretty rough."
Cops slapped plastic cuffs on the protesters' wrists while other officers snapped Polaroid photos of the detainees in what appeared to be bid to head off allegations of police brutality.
Two busloads of protesters were taken from the scene to a temporary jail on the West Side Highway while a flatbed truck was piled high with their confiscated bikes.
"They're trying to set the tone for the next week," suggested Annette Wilcox, 47, as she watched the protesters being hauled off. "If you sneeze the wrong way, they're going to arrest you."
A crowd three blocks deep gathered around the protesters last night, chanting, "Let them go!" as a helicopter hovered overhead.
But police said they had warned the riders for weeks they would be arrested if they blocked traffic.
"They were blocking intersections all along the way, backing up traffic," said top NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. "I personally witnessed several ambulances that couldn't get through. They had their lights and sirens on."
The ride, organized by an environmental group called Time's Up and dubbed "Critical Mass," is held in the city on the last Friday of every month but never near the scale of last night.
Thousands more protesters will take to the streets today. One group - denied its bid to rally in Central Park - is still planning to converge there today. Leaders of the ANSWER coalition have been passing out flyers informing protesters of their right to congregate in the park.
About 10,000 abortion-rights activists are expected to cross the Brooklyn Bridge in the 11 a.m. March for Women's Lives, which has a permit from the city.
Earlier yesterday, parks workers discovered the Van Cortlandt Golf Course in the Bronx, where a few GOP delegates were to play yesterday, had been vandalized with anti-Bush messages. "Extensive damage" was done to holes 15 through 18 and slogans were spray-painted on the grass, parks officials said. Repairs will cost $6,000.
The Battle for New York: A Roundup of the RNC Protests Plans democracynow.org
rootsie on 08.28.04 @ 11:42 AM CST [
link]
Rumsfeld Denies Abuses Occurred at Interrogations
by Eric Schmitt
New York TimesWASHINGTON, Aug. 27 - In his first comments on the two major investigative reports issued this week at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday mischaracterized one of their central findings about the American military's treatment of Iraqi prisoners by saying there was no evidence that prisoners had been abused during interrogations.
The reports, one by a panel Mr. Rumsfeld had appointed and one by three Army generals, made clear that some abuses occurred during interrogations, that others were intended to soften up prisoners who were to be questioned, and that many intelligence personnel involved in the interrogations were implicated in the abuses. The reports were issued Tuesday and Wednesday.
But on Thursday, in an interview with a radio station in Phoenix, Mr. Rumsfeld, who was traveling outside Washington this week, said, "I have not seen anything thus far that says that the people abused were abused in the process of interrogating them or for interrogation purposes."
full article
rootsie on 08.28.04 @ 11:20 AM CST [
link]
Did Kissinger Tolerate Rights Abuses in Argentina?
by Diana Jean Schemo
New York TimesWASHINGTON, Aug. 26 - In a 1976 meeting with officials of the newly installed military junta in Argentina, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger raised no protest against human rights violations that were the start of Argentina's "dirty war," according to a newly declassified document from United States government archives.
The document, obtained by the nonprofit National Security Archive under the federal Freedom of Information Act, is a 13-page memorandum on an hourlong meeting between Mr. Kissinger and Adm. César Augusto Guzzetti, the foreign Minister of Argentina, on June 10, in Santiago, Chile. The meeting, Mr. Kissinger's first with the foreign minister, occurred less than three months after the military ousted the government of Isabel Perón.
Also at the meeting were William Rogers, then under secretary for economic affairs, and Luigi Einaudi, the current assistant secretary general of the Organization of American States, who took notes at the meeting. Both men have previously denied that Mr. Kissinger privately gave any "green light" to political repression and torture in Latin America, as has Mr. Kissinger himself.
In the meeting, Admiral Guzzetti complained that his country's "main problem" was terrorism. "It is the first priority of the current government," he said, adding that the government sought, first and foremost, "to ensure the internal security of the country."
Mr. Kissinger responded: "We are aware you are in a difficult period. It is a curious time, when political, criminal and terrorist activities tend to merge without any clear separation. We understand you must establish authority."
Later, he said, "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you should get back quickly to normal procedures."
full articleOld Henry sounds like Lady Macbeth, another famous butcher with a million expedient justifications for murder who just could not get the blood off her hands.
rootsie on 08.28.04 @ 11:14 AM CST [
link]
Powell Scraps Plan to Attend Olympics Ceremonies
netscape newsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell abruptly canceled plans to attend the Olympics closing ceremonies in Athens Sunday in part because of events in Iraq and Sudan, the State Department said.
U.S. officials denied Powell changed plans because of protests against U.S. foreign policy that were dispersed when police hurled tear gas Friday at about 1,000 demonstrators headed in the direction of the U.S. Embassy in Athens.
Saturday Greek activists hoisted a massive banner saying "Powell Killer Go Home" on the Acropolis hillside towering over Athens to protest against his planned 24-hour visit.
...The Greek government, which may have been embarrassed by Powell's cancellation, said he told Molyviatis he could not come because of "pressing obligations" and that the two agreed he would visit Greece in the first half of October.
The International Olympic Committee declined to comment on Powell's decision. But an organizer of protests in Athens said it was a victory for the anti-war movement.
"Of course, the cancellation was linked to our protests," Yiannis Sifakakis told Reuters. "This is a huge victory for the anti-war movement which protested by the thousands in the streets of Athens last night.
full article
rootsie on 08.28.04 @ 11:06 AM CST [
link]
FBI Probes if Official Spied for Israel
by Curt Anderson
Guardian UKWASHINGTON (AP) - In a spy investigation that could strain U.S.-Israeli relations and muddy the Bush administration's Middle East policy, the FBI is investigating whether a Pentagon analyst fed to Israel secret materials about White House deliberations on Iran.
No arrests have been made, said two federal law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation. A third law enforcement official, also speaking anonymously, said an arrest in the case could come as early as next week.
The officials refused to identify the Pentagon employee under investigation but said the person is an analyst in the office of Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, the Pentagon's No. 3 official.
The link to Feith's office also could prove politically sensitive for the Bush administration.
Feith is an influential aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld who works on sensitive policy issues including U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran. Feith's office includes a cadre assigned specifically to work on Iran.
He also oversaw the Pentagon's defunct Office of Special Plans, which critics said fed policy-makers uncorroborated prewar intelligence on President Saddam Hussein's Iraq, especially involving purported ties with the al-Qaida terror network. Pentagon officials have said the office was a small operation that provided fresh analysis on existing intelligence.
full article
rootsie on 08.28.04 @ 03:11 AM CST [
link]
Prison in the Cards: Many black men face a rough new rite of passage
By Silja J.A. Talvi
In These TimesAccording to two recent research studies, the path that awaits young, undereducated African-American men is more likely to lead them to prison than anywhere else.
In fact, with the expansion of the nation’s sprawling prison industrial complex since the 1980s, things have gotten far, far worse for black men everywhere.
Consider that in 1954—the year that the Supreme Court weighed in favor of desegregation with their Brown v. Board of Education decision—an estimated 98,000 African-Americans sat behind bars. Today, that figure stands at 884,500, or nine times the number of black men and women incarcerated at the advent of the Civil Rights movement.
Given current trends, one of every three African-American men born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime. According to the authors of The Sentencing Project’s recent report, “Schools and Prisons: Fifty Years After Brown v. Board of Education,” the situation is largely attributable to the War on Drugs, particularly the grossly disparate crack and powder cocaine federal sentencing guidelines. Despite a U.S. Sentencing Commission recommendation to fully eliminate such sentencing differentials, these guidelines have been supported by both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Imprisonment is now so common for young men of color that it serves as a veritable rite of passage. And no community has been as badly impacted as African-American inner city neighborhoods, leading to a phenomenon that many sociologists have begun to call the “mass incarceration” of young, low-income black men.
“American society loses the contribution of those men going to prison, in their roles as parents, workers, and citizens,” says Professor Bruce Western, professor of sociology at Princeton University.
Along with University of Washington sociology professor Becky Pettit, Western recently co-authored an extensive research study, “Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration,” which was first published in the American Sociological Review. Their study, conducted over a period of several years, demonstrates conclusively that African-American men are now more likely to end up in prison than to earn a bachelor’s degree or even serve in the military.
“I think the findings also indicate an institutional failure,” says Western. “The idea of universal rights of citizenship, social membership, is a central part of American political culture, yet mass incarceration has systematically limited the full participation of low-education black men in American society. Democracy and civil society are diminished and that is a collective loss.”
Pettit and Western’s dramatic findings further demonstrate that fully 60 percent of African-American male high-school dropouts born between 1965 and 1969 ended up doing time in prison by 1999.
full article
rootsie on 08.28.04 @ 02:48 AM CST [
link]
Friday, August 27th
Sexed-up reports, pressure on the UN ... here we go again
Jonathan Steele: US claims over Iran's nuclear programme sound eerily familiar
Guardian UKHistory is beginning to repeat itself, this time over Iran. Just two years after the notorious Downing Street dossier on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction and the first efforts to get United Nations approval for war, Washington is trying to create similar pressures for action against Iran.
The ingredients are well-known: sexed-up intelligence material which puts the target country in the worst possible light; moves to get the UN to declare it in "non- compliance", thereby claiming justification for going in unilaterally even if the UN gives no support for invasion; and at the back of the whole brouhaha, a clique of American neoconservatives whose real agenda is regime change.
full article
rootsie on 08.27.04 @ 03:06 PM CST [
link]
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow": Thirty-One Years and Counting Inside the Belly of the Beast
by Veronza Bowers Jr.
counterpunch.orgI send each and every one of you my very warmest greeting from 31 years deep inside of the Belly of the Beast.
As you know, I'm a former member of the original Black Panther Party, and even though government officials claim that there are no political prisoners in this country's prisons and jails, it's simply not true. Having already "served" over three decades in continuous custody in federal prison, I'm one of the longest held political prisoners in the U.S. of A. There are quite a number of us scattered about & but that's a very long story.
Picture this in your mind ... if you dare:
full article
rootsie on 08.27.04 @ 03:01 PM CST [
link]
Thursday, August 26th
Pinochet is stripped of immunity by court
Independent UKThe Supreme Court of Chile yesterday stripped Augusto Pinochet, the country's former military dictator, of his immunity from prosecution - opening the way for him to be charged with human rights abuses and the alleged death and disappearance of more than 3,000 people.
The court in Santiago, the capital, voted 9-8 to lift the immunity protecting the former president, overruling its own previous decisions that the 88-year-old was too physically and mentally ill to face prosecution. Two years ago, court-appointed doctors determined that General Pinochet had a mild case of dementia, used a pacemaker and suffered from diabetes and arthritis. He has had at least three mild strokes since 1998.
full article
rootsie on 08.26.04 @ 07:52 PM CST [
link]
Nearly 36 Million Americans Live in Poverty
myway.comWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some 1.3 million Americans slid into poverty in 2003 as the ranks of the poor rose 4 percent to 35.9 million, with children and blacks worse off than most, the U.S. government said on Thursday in a report sure to fuel Democratic criticism of President Bush.
Despite the economic recovery, the percentage of the U.S. population living in poverty rose for the third straight year to 12.5 percent -- the highest since 1998 -- from 12.1 percent in 2002, the Census Bureau said in its annual poverty report. The widely cited scorecard on the nation's economy showed one-third of those in poverty were children.
The number of U.S. residents without health care coverage also rose by 1.4 million last year to 45 million, the highest level since 1999, and incomes were essentially stagnant, the Census Bureau said.
The poverty line is set at an annual income of $9,573 or less for an individual, or $18,660 for a family of four with two children. Under that measure, a family would spend about a third of its income on food.
full article
rootsie on 08.26.04 @ 07:44 PM CST [
link]
Judge Charged After Calling Unwed Mom 'Disgrace To Society'
local6.comORLANDO, Fla. -- A judicial panel has charged an Orange County judge with chastising a deputy sheriff who had a child out of wedlock, saying she was a "disgrace to society," "had no morals," and her child was "a bastard."
Judge Alan C. Todd, a judge for 14 years, was charged with making a series of "rude, intemperate and demeaning comments," according to the six-page notice released Wednesday by the state Judicial Qualifications Commission.
After discovering in January that Orange County Deputy Sheriff Mindy Hood was an unwed mother, Todd told her "it is acceptable for a male to have sex before marriage, but if a female does so, she is not respected and considered a tramp," according to the notice.
He also said Hood's family "obviously had no morals," the notice said.
Chandler Muller, the judge's attorney, said he couldn't comment on the specific allegations because of judicial rules, but said Todd was a respected judge with the full support of the legal community.
According to the notice, Todd also referred to another woman deputy as a "deputite" and said the only "real deputy" assigned to his courtroom was a man, the notice said.
Todd asked detectives in 2001 if a female courthouse administrator "was taking good care of the detectives." The detectives said she was and he responded, "Well, that's what the men's bathroom wall says ... I just wanted to make sure," the notice said.
The notice also alleges that Todd said: Baptists "think there is no sin in the world and have no morals"; Pastors and priests shouldn't marry a woman that has children out of wedlock or couple that has been living together, because those actions are morally wrong and sinful; and children raised in single-family homes normally go to jail as adults.
full article
rootsie on 08.26.04 @ 07:40 PM CST [
link]
Mark Thatcher 'was planning Texas move'
Guardian UKSir Mark Thatcher was planning a move from South Africa to Texas when he was arrested over alleged involvement in a coup plot, a South African prosecutor said today.
Margaret Thatcher's son is under house arrest and facing the possibility of 15 years in prison after being accused over an alleged plot to overthrow the government of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea.
The 51-year-old, who denies the charge, was arrested at his Cape Town home early yesterday, and appeared in court in the city later that day.
Makhosini Nkosi, a spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority, today said: "It does appear that he was planning to leave the country.
"The house was on the market, he had disposed of some of the cars, and there were suitcases around the house which indicated they were planning to leave. He did confirm he was planning to relocate to Texas."
full articleA senior politician's son is accused of attempting to profit from African oil. Sound familiar? Ros Taylor recalls the troubles of Jean-Christophe Mitterrand Guardian UKMark Thatcher is not the only scion of a European political dynasty to be dogged by accusations that he tried to profit from African oil.
Four years ago, Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the son of France's former president, was arrested on charges of helping to traffic hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of Russian arms to Angola in the mid-1990s, when the country was in the grip of a brutal and protracted civil war.
He was released in January 2001 after his mother, Danielle Mitterrand, raised five million francs (roughly £500,000) in bail- a sum she angrily referred to as a "ransom" - and the French court dropped its investigation a few months later on a legal technicality.
But "Angolagate" is still under investigation. Mr Mitterrand was arrested again in June this year and questioned about a fish-processing business he set up in Mauritania. Judge Philippe Courroye, who Mr Mitterrand accuses of conducting a vendetta against him and trying to sully the name of his family, suspects the factory may have provided a cover for money laundering. Mr Mitterrand insists he was simply trying to revive Mauritania's economy.
full articleMauritania, Angola, Equitorial Guinea...oil and natural gas. It's noblesse oblige you know...
rootsie on 08.26.04 @ 07:32 PM CST [
link]
US Doubtful on 13, 000 More UN Troops for Congo
ReutersUNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Washington is unlikely to support fully a U.N. appeal for more than 13,000 additional troops for the troubled U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo but no decision has been made, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. decision has been made, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has recommended that the U.N. Security Council more than double the size of the mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo to 23,900 troops from its current authorized ceiling of 10,800.
Diplomats said there was a consensus in the 15-nation council that more troops were needed to keep Congo's shaky peace on track after a five-year civil war that killed more than 3 million people, most through disease and hunger.
But with demand for peacekeepers soaring and the U.S. budget drowning in red ink, U.S. envoy Stuart Holliday said Washington was focusing on the vast central African nation's troubled East, where armed groups and sporadic fighting remain a problem well after a 1999 peace agreement.
``I think it would be very difficult in this current climate to contemplate that full amount, but nothing has been ruled out,'' Holliday said.
``We think the issue is strengthening in the East, and as we look at what kind of size, we would contemplate we'll be pulling numbers from the secretary-general's reportlooking carefully at them,'' he told reporters following a closed-door council meeting called to discuss Annan's views.
The Congo mission will cost $746 million this year and Washington pays about a quarter of the U.N. peacekeeping tab.
While Annan offered no estimate of the cost of the additional peacekeepers, diplomats put the figure at $160 million or more, which would make the Congo force the most costly U.N. mission.
``There is a concern (in Washington) that resources are being overstretched, and we have a number of new missions on line,'' including a peace-monitoring force expected to be dispatched to Sudan later this year, Holliday said.
Are we so accustomed to hearing this kind of garbage from the US government that we are unable to recognize how insane it is?
rootsie on 08.26.04 @ 09:53 AM CST [
link]
British Lawmakers Plan to Impeach Blair
ReutersLONDON (Reuters) - A group of British lawmakers plan to invoke a parliamentary procedure last used more than 150 years ago to impeach Prime Minister Tony Blair over the war in Iraq, British newspapers said on Thursday.
Eleven members of parliament (MPs), mainly Welsh and Scottish nationalists who opposed the war and two opposition Conservatives, want to use the dated practice to force Blair to defend himself at Westminster over his decision to go to war.
rootsie on 08.26.04 @ 09:53 AM CST [
link]
Maximum factionalism is in the US long-term interest
Supporters of Sistani Fired Upon, 20 Dead: WitnessReutersFiled at 4:40 a.m. ET
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Supporters of Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani were fired upon in the town of Kufa on Thursday and 20 people were killed, a Reuters photographer said from the scene.
The photographer said he had seen 20 bodies under blankets. It was unclear who fired on the supporters, who had been marching to Najaf, carrying pictures of Sistani.
Iraqi Sadr Supporters Attacked Near Najaf-Witnesses Reuters Filed at 4:15 a.m. ET
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Supporters of rebel Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were fired on as they marched from the town of Kufa to the city of Najaf on Thursday and several were wounded, witnesses at the scene said.
Wounded people lay on the road and ambulances ferried them away. Sadr has called on his supporters to march on Najaf on Thursday.
It was not clear who launched the attack. Earlier, mortars hit a mosque in Kufa where hundreds of Sadr supporters had gathered, killing at least 25 and wounding 60.
rootsie on 08.26.04 @ 09:48 AM CST [
link]
Wednesday, August 25th
Distraught father torches self in Marine van
msn.comHOLLYWOOD, Fla. - A distraught father who had just been told his Marine son was killed in combat in Iraq set himself on fire in a Marine Corps van and suffered severe burns Wednesday, police said.
Three U.S. Marines went to a house in Hollywood and told the parents of a 20-year-old Marine that their son died had Tuesday in Najaf, police said.
The father, Carlos Arredondo, 44, then walked into the open garage, picked up a can of gasoline, a propane tank and a lighting device, police Capt. Tony Rode said. He smashed the van’s window with the propane tank and doused the van with gasoline before setting it ablaze.
“The father was in disbelief, same as any of us would be after hearing this kind of news,” Rode said. “But then the father basically loses it. You can only imagine what this father was going through. He snapped to say the least.”
Television news stations identified the son as Pfc. Alexander Arredondo. Rode did not confirm that. Calls to the Marine Corps were not immediately returned.
Police said that despite the Marines’ efforts to stop him, Arredondo set the van and himself on fire. The Marines pulled him out of the burning vehicle and put out the flames, police said.
“We have not seen this type of reaction. Every reaction is negative; it’s the loss of a loved one,” said Marines spokesman Maj. Scott Mack. “I don’t think any of us are qualified to go into the depths of the mind and truly anticipate how somebody is going to react.”
Arredondo was listed in serious condition with severe burns to his arms and legs in the burn unit of Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital. Hollywood is about 20 miles north of Miami.
Rode said it was too early to discuss possible charges against Arredondo.
“We’ll see how he recovers before doing anything,” Rode said.
U.S. forces in Najaf have been battling for nearly five months against militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
rootsie on 08.25.04 @ 08:36 PM CST [
link]
Slaughter of the innocents
Independent UKThe international community claimed to have learnt the lessons of Rwanda. Yet 10 years on, the terrible cycle of ethnic violence has started again - in neighbouring Burundi.
