November 2007

War with Iran is looming
Posted: Friday, November 30, 2007

¤ 100 Years of Myth-Making in Mexico

¤ Catch 22 in Iraq
Every week or so, the Department of Defense conducts a video-conference press briefing for reporters in Washington, featuring an on-the-ground officer in Iraq. On November 15th, that briefing was with Col. Jeffrey Bannister, commander of the Second Brigade of the Second Infantry Division. He was chosen because of his unit’s successful application of surge tactics in three mainly Shia districts in eastern Baghdad. He had, among other things, set up several outposts in these districts offering a 24-hour American military presence; he had also made generous use of transportable concrete walls meant to separate and partition neighborhoods, and had established numerous checkpoints to prevent unauthorized entry or exit from these communities.

¤ The media has gone nuclear about Syria
"...given Baghdad's recent experience, even if--the current American secretary of state can produce a vial of evidence to hold up during a session of the Security Council, it is incumbent on the media to exercise responsibility and to simply report the fact that the Israeli raid on Syria remains a mystery."

¤ Bush handed blueprint to seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal

¤ Nixon Papers Recall Concerns on Israel's Weapons
¤ Failure now approaches in Afghanistan
¤ US Ranked Low in Humanitarian Aid

¤ China's Attempt to Convert its U.S. Treasury holdings into euros
As I discussed previously, the Chinese currency wild-card may become relevant far sooner than expected. An effort by China to convert its $1.4 trillion U.S. Treasury holdings into euros is not viable for many reasons -- not the least of which is the European Central Bank's inability to absorb such an event. As China continues its rush away from supporting U.S. Treasuries and as Middle Eastern investors are buying them up in more diversified holdings, a new "currency exchange" is unfolding.

¤ The Method to Bush’s Madness in Overthrowing Venezuela
Have George w. Bush and the entire U.S. Government gone insane, are they just totally incompetent or worse, is there a method to the madness which is just part of the most ingenious evil plan ever devised?
Note: Our last article linked below described how the US might invade Venezuela and the scenario assumes this happens before they bomb Iran. This articles assumes the Venezuela take over happens later.

¤ Over 150 European Parliamentarians Declare Support for Venezuelan Reform

¤ CIA Operation "Pliers" Uncovered in Venezuela
An internal CIA memorandum has been obtained by Venezuelan counterintelligence from the US Embassy in Caracas that reveals a very sinister - almost fantastical, were it not true - plan to destabilize Venezuela during the coming days. The plan, titled "OPERATION PLIERS" was authored by CIA Officer Michael Middleton Steere and was addressed to CIA Director General Michael Hayden in Washington. Steere is stationed at the US Embassy in Caracas under the guise of a Regional Affairs Officer. The internal memorandum, dated November 20, 2007, references the "Advances of the Final Stage of Operation Pliers", and confirms that the operation is coordinated by the team of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) in Venezuela.

¤ Chavez supporters take to streets
Tens of thousands of people have marched in the Venezuelan capital Caracas to show their support for constitutional changes that would allow Hugo Chavez, the president, to run for re-election any number of times.
Venezuelans will vote in a referendum on a series of amendments on Sunday.

¤ A different venue, but the pious claims and promises are the same

¤ Iran to give US "far worse destiny" than Iraq, ex-president says
A probable military attack against Iran over its nuclear programme would give the United States 'a far worse destiny' than Iraq, Iranian former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani said Friday.
'If the nuclear dispute is really intended to be solved, then negotiations would be the only way, but if other options (military attack) are envisaged, then the protagonists of such options should know that their destiny would definitely be far worse than in Iraq,' Rafsanjani said in a speech at Friday prayers in Tehran.

¤ War with Iran is looming
The parallels between pre-invasion Iraq and today's Iran forebode yet another American invasion. The United States' mounting accusations of Iran's alleged quest for nuclear weapons have surpassed the level of those previously pointed at Saddam Hussein's regime. Similar to Iraq in 2002, Iran is being singled out as an active state sponsoring and harboring international terrorism. Moreover, Iran's attempts to establish itself as a regional power act to undermine the stability of U.S. energy interests in the Middle East. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino recently threatened Iran with further sanctions if Iran continues its nuclear program.