In the wreckage, the torn-out pages of a child's book, a burnt shoe and a small pile of battered cooking pots. A team of people arrived and started to pull down the charred remains of the tents and pick their way through the possessions of the refugees who had once lived at the Gatumba transit camp in Burundi. Their job was to dismantle what little was left.
Large tents made of UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) green plastic sheeting flapped in the wind. In some places the plastic was blackened by smoke, in others it was all but destroyed. Scattered on the ground were the white masks and gloves dropped by the charity staff who had gathered up the dead into body bags. The men worked in silence, and the smell of charred wood and dead bodies still lingered in the air.
Just over a week has passed since 160 Banyamulenge refugees were killed in this desolate transit camp, which lies under the shadow of the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) Kivu mountains. They had come here to the Burundian border seeking respite from the war that continues to ravage the DRC, hoping if not for peace then at least for a temporary rest from the horrors they have grown up with for most of their lives. They found instead that war cannot be outrun.
rootsie on 08.25.04 @ 08:27 PM CST [
more..]
US seeks 'coalition' to force Zimbabwe regime change
Independent UKThe United States has called for the building of a "coalition of the willing" to push for regime change to end the crisis in Zimbabwe. The new American ambassador to South Africa, Jendayi Frazer, said quiet diplomacy pursued by South Africa and other African countries in its dealings with the Zimbabwe president needed a review because there was no evidence it was working. She said her country would be willing to be part of a coalition if invited.
The US could not act on its own, "put the boot on the ground" and give President Robert Mugabe 48 hours to go as requested by beleaguered Zimbaweans but the US would be willing to work in a coalition with other countries to return Zimbabwe to democracy.
Ms Frazer, in a meeting with journalists in Johannesburg yesterday, said: "There is clearly a crisis in Zimbabwe and everyone needs to state that fact. The economy is in a free fall. There is a continuing repressive environment. There needs to be a return to democracy."
She said the US believed that South Africa could play a positive role in returning Zimbabwe to democracy and that it had the means to do so. "It [South Africa] has the most leverage probably of any other country in the sub-region and should therefore take a leadership role," said Ms Frazer, a protege of President George Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
full article
rootsie on 08.25.04 @ 08:16 PM CST [
link]
Police use teargas at Masai rally
Guardian UKKenyan police fired teargas to disperse about 100 Masai tribesmen marching to the British high commission to demand the return of land they say is due to them after a colonial-era treaty expired this month.
The Kenyan lands minister said a 1904 treaty giving ancestral Masai land to British settlers had yet to expire. The treaty says it "shall be enduring as long as the Masai as a race shall exist", Amos Kimunya told reporters. "They're just misguided," he said.
Police intercepted about 100 Masai, wearing traditional bright red robes, as they tried to deliver a petition to the British high commissioner, Edward Clay. An earlier attempt to reach the building was rebuffed on August 13.
On Saturday police shot and killed a 70-year-old and wounded four other Masai grazing cattle on private land they say is theirs. The Masai have vowed to take their case to Kenyan and international courts.
full article
rootsie on 08.25.04 @ 08:10 PM CST [
link]
Thatcher's Son Accused of Coup Plot in Equatorial Guinea
New York Times/APCAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) -- Mark Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was arrested and charged Wednesday with helping to finance a foiled coup attempt in oil rich Equatorial Guinea.
Thatcher, a 51-year-old businessman who has lived in South Africa since 2002, was arrested at his Cape Town home and brought before the Wynberg Magistrate's Court to be charged with violating South Africa's Foreign Military Assistance Act.
``We have evidence, credible evidence, and information that he was involved in the attempted coup,'' said police spokesman Sipho Ngwema. ``We refuse that South Africa be a springboard for coups in Africa and elsewhere.''
Thatcher was placed under house arrest and has until Sept. 8 to post $297,460 bail.
Police with search warrants raided Thatcher's home in the upscale suburb of Constantia shortly after 7 a.m. local time Wednesday. He was held there while investigators searched his records and computers for evidence linking him to the alleged plot to overthrow Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang, which authorities claim was foiled in March.
full articleQ&A: the Equatorial Guinea 'coup' Guardian UKWhat happened in Equatorial Guinea?
In the event, not much - the alleged participants of the attempted coup against the country's president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema M'basogo, were detained at Harare airport in Zimbabwe in March.
Sixty-four men were arrested on board a plane apparently en route to Equatorial Guinea, although they were unarmed. Two days later a further 15 men were arrested, allegedly an advanced party and believed to be led by a South African man called Nick du Toit. Two separate trials of the men are taking place, one in Zimbabwe and one in Equatorial Guinea. One of the suspects, a German man, died in prison in Equatorial Guinea after what Amnesty International described as suspected torture.
Why would there be a coup?
The underlying motive is most likely connected to the discovery of oil in the formerly impoverished state. Production has increased tenfold since the mid-1990s, making Equatorial Guinea the third largest oil power in sub-Saharan Africa.
rootsie on 08.25.04 @ 11:18 AM CST [
link]
E.P.A. Says Mercury Taints Fish Across U.S.
New York TimesWASHINGTON, Aug. 24 - The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday that fish in virtually all of the nation's lakes and rivers were contaminated with mercury, a highly toxic metal that poses health risks for pregnant women and young children.
Michael O. Leavitt, the E.P.A. administrator, drew his conclusion from the agency's latest annual survey of fish advisories, which showed that 48 states - all but Wyoming and Alaska - issued warnings about mercury last year. That compared with 44 states in 1993, when the surveys were first conducted.
The latest survey also shows that 19 states, including New York, have now put all their lakes and rivers under a statewide advisory for fish consumption.
full article
rootsie on 08.25.04 @ 11:11 AM CST [
link]
Saving Time-and-a-Half
New York Times There is no doubt the nature of America's work force has changed a great deal since the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, but the Bush administration has cynically relied on this fact to overhaul the law's overtime provisions in a manner most likely to hurt millions of Americans. At a time of stagnant wages and a weak labor market - when workers need more security, not less - fewer people are likely to receive overtime pay when they put in more than 40 hours a week on the job.
That is because new rules that went into effect this week take an expansive view of the nation's managerial class, which is ineligible for overtime pay. If you are a factory employee or a retail store supervisor who leads a small team of fellow workers, for instance, the new rules deny you overtime if you can merely recommend - not carry out - the hiring and firing of employees.
Business groups want the new rules because they say they need to cut down on the litigation-inducing uncertainty of who is eligible for overtime. But the Bush administration could have provided more clarity without necessarily stacking the deck against working Americans. The administration goes so far as to say that its changes will expand the pool of people eligible for overtime, but research by liberal and labor advocates persuasively argue that the changes would cut the number, by as many as 6 million.
New York Times
rootsie on 08.25.04 @ 11:05 AM CST [
link]
Tuesday, August 24th
Black and Indian Power: The Meaning of Hugo Chávez
by William Loren Katz
counterpunch.orgTo the sputtering fury of a Bush administration who has repeatedly conspired with Venezuela's elite to drive Hugo Chavez from power, the Black Indian President of this oil-rich nation has scored a decisive 59% victory over a recall effort. Chavez now sits more comfortably than ever atop a fourth of the world oil supplies -- equal to that of Iraq -- and he supplies a fifth of US oil needs. In addition, he is current leader of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC. George W. Bush would prefer his friends in Saudi Arabia rather than Chavez set global oil prices. US attacks on Chavez caricature him as a tyrant in the class of Saddam Hussein, or a Marxist, or a ferociously anti-American clone of Castro. Actually, his populist uprising springs from multicultural grass roots that pre-date the foreign invasion of the Americas that began in 1492.
Like four-fifths of Venezuelans, Chavez was born of poor Black and Indian parents. Since the days of Columbus descendants of the Spanish conquistadores have supplied the governing classes of the Americas, and have denied indiginous people a say in their future. Chavez represents a strong challenge.
Chavez is not only proud of his biracial legacy, but has begun to use oil revenues to help the poor of all colors improve their education and economic standing. He also flatly rejects Bush administration efforts to isolate Cuba, counts Castro a friend, and has repeatedly accused the US of meddling in his country and around the world.
Chavez rules a country where three percent of the population, mostly of white European descent, own 77% of the land. In recent decades millions of hungry peasants have drifted into Caracas and other cities, and live in barrios of cardboard shacks and open sewers. Chavez has begun to transfer fields from giant unused or abandoned haciendas to peasant hands, and as landlords have responded with howls of alarm, he has promised further distributions.
full articleLong after slavery, inequities remain Miami HeraldLIMA - The cover of the 2004 Lima phone book features a white doctor, a white nurse, a white chef, a white man on the phone, two white men doing home repairs -- and a black bellhop carrying luggage.
Jorge Ramírez winced as he examined the cover.
''This only perpetuates racism in Peru,'' said Ramírez, a self-described Afro-Peruvian who heads a civil rights group in Lima. ``It puts blacks below everyone else.''
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Peru, and a few determined Afro-Peruvians are using the occasion to tell their countrymen that racism is alive and well here, in ways both similar to and different from racism in the United States.
Their counterparts throughout Latin America tell a similar story as blacks throughout the region are increasingly expressing black pride and creating political movements -- 50 years after the civil rights movement mushroomed in the United States.
Blacks in Latin America report regular acts of racism: that whites sometimes cross the street to avoid them, that waiters at exclusive restaurants ignore them and that security guards often follow them through store aisles while they shop.
Few countries -- Brazil being a major exception -- even keep separate socioeconomic statistics on blacks, which effectively hides their lagging status, said Josefina Stubbs, a World Bank official.
All Latin American presidents are white or brown-skinned, as are the overwhelming majority of their Cabinet ministers and the leading businessmen throughout the region.
But unlike the United States, where anyone with a drop of black blood was once legally considered black, racial distinctions in Latin America are harder to pin down. Also unlike the United States, Latin American governments have not systematically practiced racial segregation or deliberately repressed their black citizens.
''Racism here is more subtle,'' said Rafael Santa Cruz, a black actor who in 1991 portrayed the first successful black professional in a Peruvian soap opera when he played a doctor. ``In Peru, you're black if you look black. The darker you are, the lower you are socially and economically.''
full article
rootsie on 08.24.04 @ 08:27 PM CST [
link]
Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi: What is so radical about Iraq's rebel cleric?
Independent UKThe standoff in Najaf has cast the spotlight on the rebel Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr. While the Western media cannot resist calling him "radical", it is in fact very difficult to find any basis for this description.
He has been consistent in his staunch opposition to the occupation of Iraq. "There can be no politics under occupation, no freedom under occupation, no democracy under occupation," he said this month. What is so radical about that? If his Mehdi Army were patrolling and bombing London or New York, I would be astonished to find media descriptions of US and British resistance as "radical".
His opposition to foreign occupation cannot be explained away as support for Saddam Hussein, who persecuted the Shias so ruthlessly. Sadr and his family were vehemently opposed to the dictator and his regime, and for this they paid a heavy price - Sadr's uncle was executed in 1980, and his father and two brothers were shot dead in February 1999.
Although Sadr's opposition to occupation has been consistent, he only turned to armed resistance more than a year after the invasion. His sermons previously called for non-violent resistance.
While death and insecurity reigned after Baghdad fell, Sadr supporters took control of many aspects of life in the Shia sectors, appointing clerics to mosques, guarding hospitals, collecting garbage, operating orphanages, and supplying food to Iraqis hit by the hardships of war. I cannot imagine anything less "radical" than collecting garbage especially since the occupation authorities failed in their responsibility under international law to provide such basic and vital services.
full articleThere's more to Sadr than meets the eye Guardian UK
rootsie on 08.24.04 @ 08:11 PM CST [
link]
The Vietnam Passion
New York TimesI'm launching a major investigation into whether the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth organization is being secretly financed by the Kerry campaign. For today that organization begins airing ads drawing attention to John Kerry's 1971 testimony against the Vietnam War.
If voters see that testimony, they will see a young man arguing passionately for a cause. They will see a young man willing to take risks and boldly state his beliefs. Whether they agree or not, they will see in John Kerry a man of conviction.
Many young people, who don't have an emotional investment in endlessly refighting the conflicts of the late 1960's, might take a look at that man and decide they like him. They might not realize that man no longer exists.
That conviction politician was still visible as late as the 1980's. When Senator Kerry opposed aid to the contras, or took on Oliver North, he did it with the same forthright fire.
But then in the early 1990's, things began to evolve. First, Kerry relied on his post-Vietnam convictions and ended up casting the vote against the first Iraq war that threatened his political future.
Then the political climate changed. Bill Clinton came to power and suddenly the old Vietnam-era liberalism was no longer in vogue. The future belonged to triangulating New Democrats. Then Newt Gingrich came in and the frame of debate shifted further to the right. John Kerry was now in a position to run for national office - and thus needed to be acceptable to a national constituency.
full article
rootsie on 08.24.04 @ 08:02 PM CST [
link]
Saddam was no defender of women, but they have faced new miseries and more violence since he fell
Guardian UKWomen in Iraq endured untold hardships and difficulties during the past three decades of the Ba'ath regime. Although some basic rights for women, such as the right to education, employment, divorce in civil courts and custody over kids, were endorsed in the Personal Status Code, some of these legal rights were routinely violated.
The Ba'ath regime's "faithfulness campaign", an act of terrorism against women that included the summary beheading of scores of those accused of prostitution, is just one example of its brutality against women.
However, it is now almost a year after the war, which was supposed to bring "liberation" to Iraqis. Rather than an improvement in the quality of women's lives, what we have seen is widespread violence, and an escalation of violence against women.
From the start of the occupation, rape, abduction, "honour" killings and domestic violence have became daily occurrences. The Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq (Owfi) has informally surveyed Baghdad, and now knows of 400 women who were raped in the city between April and August last year.
A lack of security and proper policing have led to chaos and to growing rates of crime against women. Women can no longer go out alone to work, or attend schools or universities. An armed male relative has to guard a woman if she wants to leave the house.
Girls and women have become a cheap commodity to be traded in post-Saddam Iraq. Owfi knows of cases where virgin girls have been sold to neighbouring countries for $200, and non-virgins for $100.
full article
rootsie on 08.24.04 @ 07:56 PM CST [
link]
Air pollution 'masking global warming'
Independent UKThe true threat from global warming may have been masked by air pollution, a leading scientist warned today.
Aerosols - particles of pollution in the air - help to cool the earth but, as they diminish in coming decades, global warming may be found to accelerate, says Meinrat Andreae, of the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, Germany.
Professor Andreae will tell a conference in London today that warming will be especially fast if aerosol "cooling" has hidden a higher climate sensitivity than is generally assumed.
"These arguments suggest that there is a considerable chance that climate change in the 21st century will follow the upper extremes of current... estimates, and may even exceed them.
"This would have truly grave consequences for the Earth environment and human society, and argues for immediate and radical reductions of greenhouse gas emissions."
full article
rootsie on 08.24.04 @ 07:51 PM CST [
link]
The archbishop, the death squad and the 24-year wait for justice
Independent UKIt is a warm Monday evening in spring and in the Chapel of Divine Providence in El Salvador's capital city, San Salvador, a small, bespectacled priest is performing Mass. Having completed his sermon, the priest is standing close to the altar, blessing the wafer discs that represent the body of Christ.
From the rear of the church there is the sound of a single shot. The priest crumples to the floor of the chapel fatally wounded, blood seeping from a small hole in his chest and soaking his vestments. Outside the small chapel, a bearded man armed with a .223 high-velocity weapon, is seen in the back seat of a red, four-door Volkswagen which then drives away.
The priest was Oscar Arnulfo Romero, the Archbishop of El Salvador and an outspoken champion of the poor, and he was assassinated by right-wing paramilitaries, on 24 March 1980. Though the identity of the assassin remains unknown, many of the alleged conspirators have long been identified and live on untouched, a sore that has continued to fester within Salvadoran society.
Now, more than 24 years later, a court in California will today hear evidence against one of those accused of orchestrating the murder of Archbishop Romero. That man, Alvaro Rafael Saravia, the right-hand man to the leader of El Salvador's death squads of the 1980s, has lived in the US for the past 19 years but has not been seen in public since papers were filed against him last September. The hearing will be held in his absence.
The civil action is designed to establish Mr Saravia's alleged complicity in the killings and seek damages against him. Archbishop Romero often spoke critically of the US, which supported the right-wing government of El Salvador and those of other Latin American countries in their so-called "dirty wars", training and funding paramilitary forces.
Among those trained by the US was Mr Saravia's boss, the late Major Roberto D'Aubuisson who is said to have ordered the archbishop's assassination. He studied at the notorious School of the Americas, a US military college in Fort Benning, Georgia, which for decades taught counter-insurgency to more than 60,000 cadets from Latin American regimes, It was renamed in 2001 after a series of scandals, including the discovery there of stacks of torture manuals.
full article
rootsie on 08.24.04 @ 07:46 PM CST [
link]
Israel Urged to Change Stand on Geneva Convention
ReutersJERUSALEM (Reuters) - Hoping to avoid sanctions, Israel's attorney general wants Israel to consider applying to Palestinians the Fourth Geneva Convention safeguarding the treatment of occupied people, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
It was another sign of emerging Israeli disquiet about the risk of international sanctions following a World Court decision in July that declared illegal its West Bank barrier built across Palestinian farmland.
Israel has said previously the Geneva Convention's clauses on occupation do not apply to it because Jordanian and Egyptian control over the West Bank and Gaza before 1967 was not internationally recognized.
Some 3.6 million Palestinians live in the two territories which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel says it does its best to heed humanitarian standards in Palestinian areas but Palestinians dispute this, pointing to Jewish settlements, roadblocks and other Israeli controls.
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz last week urged the right-wing government to reroute its barrier swiftly to minimize the risk of sanctions, and the High Court gave it 30 days to issue a statement on the ramifications of the World Court decision.
A Justice Ministry spokesman said Mazuz now wanted the government to ``deeply consider'' the possibility of adopting the 1949 Convention, which forbids abuses of civilians in conflict zones and transferring citizens of an occupying power onto captured territory.
full article
rootsie on 08.24.04 @ 07:41 PM CST [
link]
Parents Divided Over Practice of ‘Hot Saucing’ as a Form of Discipline
abc news.com — The practice of "hot saucing" a child's tongue as a method of discipline may seem cruel to some parents, but those who regularly use the punishment say it teaches their charges valuable and long-lasting lessons.
Lisa Whelchel, who played Blair on the popular 1980s TV series Facts of Life, is an advocate and practitioner of "hot saucing." Whelchel, the author of Creative Correction: Extraordinary Ideas for Everyday Discipline, says the practice worked for her children when other disciplinary actions did not.
"It does sting and the memory stays with them so that the next time they may actually have some self-control and stop before they lie or bite or something like that," Whelchel said on ABC News' Good Morning America.
Whelchel says she would have never used hot sauce to discipline her three children if it caused lasting damage.
full articleWhat is the definition of 'long-lasting damage?' Everyone was incensed about Janet Jackson's breast at the Super Bowl, but nobody said a word about the commercial that aired that day featuring a bar of soap stuffed in a child's mouth. Children have no activist groups protesting their everyday brutalization. It is legal for a parent to physically assault his/her child as long as no marks are left. In balanced, healthy societies, parents do not assault their kids.
rootsie on 08.24.04 @ 07:36 PM CST [
link]
Monday, August 23rd
Contained Revolution
by Michael Shifter
Washington Post---Full ArticleIt's easy to interpret Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's big win at the polls as a sure sign that leftist radicalism is about to sweep the rest of Latin America. So far, though, there is little evidence to support that view.
Chavez's victory in the Aug. 15 recall referendum can be attributed to reasons unique to Venezuela. Record-high oil prices enabled Chavez to employ preelection gimmicks reflected in spectacular social spending in poor barrios. There is nothing radical about such a practice; rather, it is blatantly old-fashioned patronage politics of the sort Chavez has, ironically, often railed against. Chavez also benefited handsomely from turmoil over the U.S. Iraq policy that he so vehemently attacked.
Well this one is good for a giggle. Shifter is v.p. at Inter-American Dialogue, an outfit started in 1982 (just in time for the Contra war in Nicaragua), peopled by IMF, Council on Foreign Relations, Open Society Institute (Soros), Human Rights Watch (Soros),anti-Castro Cuban-types, and the like. As if these guys have the ultimate word on whether Chavez's Venezuela represents a 'real' revolution or not, being in the vanguard of the revolution as they are...When guys like Soros think 'revolution' (shudder), they think dirty commies, and later on in this editorial Shifter points to evidence in the fact that Chavez deals with the petroleum big boys, and thus cannot be a revolutionary. I think it's pretty subversive to use the big bucks of the capitalists to rebuild your infrastructure, rooting out the curruption and dealing with the oil companies on your own terms. He praises Lula in Brazil for promptly selling out his country. Either these guys have not caught up to the new face of Latin American anti-colonialism, or they know darned well it's revolution they're looking at, and are trying to play it down. I suspect the latter. Any country with natural resources like Venezuela can do the same, and then move on to help detox other countries with the IMF/World Bank monkeys on their back.Inter-American Dialogue Staff (i.e. Rogues' Gallery)
rootsie on 08.23.04 @ 02:46 PM CST [
link]
William Blum: Brave New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
counterpunch.org---Full ArticleThis is what the Brave New World of Iraqi Sovereignty looks like:
* US military bases remain, with more being built.
* Some 160,000 troops of the United States and its allies remain, the Americans for at least five years.
* US military commanders will continue to exercise final authority over not only these troops, but also all Iraqi police, security and army units.
* Immunity from Iraqi criminal charges for US military and contractor personnel continues.
* A giant American embassy is being built, to hold a thousand employees.
* Before his departure, the US administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer, issued a raft of edicts. The new interim government has very limited power to change these laws and regulations, one of which is an elections provision that gives a commission the power to disqualify political parties and any of the candidates they support.
* Bremer also appointed at least two dozen selected Iraqis to key government jobs with multi-year terms.
* The prime-minister, Ayad Allawi, who was chosen by Bremer, is a former (?) CIA asset. (Allawi has a vicious, ruthless background, including working with Saddam Hussein, and reportedly has personally engaged in horrible, sadistic acts as prime minister.)
* The United States retains custody of Saddam Hussein.
* The United States continues to bomb the people of Iraq and smash down their doors wherever and whenever it wishes.
rootsie on 08.23.04 @ 02:23 PM CST [
link]
Missing the Point
Washington Post----Full ArticleLAST FALL, DEFENSE Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ducked the embarrassing matter of grossly offensive, anti-Islamic remarks by Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin by asking the Defense Department's inspector general to examine his behavior. This was a ruse. The problem with Gen. Boykin's words was never the possibility that they violated this or that department regulation -- the sort of thing inspectors general are charged with investigating. The problem was that Gen. Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, was delivering himself of bigoted remarks -- generally while in uniform -- that directly undercut President Bush's repeated insistence that America's war is not against Islam generally and is not a clash of religious civilizations. By unloading the matter on the inspector general, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush avoided having to condemn the remarks forthrightly while seeming to take appropriate action.
rootsie on 08.23.04 @ 02:18 PM CST [
link]
Iran pursues 2d nuclear reactor with Russia's help
Boston Globe Full ArticleTEHRAN -- Iran said yesterday that it plans to build a second nuclear reactor with Russia's help and that at least two other European states have expressed interest in such a project, brushing aside US accusations that the Islamic state wants to build atomic weapons.
Russia is building Iran's first nuclear reactor, which was begun by West Germany but interrupted during the 1979 Islamic revolution. Damage caused to the nearly completed facility in Bushehr during Iran's 1980-88 war with Iraq also led to the postponement of its planned inauguration from 2003 to August 2006.
Despite the delays and the project's $800 million cost, Iranian nuclear officials say they want Russia to build more nuclear reactors to help generate greater amounts of electricity.
The comments yesterday reflect Iran's determination to push ahead with its nuclear program despite US and international concerns that it seeks to develop nuclear weapons.
rootsie on 08.23.04 @ 02:14 PM CST [
link]
Sunday, August 22nd
My 'Revolution' Will Not Hurt You, Chavez Tells Foes
ReutersCARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told his opponents on Sunday they should not fear his left-wing ``revolution'' after his referendum win and pledged to respect private wealth and fight corruption.
While he offered a dialogue to foes who accepted his victory in the Aug. 15 recall poll, Chavez said he would ignore opposition leaders who refused to recognize his mandate and urged other Latin American leaders to ostracize them as well.
...`All this stuff about Chavez and his hordes coming to sweep away the rich, it's a lie,'' he said. ``We have no plan to hurt you. All your rights are guaranteed, you who have large properties or luxury farms or cars.''
But he pledged to intensify social programs for the poor and proceed with reforms of Venezuela's Supreme Court and judiciary that critics say are squandering the country's oil resources and seek to consolidate his personal grip on power.
He also vowed to ``fight to the death against corruption.''
...``We cannot talk with people who don't recognize this result or the constitution ... if they want to start a rebellion in the mountains, then let them,'' said Chavez.
full articleWell I guess it all depends on whether they can get their luxury cars up the mountains, and what sort of accomodations they will receive once they arrive. This is not a 'revolution.' It's a revolution.
rootsie on 08.22.04 @ 11:02 PM CST [
link]
Focus Shifts to Kerry's Antiwar Activities in '70s
LA TimesAfter making his service in Vietnam the centerpiece of his presidential bid, Sen. John F. Kerry now finds himself defending his role as a protester of the war — the chapter of his biography that first gained him prominence but which he has discussed infrequently this year.
The new focus on the antiwar part of Kerry's past is the latest twist in a more than 30-year evolution of the role his actions during the Vietnam era have played in his political life.
Kerry used his leadership in the Vietnam protest movement as a springboard into politics, running as an antiwar candidate in his first campaign in Massachusetts — a race for the U.S. House that he lost. He also distanced himself from his military career at least once in his next five campaigns, all of which he won.
But his involvement in the peace movement receded as a key element of his political resume, as the nation's attitudes toward the Vietnam War changed.
full articleWell this is what comes of a basic lack of integrity, opportunistically highlighting certain parts of your history and trying to distance yourself from others. I know people who are in favor of Kerry because of his 'integrity' in 1971, coming home to tell the truth about the war, but what they don't see is that Kerry does not want people to remember that chapter of his life, and instead has decided that the way to win the election is to out-Republican the Republicans. Every speaker at the Dem. convention got up there and emphasized Kerry the soldier, the war hero, the guy with the cojones to stand up to those A-rabs. The Republicans have a point about Kerry's waffling. Rove and the boys set the trap, and he stepped right in. Kerry has a history of leaning whichever way the wind blows, to the point of misrepresenting himself as an Irishman to get votes in Massachusetts, where every other politician is named Kerry. If you stand on your history, you stand on all of it, or none of it is worth a damn.
rootsie on 08.22.04 @ 05:23 PM CST [
link]
Via a grave site, Spain relives harsh divisionsMany seek to dig into war's remains
by Charles M. Sennott
Boston GlobeGRANADA, Spain -- On a hillside overlooking the Sierra Nevada mountains, a gnarled olive tree and a simple granite marker stand where historians believe Spain's most celebrated 20th-century poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, was summarily executed and dumped in a communal grave.
It was August 1936 when Garcia Lorca, who romanticized the ruggedness of the landscape and the people of southern Spain in poetry and plays, and who stated, "I will always be on the side of those who have nothing," was killed by Francisco Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War.
...The effort to document the past has provided a political theme in modern Spain, a sense that if it is to progress as a modern country it must recognize injustices.
The issue is not prosecution or a formal truth and reconciliation committee, as in South Africa, Chile, and elsewhere. Spain's journey toward truth is about a "persistence of memory," to borrow a phrase from Salvador Dali's depiction of a melting clock, that has lasted through three generations.
full article Mas, como el recuerdo de la tierra, como el petreo
esplendor del metal y el silencio,
pueblo, patrio y avena, es tu victoria.
Avanta tu bandera agujerada
como tu pecho sobre las cicatrices
del tiempo y tierra.
And furthermore, like the memory of the earth, like the petrified splendor of metal and the silence,
people, motherland and fields of oats, is your victory.
Your tattered banner advances
like your breast above the scars
of time and earth.
Pablo Neruda
rootsie on 08.22.04 @ 11:35 AM CST [
link]
Saturday, August 21st
"He Must be Killed or Captured:" The "Rebel Cleric" and the Siege of Najaf
by Mike Whitney
counterpunch.org"They say freedom and democracy and yet they appoint a government. Appointment cannot agree with freedom and democracy. Rather, we are demanding with all our strength the formation of an Iraqi government and sovereignty, but not through the Americans and occupiers. They have no right to interfere with Iraqi affairs whatsoever..."
Muqtada al Sadr
"Al Sadr must be killed or captured."
General Mark Kimmet
"Shia leader Muqtada al Sadr has rejected an ultimatum to withdraw his besieged fighters...and US troops are reportedly advancing from several directions"
Al Jazeera Thurs, Aug 19
The siege of Najaf has two clearly defined objectives; disband the "al Mehdi" militia and restore the city to occupation control.
The conflict is being heralded as the "first major test" of the new provisional government of US "appointee" Ayad Allawi. Most critics conclude that if the US military backs down now the credibility of the new regime will be in shambles.
So, the siege will continue.
Early reports from Al Jazeera indicate that fighting has already resumed and that "29 casualties have been brought in from clashes in the heart of the city."
The current conflict with al Sadr has been quickly conveyed to most of the major cities in Iraq. The possibility of a widespread Shiite rebellion seems inevitable.
As journalist Robert Fisk predicted some weeks ago, "Iraq is ready to explode."
full article
rootsie on 08.21.04 @ 08:25 PM CST [
link]
The Banality of Evil
Council on Foreign Relations: Latin Expert Schneider: Chavez Victory Gives Venezuela's Populist President MomentumCFR...One would hope, given this victory, that Chavez would reach out; look for ways to incorporate part of the opposition, at the very least in consultative mechanisms; give greater space in the legislature for opposition views to be considered; and move away from the enormously polarized environment. I was there in early March. I felt as if I were in Nicaragua in the late '80s, when the entire country seemed to be divided either for or against the Sandinista president. Venezuela is a country where traditionally there's not been that kind of venomous partisan emotion. It seems to be a different country now.
Were you personally surprised by the outcome?
I was. I thought it would be much closer. I wasn't sure which side would win, but I thought it would be very, very close. I think it's worthwhile to talk about the international aspect. One of the things the Bush administration has gone after Chavez about--and it's been reciprocated in the sense that Chavez responded with a lot of anti-Bush and anti-U.S. rhetoric--is Chavez's support for Castro's leftist, populist operations in other countries, including providing sanctuary to the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist rebel group] and ELN [National Liberation Army, a rival Marxist group] along the Colombian border. Interestingly, in the weeks just prior to the referendum, Chavez again seemed to reach out and present [a] slightly different image. He met with [Colombian President Alvaro] Uribe and made some significant agreements about oil exports that would go through Colombia and allowed Colombian oil to go through Venezuelan pipelines, which was unusual. The other [issue that has strained relations with the Bush administration] is that there continues to be concern about Chavez's linkage to [Bolivian left-wing politician] Evo Morales' radical side of the Bolivian political spectrum, [and] and there are allegations about similar linkages in Peru. That's something I think people are going to watch very closely over the next couple of months.
full interviewIt's good to check in on the CFR and observe what oily rhetoric they're pumping out this time. O yes, for these are reasonable men. They speak in measured terms of the Venezuelan elite's' sad feelings of being left out, of their coup attempt, of the strikes they fomented to bring chaos, without a word of US involvement in these antics, acting as if Chavez's crushing victory is merely a mildly disappointing and baffling development in a woebegone little country. The problem is that this has all the makings of a true Bolivarian revolution, and a redemption of Simon Bolivar's valiant efforts to end European control of Latin America. And guys like this Schneider know it.
By defeating recall, Chavez inspires Left Boston Globe CARACAS, Venezuela -- By handily defeating a referendum aimed at ousting him, President Hugo Chavez has broadened his mandate and inspired left-leaning groups throughout much of Latin America.
From the snowy peaks of Bolivia to guerrilla hideouts in the Colombian jungle, Chavez's win fortified a common cause among anti-American radicals: the fight against "imperialist" economic policies that they believe Washington intends to impose on the region.
After results of Sunday's recall referendum were announced, Evo Morales, leader of Bolivia's Indian coca farmers, told The Associated Press that Chavez had become "Latin America's leader of liberation forces."
full article
rootsie on 08.21.04 @ 12:25 PM CST [
link]
EQUATORIAL GUINEA:The Dictator's Achilles' Heel
IPS NewsLegal action in Spain and the United States taking aim at secret bank accounts of President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea could become a weapon to help put an end to his 25-year dictatorship, say opposition leaders and activists from the West African nation.
MADRID, Jul 21 (IPS) - Legal action in Spain and the United States taking aim at secret bank accounts of President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea could become a weapon to help put an end to his 25-year dictatorship, say opposition leaders and activists from the West African nation.
The trials could mark the beginning of the end for a dictatorship ”which has turned the country into one enormous prison,” Celestino Okenve, head of the Madrid-based non-governmental group Equatorial Guinea Solidarity Forum (FSGE), which will be lodging a lawsuit in the Spanish courts, told IPS.
full articleWell this 'non-governmental group' is clearly working in concert with the Spanish government and the oil giant who tried to pull off a coup in E.G. a few weeks ago. Watch those 'NGO's'... Dictators are unacceptable to the US only when they're horning in on oil and gas profits.
rootsie on 08.21.04 @ 11:56 AM CST [
link]
Scramble for Resources in DRC Leads to Massive Deaths, But Scant Attention
allafrica.comWith an estimated 3.5 million Congolese dead over the last six years due to war, starvation and disease, the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the world's worst long-running humanitarian disasters. About 3.3 million people are out of reach of relief organizations.
full article
rootsie on 08.21.04 @ 11:47 AM CST [
link]
Antidepressant Study Seen to Back Expert
New York TimesA top government scientist who concluded last year that most antidepressants are too dangerous for children because of a suicide risk wrote in a memo this week that a new study confirms his findings.
The official, Dr. Andrew D. Mosholder, a senior epidemiologist at the Food and Drug Administration who assesses the safety of medicines, found last year that 22 studies showed that children given antidepressants were nearly twice as likely to become suicidal as those given placebos.
His bosses, however, strongly disagreed with his findings, kept his recommendations secret and initiated a new analysis.
In his memo, dated Monday, Dr. Mosholder said that the results of the new analysis, undertaken in part at Columbia University, matched his own. Though the two studies used different methods and different numbers, they came to similar conclusions, Dr. Mosholder wrote in the internal memo. A copy of the memo was made available to The New York Times.
In the new analysis, Paxil, which is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, and Effexor, made by Wyeth, have been found to be even more likely to lead children to become suicidal than Dr. Mosholder's original analysis found, his memo says.
The findings add to the debate over whether the government should ban prescribing the pills to children.
full article
rootsie on 08.21.04 @ 11:41 AM CST [
link]
Friday, August 20th
Voting While Black
by Bob Herbert
New York TimesThe smell of voter suppression coming out of Florida is getting stronger. It turns out that a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation, in which state troopers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando in a bizarre hunt for evidence of election fraud, is being conducted despite a finding by the department last May "that there was no basis to support the allegations of election fraud."
full article
rootsie on 08.20.04 @ 09:33 PM CST [
link]
Back with a VengeanceThe Return of Racial Profiling
by Greg Bates
counterpunch.orgRacial profiling is back. Not that it ever left. But for a time it was unacceptable for commentators to argue that law enforcement should target suspects based on skin color. Today, it's the edgy thing to advocate. This isn't racism, the claim goes, but expediency in the post-911 world...
...Because racial profiling happens not only to be convenient and cost effective but also based on statistical data, we tend to see it not as racist, but as scientific. That's exactly the trap that scientists of earlier days fell into when measuring brain sizes of the various races. Far from being reassuring, the support that science seems to lend to racism ought to raise that age old caveat: is this deal too good to be true? Do we really see the data clearly, or are our cultural values playing tricks on us?
full article
rootsie on 08.20.04 @ 09:21 PM CST [
link]
Texas politician seeks custody to 'save' African child
by Gary Younge
Guardian UKA white Texan politician is trying to win custody of the 20-month-old son of his African former maid, claiming that he and his wife want to help the boy because of "the terrible problem that black male children have growing into manhood without being in prison".
State representative Talmadge Heflin and his wife Jan ice made their case to a family court in Houston this week, accusing Mariam Katamba and her partner, Fidel Odimara, of not caring for their son or providing him with adequate medical care.
Ms Katamba, who is from Uganda, and Mr Odimara, who is from Nigeria, say they love their child, have never abused him, and are being threatened by the Heflins be cause they are illegal immigrants.
full article
rootsie on 08.20.04 @ 07:52 PM CST [
link]
Colombia's oil pipeline is paid for in blood and dollars
by Isabel Hilton
Guardian UKTrade unionists are the prime target of the US-funded 18th Brigade
If peace ever comes to Colombia after decades of civil war, it will come too late for three citizens of the oil-rich north-east region of Arauca, on the border with Venezuela. They were murdered by the army on August 5. The men were all trade unionists, and their killings bring to 30 the number of unionists killed in Arauca so far this year.
I met the men on a recent visit to Saravena, a town in Arauca at the epicentre of the government's security policies. Armed soldiers stood on every street corner. At a packed meeting, they and other trade unionists described the conditions they had struggled with after the President Alvaro Uribe designated their area a special security zone. Armoured cars cruised past the building, as though warning those inside that we were all being watched.
The stories they told were of mass arrests, kidnappings, intimidation and murder.
full article
rootsie on 08.20.04 @ 07:47 PM CST [
link]
Congo Pulls Diplomats Out of Burundi
New York TimesKINSHASA (Reuters) - The Democratic Republic of Congo has pulled all of its diplomats out of neighboring Burundi following the slaughter of Congolese Tutsi refugees there last week, its foreign minister said on Friday.
The decision was taken after Congolese Tutsis held violent protests outside Congo's embassy in Bujumbura earlier in the week, breaking windows and tearing its flag to shreds, he said.
full article
rootsie on 08.20.04 @ 07:43 PM CST [
link]
Thursday, August 19th
New Overtime Rules Take Effect Monday
npr.orgAug. 19, 2004 -- Americans spend more time on the job than workers in any other industrialized country. Most who put in more than 40 hours per week are supposed to be paid overtime -- time and a half.
Some labor studies indicate that as many as 30 percent of employees are working off the clock. But complaints filed with the Labor Department are increasing; back pay awards jumped 30 percent last year.
The Bush administration's new rules on overtime will take effect Aug. 23. Proponents say the changes will decrease litigation by closely defining who is eligible for overtime and who isn't.
Critics charge that millions more will loose out, as the fraction of the workforce that's not entitled to overtime pay could climb from 15 percent to as much as 40 percent.
more mean-spiritedness
rootsie on 08.19.04 @ 09:21 PM CST [
link]
In the Minds of the Rich, the Venezuela Poor Aren't Even Members of Society...Guess Who's Laughing Now
by Diane Barahona
counterpunch.orgI never left Caracas during my 7 day trip, and residents always urged me to get out and see the natural wonders of the country. But Caracas is interesting enough for a newcomer -- built in a valley surrounded by green hills, and continuing on the other side of more hills which you traverse through a tunnel on the way north to the airport on the coast.
Everywhere you go you feel the presence of the oil economy; the boom of fancy buildings of concrete, marble, and modern elevators, the bust of crumbling concrete, leaky plumbing, dirty carpets. The most impressive feature of Caracas is a clean, modern subway system which is being expanded there and replicated in other cities.
Then there is the wonder of the red brick shantytowns clinging precariously to the hillsides in and around Caracas. They say that Chavez gave the people the bricks to solidify these improvised homes, which sprang up as people from around the country gave up on the impoverishment of rural life and migrated to the big city looking for work. Chavez granted land titles to these people, who make up a large part of the 6 million inhabitants of Caracas -- nearly 25% of the population of the country. He also gave them paved roads, free running water, telephone lines, and electricity at about $1.00 a month. I know because I went to one of these neighborhoods and asked them.
The elites are terrified of these folks, and extremely put out that the shanty dwellers would not only be taken into account by the government, but that they represent a permanent army encamped around the city, ready to march down from the hills at any time and defend their revolution. I truly believe that this is the primal source of the violent, irrational hatred that the opposition has for Chavez -- his widespread support among the poor who, in the minds of the rich, are not even members of society and should not be playing any role except that of the silent worker or servant.
full article
rootsie on 08.19.04 @ 09:12 PM CST [
link]
Iran warns of preemptive strike to prevent attack on nuclear sites
Yahoo NewsDOHA (AFP) - Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani warned that Iran might launch a preemptive strike against US forces in the region to prevent an attack on its nuclear facilities.