¤ Not Through Annapolis
¤ Man held after taking Clinton staff hostage
¤ Musharraf: U.S. Shares Blame for Pakistan and Afghanistan

¤ The Final Battle in Bolivia
Evo Morales, the first Indian president of Bolivia, is forcing a showdown with the oligarchy and the right wing political parties that have stymied efforts to draft a new constitution to transform the nation. He declares, "Dead or alive I will have a new constitution for the country by December 14," the mandated date for the specially elected Constituent Assembly to present the constitution.

¤ Bolivia`s Morales Calls for Talks With Opposition

¤ Bombs Away?
¤ SEE GAZA AND WEEP

¤ Bill Clinton, Anti-War?
¤ Aid shrinks as Iraq's internal refugee tally grows
¤ Oil Traders Seize Control of World Oil Prices
¤ Madrid redux
¤ Journalists follow other Iraqis into exile
¤ Same Old, Same Old - Israel Wins Again
¤ In Iraq, Psyops Team Plays on Iran Fears, Soccer Love
¤ A more plausible reading of US policy
¤ Terror is a tactic
¤ Democrats Openly Embrace Aggression and Torture
¤ Daredevil Evel Knievel dies at 69

Zimbabwe: More than just a million march
Posted: Friday, November 30, 2007

By Caesar Zvayi
November 30, 2007
The Herald

ON Sunday January 27 1980, Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe made a triumphant return to Zimbabwe, five years after he crossed into Mozambique on April 4 1975 having spent 11 years in the Rhodesian regime's prisons.

Cde Mugabe and other cadres were welcomed by a crowd estimated at 1,6 million by the Zanu-PF information and publicity department, 200 000 by the BBC, 150 000 by the Rhodesian police, and 1 million – with a safety margin of 25 percent – by people who said they arrived at the figure by enlarging aerial photographs and calculating crowd density.

Whatever the final figure, a crowd never before seen in the history of this country welcomed Cde Mugabe at Zimbabwe Grounds. It was by far the largest crowd to welcome any of the nationalist leaders who were to contest the general election set for March 1980. Even Abel Muzorewa's so-called Huruyadzo rally, where people were bribed with beer and food over three days to attend, paled in comparison to the multitudes that welcomed Gushungo on that day.

Zimbabwe Grounds was filled to capacity, and the man who had led the onslaught against the Smith regime, the man the people had come to see did not disappoint. His message was powerful; Zimbabwe had arrived and never again was it to go back into settler hands, directly or by proxy.

Cde Mugabe, whose address was predominantly in the vernacular, laid the framework for the policy of reconciliation he was to enunciate after the elections as he appealed to white Rhodesians, in their native English, to stay and help build a Zimbabwe grounded on national unity.

He spoke passionately about how hunger for land was the "deepest of all grievances among our people" saying the new Government would not seize land from anyone who had use for it but would certainly acquire land that was lying unused while indigenous black people remained landless.

"Farmers who are able to be productive and prove useful to society will find us co-operative," BBC quoted him as saying.

The central themes of his message on that day are the same motifs that have run through his speeches over the years. Themes we have heard time and again, themes immortalised in the historic policy of reconciliation, themes immortalised in his constant refrain, "Zimbabwe will never be a colony again", themes enshrined in his insistence that Zimbabweans have a right to all their resources down to the ants and reptiles, themes critical of western subversion.

On that day, Cde Mugabe blasted British duplicity as the government of Margaret Thatcher was amenable to the lackeys that had joined Smith in the Internal Settlement, and averse to the real nationalists who had slogged it out in bases in Mozambique and Zambia, and the Zimbabwean countryside to bring the Rhodesian regime to its false knees, ko vainyepaka kuti havana mabvi (they claimed they had no knees).

Cde Mugabe castigated Britain, accusing British governor Lord Soames of manipulating the political situation against Zanu-PF.

He warned: "Take note therefore that as we move into assembly points, we have not done so as cowards, it is not an act of surrender but mere compliance with an agreement. And equally take note that as we have moved into assembly points, we can move out of those assembly points."

The turnout at Zimbabwe Grounds, which even the British grudgingly acknowledged was the largest for any of the leaders who were to contest the election in March, gave the world a foretaste of what was to come at election time as Cde Mugabe and Zanu-PF swept to power on a landslide that left all other competitors deflated.

Despite the machinations of the British, people's power prevailed, and the people chose the leaders they wanted. The British proxy Muzorewa, despite the binges his handlers bankrolled at Zimbabwe Grounds, and the three helicopters they had availed for his campaign, managed a paltry three seats, one for each helicopter.

Today, 27 years after that historic gathering at Zimbabwe Grounds, the men and women Cde Mugabe led in and from Mozambique, the people who were at the frontline, have organised the mother of all marches; one million men and women are to convene at Zimbabwe Grounds today to express solidarity with their leader whom they anointed during the liberation struggle, and again before the whole world in March 1980, and every five years thereafter.

Even those who were not in the trenches but who supported the struggle in various ways will also be there along with those born-free because of the sacrifices of the living and fallen heroes of this great nation.

Patriotic Zimbabweans have flocked to Harare from all 10 provinces by bus, train, private transport and some on foot to be at Zimbabwe Grounds, the same way they gathered 27 years ago. Today's march is a culmination of the huge solidarity marches held in all 10 provinces.

Today's march and gathering is like a throwback to January 1980 because the setting and circumstances are the same. The British are at it again, funding a proxy opposition in an attempt to torpedo the people's revolution.

Zimbabwe is four months away from a historic harmonised election, again set for March, and the contestants are the same, the people versus the British proxies. And just like in 1980, the British are up to their usual games, trying to manipulate the political situation in Zimbabwe for self-aggrandisement.

Today's march is not just a procession; it is a powerful statement about the success of the peoples' revolution. Today is not just about expressing solidarity with President Mugabe; it is about reaffirming commitment to the ideals of the struggle, all of which he embodies in their entirety.

This march is not just about expressing confidence in President Mugabe's candidature for March 2008; it is about making a statement about those elections. Today is not about silencing errant voices within Zanu-PF, it is about defending the values of the revolution in which over 50 000 precious lives were lost at the hands of a racist settler regime, while tens of thousands of survivors were needlessly maimed by the uncouth Rhodesian army.

Today's march is not a partisan procession by the Zimbabwe National War Veterans' Association, it is a national statement, and is for everyone who believes in the Zimbabwean dream, that of a progressive, self-determining country.

Just like the historic welcome rally at Zimbabwe Grounds 27 years ago that provided a foretaste of what the country's first democratic election was to bring, today's gathering is an election before the election. It gives a foretaste of what is to come in March next year, when a united Zanu-PF takes on a splintered MDC torn by factions and fractions.

The timing of the march is providential, coming as it does just a week before the EU-Africa Summit convenes in Lisbon, Portugal; a gathering that British prime minister Gordon Brown will boycott claiming that President Mugabe and Zanu-PF are "repressing a popular opposition party", the MDC.

This march should send a clear message to all who have been swayed by British propaganda, it should send the message that the votes tallied during every election are not ghost votes but are cast by Zimbabweans determined to defend the gains of the revolution.

This is not to say the British and Americans do not know this, for they only make such claims to justify their subversive activities. Even established journalists like the Briton-turned-Zimbabwean, Peta Thorncroft now openly acknowledge that Zanu-PF has massive support.

In a recent interview with one Violet Gonda of the pirate radio station SW Radio Africa on November 13, Thorncroft had this to say about Zanu-PF in response to a question on whether the MDC was the party people thought it was:

"I wonder if we ever knew what it (the MDC) was. We just accepted it, didn't we? I wasn't there in 2000, I went to one of its rallies in 2000 and I came in July 2001 and I think I just accepted that the MDC had been cheated at the elections and that this was a party that had the majority support in the country and it was only long afterwards that I discovered that in fact of course Zanu-PF had enormous support in certain rural parts of the country.

"I first saw that demonstrated to me in the March elections of 2005, I was actually astonished by that and it is in my copy. I then saw it again demonstrated in the Budiriro by-election when 4 000 people continued to vote for Zanu-PF and it was quite a peaceful by election.