"We will not sit (with arms folded) to wait for what others will do to us. Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly," Shamkhani told Al-Jazeera TV when asked if Iran would respond to an American attack on its nuclear facilities.
"America is not the only one present in the region. We are also present, from Khost to Kandahar in Afghanistan; we are present in the Gulf and we can be present in Iraq.
full articleUS: Iran Says Can Have Nuclear Weapons in 3 Years New York Times
rootsie on 08.19.04 @ 07:55 PM CST [
link]
U.S. Warplanes Bomb Sunni Town of Falluja
ReutersFALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes bombed targets in the restive Sunni Muslim town of Falluja west of Baghdad, witnesses said.
The raid on Falluja coincided with heavy aerial and ground U.S. bombardment in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf.
U.S. warplanes have bombed Falluja almost daily over the past week. The city of 200,000 people is a hotbed of anti-U.S. insurgents.
Sunni insurgents. Shi'a insurgents. What happens when they band together?
rootsie on 08.19.04 @ 07:49 PM CST [
link]
Error Puts Kennedy on Airline No-Fly List
APWASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate Judiciary Committee heard this morning from one of its own about some of the problems with airline "no fly" watch lists. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., says he had a close encounter with the lists when trying to take the U.S. Airways shuttle out of Washington to Boston. The ticket agent wouldn't let him on the plane. His name was on the list in error.
After a flurry of phone calls, Kennedy was able to fly home, but then the same thing happened coming back to Washington.
Kennedy says it took three calls to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to get his name stricken from the list. The process took several weeks, in all.
rootsie on 08.19.04 @ 07:43 PM CST [
link]
In Bolivia, Push for Che Tourism Follows Locals' Reverence
commondreams.comLA HIGUERA, Bolivia - Revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, an atheist, has been reborn a saint in the desolate Bolivian village where he was captured and executed nearly 37 years ago. Like many a saint, he's also a tourist draw.
Today his handsome mug appears on the walls of homes and in market stalls in remote La Higuera, where he died, and in Vallegrande, where he was secretly buried. In many homes, his face competes for wall space with Jesus, the Virgin Mary and a host of Roman Catholic saints.
"They say he brings miracles," said Susana Osinaga, 70, who was a young nurse on Oct. 9, 1967, when she washed the blood off Guevara's corpse in Vallegrande's small hospital.
A grocery owner now, Osinaga frowns on curious tourists and journalists who seek her out. But like other locals she keeps a photo of Guevara, known throughout Latin America by his nickname, Che, on her grocery's wall.
Osinaga may soon get more unwanted visits. The international relief agency CARE is administering $300,000 in British government and private aid to promote what CARE calls Che Tourism. The project includes hostels for backpackers, road construction and infrastructure improvements to promote tourism in rural southeastern Bolivia. The hope is that Che will mean money.
full article
rootsie on 08.19.04 @ 07:39 PM CST [
link]
Wednesday, August 18th
Enough Imperial Crusades
commondreams.orgThe Alternative to Armed Intervention in Darfur is not Passive Resignation, but Support for an African Union-led Solution
by Peter Hallward in the Guardian
What is exceptional about the violence of the government-backed Janjaweed militia in Darfur, is less its scale than the intense - if belated - international attention it has received.
To oppose direct western intervention in Sudan is not to downplay Khartoum's crimes during this latest twist in the catastrophic war that has cost perhaps two million lives since 1983. Over the last 20 years, in order to shore up their exclusive and authoritarian rule, Sudan's succession of military rulers have done everything possible to sustain an often imaginary distinction between "Arabs" and "Africans", pitting Muslims against Christians and herders against farmers .
Before we jump to the conclusion that benevolent invasion, however, is the natural consequence of our new-found humanitarian duties, we should remember that this won't be the first time that either Britain or the US has intervened in Sudan. An earlier moral crusade, the "war against slavery", provided much of the ostensible justification for British colonization of the region at the end of the 19th century. Britain's disastrous southern policy, inaugurated in 1929, made permanent the long-standing division between a relatively prosperous (mainly Muslim) northern territory and a much poorer (mainly animist or Christian) southern territory. The war that began between these two territories even before the British abandoned the colony in 1956 entered its most violent phase shortly after the Americans began backing, in the late 70s, the flagging regime of Sudan's increasingly reactionary General Gaafar Nimeiri.
The resulting chaos created the conditions for the Taliban-style reaction whose effects continue to shape the situation even today.
full article
rootsie on 08.18.04 @ 08:30 PM CST [
link]
Buried alive under California's law of 'three strikes and you're out'
Guardian UKBrian A Smith didn't know the two women who were shoplifting. They were caught on security cameras stealing sheets at the Los Cerritos mall in Los Angeles and received a two-year sentence.
But Smith was seen standing near the shoplifters as they committed their crime. Despite having no stolen goods, he was convicted of aiding and abetting them.
Under California's three strikes law, which marked its 10th anniversary on Sunday, the 30 year old received a 25-year-to-life sentence.
Smith's crime was to have two previous convictions, one 11 years earlier and the second six years before the shoplifting incident. Those convictions, for purse snatching in 1983 and burglary in 1988, earned him the dubious honour of being one of the first criminals to be sentenced under the California law.
By September last year, California, the US state with the highest prison population, had 7,234 prisoners held under the three strikes rule.
Sitting in her Los Angeles home, Smith's aunt, Dorothy Erskine, a retired schoolteacher, recalls the family's reaction to his sentence. "We were, like, is this really happening? I'm sure he was in shock when he was sentenced and thought he could get it reduced on appeal.
"But he was advised not to appeal. And we were told that unless you have about $20,000 (£10,800) or $30,000 to pay for the right type of a lawyer, your chances are very, very slim. I did not have $30,000."
full article
rootsie on 08.18.04 @ 08:21 PM CST [
link]
Upset at Haiti acquittal
Guardian UKA jury acquitted the Haitian former paramilitary leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain of murder yesterday after a 14-hour trial that caused outrage among human rights groups, who have attacked the country's US-backed government.
Mr Chamblain and his co-defendant, Jackson Joanis, were cleared of the murder of Antoine Izmery, a former justice minister and financier of the former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to Stanley Gaston, a defence lawyer.
Viles Alizar of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights, said eight witnesses had been called by the prosecution but only one had appeared, saying he knew nothing about the case. For the defence, two defence witnesses had been present, but they provided few details.
Jury selection began on Monday morning and journalists were told the day would likely be devoted to it.
Mr Chamblain was remanded to face another trial over the killings of several people in a pro-Aristide stronghold in northern Gonaives in 1994. Mr Joanis, a former police chief in Port-au-Prince, was also held to face murder charges over the killing of the Rev Jean-Marie Vincent, a pro-Aristide priest who was shot leaving his office in 1994. It could be another month before the pair's next trial, Mr Gaston said.
Mr Chamblain was a co-leader of the paramilitary Front for the Advancement and Progress of the Haitian People, a group that was blamed for some 3,000 killings from 1991 to 1994, during the regime that followed Mr Aristide's first ousting in 1991.
When US troops came to the country in 1994 to restore Mr Aristide, Mr Chamblain fled to neighbouring Dominican Republic. In 1995 he was convicted in absentia and given two life sentences for his alleged role in the 1993 assassination of Izmery and the 1994 killings of scores of Aristide supporters.
Haitian law provides that people judged in their absence have a right to a new trial if they return.
rootsie on 08.18.04 @ 08:17 PM CST [
link]
FBI Expects Violence at GOP Convention
Guardian UKWASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI anticipates violent protests at the upcoming Republican National Convention in New York but does not have enough evidence to move against any group or person, the bureau's top terrorism official said Wednesday.
New York officials have said they expect hundreds of thousands of people to stage demonstrations around the convention, which begins Aug. 30.
Concern over the convention comes amid heightened security across New York over fears that foreign terrorists might strike the city again. New York remains on a ``high'' terrorism alert level, while most of the country is on elevated alert.
Federal investigators have infiltrated some organizations and are monitoring plans for protests being published on the Internet. The FBI also interviewed some protesters around the country before last month's Democratic convention in Boston and in anticipation of the GOP convention.
``We don't have any specific plot where we have all the variables we need to go out and take pre-emptive and judicial action,'' said Gary Bald, assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division.
full articleIt used to be that when the FBI infiltrated organizations, they tried to keep it secret. But why bother? The vast majority seems to have no problem with the hijacking of our Constitutional rights.
rootsie on 08.18.04 @ 08:12 PM CST [
link]
Tuesday, August 17th
Burundi threatens Congo after massacre of 160 Tutsis
Independent UKThe spectre of a new ethnic conflagration hung over central Africa last night as Burundi and Rwanda threatened to cross into neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo to hunt down the killers of 160 Tutsis.
Women, children and babies were among the Congolese Tutsis who were massacred in a UN refugee camp inside Burundi close to the Congo border last Friday. The victims were burnt, hacked and shot to death in one of the worst massacres in the troubled Great Lakes region in years.
The attack was claimed by Burundian Hutu extremists of the rebel National Liberation Forces (FNL), but the Burundian army chief yesterday accused Congolese soldiers of taking part. Remnants of the Rwandan Hutu extremist militias responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda are also still based in Congo.
full article
rootsie on 08.17.04 @ 08:51 PM CST [
link]
Charley could benefit insurers: Analysts say next year's premium rises will more than offset hurricane claims *
Guardian UKInsurers worldwide yesterday began counting the cost of the damage wreaked by Hurricane Charley, but shares in Lloyd's of London companies were helped by hopes of higher premiums next year.
full articleWell then, the more deadly hurricanes the better.
rootsie on 08.17.04 @ 08:42 PM CST [
link]
Tulsa Killing Sparks Homeless Backlash
Guardian UKTULSA, Okla. (AP) - Anger over a homeless man's fatal beating of a brass-knuckle-wielding bar owner is boiling over in Tulsa, where street people are facing a loosely organized campaign against their presence - and in some cases are being run out of the area.
T-shirts around town blast homeless people with a four-letter word, and some people are warning of vigilante justice. A liquor store put up a wanted poster with a picture of Terry Badgewell, the man who used a length of pipe to kill Deadtown Tavern owner Shawn Howard.
A prosecutor said the killing was self-defense and refused to file charges, but the victim's family is gathering thousands of signatures on a petition to force a grand jury investigation.
``We're very committed,'' said Howard's mother, Kay. ``Shawn deserves this.''
Meanwhile, Tulsa's homeless are feeling the heat. Michael Cypert, 31, who usually stays at a Salvation Army shelter near downtown, said patrons of the Deadtown Tavern chased him away from the area during a memorial for Howard a few days after his June 25 death.
Police have warned homeless people to stay away from the bar, and Cypert said has seen people downtown wearing ``F--- the homeless'' T-shirts handed out by bar owners.
full articleWhat is becoming clearer by the day is the increasing mean-spiritedness of American people, and this especially manifests in hostility towards the poor. 'Sweeps' of the homeless in major cities, police violence, Bill Cosby's poor-bashing...The physical presence of poor people is insulting to those who cherish the image of America portrayed in all of the many Army-recruiting commercials, shining the light of freedom and prosperity on the rest of the world. This mean-spiritedness is being actively encouraged by the government, despite all the rhetoric about 'unity in diversity'. 'Diversity seems to mean that conversations about race and poverty are off-limits. The racial demographic of poverty is never discussed. It is not politically correct to have t-shirts that say f* blacks. People who talk about race, like Al Sharpton, are called divisive for pointing out the stark divisions which exist.Gap Between Rich and Poor Widening in Troubled Economy
commondreams.orgWASHINGTON — Over two decades, the income gap has steadily increased between the richest Americans, who own homes and stocks and got big tax breaks, and those at the middle and bottom of the pay scale, whose paychecks buy less.
The growing disparity is even more pronounced in this recovering economy. Wages are stagnant, and the middle class is shouldering a larger tax burden. Prices for health care, housing, tuition, gas and food have soared.
The wealthiest 20 percent of households in 1973 accounted for 44 percent of total U.S. income, according to the Census Bureau. Their share jumped to 50 percent in 2002, while everyone else's fell. For the bottom fifth, the share dropped from 4.2 percent to 3.5 percent.
full article
rootsie on 08.17.04 @ 08:27 PM CST [
link]
Japanese children shun the rising sun
Guardian UKHalf of Japanese primary and secondary school students have never seen a sunrise or sunset, according to a survey.
The study, conducted last year among 900 children, found that Japanese youngsters spend significantly less time outdoors than previous generations.
Compiled by Tetsuro Saito of Kawamura Gakuen Women's University, the report is the fourth of its kind to be carried out since 1991.
It shows that 52% of today's children have never seen either a sunrise or a sunset. Thirteen years ago the figure was 41%.
"Today's parents don't have a lot of experience with nature," said Professor Saito, who advocates changing the classroom-bound education system to allow for more time for outdoor learning.
"But the situation can only improve if parents make an effort to spend more time outdoors with their children."
Parents' groups and other social analysts say several factors have influenced young people's distant relationship with the environment. These range from an urbanised lifestyle with its emphasis on consumption and few opportunities to spend time outdoors, to Japan's notorious cram school system.
full article
rootsie on 08.17.04 @ 07:53 PM CST [
link]
Kerry's royal roots will give him victory, says Burke's
Guardian UKWhen it comes to American presidential elections, blue blood counts.
So say British researchers who predict that Democratic challenger John Kerry will oust President George Bush on November 2 because he boasts more royal connections than his Republican rival.
After months of research into Mr Kerry's ancestry, Burke's Peerage, experts on British aristocracy, reported yesterday that the Vietnam war veteran is related to all the royal houses of Europe and can claim kinship with Tsar Ivan "The Terrible", a previous Emperor of Byzantium and the Shahs of Persia.
Burke's director, Harold Brooks-Baker, said Mr Kerry had his mother, Rosemary Forbes, to thank for most of his royal connections.
"Every maternal blood line of Kerry makes him more royal than any previous American president," Mr Brooks-Baker said.
full article
rootsie on 08.17.04 @ 07:43 PM CST [
link]
Iran Threatens Israel on Nuclear Reactor
Guardian UKTEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Accompanied by a warning that its missiles have the range, Iran on Tuesday said it would destroy Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor if the Jewish state were to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
``If Israel fires a missile into the Bushehr nuclear power plant, it has to say goodbye forever to its Dimona nuclear facility, where it produces and stockpiles nuclear weapons,'' the deputy chief of the elite Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, said in a statement.
Bushehr, a coastal town on the Persian Gulf, is the site of Iran's first nuclear reactor. Built with Russian assistance, it's due to come online in 2005.
Iran says its nuclear program is strictly for generating electricity. But Israel and the United States strongly suspect Iran is secretly building nuclear weapons.
full article
rootsie on 08.17.04 @ 07:39 PM CST [
link]
Dominican Resumes Presidency on Stern Note
New York TimesSANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, Aug. 16 - Leonel Fernández returned to the presidency of this nation after a four-year hiatus on Monday, bracing Dominicans for austerity measures needed to ease an economic crisis that has caused living standards to plummet during the past year.
Mr. Fernández, a lawyer and former university professor, said in a speech at a swearing-in ceremony that he would restrict spending by government agencies, preventing civil servants from using public funds to buy the imported sport utility vehicles that have become symbols here of skewed income distribution, rubbing up against the dilapidated motor scooters that fill the streets of this city.
He also said his administration would limit international phone calls by civil servants, among other cost-cutting measures intended to reduce a budget shortfall that has depleted resources to import fuel and generate electricity. In a jab against his predecessor, Hipólito Mejía, a populist businessman against whom Mr. Fernández won a landslide victory in May, he deplored the "absence of seriousness in everything."
...Mr. Fernández reached out to President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela in a trip to Caracas last month, seeking to preserve an agreement allowing the Dominican Republic to import oil on favorable terms. And Mr. Fernández was scheduled to meet Monday evening with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil in an effort to strengthen ties with that country, Latin America's largest.
full articleMaybe what we are seeing is the start of a 'reverse domino theory', countries one by one escaping the traps set for them by the US and Europe.
rootsie on 08.17.04 @ 10:57 AM CST [
link]
Sharon Proposes New Housing in West Bank Settlements
New York TimesJERUSALEM, Aug. 17 — The day before Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faces sharp debate about his policies at his own Likud Party convention, his government made an effort to pacify his critics today, issuing tenders for 1,001 new, government-subsidized apartments for settlers in the occupied West Bank.
The decision will annoy Washington, Western diplomats said. The road map to peace, which Israel accepted, calls for a freeze on all Israeli settlement activity.
While Israeli officials insisted the new housing was long planned and remained within current settlement boundaries, it will renew the debate in Washington over Israeli compliance.
"It's difficult to see how 1,001 new housing starts are consistent with the road map," a Western diplomat said today.
full articleLet's see: road to nowhere? Road to disaster? Highway to hell?
rootsie on 08.17.04 @ 10:50 AM CST [
link]
Monday, August 16th
President Chavez celebrates crushing referendum victory
Independent UKIn a marathon poll marked by high voter turnout, Venezuelans have ratified the mandate of President Hugo Chavez in a recall referendum that represents a monumental boost to his government and ablow to his domestic and foreign opponents.
Ending hours of confusion, former American president Jimmy Carter, who helped monitor the referendum, endorsed the returns showing that the maverick president had won the vote. "Our findings coincided with the partial returns announced today by the National Elections Council [CNE]," Mr Carter told a news conference, and urged Venezuelans to accept the result.
The Organisation of American States, which also monitored the vote, said there were no indications of fraud.
full article
rootsie on 08.16.04 @ 08:01 PM CST [
link]
Little Rock Considers Sweep of Homeless
Guardian UKLITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - City officials want to eradicate 27 homeless camps, getting their occupants into shelters or out of town as Little Rock prepares for the high-profile opening of the Clinton Presidential Library.
Officials deny the strategy has anything to do with the Nov. 18 opening, but homeless advocates fear the city is being merciless - perhaps at the behest of the library. The homeless were living at the library site before construction began.
full articleSince Clinton made so many people homeless, and furthermore invisible, I think they should have a permanent spot at his library.
rootsie on 08.16.04 @ 07:56 PM CST [
link]
German minister says sorry for genocide in Namibia
Guardian UKGermany apologised for the first time yesterday for a colonial-era genocide which killed 65,000 Herero people in what is now Namibia.
"We Germans accept our historic and moral responsibility and the guilt incurred by Germans at that time," said Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany's development aid minister, at a ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the Hereros' 1904-1907 uprising against their rulers.
"The atrocities committed at that time would have been termed genocide," she said, according to Associated Press.
Although she ruled out financial compensation for the victims' descendants - a civil case has been brought by relatives of those who died - she promised aid, particularly in land reform.
...Germany dismissed the claim, saying international rules on the protection of combatants and civilians were not in existence at the time of that conflict.
full articleGenocide wasn't illegal then: how lame is this?
rootsie on 08.16.04 @ 07:47 PM CST [
link]
City of defiance
Independent UKThey came from across Iraq, marching in solidarity with Shia brothers. Civilians they bear no arms, for the moment anyway who are willing die on the steps of the Imam Ali shrine. The human shields have arrived in Najaf.
full article
rootsie on 08.16.04 @ 07:41 PM CST [
link]
Mass hunger strike in Israeli jails
Guardian UKAbout 1,600 Palestinian prisoners began a hunger strike yesterday to protest at conditions in Israeli jails.
The Israeli prisons authority said the inmates had refused to accept breakfast and lunch, but were drinking water.
The action comes despite a warning from Israel's public security minister that the prisoners could "starve to death" before he agreed to ease restrictions.
Organisers said around 7,500 remaining Palestinian prisoners would join the hunger strike by the end of the week.
full articleIsrael May Try to Break Hunger StrikeGuardian UKJERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli jailers may try to break a Palestinian hunger strike with barbecues, hoping the aroma of grilling meat will wear down security prisoners protesting conditions and demanding more access to their families.
full article
rootsie on 08.16.04 @ 07:37 PM CST [
link]
Why Venezuela has Voted Again for Their 'Negro y Indio' President
by Greg Palast
AfricaSpeaks.comThere's so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I may be violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts. Let's begin with this: 77% of Venezuela's farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the 'hacendados.'