"They were just as short of fuel, water and electricity as all the other people in Budiriro. And I think that I realised that I hadn't taken into consideration that Zanu-PF was an old established party, which despite its appalling lack of democracy and its top-down style of doing business – because of the liberation struggle and the propaganda it's been able to feed everyone – it does genuinely have support.

"And that the MDC as the farm workers disappeared and as the farmers disappeared a great chunk of its support went with it. I think that was important and I think that we didn't see it and we didn't sort of realise it at the time, I didn't realise it at the time . . . "

Thorncroft then gave a precise analysis of why the MDC doesn't have the support Zanu-PF has, from its open linkage to the west, how its leaders campaign in western capitals and not among Zimbabweans, how its pro-west stance had alienated it from the ordinary Zimbabwean in particular, and African in general.

In short she accounted for why all the MDC's attempts at mass actions and mass stayaways have flopped over the years, and by extension why Zanu-PF has continued to rout the opposition at the polls.

Take this dear reader, coming straight from Thorncroft's British mouth: "When the MDC started in 2000, what a pity that they were addressing people in Sandton mostly white people in Sandton north of Johannesburg instead of being in Dar es Salaam or Ghana or Abuja. They failed to make contact with Africa for so long, they were in London, we've just seen it again, Morgan Tsvangirai's just been in America.

"Why isn't he in Cairo? Maybe he needs financial support and he can't get it outside of America or the UK and the same would go for Mutambara. They have not done enough in Africa . . . "

And this: "Where are they (MDC) in Mashonaland West, Central – the three Mashonaland provinces? And I go on and on about this and I was there just a few weeks ago, driving there with a very good cover and nobody knew I was a journalist and I was able to speak to people and they were very open and chatty with me. I mean the MDC just hasn't tried to go into most of those places. And will they ever or are they going to just remain an urban party you know an urban party in Harare, some in Manicaland . . . "

There you have it, dear reader, straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. The MDC has no connection with Zimbabwe in particular or Africa in general, but is highly connected to the white west. Any wonder their attempted mass actions have always been flops? Any wonder they always lose elections? As for Zanu-PF, the opposite is true, this is a Zimbabwean and African revolutionary party, which is why today's march should reiterate that message for the whole world to see and hear.

The revolution is alive, very much alive.

Leading to Iraq: High crimes and misdemeanors
Posted: Thursday, November 29, 2007

¤ Why Ian Smith lived and died a failure
The death this week of Ian Smith, former Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, later Rhodesia and what is now known as Zimbabwe, brings to a close an important chapter in the racism, genocide and race crime against Africans.

¤ Smith is history for hard-pressed Zimbabweans
¤ We shan't mourn this racist or plead guilty
¤ Ian Smith and Africa's post-independence challenges
¤ Musharraf bows out to the strains of Auld Lang Syne
¤ Ashfaq Kayani: the new man with the baton in Pakistan
¤ Uniform not enough, Pakistanis want Musharraf gone
¤ How you helped build Pakistan's bomb
¤ Iraq : Looking Back : 'Internationally Sponsored Genocide'.
¤ US air strikes kill civilian roadworkers in Afghanistan
¤ Chavez Vows Referendum 'Cannot Fail'

¤ Venezuela's Constitutional Reform
The following is an article-by-article summary of the changes being proposed to Venezuela's 1999 constitution. The summary is in no way official and should only be used as an aid in making sense of the proposed constitutional reform. The official reform text is quite long (31 pages), as it includes the full text of each to be changed article, even if only one sentence or word was changed in the article. Making out what, exactly, the changes are relative to the original 1999 constitution can thus be a sometimes time-consuming and difficult task.

¤ CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces
¤ This Revolution Will Not Be Televised
¤ Shifting Policy or a Face-saving Gimmick, Somalia Cannot be Ignored
¤ Yes: I TOLD YOU SO
¤ Selling the US by the dollar

¤ Cloning Dubya
While George Dubya Bush will be in office for fourteen more months, many have already labeled him the worst President in modern American history. They complain that the Bush legacy will extend well beyond January of 2009 when the next President takes office. Political observers lament he has had the "reverse Midas touch," where he's worsened every aspect of American foreign and domestic policy he's blundered into. Bush's most lasting negative legacy is his autocratic leadership style, which has inspired other politicians to emulate his tactics and ethics. As a result, we see mini-Dubyas running for President and Dubya clones ruling other countries.