I met one of these farmlords in Caracas at an anti-Chavez protest march. Oddest demonstration I've ever seen: frosted blondes in high heels clutching designer bags, screeching, "Chavez - dic-ta-dor!" The plantation owner griped about the "socialismo" of Chavez, then jumped into his Jaguar convertible.
That week, Chavez himself handed me a copy of the "socialist" manifesto that so rattled the man in the Jag. It was a new law passed by Venezuela's Congress which gave land to the landless. The Chavez law transferred only fields from the giant haciendas which had been left unused and abandoned.
This land reform, by the way, was promoted to Venezuela in the 1960s by that Lefty radical, John F. Kennedy. Venezuela's dictator of the time agreed to hand out land, but forgot to give peasants title to their property.
But Chavez won't forget, because the mirror reminds him. What the affable president sees in his reflection, beyond the ribbons of office, is a "negro e indio" -- a "Black and Indian" man, dark as a cola nut, same as the landless and, until now, the hopeless. For the first time in Venezuela's history, the 80% Black-Indian population elected a man with skin darker than the man in the Jaguar.
full article
rootsie on 08.16.04 @ 02:22 PM CST [
link]
Sunday, August 15th
US and France Begin a Great Game in Africa
by Julio Godoy
antiwar.comPARIS - France and the United States have begun a new race to compete for favors with undemocratic regimes in Africa. The competition is growing particularly in the oil-rich North and West Africa.
full articleAiling Shell braced for French bid Guardian UKRoyal Dutch/Shell is bracing itself for a takeover bid, with Shell executives now conceding that it is vulnerable to a predator.
Insiders at the Anglo-Dutch oil giant fear Total, the French oil group, will launch a raid. Total, the world's fourth-largest oil firm, is considered the only predator capable of gaining regulatory approval for what would be a spectacular merger...
...Analysts say that Total's strong Middle Eastern presence would bolster that of Shell's, while a single Shell/Total business would be the dominant player in Nigeria. Unlike Shell, Total has a strong presence in Angola.
full article
rootsie on 08.15.04 @ 07:18 PM CST [
link]
The Last Shot
by Douglas Belkin
Boston GlobeThe last time Boston's homicide rate rose as it has this year, young men who had once ruled their streets through intimidation were left paralyzed, ashamed, and, in some cases, wishing they were dead. They are the hidden casualties of the worst stretch of violence in Boston's history. "When you grow up the way I did," one says, "you just figure a bullet is going to find you one day."
full article
rootsie on 08.15.04 @ 07:07 PM CST [
link]
Pollutants cause huge rise in brain diseases
Guardian UKThe numbers of sufferers of brain diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease, have soared across the West in less than 20 years, scientists have discovered.
The alarming rise, which includes figures showing rates of dementia have trebled in men, has been linked to rises in levels of pesticides, industrial effluents, domestic waste, car exhausts and other pollutants, says a report in the journal Public Health.
In the late 1970s, there were around 3,000 deaths a year from these conditions in England and Wales. By the late 1990s, there were 10,000.
full article
rootsie on 08.15.04 @ 07:01 PM CST [
link]
Sharp Tongues for Sharpton
by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw
The Nation...The zeal to get beyond race will hasten efforts to drive wedges between black politicians--a move already afoot in the effort to hold up Barack Obama as "the good black" and Sharpton, Jackson and others as the "bad blacks." The New York Times published a review of the convention that declared,
"Rather than positioning him within a black tradition, Mr. Obama's speech evoked, through his and his family's varied races, trades and professions, a diversity that aims at unity"--as though the failure to achieve unity on civil rights is the natural consequence of the black discursive tradition, "I Have a Dream" notwithstanding. Even the Republicans weighed in on the good black/bad black question--Bob Novak declared that "the kind of black [the Democrats] want out there representing the party is Senator Obama from Illinois and not Al Sharpton." Perhaps that's true, but any close reading of Obama's own testament--his autobiography, boxes of which languished in his basement no doubt because he didn't declare himself to be the raceless son of an African immigrant in a colorblind world--would reveal that the division that the media celebrate is far more a difference of style than of substance.
full articleThis is a classic:using 'diversity' to short-circuit the necessary historical conversation that needs to take place in this country: we are all one glorious rainbow of indeterminate color. Al Sharpton is accused of hijacking the Democratic convention for talking about race and history. Of all black spokespeople on the scene, Sharpton alone has been on-message for many years, whatever else one might think about him. See what happens to a black's credibility and rep if he or she insists on keeping race issues front and center.
rootsie on 08.15.04 @ 10:24 AM CST [
link]
Saturday, August 14th
Globalization And Racialization
by Manning Marable
zmag.orgIn 1900, the great African-American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, predicted that the “problem of the twentieth century” would be the “problem of the color line,” the unequal relationship between the lighter vs. darker races of humankind. Although Du Bois was primarily focused on the racial contradiction of the United States, he was fully aware that the processes of what we call “racialization” today – the construction of racially unequal social hierarchies characterized by dominant and subordinate social relations between groups – was an international and global problem. Du Bois’s color line included not just the racially segregated, Jim Crow South and the racial oppression of South Africa; but also included British, French, Belgian, and Portuguese colonial domination in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean among indigenous populations.
Building on Du Bois’s insights, we can therefore say that the problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of global apartheid: the racialized division and stratification of resources, wealth, and power that separates Europe, North America, and Japan from the billions of mostly black, brown, indigenous, undocumented immigrant and poor people across the planet. The term apartheid, as most of you know, comes from the former white minority regime of South Africa. It is an Afrikaans word meaning “apartness” or “separation.” Apartheid was based on the concept of “herrenvolk,” a “master race,” who was destined to rule non-Europeans. Under global apartheid today, the racist logic of herrenvolk, the master race, still exists, embedded in the patterns of unequal economic exchange that penalizes African, south Asian, Caribbean, and poor nations by predatory policies of structural adjustment and loan payments to multinational banks.
full article
rootsie on 08.14.04 @ 09:59 PM CST [
link]
The Next Imperial Lunacy
by Aseem Shrivastava
zmag.orgSuper-bully going to Iran?
"My idea of our civilization is that it is a shabby poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meanness, and hypocrisies. As for the word, I hate the sound of it, for it conveys a lie; and as for the thing itself, I wish it was in hell, where it belongs."
- Mark Twain
"The budget should be balanced; the treasury should be refilled; public debt should be reduced; and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled."
- Cicero.
The coming months may eliminate the question mark from the title of this article. And American civilization may well end up where Twain wished in his despair that it should.
History returns to haunt in strange ways.
It was on August 19th, 51 years ago, that Britain and the US orchestrated a military coup in Iran, dislodged the democratically elected government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq and installed the exiled monarch, Reza Shah Pahlavi on the Peacock Throne.
full articleUS to redeploy 100,000 troops and shut bases Guardian UK
rootsie on 08.14.04 @ 09:55 PM CST [
link]
An Echo, Not a Choice
by Steve Chapman
commondreams.org John Kerry is a man of great personal courage, which served him well as a naval officer in the Vietnam War. But the man who takes the inaugural oath in January won't be asked to lead a bayonet charge. A more vital quality in a president is moral courage. And trying to detect evidence of that attribute in Mr. Kerry is like expecting Mikhail Baryshnikov to show up at the county fair.
The latest proof that Mr. Kerry's backbone is made of goose down was his statement that even if he had known what he knows now about Iraq's yet-to-be-found weapons of mass destruction and mythical partnership with al-Qaida, he still would have voted for the resolution authorizing President Bush to go to war. "I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," he said.
The Iraq war is shaping up to be the greatest American foreign policy debacle since Vietnam. It has killed nearly 1,000 American soldiers and wounded more than 6,000, while tying down 140,000 troops who are cruelly undermanned. Its price tag has reached $150 billion, with more costs to come. The war and occupation have alienated our friends, inflamed anti-Americanism in the Arab world and diverted us from the war on al-Qaida. If those facts don't convince Mr. Kerry that his vote was a mistake, it's hard to imagine what would.
Actually, it's not so hard to imagine what would cause Mr. Kerry to recant: political expedience. The Massachusetts senator firmly believes something he firmly believed when he voted for the war resolution, which is that he should take the politically safe course no matter what. So he's happy to straddle the fence by criticizing Mr. Bush for taking us down the wrong road in Iraq while refusing to say Congress should have stopped him. And he figures he can stand by his vote because opponents of the war have nowhere else to turn. But they can always turn to Ralph Nader, or just stay home. When it comes to Iraq, after all, Mr. Kerry sounds an awful lot like the guy who got us into this mess.
full article This is not the John Kerry who spoke truth to power in 1971 as a VVAW. He learned his lesson after he voted against Iraq I in 1991.
rootsie on 08.14.04 @ 09:48 PM CST [
link]
McProtests R US***Or: Would You Like Some Fries with Your Black Mask?
by Mickey Z
counterpunch.org"Complain all you want; but do as you're told." --Frederick the Great of Prussia
In a matter of weeks, politicians, protesters, and police will converge on my beleaguered city...and that is precisely why I'm skipping town for a few days. The police state tactics and color-coded alerts are reason enough...but I'd also rather not witness firsthand the death throes of protest as we know it.
It's bad enough that today's breed of subversive didn't deem the Democratic Convention worthy of his or her time (Where was the planned-for-months-in-advance outrage in Boston? The Hitler mustaches? The warnings about fascism? The cataloging of candidate crimes?); now we have hordes of anti-authority types submitting to New York's demands for polite opposition restricted to a pre-determined venue. Sure, a lawsuit is being threatened but it has little to do with freedom of speech being limited to a city-sanctioned site far away from the conventional action. Nah, the progressives in question are in an uproar about the lack of shade near the West Side Highway.
No sunscreen...no justice.
Now, if you think the radical left playing nice in Boston and adhering to the rules in Manhattan has made supporters of Kerry (a.k.a. Yale-educated War Criminal #2) a happy bunch of corporate campers, you display precious little savvy about our two-party (sic) system.
An Associated Press item floating around this week quotes lots of Dems dissing demonstrators. The piece begins: "(Some Democrats) said disorder and clashes between protesters and police not only could drown out the Democrats' carefully crafted message of 'loyal opposition' to the GOP but also could be linked to their party."
New York Representative Jerrold Nadler explains: "If a problem develops, I think the political impact will not be good for Democrats. There are a lot of very fine patriotic demonstrators, and then there are some who are probably anarchists or crazies of one sort or another."
full article
rootsie on 08.14.04 @ 09:34 PM CST [
link]
Bush Ignited This Insurgency, Not al-Sadr
counterpunch.orgThe United States has launched a war against a large part of the Iraqi people. It is the Bush Administration's desire for total domination, not the militancy of Shia insurgents, that has triggered this latest uprising. The US is trying to tame the Shia majority.
At the time of writing, US forces have surrounded the most holy site in Shia Islam, the Imam Ali mosque in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf, after eight days of fierce fighting with the forces of Muqtada al-Sadr, reportedly leaving hundreds dead. Elsewhere, "US air strikes and fighting on the ground in the [largely Shia] Iraqi city of Kut have left 72 people dead and about 150 injured,' according to the interim Iraqi government. (BBC News Online, 12 Aug.)
full article
rootsie on 08.14.04 @ 09:28 PM CST [
link]
Free-Spending Chávez Could Swing Vote His Way
New York TimesCARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 13 - In an extraordinary referendum after years of political turmoil, Venezuelans will vote Sunday on whether to dismiss President Hugo Chávez, who has alienated the Bush administration with his anti-American bombast and polarized the nation with promises to use oil wealth for a social revolution.
Eight months ago, as opponents of Mr. Chávez fanned out across the country to gather the signatures needed for the vote, he looked likely to have his tenure cut short. But on Friday, amid a huge spending campaign in poor neighborhoods, the contest had narrowed to the point where several pollsters said the president might win an endorsement of his rule.
The referendum is being closely monitored abroad. Mr. Chávez, 50, a former paratrooper and failed coup leader, rose from poverty to power five and a half years ago and then won re-election in a landslide that underscored Venezuelans' anger at the old political order. He has since so rankled Washington with his leftist agenda and authoritarian impulse that American officials blamed Mr. Chávez himself when he was briefly ousted after deadly street protests in 2002.
full articleIt is funny to see what is REALLY eating at these guys about Chavez. Imagine, he has the nerve to use oil profits to improve the lives of poor people. Here in the US with our elections, you would think poor people did not exist; nobody, Democratic or Republican, is making a peep about them. The problem, in their eyes, was solved by dumping the poor out of the bottom of the economy, to the land beyond statistics, during the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years. You don't hear anybody talking about the appalling results of Clinton's 'welfare reform.'
So the reckless free-spender Chavez is pouring money into the ghetto. Shame shame shame. O yes, and his rough uncultured ways 'embarass' the elite. The poor should neither be seen nor heard.The War on the Poor by Cockburn and St. Clair
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 08.14.04 @ 11:02 AM CST [
link]
Talks to End Najaf Conflict Collapse - Iraqi Official
ReutersNAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Talks to end the conflict in Najaf between U.S. and Iraqi forces and radical Shi'ite militiamen have collapsed, Iraq's national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said Saturday.
``The talks have failed. All efforts to end this have not succeeded,'' he told reporters.
Reuters
rootsie on 08.14.04 @ 10:47 AM CST [
link]
Burundi Says Hutus Kill 159 in Refugee Camp
ReutersGATUMBA, Burundi (Reuters) - Hutu rebels and allied attackers armed with guns and machetes killed at least 159 people in ``a plan of genocide'' at a camp for Tutsi Congolese refugees in western Burundi, the army said Saturday.
The Hutu Forces for National Liberation (FNL) claimed responsibility for Friday night's attack, saying they were aiming to hit a military target near the camp. Burundi has a military camp about 500 meters from the refugee camp.
But Burundi's army said the attack was deliberately aimed at killing the refugees at their camp and was not an attack on the military base. Six bodies of refugees who had been kidnapped and later killed were recovered near the camp, it said.
full article
rootsie on 08.14.04 @ 10:42 AM CST [
link]
Sudanese rebel fighters braced for attack
Independent UKSurrounded by massing government troops and the Janjaweed, ringed by burnt villages, the rebel fighters of Darfur man their guns and wait for the attack they believe is about to come.
These are the people the Sudanese military and the Arab militia claim to be fighting when they carry out their raids, resulting in murders, mutilations and rapes of civilians, and accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
full article
rootsie on 08.14.04 @ 10:37 AM CST [
link]
Out of Spotlight, Bush Overhauls U.S. Regulations
New York TimesWASHINGTON, Aug. 13 - April 21 was an unusually violent day in Iraq; 68 people died in a car bombing in Basra, among them 23 children. As the news went from bad to worse, President Bush took a tough line, vowing to a group of journalists, "We're not going to cut and run while I'm in the Oval Office."
On the same day, deep within the turgid pages of the Federal Register, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a regulation that would forbid the public release of some data relating to unsafe motor vehicles, saying that publicizing the information would cause "substantial competitive harm" to manufacturers.
As soon as the rule was published, consumer groups yelped in complaint, while the government responded that it was trying to balance the interests of consumers with the competitive needs of business. But hardly anyone else noticed, and that was hardly an isolated case.
Allies and critics of the Bush administration agree that the Sept. 11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq have preoccupied the public, overshadowing an important element of the president's agenda: new regulatory initiatives. Health rules, environmental regulations, energy initiatives, worker-safety standards and product-safety disclosure policies have been modified in ways that often please business and industry leaders while dismaying interest groups representing consumers, workers, drivers, medical patients, the elderly and many others.
full article
rootsie on 08.14.04 @ 10:33 AM CST [
link]
Friday, August 13th
Namibia Marks Century-Old Massacre Amid Calls for German Compensation
ReutersBERLIN, Aug. 11 - A German minister left for Namibia on Wednesday amid calls by Namibia's government and human rights advocates for Germany to pay compensation for a massacre of Herero tribesmen in 1904 by its colonial troops.
Germany's development minister, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, will attend a ceremony in Okakarara on Saturday marking the 100th anniversary of a revolt by the Herero people in southwest Africa against Kaiser Wilhelm's troops in which 65,000 of the 80,000 Hereros died.
About 10,000 members of the Nama tribe were also killed in the massacre, which some historians call the first genocide of the 20th century.
Ms. Wieczorek-Zeul will also discuss regional development with the Namibian government and meet Herero representatives.
"In making this trip I want to mark Germany's particular political and moral responsibility for the past and its colonial guilt," Ms. Wieczorek-Zeul said in a statement. "I would also like to emphasize
Germany's special responsibility for Namibia."Germany, which is Namibia's main source of development aid, has expressed "deep regret" for the killings, which almost eradicated the Herero tribe, but has ruled out paying compensation, and has not made a formal apology out of fear this could make it vulnerable to claims.
Though the Herero people are using the anniversary to press their demand for reparations, the killings happened too long ago for them to file a civil suit in Germany. A $4 billion lawsuit that has been filed in the United States is thought to have limited chance of success.
The Society for Threatened Peoples, a Berlin-based human rights group, said Ms. Wieczorek-Zeul's visit was a step in the right direction, but Ulrich Delius, the group's Africa representative, called on Ms. Wieczorek-Zeul to acknowledge Germany's guilt and not "duck out of the issue," as he said Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer had done during his visit to Namibia in October 2003.
Germany, which has paid billions in compensation for victims of the Nazis, has argued that the Herero people have no case for compensation because international laws on the protection of civilians did not exist at the time of the conflict.
A former attorney general in Namibia, Veuii Rukoro, has dismissed this argument as "not only an insult to the collective intelligence of mankind, but also a blatantly racist statement" given Germany's payments to Jewish victims of the Nazi era.
This paternalistic business is so hypocritical and so sickening. Germany's 'special responsibility for Namibia'?? For what about Namibia? For history? For well-being? For what? What does it mean to 'feel responsible' and yet to refuse to act? Namibia is not asking for German concern or care or nebulous 'responsibility.' Namibia wants $4billion. Period.
rootsie on 08.13.04 @ 03:35 PM CST [
link]
Vatican Shuts Austria Seminary Under Cloud
New York TimesROME, Aug. 12 - The Vatican shut down a seminary in Austria on Thursday that had been accused of harboring widespread sexual misconduct, including the distribution of child pornography.
"The seminary of St. Pölten is declared closed," said Bishop Klaus Küng, who was sent to Austria by Pope John Paul II three weeks ago to investigate the seminary, which is near Vienna. "A fresh start is necessary."
Since news of the scandal broke late last year, Austrian investigators have found some 40,000 pornographic photographs and many videos on computers at the seminary. Among the photographs were pornographic representations of minors, depictions of bestiality and violent sexual scenarios, prosecutors have said.
full articleYeah well we all know it's those uppity women's fault...
rootsie on 08.13.04 @ 03:22 PM CST [
link]
U.N. Report Cites Harassment at American Airports of Asylum Seekers
New York TimesWASHINGTON, Aug. 12 - A confidential report conducted by the United Nations in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security has found that airport inspectors with the power to summarily deport illegal immigrants have sometimes intimidated and handcuffed travelers fleeing persecution, discouraged some from seeking political asylum and often lacked an understanding of asylum law.
Homeland Security officials say they have responded to the problems identified in the report, which was completed late last year and obtained this week by The New York Times. But the study highlights the challenges facing the department as it grants Border Patrol agents sweeping new powers to deport illegal immigrants from the borders with Mexico and Canada without providing them the opportunity to make their case before an immigration judge.
Until now, Border Patrol agents typically delivered illegal immigrants to the custody of the immigration courts, where judges determined whether they should be deported or remain in the United States. Homeland Security officials, who announced the policy shift this week, said border agents would be trained before deporting illegal immigrants to ensure that asylum seekers and legitimate travelers were not mistakenly sent home.
full article
rootsie on 08.13.04 @ 01:06 PM CST [
link]
Powell Links Japan UN Seat to Constitution - Report
NY TimesTOKYO (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell said Japan must consider revising its pacifist constitution if it wanted to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, Kyodo news agency reported on Friday.