¤ Leading to Iraq: High crimes and misdemeanors
¤ Saudis Pour Oil Money into Terror
¤ Judges Are Heroes in Pakistan

¤ Reporters Say Baghdad Too Dangerous Despite Surge
Nearly 90 percent of U.S. journalists in Iraq say much of Baghdad is still too dangerous to visit, despite a recent drop in violence attributed to the build-up of U.S. forces, a poll released on Wednesday said.
The survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center showed that many U.S. journalists believe coverage has painted too rosy a picture of the conflict.

¤ Taser Nation
¤ Have They No Shame?
¤ The Algebra of Occupation
¤ A Culture of Crime, Racism and Privilege
¤ President Signs Document Effectively Making Iraq A Colony Of The U.S.

¤ Four Days in Iraq: And this Means the Surge is Working?
¤ Is what the US has been doing in Iraq genocide?
¤ American site publishes false news about the Iraqi resistance
¤ Lies from Annapolis
¤ The Surge Worked: Bush Got His Permanent Iraq War
¤ Another Brick in the Wall...
¤ U.S. Army expands by lowering the bar on recruits
¤ Mexico Floods, America Shrugs
¤ What a New Leader in Pakistan Will Mean for the U.S.
¤ Iraq civilians die in US shooting

¤ Impeach Cheney, Bush and Pelosi!
¤ America Heads for the Trash Can of History
¤ The Ghosts of Misplaced Conscience
¤ Impending Destruction of the US Economy

¤ A Dollar the Size of a Postage Stamp
Lately it seems as though everyone wants to take a poke at the dollar. Last week, it was the Brazilian supermodel who demanded euros for her jaunts on the catwalk instead of USD. The week before that, hip-hop impresario, Jay-Z, released a video dissin' the dollar and praising the euro as the 'baddest Dude in the 'hood'. Lambasting the greenback has become trendy. It's a favorite pastime of politicians, too. At the November OPEC meeting in Riyadh, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked the assembled finance ministers to "study the feasibility of selling oil in another currency." Ahmadinejad disparaged the dollar as "a worthless piece of paper".

¤ The Iraqi Miracle – From Invasion to "Partnership"

¤ Distorting Fascism to Demonize Iran
In their frantic drive to pave the way for a military strike against Iran, leading figures in the neoconservative pro-Israel lobby have embarked on a vicious campaign of demonizing that country by comparing it with the early years of Nazi Germany and its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with Hitler.
These champions of war and militarism are the same trigger happy characters who helped orchestrate the criminal war against Iraq on the basis of ghastly lies and criminal fabrications of evidence. Instead of being held responsible for all of the grisly lies and evidence manufacturing, they are let loose to once again beat the drums of war—this time against Iran.

CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces
Posted: Thursday, November 29, 2007

On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine operations and which will influence the referendum this Sunday, December 2, 2007.
Full Article : venezuelanalysis.com

CIA Operation 'Pliers' Uncovered in Venezuela
Posted: Thursday, November 29, 2007

Last night CNN en Español aired the above image, which captions at the bottom "Who Killed him?" by "accident". The image of President Chavez with the caption about killing him below, which some could say subliminally incites to assassination, was a "production error" mistakenly made in the CNN en Español newsroom. The news anchor had been narrarating a story about the situation between Colombia and Venezuela and then switched to a story about an unsolved homicide but - oops - someone forgot to change the screen image and President Chavez was left with the killing statement below. Today they apologized and admitted it was a rather "unfortunate" and "regrettable" mistake. Yes, it was.
Full Article : venezuelanalysis.com

The High Price of Arrogance
Posted: Tuesday, November 27, 2007

¤ Zimbabwe: Museveni raps Brown
¤ What about Life in America?
¤ Don't look now: Here comes the recession
¤ Older white women join Kenya's sex tourists
¤ Israeli settlers attack Palestinian schoolgirls with axes
¤ Maliki government opens door to permanent U.S. bases

¤ The Annapolis "Set- Up"
The leaders of five of the largest Palestinian political organizations participating in a conference organized by Hamas on Friday, unanimously agreed to that the Annapolis conference is a set up, aimed to target and liquidate the Palestinian resistance. Furthermore the participants in the Gaza conference stated that the Annapolis conference is,"one of the platforms intended for liquidating the Palestinian righteous cause". The Annapolis conference will further distance the Palestinian liberation to be imposed a foreign agenda,on the Palestinian people.