Article Nine of Japan's postwar, U.S.-drafted constitution, renounces the right to go to war and forbids a military, although it is interpreted as permitting forces for self-defense.
`If Japan is going to play a full role on the world stage and become a full active participating member of the Security Council, and have the kind of obligations that it would pick up as a member of the Security Council, Article Nine would have to be examined in that light,'' Kyodo quoted Powell as saying.
full article
rootsie on 08.13.04 @ 12:54 PM CST [
link]
Thousands of Iranians Protest U.S. Actions in Iraq
ReutersTEHRAN (Reuters) - Thousands of Iranians marched through the streets of Tehran on Friday to protest U.S. military actions in Iraq after a senior hardline cleric praised the resistance of Shi'ite Muslim rebels in Najaf.
Chanting ``Death to America'' and burning U.S. flags, the protesters flooded streets in central Tehran carrying banners proclaiming: ``Death to the occupiers'' and ``American democracy - massacre of innocent people.'' Similar state-sponsored rallies were planned across the country.
Shi'ite Muslim Iran has consistently called for U.S.-led forces to leave Iraq and expressed outrage at the presence of multinational forces in holy Shi'ite cities Najaf and Kerbala.
``They (Americans) want to fully eliminate Islamic groups from the Iraqi scene and give power to a laic group who are U.S. agents,'' Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati told worshippers at Friday Prayers in Tehran before the protest march started.
``I must appreciate those who are resisting around the holy shrine (of Imam Ali in Najaf) against the bloodthirsty wolves,'' he said.
full article
rootsie on 08.13.04 @ 12:50 PM CST [
link]
California Will Spend More to Help Its Poorest Schools
NY TimesLOS ANGELES, Aug. 12 - If 16-year-old Eliezer Williams has his way, rats will no longer scurry through classrooms in California, and every student will have books, a place to sit and a clean bathroom to use.
Eliezer is the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed in 2000 by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of 1.5 million California students, most from poor neighborhoods.
The lawsuit accused the state of denying poor children adequate textbooks, trained teachers and safe classrooms.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, plans to announce Friday that California has settled the suit by agreeing to the demands that the students receive equal access to basic instructional materials in all core subjects and that they be taught by qualified teachers in sound and healthy schools.
The proposed settlement, which is subject to approval by a judge, would require the state to devote as much as $1 billion to repairs and upgrades to 2,400 deteriorating, low-performing schools.
It would also provide almost $139 million for textbooks this year alone.
"This means that every child counts," said Mark D. Rosenbaum, legal director of the Southern California branch of the A.C.L.U.
The deal, Mr. Rosenbaum said, ends "decades of neglect and indifference."
"We were in classrooms where kids had to share space with rats," he said. "We saw essays posted on a board in an elementary school where kids had written about the prevalence of rats in their classrooms."
While touring schools to research the lawsuit, Mr. Rosenbaum said, he found children who had defecated in class because restrooms were out of order.
In some classrooms, he said, rain poured through holes in ceilings.
Citing a Harris poll, Mr. Rosenbaum said that one million to two million students did not have books for use in school or to take home for study, and that schools with high concentrations of black and Latino students were 74 percent more likely than predominantly white schools to lack sufficient textbooks.
...The administration of Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat who was ousted last year in a recall election, spent about $18 million fighting the lawsuit.
Lawyers for the state argued that poor students were unlikely to do better in school even if they had the same educational benefits as children who were not poor. They also said the responsibility for ensuring educational equality belonged to local governments.
But the plaintiffs argued that the state had denied thousands of children their fundamental right to an education under the California Constitution.
full article
rootsie on 08.13.04 @ 12:46 PM CST [
link]
Thursday, August 12th
Leading US Daily Admits Underplaying Stories Critical of White House Push for Iraq War
commondreams.orgWASHINGTON - The Washington Post became the latest prestigious US newspaper to question its own coverage of Iraq leading up to the US-led war, saying it underplayed stories questioning White House claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
full article
rootsie on 08.12.04 @ 09:59 PM CST [
link]
War? What war?
Guardian UK..."On June 28, my feeling was nothing was going to change because of the handover," says Steven Cook, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "There were still going to be car bombings and US soldiers being killed, and that's exactly what's happened. Nothing has changed."
But one thing did change: US press coverage of Iraq. The handover marked a turning point in the level and intensity of media interest, which sharply decreased, particularly on the 24-hour cable news channels.
"Clearly the volume in press coverage has gone way down," says Cook. "'Sleepy' is a good word to describe it. The coverage doesn't compare with anything we'd seen during the previous 12 months from Iraq. The drop-off has been noticeable.
full articleThe Withdrawal of Foreign Troops is the Only Solution:
The Media-hyped Fiction of a Handover of Power in Iraq is designed for US Voters by Tariq Ali commondreams.orgMost legends contain a small grain of truth, but none is to be found in the fraudulent images being presented each day by the BBC (and the US networks). The print media is not much better. Official propaganda is constantly repeated in sentences such as: "On June 28 the United States and its coalition partners transferred sovereign control of Iraq to an interim government headed by prime minister Ayad Allawi. The transfer of sovereignty ended more than a year of American-led occupation". Meanwhile, US intelligence agencies admit that the size of the resistance increases every day. If Moqtada al-Sadr were to be captured or killed in the fighting taking place in Najaf, the steady trickle of recruits could become a flood. In such a situation and with no official opposition to the occupation in the Commons it should be the responsibility of the media to ensure that some truth, at least, is regularly reported.
full article
rootsie on 08.12.04 @ 09:51 PM CST [
link]
Wednesday, August 11th
Venezuela Gets the Florida Treatment: Will The Gang That Fixed Florida Fix the Vote in Caracas this Sunday?
by Greg Palast
africaspeaks.comHugo Chavez drives George Bush crazy. Maybe it's jealousy: Unlike Mr. Bush, Chavez, in Venezuela, won his Presidency by a majority of the vote.
Or maybe it's the oil: Venezuela sits atop a reserve rivaling Iraq's. And Hugo thinks the US and British oil companies that pump the crude ought to pay more than a 16% royalty to his nation for the stuff. Hey, sixteen percent isn't even acceptable as a tip at a New York diner.
Whatever it is, OUR President has decided that THEIR president has to go. This is none too easy given that Chavez is backed by Venezuela's poor. And the US oil industry, joined with local oligarchs, has made sure a vast majority of Venezuelans remain poor.
Therefore, Chavez is expected to win this coming Sunday's recall vote. That is, if the elections are free and fair.
They won't be. Some months ago, a little birdie faxed to me what appeared to be confidential pages from a contract between John Ashcroft's Justice Department and a company called ChoicePoint, Inc., of Atlanta. The deal is part of the War on Terror.
Justice offered up to $67 million, of our taxpayer money, to ChoicePoint in a no-bid deal, for computer profiles with private information on every citizen of half a dozen nations. The choice of which nation's citizens to spy on caught my eye. While the September 11th highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint's menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Argentines. How odd. Had the CIA uncovered a Latin plot to sneak suicide tango dancers across the border with exploding enchiladas?
full articleUS Support for Anti-Democratic Forces in Venezuela Recall africaspeaks.commagine the scandal if a foreign government had for years funneled millions of dollars to political groups in the United States in an attempt to affect the outcome of a U.S. election. Even worse, what if some of the groups that received money had been involved in a failed coup attempt against a democratically elected U.S. president? Would the U.S. public not have a right to be outraged at the attempt to manipulate our political process?
Of course we would -- which is why the people of Venezuela have a right to be outraged at the U.S. government's ongoing attempts to meddle in the electoral process in Venezuela.
full article
rootsie on 08.11.04 @ 10:42 PM CST [
link]
New York lockdown
Guardian UKIf you're a delegate attending the Republican national convention at Madison Square Garden later this month, Jamie Moran knows where you're staying. He knows where you're eating and what Broadway musical you plan on seeing. For the past nine months, Moran has been living off savings earned as an office manager at a nonprofit and working full-time to disrupt the RNC.
His small anarchist collective, RNCNotWelcome.org, runs a snitch line and an email account where disgruntled employees of New York hotels, the Garden and the Republican party itself can pass on information about conventioneers. So far, the collective has received dozens of phone calls and hundreds of emails with inside dirt on GOP activities.
Recently, a woman with a polished, middle-aged sounding voice left a message saying, "For some God-unknown reason I'm on the Republican mailing list, and they sent me what they call a list of their inner-circle events." The events hadn't been publicised elsewhere, she said, and she wanted to fax the list to Moran.
Moran feeds information like this to a cadre of activists desperate to unleash four years' worth of anger at the Bush administration. By dogging the delegates wherever they go, RNC Not Welcome hopes to make the Republicans' lives hell for as long as they're in New York.
"We want to make their stay here as miserable as possible," says Moran, who has sandy hair, a snub nose and a goatee. The son of a retired Queens cop, he's 30 but looks younger. "I'd like to see all the Republican events - teas, backslapping lunches - disrupted. I'd like to see people from other states following their delegates, letting them know what they think about Republican policies. I'd like to see impromptu street parties and marches. I'd like to see corporations involved in the Iraq reconstruction get targeted - anything from occupation to property destruction."
There's a showdown coming to Manhattan. Backed by the most intense security the city has ever seen, the Republicans are about to turn the blue-state bastion of New York City into the backdrop for George Bush's coronation. The RNC chose New York because it was the site of the September 11 terror attacks, which to Bush's opponents and even some ordinary New Yorkers seems a brazen provocation.
On one side are 36,000 cops - a force that city councilman Peter Vallone Jr calls "perhaps the world's 10-largest standing army". On the other side are at least 250,000 protesters expected to converge on the city from all across the United States and Canada - a demonstration six times larger than the legendary antiglobalisation protests that rocked Seattle in 1999. They're facing off at a time when police are increasingly adopting military tactics in response to protest, and protesters are responding likewise, conducting their own reconnaissance on Republican plans and plotting actions designed to hit where the cops are weakest.
full article
rootsie on 08.11.04 @ 10:30 PM CST [
link]
Iran Tests Missile Capable of Hitting Israel
New York TimesTEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Wednesday it carried out a successful field test of the latest version of its Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile, which defense experts say can reach Israel or U.S. bases in the Gulf.
Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said last week Iran was working to improve the range and accuracy of the Shahab-3 in response to Israel's moves to boost its anti-missile capability.
The Defense Ministry, in a brief statement carried on the official news agency IRNA, said the test of the new Shahab-3 ``was carried out successfully ... The pre-determined targets were hit in the testing,'' it said.
Iran says its missile program is purely for deterrent purposes. Tehran also denies U.S. and Israeli accusations that it is seeking to develop nuclear warheads which could be delivered by the Shahab-3.
In Washington, the State Department said Iran's attempts to improve its missile capability were a threat to the region and U.S. interests.
``We will continue to take steps to address Iran's missile efforts, and to work closely with other like-minded countries in doing so,'' State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said.
Based on the North Korean Nodong-1 and modified with Russian technology, the Shahab-3 is thought to have a range of 810 miles, which would allow it to strike anywhere in Israel.
Shahab means meteor in Persian.
Amid media speculation that Israel may try to halt Iran's nuclear program by carrying out air strikes on some atomic facilities in Iran, Iranian officials have said Tehran would retaliate promptly and strongly to any such attack.
TOUGH TALK
``If Israel behaves like a lunatic and attacks the Iranian nation's interests, we will come down on their heads like a mallet and break their bones,'' the ISNA students news agency quoted Revolutionary Guards Commander Yahya Rahim Safavi as saying on Wednesday.
full articleWell this is not a starving country with a military bombed into submission every day for 10 years. It is certainly not irrational for the Iranians to believe that the fix is in. Even the Congressional declaration of war on Iraq contains ominous statements about Iran.
rootsie on 08.11.04 @ 10:25 PM CST [
link]
Congo Says U.N. Must Forcibly Disarm Rwandan Rebels
ReutersKIGALI (Reuters) - The United Nations must forcibly disarm Rwandan Hutu militias at the heart of years of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the country's four vice-presidents said on Wednesday.
Vice-president Azarias Ruberwa said Congo wanted the U.N. Security Council to beef up the mandate of its 11,000-strong peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUC) to help hunt down and forcibly disarm the Interahamwe.
full article
rootsie on 08.11.04 @ 10:08 PM CST [
link]
Mapuche Indians in Chile Struggle to Take Back Forests
New York TimesTRAIGUÉN, Chile - Before the conquistadors arrived, and even for centuries afterward, the lush, verdant forests of southern Chile belonged to the Mapuche people. Today, though, tree farms stretch in all directions here, property of timber companies that supply lumber to the United States, Japan and Europe.
But now the Mapuches, complaining of false land titles and damage to the environment and their traditional way of life, are struggling to take back the land they say is still theirs. As their confrontation with corporate interests has grown more violent, Chile's nominally Socialist government has sought to blunt the indigenous movement by invoking a modified version of an antiterrorist law that dates from the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, 1973 to 1990.
Despite international protests, 18 Mapuche leaders are scheduled to go on trial soon, accused under a statute that prohibits "generating fear among sectors of the population." The charges stem from a series of incidents during the past seven years in which groups of Mapuches have burned forests or farmhouses or destroyed forestry equipment and trucks.
full article
rootsie on 08.11.04 @ 10:05 PM CST [
link]
Tuesday, August 10th
Fighting for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
by Brian Concannon Jr. and Anthony Fenton
zmag.orgFenton:Why did you feel it was necessary to form the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti [IJDH]?[1]
Concannon:The IJDH was formed in response to both the unconstitutional regime change in Haiti in February and the inadequate response, by civil society both inside and outside of Haiti. Our mission is to promote democracy and human rights in Haiti, and we have three main areas of activity: working with grassroots groups in Haiti and the solidarity community abroad,; documenting human rights abuses in Haiti and disseminating that information; and pursuing legal actions in Haitian and international courts to support the democratization of Haiti and to help victims of human rights abuses find justice.
Fenton:Are there any cases that you are actively pursuing right now?
Concannon:Yes. We have lawyers on the ground who are trying to get political prisoners out of jail; we’ve had some successes, there have been some people released out of jail; we hope that by applying pressure in the US and working within the system that we can get the justice system to recognize detainee’s rights under Haitian and International law.
So far it’s been an uphill battle, but we’re going to keep working on that.
full article
rootsie on 08.10.04 @ 10:06 PM CST [
link]
Bluebeard's CastleDisappearing the Right to Development
by Toni Solo
counterpunch.orgAn unconvincing but resonant tale, Bluebeard's Castle: A beautiful young woman marries a strange but captivating aristocrat: Before leaving on a journey, her new husband entrusts her with a magic key to a locked room. Curiosity overcomes her. Inside, she discovers the horrifying remains of her murdered predecessors. Relocking the door, she stains the key with blood. Nothing she does can clean it. Bluebeard returns, discovers the truth from the bloodied key. He is about to cut her to pieces. Her brothers arrive at the last minute and save her.
Writing in 1971, the cultural critic Geroge Steiner used the story as a symbol for the irreparable gap between the high moral claims for Western culture and its practice of torture, pogrom and massacre. He wrote:
"We come immediately after a stage of history in which millions of men, women, and children were made to ash. Currently, in different parts of the earth, communities are again being incinerated, tortured, deported. There is hardly a methodology of abjection and of pain which is not being applied somewhere, at this moment, to individuals and groups of human beings. Asked why he was seeking to arouse the whole of Europe over the judicial torture of one man, Voltaire answered, in March 1762, "c'est que je suis homme. " By that token, he would, today, be in constant and vain cry."
full article
rootsie on 08.10.04 @ 10:00 PM CST [
link]
Chicago on the Hudson?
by Dave Lindorff
counterpunch.orgThe way things look, August 29 could see a major triumph for the First Amendment, or a pitched battle between police and demonstrators that would be reminiscent of Chicago's Democratic Convention police riot of 36 years ago.
Since Michael Bloomberg, the Republican mayor, has taken the anti-civil liberties position that a protest rally can't be held on Central Park's Great Lawn-traditional site of such major political events-thousands of those who want to gather to protest the Bush administration have concluded that this is exactly where they ought to go.
No surprise that. After all, much of the anger at Republicans and Bush is over his administration's assault on basic civil liberties, such as freedom of speech and assembly.
The main protest organization that has been working for over a year on the anti-RNC march and demonstration, United for Peace and Justice, recognizing that Bloomberg and his police department were committed to stonewalling their permit application for the Great Lawn to the bitter end, finally agreed to the mayor's shabby and wholly inadequate offer of a rally site along the lower portion of the West Side Highway, a multi-lane artery that runs just along the edge of the Hudson River. Clearly, while it certainly makes crowd control simple, a highway is no place for a rally, since it forces the estimated several hundred thousand to half a million anticipated demonstrators to stretch out along over a mile of hot pavement.
The alternative, which is being discussed and promoted on numerous websites and chat lines-and advocated in the mainstream newspaper New York Newsday by columnist Jimmy Breslin--is for people to just make their way spontaneously to Central Park, which after all will remain open to the public (short of instituting martial law and bringing in the National Guard, it would be almost impossible for city police to close the park, especially given the numbers of cops who will have to be sent to the West Side Highway for the official rally).
full articleOpen Letter by United for Peace and Justice zmag.orgUnited for Peace and Justice has been fighting for months to have our Constitutional rights respected. We have been in a contentious process with the Mayor and Police Department of New York City regarding the location of our march and rally against the Bush agenda on August 29th, the eve of the Republican National Convention. We are writing to update you on these negotiations and to make sure you know about a number of important developments.
full article
rootsie on 08.10.04 @ 09:54 PM CST [
link]
Kerry's big Idea? There isn't One *Desperation Shouldn't Blind us to the Faults of Bush's Challenger*
by Simon Tisdall
Common DreamsThe lack of an appreciable post-convention "bounce" in John Kerry's poll ratings is significant. The Democratic party's Boston shindig last month was supposed to present him as a strong, experienced replacement for President George Bush. But Boston's main achievement may have been to highlight the limitations and flaws of Kerry's candidacy.
The eviction of a White House incumbent is always an uphill struggle. It requires something special. Bill Clinton possessed that indefinable quality in 1992.
If Kerry lacks Bubba's bounce, it may simply be because he is not, well, very bouncy.
full articleSilencing the Voice of the PeopleCounterpunch.orgDissent disrupts democracies, yet without it there is no democratic discourse. That point struck home as I watched the Democratic National Convention unfold and realized that the voices of the delegates, the representatives of the common people, had been muffled by the preordained celebrants of the Kerry command. With rare exception, notably Jimmy Carter and Rev. Sharpton, no voice spoke against the appointed incumbent; no voice raised the rabble about the lies that led to slaughter; no voice questioned the silencing of the people behind the curtain of the Patriot Act; no voice damned the administration that dared to impose on Americans the impious "pre-emptive strike" policy that destroys the very concept of Democracy; no voice asked why America does nothing to respond to the silent genocide taking place in our name in Rafah and the refugee camps crammed together in Gaza; no voice lamented the incarceration of the Palestinians by the illegal wall made of hatred and racism erected by the notorious terrorist, Ariel Sharon; no voice blasted the erasure of western law by the acceptance of extra-judicial executions; no voices, not a sound. Why?
full article
rootsie on 08.10.04 @ 09:44 PM CST [
link]
Diplomacy sidelined as US targets Iran
by Simon Tisdall
Guardian UKThe US charge sheet against Iran is lengthening almost by the day, presaging destabilising confrontations this autumn and maybe a pre-election October surprise.
The Bush administration is piling on the pressure over Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme. It maintains Tehran's decision to resume building uranium centrifuges wrecked a long-running EU-led dialogue and is proof of bad faith.
...Israel, Washington's ally, has also been stoking the fire. It is suggested there that if the west fails to act against Iran in timely fashion, Israel could strike pre-emptively as it did against Iraq's nuclear facilities in 1981, although whether it has the capability to launch effective strikes is uncertain.
full article
rootsie on 08.10.04 @ 09:35 PM CST [
link]
Strength and Weakness of the Bolivarian Revolution
by Omar Gomez
Africa SpeaksThe revolution that we are experiencing in Venezuela differs in an absolute manner from the processes that have developed in other countries. In Nicaragua, for instance, the Sandinista Forces, when coming to power, could not count on the enormous resources of an industry like PDVSA, that were able to finance the development of social welfare and which had the potential to constitute a weapon against North American interventionism. In Chile, Salvador Allende could not count on loyal Armed Forces that would allow him to counter the coup d'état. In Cuba, Fidel Castro had to battle against more than 40 years of economic blockade and attempts of invasion, what resulted in the revolution not having been able to advance at the pace and capacity it could have, if given a chance. There are innumberable examples that show the differences and advantages of the Revolution in Venezuela with regard to other revolutionary processes.
To be in the possession of one of the world's most important oil industries, to have the Armed Forces at one's side and, above all, to have the most widespread and categorical backing of the people, like has been proven by all polls concerning the upcoming referendum, all this indicates that our Revolution has an important solidity. But still, the Revolution has a limping leg.
full article
rootsie on 08.10.04 @ 10:59 AM CST [
link]
CIA executives gathered in Santiago de Chile revealed in contingency plot to overthrow Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias
VHeadlineVenezuela state-owned news agency VENPRES is quoting an El Mundo de Madrid (Spain) report that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is set to put a contingency plan in motion in the (likely) event that President Hugo Chavez Frias wins next weekend's Recall Referendum.
The Madrid newspaper says that the White House strategy is to avoid a regional expansion of the President Hugo Chavez Frias 'Bolivarian Revolution' which is seen by Washington D.C. as a direct step into the kind of socialism espoused by many European nations and envisaged in the United States if John Kerry wrests control of the White House from the Bush 2 administration this coming fall.
El Mundo says the CIA plan appears to concede a Chavez Frias victory next weekend "for good or bad" and that Langley spooks are already working on a strategy to "neutralize" Chavez Frias by fair means or foul.
rootsie on 08.10.04 @ 10:52 AM CST [
more..]
Monday, August 9th
Kerry: Still Would Have Approved Force for Iraq
APGRAND CANYON, Ariz. (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Monday he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found.
Taking up a challenge from President Bush, whom he will face in the Nov. 2 election, the Massachusetts senator said: "I'll answer it directly. Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have but I would have used that authority effectively."
full articleWell now that's a relief.
rootsie on 08.09.04 @ 09:34 PM CST [
link]
Obama holds 'slaveholder's' view, Keyes says
Chicago Sun TimesRepublican Alan Keyes ripped into Democratic rival Barack Obama's views on abortion Monday, calling them "the slaveholder's position," as the U.S. Senate race roared back to life in Illinois.
Up at dawn for a whirlwind round of broadcast interviews, the conservative former diplomat started his first full day of campaigning as the GOP candidate by saying Obama, a state senator from Chicago, had violated the principle that all men are created equal by voting against a bill that would have outlawed a form of late-term abortion.
Keyes said legalizing abortion deprives the unborn of their equal rights.
"I would still be picking cotton if the country's moral principles had not been shaped by the Declaration of Independence," Keyes said. He said Obama "has broken and rejected those principles-- he has taken the slaveholder's position."
The remarks underscore the uniqueness of this Senate race in which both candidates, one an outspoken conservative and the other a favorite of party liberals, are black.
full articleLet the games begin.
rootsie on 08.09.04 @ 09:28 PM CST [
link]
Friends in the White House Come to Coal's Aid
New York TimesWASHINGTON - In 1997, as a top executive of a Utah mining company, David Lauriski proposed a measure that could allow some operators to let coal-dust levels rise substantially in mines. The plan went nowhere in the government.
Last year, it found enthusiastic backing from one government official - Mr. Lauriski himself. Now head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, he revived the proposal despite objections by union officials and health experts that it could put miners at greater risk of black-lung disease.
full article
rootsie on 08.09.04 @ 09:21 PM CST [
link]
Europe Sees No Genocide in Sudan Region
ReutersBRUSSELS, Aug. 9 (Reuters) - The European Union said Monday that it had found no evidence of genocide in the Sudanese region of Darfur despite widespread killings, but that there were few indications of government efforts to protect civilians.
The conclusion of a fact-finding mission put Europe at odds with the United States Congress, which has pushed for a declaration that the campaign of looting and burning by government-backed Arab militiamen against black village farmers in Darfur is genocide.
full article
rootsie on 08.09.04 @ 09:17 PM CST [
link]
Rice Says Iran Must Not Be Allowed to Develop Nuclear Arms
New York TimesKENNEBUNKPORT, Me., Aug. 8 - President Bush's national security adviser said Sunday that the United States and its allies "cannot allow the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon" and warned that President Bush would "look at all the tools that are available to him" to stop Iran's program.
full article
rootsie on 08.09.04 @ 09:12 PM CST [
link]
Sunday, August 8th
The Price of Valor
by Dan Baum
New YorkerWe train our soldiers to kill for us. Afterward, they’re on their own.
Carl Cranston joined the Army in 1997 when he was still a junior at Sebring McKinley High School, not far from Canton, Ohio. He and his girlfriend, Debbie Stiles, had just had a baby, and the thought the Army offered the easiest path to job security The country was enjoying what President Clinton liked to call “the longest peacetime expansion in history, and Carl’s duties as an infantryman, the thought, would largely be a matter of his getting into shape shooting awesome weapons, and learning skills like rappelling and land navigation. The Army allowed Carl to finish high school and, once he’d completed basic training, sent him to Schofield Barracks outside Honolulu. Debbie gladly accompanied him. “The Army was the best choice we could have made, and I’d do it again,” she says. “Suddenly we were on our own, paying our bills. Eighteen years old, our first time away from home.
The attacks of September 11th changed everything. The Cranstons were moved to Fort Benning, in Columbus, Georgia, so that Carl could join the 3rd Infantry Division’s 3rd Brigade, a mechanized unit known as the Sledgehammer Brigade. He and his men were assigned to accompany Bradley fighting vehicles—the fast, heavily armed personnel carriers that became the backbone of the attack on Iraq. Seven soldiers, or “dismounts,” would squeeze into the Bradley’s stifling rear compartment, and Carl, by now a sergeant, was their team leader. The Sledgehammers were among the first units to cross into Iraq after the war started, in March, 2003, and Carl was involved in eleven firefights, seven of them “major,” by his reckoning. They fought from the Kuwait border to central Baghdad, and finally rotated back to Fort Benning last July.
I met Carl and Debbie in February, at a Red Lobster restaurant in Columbus. He’s a big man of twenty-four, with a high-fade military buzz cut and a well-padded face that relaxes into a wide smile. She is small and blond, with a sharp chin and a quick, alert look honed by rimless glasses. Carl tends to be guileless and cheerful, Debbie more clipped and wary.
Carl still marvels at the lethality of the Sledgehammers. Iraqi soldiers, believing they were concealed by darkness or smoke, would expose themselves to the Bradley’s thermal sights and the devastating rapid fire of its twenty-five-millimetre cannon. Carl and his squad would tumble out the back of the Bradley and attack Iraqi soldiers who had survived. “We killed a lot of people,” he said as we ate. Later, Carl and his men had to establish roadblocks, which was notoriously dangerous duty. “We started out being nice,” Carl said. “We had little talking cards to help us communicate. We’d put up signs in Arabic saying ‘Stop.’ We’d say, ‘Ishta, ishta,’ which means ‘Go away.’” But people would approach with white flags in their hands and then whip out AK-47s or rocket-propelled grenades. So Carl’s group adopted a play-it-safe policy: if a driver ignored the signs and the warnings and came within thirty metres of a roadblock, the Americans opened fire. “That’s why nobody in our whole company got killed,” he said. Debbie stopped eating and stared into her food. “You’re not supposed to fire warning shots, but we did,” Carl said. “And still some people wouldn’t stop.” He went on, “A couple of times—more than a couple—it was women and children in the car. I don’t know why they didn’t stop.” Carl’s squad didn’t tow away the cars containing dead people. “You can’t go near it,” he said. “It might be full of explosives. You just leave it.” He and his men would remain at their posts alongside the carnage. “Nothing else you can do,” he said.
Debbie watched the waitress clear our plates, then she leaned forward to tell about a night in July, after Carl’s return, when they went with some friends to the Afterhours Enlisted Club at Fort Benning. Carl had a few drinks, Debbie said, and started railing at the disk jockey, shouting, “I want to hear music about people blowing people’s brains out, cutting people’s throats!” Debbie continued, “I said, ‘Carl. Shut up.’ He said, ‘No, I want to hear music about shit I’ve seen!’” Carl listened to Debbie’s story with a loving smile, as though she were telling about him losing his car keys. “I don’t remember that,” he said, laughing. Debbie said, “That was the first time I heard him say stuff about seeing people’s brains blown out. Other times, he just has flashbacks—like, he sits still and stares.” Carl laughed again. “Really, though, I’m fine,” he said. Beside him in the booth, Debbie shook her head without taking her eyes from mine and exaggeratedly mouthed, “Not fine. Not fine.”
full article
rootsie on 08.08.04 @ 07:47 PM CST [
link]
Rwandan Accused in Genocide Wins Suit for U.N. Pay
New York Timesfter the killing frenzy in Rwanda a decade ago, a war crimes investigator charged that a United Nations employee delegated to ensure the safety of his colleagues took part in the atrocity. The employee was never prosecuted and continued to hold jobs in the United Nations for years.
Now he has won the right to compensation for pay lost after he was finally dismissed in 2001, a decision that has incensed some United Nations investigators and officials, who say it represents a betrayal of the United Nations' most basic principles.
full article
rootsie on 08.08.04 @ 07:30 PM CST [
link]
Huge Caracas Rally Boosts Chavez Referendum Hopes
ReutersCARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's supporters flooded Caracas on Sunday in a huge show of support for the left-wing leader a week before he faces a cliff-hanger referendum.
The outcome of the Aug. 15 recall vote is too close to call.
full articleVenezuela's Opposition Loses Momentum New York TimesA protest demonstration last week in Caracas against President Hugo Chávez drew few people. The opposition has failed to overcome the president's populist appeal as a recall vote nears next Sunday.
...After the opposition's failed coup attempt against President Hugo Chávez and its four economically devastating strikes, the old dinosaurs of the two political parties that plundered the country for decades and are now in opposition have lost their influence.
full article
rootsie on 08.08.04 @ 07:25 PM CST [
link]
Diplomacy Fails to Slow Advance of Nuclear Arms
New York TimesKENNEBUNKPORT, Me., Aug. 7 - American intelligence officials and outside nuclear experts have concluded that the Bush administration's diplomatic efforts with European and Asian allies have barely slowed the nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea over the past year, and that both have made significant progress.
In a tacit acknowledgment that the diplomatic initiatives with European and Asian allies have failed to curtail the programs, senior administration and intelligence officials say they are seeking ways to step up unspecified covert actions intended, in the words of one official, "to disrupt or delay as long as we can" Iran's efforts to develop a nuclear weapon.
full articleAnd who is looking to the US nuclear threat? Two new weapons are being developed right now.
I know...silly question.
rootsie on 08.08.04 @ 07:12 PM CST [
link]
China in Africa: All Trade, With No Political Baggage
New York TimesBEIJING - A look of satisfaction played on the trade official's face as he reeled off statistics recently from a ministry report about China's booming commerce with Africa.
"Forty African countries have trade agreements with China now," said the official, Li Xiaobing, deputy director of the West Asian and African Affairs division of the Trade Ministry. "We are doing a railway project in Nigeria, a Sheraton hotel in Algeria and a mobile telephone network in Tunisia. We are all over Africa now."
For any doubters, a glance at the statistics indicates that the official's exultation is, if anything, understated. Though starting from a modest base, China's trade with the African continent reached $18.5 billion in 2003, an increase of 50 percent since 2000, and it is on track for another big increase this year.
China's push into Africa is all the more remarkable because it comes when that continent has become the virtual stepchild of the international trade system, a mere footnote - or worse, simply unmentioned in discussions of global commerce.
Beijing's fast-rising involvement with Africa grows out of China's immense and growing need for natural resources, in particular for imported oil, of which 25 percent now comes from Africa.
Lacking the economic and political ties that Western Europe has with Africa as a legacy of colonialism, and the economic power that the United States wields because of its wealth and influence in international financial institutions, China's new leadership under President Hu Jintao has pushed to forge stronger ties. Mr. Hu himself traveled to Africa in January and February, visiting Egypt, Gabon and Algeria.
full article
rootsie on 08.08.04 @ 07:04 PM CST [
link]
Saturday, August 7th
All About Eve
by Chris Floyd
Moscow TimesLook out, ladies! The divinely-appointed duo of George W. Bush and Pope John Paul II are on the prowl again, bringing their patented one-two punch to boudoirs and back alleys everywhere. Last summer, the pious pair launched simultaneous broadsides against the apocalyptic threat of gay marriage; now they're firing their missiles of moral correction at the ultimate source of the world's distemper: uppity females.
This week, the pope's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (known as "The Inquisition" back in the glory days) released a "major statement" on the status of women. The Inquisitors declared that women who resist their subordination to men too strongly are "giving rise to harmful confusion" and perverting their "natural characteristics" of "listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting."
rootsie on 08.07.04 @ 09:44 PM CST [
more..]
Why Bush could be a fan of terror
Guardian UKAmerica won't turn against its President this November, not as long as al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden stay on the front pages
The fattest factor in America's election year hasn't flamed, or even singed, yet. But another hot week of orange alerts, white knuckles and scarlet blushes begins to pose the inevitable awful problem. Who exactly will Osama bin Laden be voting for this November? Is he (whisper it gently) a closet Republican?
Take almost any current terror scenario and put it to public opinion. Suppose that the 9/11 commission is right. Suppose that the obvious risk of another al-Qaeda attack turns to bloody reality sometime over the next four months. Who gains? Why, the sitting President, the Commander in Chief. George W Bush declared this 'war' and took his country into battle. It would not desert him if true crisis suddenly returned.
full article
rootsie on 08.07.04 @ 09:33 PM CST [
link]
Stay calm everyone, there's Prozac in the drinking water
Guardian UKIt should make us happy, but environmentalists are deeply alarmed: Prozac, the anti-depression drug, is being taken in such large quantities that it can now be found in Britain's drinking water.
Environmentalists are calling for an urgent investigation into the revelations, describing the build-up of the antidepressant as 'hidden mass medication'. The Environment Agency has revealed that Prozac is building up both in river systems and groundwater used for drinking supplies.
full article It's amazing. My paranoia just cannot keep up with reality.
rootsie on 08.07.04 @ 09:25 PM CST [
link]
Why Hugo Chávez is heading for a stunning victory
Guardian UKLoathed by the rich
To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise of international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo Chávez is about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a referendum designed to lead to his overthrow.
First elected in 1998 as a barely known colonel, armed with little more than revolutionary rhetoric and a moderate social-democratic programme, Chávez has become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America to the neo-liberal hegemony of the United States. Closely allied to Fidel Castro, he rivals the Cuban leader in his fierce denunciations of George Bush, a strategy that goes down well with the great majority of the population of Latin America, where only the elites welcome the economic and political recipes devised in Washington.
While Chávez has retained his popularity after nearly six years as president, support for overtly pro-US leaders in Latin America, such as Vicente Fox in Mexico and Alejandro Toledo in Peru, has dwindled to nothing. Even the fence-sitting President Lula in Brazil is struggling in the polls. The news that Chávez will win this month's referendum will be bleakly received in Washington.
full article
rootsie on 08.07.04 @ 09:54 AM CST [
link]
Kerry's Goal of Independence From Middle East Oil Divides Advisers
New York TimesWASHINGTON, Aug. 6 - The idea of a United States independent of Middle East oil is a touchstone of Senator John Kerry's campaign and a huge crowd pleaser, but has divided and exasperated many of his most experienced energy advisers.
Some advisers say they worry that Mr. Kerry's focus on freeing the United States from reliance on oil from the Persian Gulf, the linchpin of the energy plan he released on Thursday, is unrealistic and misleading and that hammering away at it would erode Mr. Kerry's credibility with business, the news media and other countries.
The advisers, who include independent analysts, former staff members from Congress and the Clinton administration, and a few industry executives, contend that Mr. Kerry's regular jabs at Saudi Arabia in particular could be construed by many in the Middle East as anti-Arab, at a time when the United States may need the help of other Arab nations to improve the situation in Iraq.
full articleWas this article written by the Kerry campaign? Kerry doesn't talk about independence from oil: he talks about a reduction of 20% by 2020, by which point there won't be much oil left anyway. Yeah right the anti-corporate crusader, dealing boldly with the Arabs. Blah.
rootsie on 08.07.04 @ 09:49 AM CST [
link]
British Cultural Official Tied to Slurs Against Muslims
New York TimesLONDON, Aug. 6 - The British Council, which promotes culture and learning around the world, has suspended one of its senior press officers after it emerged that he is suspected of being the author of a series of newspaper commentaries attacking Muslims and denouncing "the black heart of Islam.
The council, whose official patron is Queen Elizabeth II, operates as the cultural arm of British diplomacy in 110 countries. A spokesman for the organization said Friday that the press officer, Harry Cummins, was suspended from his post on July 29 after the newspaper The Guardian identified him as the likely author.
"All of us who work for the British Council are appalled that our organization should in any way be associated with the deeply offensive content of these articles," the spokesman said.
In one article the author stated, "All Muslims, like all dogs, share certain characteristics." Another commentary asserted, "It is the black heart of Islam, not its black face, to which millions object."
full articleNo worse insult to them than having a 'black heart', even worse, if possible, than having a 'black face.'
rootsie on 08.07.04 @ 09:42 AM CST [
link]
Friday, August 6th
Busted
US troops surround Najaf home of Shiite militia leaderMon Aug 2,11:49 AM ET
Agence France PresseNAJAF, Iraq (AFP) - US troops surrounded the home of wanted Shiite Muslim radical leader Moqtada Sadr in the central Iraqi holy city of Najaf, an AFP correspondent witnessed.
US armoured vehicles, backed by Iraqi security forces, cordoned off the Al-Zahra neighbourhood, where Sadr's home is located in the eastern part of the city.
Smoke was seen rising from the area Monday amid the sound of heavy gunfire, mortar fire and rocket-propelled grenade explosions.
This article was filed Monday, and today the mainstream press reports that Sadr broke the cease fire yesterday (Thursday). Sadr is insisting that this is a unilateral US attack, and the story about the police station bombing that Sadr forces carried out yesterday is a fiction. Up to now the US has been blaming all the recent bombings on alZirqawi, the live-dead, one-legged-two-legged, right-handed-left handed Jordanian. The question then arises as to why the US would deliberately provoke a Shi'ite uprising. Maybe they just thought they could catch Sadr by surprise with all the talk of cease-fire and amnesty, and wipe his forces out, as they had intended all along. Or maybe maximum chaos is their ultimate aim, so that at the end of all this they can tell the world that Iraq is incapable of self-government.
rootsie on 08.06.04 @ 07:30 PM CST [
link]
Thursday, August 5th
Three banks robbed while Bush and Kerry are in town
Independent UKThe separate presidential campaigns and very different visions of America of George Bush and John Kerry converged on the same Iowa town of Davenport yesterday.
But the politicians were in large measure upstaged by local criminals who took advantage of police preoccupations with the candidates' security to stage no less than three separate bank robberies.
full articleIn the immortal words of Bob Dylan: "Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king."
rootsie on 08.05.04 @ 10:25 PM CST [
link]
Tongue-twisted Bush is bent on self-harm
Independent UKEven by the previous standards of Bushisms, this was one for the ages.
Signing into law a new $417bn (£229bn) defence spending bill, the famously tongue-twisted 43rd President of the United States solemnly declared yesterday that his administration "will never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people".
The gaffe came as President George Bush was warming to his favourite theme of the terrorist threat faced by the US.
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," he said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
full article
rootsie on 08.05.04 @ 10:19 PM CST [
link]
Uprooted trees, razed houses... Israel leaves its calling card in Gaza
Independent UKThe Palestinians of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip began to count the cost of a month-long Israeli invasion as the troops finally pulled out yesterday, leaving a trail of anger, despair and devastation behind them.
More than 42,000 olive, citrus and date trees had been uprooted, according to the local council. Altogether, 4,405 acres of orchards, vineyards and vegetable fields were flattened.
Officials accused the army of demolishing 21 houses and damaging a further 314. Five factories and 19 wells were also destroyed. They said the loss could reach as high as £70m.
full articleIn a world of abominations, why does this one seem especially sickening?
rootsie on 08.05.04 @ 10:15 PM CST [
link]
WHO violated the cease fire with Sadr?
There was a Reuters story Sunday that suggested American troops raided Sadr's compound and initiated this. Allawi was talking about including Sadr in the government a couple of weeks ago. I think Sadr was set up, and this situation an excuse for imposing martial law. As for the US, the more chaos the better. Now it seems they are initiating a Shi'ite uprising.
Iraq set to use martial law in terror fightIndependent UKThe interim Iraqi government last night looked increasingly prepared to impose martial law on sections of the country as coalition and Iraqi forces fought fierce battles with armed insurgents loyal to the radical Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr.
full articleAl-Sadr Militia Battles U.S., Iraq TroopsGuardian UKNAJAF, Iraq (AP) - Militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia battled U.S. and Iraqi troops Thursday in the holy city of Najaf, sparking clashes in other Shiite areas that killed at least 20 Iraqis and a U.S. soldier. An al-Sadr spokesman threatened a ``revolution'' unless American forces agree to a new cease-fire.
full articleClashes Threaten to Reignite Shi'ite Rising in IraqReutersNAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Followers of rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr shot down a U.S. helicopter on Thursday in the Iraqi city of Najaf and two were killed by British troops in Basra in clashes that threatened to reignite a Shi'ite uprising.
The fighting in Najaf was the heaviest in the city since a rebellion by Sadr's followers in April and May. The city is home to the holiest shrines in Shi'ite Islam, and most Iraqi Shi'ites react with outrage when clashes erupt near the sacred sites.
full article
rootsie on 08.05.04 @ 09:35 PM CST [
link]
Famous names speak up for Chavez in Venezuela poll
Guardian UKWriters, politicians and film-makers from more than a dozen countries have offered their support to the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, who faces a referendum this month on his future.
The group have signed a manifesto saying that, if they were Venezuelan, they would vote for Chavez in what will be a volatile contest. The manifesto is being launched as opponents of Mr Chavez claim he has "kidnapped" the electoral council responsible for overseeing the vote.
Signatories include the Argentinian Nobel peace prize winner Adolfo Perez, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, the musician Chico Buarque and the architect Niemeyer, both from Brazil, and British film-makers Ken Loach, Alex Cox and Mike Hodges, writers Harold Pinter and Eric Hobsbawm and politicians Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone.
full article
rootsie on 08.05.04 @ 09:16 PM CST [
link]
Kerry courts America's corporate leaders *
Guardian UKJohn Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president, published a list of about 200 entrepreneurs supporting his run for the White House, in an effort to reassure voters of his moderate credentials.
Guardian UK
rootsie on 08.05.04 @ 09:12 PM CST [
link]
Campaigners for global justice must take a leaf out of Greenpeace's book and consider direct action
Guardian UK..."We've published a report cataloguing 234 protests in 34 countries in the south. What you see going on in the north is only the tip of the iceberg. Most of the world is opposed to the corporate invasions of their country.
"What is encouraging is that we are living through the birth of the biggest, most unprecedented mass movement in history, the global justice movement.
"A hundred thousand people from around the globe are attending the world social forums and realising that what links our, admittedly smaller, problems in Europe - work insecurity, climate change, privatisation of public services - is the same model of corporate control. They pay a higher price, but we are all victims."
full article
rootsie on 08.05.04 @ 09:04 PM CST [
link]
Jab to beat addiction
CourierCHILDREN could be injected with an "anti-junkie" vaccination being developed by drug companies under a radical plan to combat rising addiction.
Under the plan, being considered by British MPs, doctors would immunise at birth babies considered to be at risk of becoming nicotine or drug addicts. The injection would be similar to an inoculation for measles or mumps.
Doctors believe the childhood jab would block the euphoric effects of drugs later in life, rendering useless narcotics such as heroin and cocaine.
The vaccinations are expected to be on the market within two years.
full article
rootsie on 08.05.04 @ 08:59 PM CST [
link]
Wednesday, August 4th
Liberia:Peace at Last?
by Lansana Gberie
zmagThere is a poignant moment in Howard French's excellent book, A Continent for the Taking: the Tragedy and Hope of Africa (2004) that, in its intensity and suspense, has the quality to stay forever in one's mind. French, a former New York Times West African Bureau chief, encounters the murderous Liberian warlord Charles Taylor in Monrovia. Amidst the general distress, Taylor, "impeccably coiffed, manicured and groomed," is "dressed in a finely tailored two-piece African-style suit," and exuded of "haughty self-contentment." He is seated "in a high-backed rattan chair reminiscent of the one of the famous pictures of Black Panther leader Huey Newton," and he is holding, for good measure, "an elaborately carved wooden scepter." It is a triumphant Taylor-this is after the 1996 Abuja Accord which would finally pave his way to becoming President of Liberia---and, for all intents and purposes, the warlord must look presidential.
Taylor is holding a press conference, and French takes his chance. "Isn't it outrageous," he asks Taylor, who had just described his predatory insurgency as 'God's war.' "Isn't it outrageous for someone who has drugged small boys, given them arms and trained them to kill to call this God's war? How dare you call the destruction of your country in this manner and the killing of two hundred thousand people God's war?" Ever wily and articulate, Taylor did not miss a beat. "I just believe in the destiny of man being controlled by God, and wars, whether man-made or what, are directed by a force," he said. "And so when I say it is God's war, God has his own way of restoring the land, and he will restore it after the war."
full article
rootsie on 08.04.04 @ 09:53 PM CST [
link]
Emancipation Charade
Awhile back we posted an article from 'concerned' European analysts bemoaning the sorry lack of 'intra-African trade' (linked below).This demonstrates the hypocrisyAfrica Speaksby George Alleyne
Trinidad and Tobago
http://www.newsday.co.ttThis year's annual charade of pretending to identify with Africa in the week immediately preceding Emancipation Day and on Emancipation Day itself has ended. Sadly, most of the persons who wore African garb for that brief period, displaying them as they would Carnival costumes, would have severe reservations about walking down Frederick or High Street in them today and the weeks and months ahead. The once-a-year "Africans" care less about seeing beyond the tragedy of Rwanda, of the Congo, of Liberia, Zimbabwe and the Sudan to the factors which created the tragedy, Europe's colonising of those countries, its ruthless exploitation of the raw materials of those countries, its dehumanising of the people, the crippling of their industries and the flooding of their markets today with cheap products in a bid to head off any attempts at industrial growth. How many of the once-a-year Africans have concerned themselves with Walter Rodney's anguished cries in his monumental work How Europe Underdeveloped Africa in which he deals with restrictions placed by the French, for example, on exports of groundnut oil from Senegal, and the British of the same product from Nigeria.
BBC News: Intra-Africa Trade is 'too low'
rootsie on 08.04.04 @ 09:27 PM CST [
more..]
Republican candidate admits supporting eugenics
Independent UKNashville, Tennesee: The Republican congressional candidate James L Hart has acknowledged that he is an unapologetic supporter of eugenics, the fake science that resulted in thousands of people being sterilised in an attempt to purify the white race.
He believes the country will look "like one big Detroit" - which has a large African-American population - if it doesn't eliminate welfare payments and immigration. He believes that if blacks were integrated centuries ago, the automobile would never have been invented.
full article
rootsie on 08.04.04 @ 08:53 PM CST [
link]
Terror alert: how four-year-old information was transformed into clear and present danger
Independent UKhe Bush administration was forced into the embarrassing admission yesterday that "new" intelligence about al-Qa'ida's plans to attack US financial institutions - information that led to an official alert and a slew of fresh security measures - was up to four years old and predated the 11 September attacks.
Intelligence officials were forced into retreat just a day after they had said fresh and "alarmingly" specific information indicated terrorists were planning attacks on institutions in Washington, New York and New Jersey and had been carrying out surveillance of the targets. One investigator had even said that al-Qa'ida operatives had recently carried out a "test-run" for an attack against a bank.
...Despite Mr Ridge's assertion, a transcript of a background briefing provided to the US media on Sunday night by intelligence agencies reveals the extent to which officials were determined to imply the information was current. It was that briefing on which the majority of reports were based.
During the briefing one official, described only as a "senior intelligence official", said: "The new information is chilling in its scope, in its detail, in its breadth. It also gives a sense, the same feeling one would have if one found that somebody broke into your house and over the past several months was taking a lot of details about your place of residence and looking for ways to attack."
full article
rootsie on 08.04.04 @ 08:45 PM CST [
link]
Rwanda intimidates press critics with arbitary arrests
Independent UKThe bar at the Hotel des Milles Collines in Rwanda's capital of Kigali is buzzing on a Tuesday night. Air-kisses flurry about, a singer pelts out pop ballads, and waitresses serve grilled fish and chilled wines.
The customers - expatriates and fashionable Rwandans - are cheerful and talkative, competing for an audience in the balmy air. This is the new Kigali - a vibrant town trying to rebuild itself, to cope with the horrors of 1994, when 800,000 people were killed in a genocide that engulfed the entire country.
But in this buzzing city, Charles Kabonero, editor of Rwanda's only independent newspaper, Umuseso, has just been released after yet another arbitary arrest - his fifth stint in jail since he took control of the newspaper six months ago. He is the fourth editor the newspaper has had since its creation in 2000. All three of his predecessors fled the country after being arrested several times and receiving death threats.
"After all the editors fled, I found myself the most senior person at the newspaper so I became editor," said 23-year-old Kabonero, who is still a journalism student at the National University in Rwanda. "Each time an edition comes out, we get three or four summons to report to the police station, the newspaper is seized, or I get arrested. I am getting used to it."
full article
rootsie on 08.04.04 @ 08:39 PM CST [
link]
They seek him here, they seek him there
Independent UKDespite the US's huge intelligence-gathering network and diplomatic clout - and even a $25m reward on his head - there's not been a single sighting of Osama bin Laden since 2001. Justin Huggler reports from Peshawar on the search for the world's most wanted man.
Somewhere, a man huddles in the shadows, speaking into a tape recorder, bringing his latest message to the outside world. His face is instantly recognisable. There is a $25m price tag on his head, and just a snippet of information on his whereabouts could make a man rich for life. He is the most wanted man in the world, but for more than three years, nobody has been able to find a trace of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts.
With Washington and New York this week on orange alert, and the US releasing what it claims is the most detailed evidence yet of an al-Qa'ida plot to strike inside its borders, the focus is suddenly back on the hunt for Bin Laden. Al-Qa'ida allies are being blamed for the loathsome beheadings of foreigners that have become almost a grisly routine in Iraq. And with a US national election looming and President George Bush doing badly in the polls, the White House is said to be desperate to capture their man in time for November.
...Rumours abound that he has already been captured by the US, or maybe Pakistan, and that his captors are waiting for the perfect moment to announce his capture: just in time for President Bush's re-election bid, for example, or in order for Pakistan's President Musharraf to wring the most glittering rewards from the US.
full article
rootsie on 08.04.04 @ 08:35 PM CST [
link]
Army Rehires CACI for Interrogations
Guardian UKWASHINGTON (AP) - The Army has rehired CACI International Inc. on a short-term contract to assist in interrogations and other intelligence-gathering activities in Iraq.
Its previous contract, with the Interior Department, has been declared improper by that department's inspector general. It was determined that although the original contract was for information technology services, Arlington, Va.-based CACI instead was conducting intelligence operations.
The finding prompted the Army to hire CACI under a new $15 million agreement announced this week. The new contract is good until the end of November; the Army will put those services out to bid in December, officials said.
One of CACI's interrogators, Steven Stefanowicz, was singled out in the investigation by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba as contributing to the prison abuse at Abu Ghraib by allowing or instructing military police ``to facilitate interrogations by 'setting conditions' which were not authorized.''
Other Army officials have said they were satisfied with CACI's performance.
rootsie on 08.04.04 @ 08:26 PM CST [
link]
Tuesday, August 3rd
GOP wooing Keyes to take on Obama
Chicago Sun TimesBarack Obama might get a race, after all.
Former GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes told Illinois Republicans Monday that he is ''open to the idea'' of taking on the Democrat in the U.S. Senate race -- a move that would pit two eloquent, nationally known African Americans against one another.
''It would be a classic race of conservative vs. liberal,'' said state Sen. Dave Syverson, a member of the panel looking for a candidate to go up against Obama. ''It would put this race on the map in this country -- just for excitement.''
full articleThe tone of this article is incredibly dsigusting. Well not only that, but the idea of pitting Obama and Keyes against each other like...what? And for the white man's sport?? This reminds me of the horrific boxing scene at the beginning of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
rootsie on 08.03.04 @ 11:25 AM CST [
link]
Monday, August 2nd
U.S. Forces Clash with al-Sadr's Gunmen
truthout.orgAssociated Press
Kufa, Iraq - U.S. forces clashed Monday with gunmen protecting the house of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the holy city of Kufa. One woman was killed and three people were wounded, a hospital official said.
The U.S. military had no immediate comment.
At least six U.S. military vehicles entered the Zahra area in Kufa near al-Sadr's house, which is protected by his militia, the Mahdi Army, witnesses said.
Heavy gunfire and a mortar barrage set cars on fire before Iraqi police intervened and the U.S. forces withdrew, witnesses said.
"One woman was killed and we have three injured," said Ajwak Kadhim, director at Al-Hakim Hospital in Kufa, 100 miles south of Baghdad.
Al-Sadr, who is wanted by U.S. forces on an Iraqi warrant for the April 2003 murder of a moderate cleric in the nearby city of Najaf, was in his house at the time, witnesses said.
The radical cleric, who has grassroots support for his anti-coalition stance, began a two-month rebellion in early April after the U.S.-led occupation authority closed his newspaper and arrested a key aide. A series of truces ended the fighting, and the issue of whether to arrest al-Sadr was dropped without resolution.
Looks like somebody was set up...
rootsie on 08.02.04 @ 08:17 PM CST [
link]
Open Letter To Thomas Kean – Chairman Of The 9/11 Commission - From FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds
ScoopThomas Kean, Chairman
National Committee on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
301 7th Street, SW
Room 5125
Washington, DC 20407
Dear Chairman Kean:
It has been almost three years since the terrorist attacks on September 11; during which time we, the people, have been placed under a constant threat of terror and asked to exercise vigilance in our daily lives. Your commission, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, was created by law to investigate “facts and circumstances related to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001” and to “provide recommendations to safeguard against future acts of terrorism”, and has now issued its “9/11 Commission Report”. You are now asking us to pledge our support for this report, its recommendations, and implementation of these recommendations, with our trust and backing, our tax money, our security, and our lives. Unfortunately, I find your report seriously flawed in its failure to address serious intelligence issues that I am aware of, which have been confirmed, and which as a witness to the commission, I made you aware of. Thus, I must assume that other serious issues that I am not aware of were in the same manner omitted from your report. These omissions cast doubt on the validity of your report and therefore on its conclusions and recommendations. Considering what is at stake, our national security, we are entitled to demand answers to unanswered questions, and to ask for clarification of issues that were ignored and/or omitted from the report. I, Sibel Edmonds, a concerned American Citizen, a former FBI translator, a whistleblower, a witness for a United States Congressional investigation, a witness and a plaintiff for the Department of Justice Inspector General investigation, and a witness for your own 9/11 Commission investigation, request your answers to, and your public acknowledgement of, the following questions and issues:
rest of letter...
rootsie on 08.02.04 @ 07:52 PM CST [
link]
World trade deal hailed as 'historic', but pressure groups fear a 'catastrophe
Independent UKMinisters from the world's richest and poorest countries struck an 11th-hour deal yesterday to boost trade by cutting farm subsidies and import tariffs worldwide.
After five days of intense negotiation, the World Trade Organisation agreed to an interim text and set a deadline of December 2005 to hammer out a new global deal.
The deal was hailed as "historic" by the WTO and the main wealthy nations but fiercely attacked by activist groups who condemned it as a "catastrophe for the poor."
full article
rootsie on 08.02.04 @ 06:24 PM CST [
link]
The Curse of Wealth Under the Ground
by Jim Schultz
zmag.orgCochabamba, Bolivia - When Bolivians went to the polls earlier this month to vote on how to develop the nation's vast oil and gas reserves, they went with history on their minds.
Just outside the old colonial city of Potosi sits the mountain known as "cerro rico" (hill of riches). Beginning in the mid-1500s silver extracted from the hill, mostly by forced Indian labor, virtually bankrolled the Spanish empire for three centuries. Today Bolivians remember very well that their country sat atop one of the planet's greatest treasures of mineral wealth yet ended up the poorest country in South America.
Last October, as President Gonzalo Sànchez de Lozada pressed ahead with plans to export the nation's gas through Chile and onward to the US, the country erupted into a month-long series of road blockades and protests. When the President sent out troops to quash the demonstrations, leaving more than sixty people dead, a surge of public anger forced him to flee to the US in exile.
As Bolivia's Vice President, Carlos Mesa, stood before a special session of Congress to be sworn in as the nation's leader he pledged a commitment to one of the protest's key demands - to put the gas issue before the people directly, through the nation's first-ever public referendum.
full article
rootsie on 08.02.04 @ 06:19 PM CST [
link]
Sunday, August 1st
Sudan is a Foothold on the Continent
US forces hunt down al-Qa'eda in SudanUK TelegraphAmerican special forces teams have been sent to Sudan to hunt down Saudi Arabian terrorists who have re-established secret al-Qa'eda training camps in remote mountain ranges in the north-eastern quarter of the country.
full articleBritish soldiers on standby to avert humanitarian disaster in DarfurIndependent UKBritish soldiers are being put on standby this weekend for possible deployment to Sudan as aid agencies warned that hundreds of thousands of lives could be at risk in the western region of Darfur.
full articleFrance Ferries Aid in Chad, Soldiers to DeployReutersABECHE, Chad (Reuters) - France on Saturday flew a planeload of United Nations aid into eastern Chad where French soldiers prepared to deploy from their base in Abeche toward the border with Sudan's Darfur region.
full articleMandelson rented flat from oil tycoon in coup claim Guardian UKPeter Mandelson, the twice-sacked minister who is to be Britain's new European Commissioner, rented a luxury London home from the Lebanese millionaire now accused of funding an illegal African coup.
Mandelson's links to Ely Calil - the British-basedtycoon who was Lord Archer's financial adviser - will once again raise questions about the former minister's links to rich businessmen.
Mandelson was forced to resign as Northern Ireland secretary in 2001 after he was accused of helping one of the Hinduja brothers obtain a British passport.
Calil, who made his fortune trading oil in Africa, is being sued in Britain for allegedly funding a coup to overthrow the president of the oil-rich west African state of Equatorial Guinea.
full articlePardon me for my scepticism as to the 'humanitarian motives' of the US, Britain, and France in Sudan. 'Hunting terrorists' is a great pretext for protecting US and European oil and natural gas interests from the Middle East all the way down the West African coast. Darfur Sudan comes at a very convenient time. Here is the 'coalition effort' Kerry and others are clamouring for, with capitalists cops deployed from Afghanistan to Angola.
rootsie on 08.01.04 @ 11:26 AM CST [
link]
CIA Leak Probe: Powell's Grand-Jury Appearance
NewsweekAug. 9 issue - Secretary of State Colin Powell recently testified before a federal grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of CIA covert officer Valerie Plame, NEWSWEEK has learned. Powell's appearance on July 16 is the latest sign the probe being conducted by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is highly active and broader than has been publicly known.
full articleThis is not going away.
rootsie on 08.01.04 @ 10:53 AM CST [
link]
Brazil Is Leading a Largely South American Mission to Haiti
New York TimesRIO DE JANEIRO, July 31 - One American administration after another has tried and failed to maintain order and restore democracy in Haiti. Now, with Washington's enthusiastic support, Brazil has stepped in at the head of a United Nations mission, and is using unconventional diplomacy to complement the usual military show of force.
[From Brazil's ruling party:]
"The current mission runs the risk of becoming part of the U.S.'s international military policy of finding regional gendarmes to play a tutorial role in countries Washington considers incapable of governing themselves," Emir Sader, a party leader, complained recently and "legitimates a military operation that overthrew a legitimately elected government."
full article"...maintain order and restore democracy." Yeah right. I don't know what Lula's thinking, but he will regret this one. 'Maintaining' an illegitimate government. Succumbing to the US 'indirect rule' strategy.
rootsie on 08.01.04 @ 10:47 AM CST [
link]