¤ Annapolis Talks About Anything But Peace
¤ Posing For A Peace Snap
¤ Let's Not ignore Atwan's Warning on Annapolis
¤ Iran: The uninvited guest at peace summit

¤ Bad, Worse, Worst and Beyond
¤ With TRILLIONs to Spend, You Don't SHOP at WalMart, you BUY WalMart!
¤ Signs and Wonders: How To Tell When Hard Times Are Here

¤ White House Releases "Principles" for Permanent Iraqi Presence

¤ Dahr Jamail, How to Control the Story, Pentagon-style
Acts matter. Here's how Dahr Jamail, a young mountain guide and volunteer rescue ranger in Alaska (who did freelance writing in the "off-season") describes his rash decision, back in 2003, to cover George W. Bush's Iraq War in person: "I decided that the one thing I could do was go to Baghdad to report on the occupation myself. I saved some money, bought a laptop, a camera, and a plane ticket, and, armed with information gleaned via some connections made over the Internet, headed for the Middle East." That was it. The next thing he knew he was driving through the Iraqi desert from Amman, Jordan, toward Baghdad and directly into the unknown. He had few contacts; no media organization to back him; no hotel/office with private guards to return to at night; no embedded place among American forces for protection; not even, on arrival in Baghdad, any place to write for.

¤ An excursion through the West Bank is a trip to disbelief
¤ Israeli Siege of Gaza Resulting in Huge Humanitarian Crisis
¤ $144 Million Over Budget and Still Not Open for Business

¤ Same Methods 300+ Years Apart
In my last column, I wrote about the annihilation of the Wampanoag Indian tribe after they helped the Pilgrims survive in a hostile environment in Massachusetts. Many of the actions perpetrated by the descendants of the Pilgrims against the Natives were similar, if not identical, to those used by the U.S. against Iraq more than three centuries later. We saw the same ethnocentrism and bigotry released in 1991 repeated in 2003 with the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq by the U.S. However, there are more precedents from antiquity that mirror those actions.

¤ Editor's Relatives Murdered After Shiite Threats
¤ The "War," Contractors, and Civilian Deaths
¤ Sarkozy urges calm as riots return to Paris
¤ The 'scenic route'
¤ Ahmadinejad offers to be an observer at US presidential election
¤ Chavez sees no Uribe reconciliation
¤ The uprising against facism: Students storm Oxford Union debate
¤ We Have to Keep Pressing Hard Against an Attack on Iran
¤ America's Days of Reckoning

¤ Pakistan's Wounded Dictator
After more than two weeks of supreme military command, Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf has had enough. Enough of international pressure to lift martial law, that is.
Claiming to "have introduced the essence of democracy in Pakistan, whether anyone believes it or not," Musharraf has been more and more candid about his impatience with the West's (sometimes half-hearted) condemnation of his strong-arm tactics. My personal favorite quotes in this regard come from a BBC interview on November 16.

¤ What Do You Know of War?
¤ Stunned by Lack of Outrage, Not Outrageous Acts
¤ The High Price of Arrogance and the Bitter Harvest of Hypocrisy

¤ From Cradle to Jail in America
The United States does not provide a level playing field for all children and does not protect all young lives equally, says a recent report by the Children's Defense Fund. Poor children and children of color, in particular, "already are in the pipeline to prison before taking a single step or uttering a word," the report states. Many youth in juvenile detention facilities have never been on the track to college or a successful life. "They were not derailed from the right track; they never got on it," the organization says.

¤ Minorities Hit Hardest by Housing Crisis
¤ Why do 'Liberal Media' Go So Easy on Bush?

Zimbabwe: Museveni raps Brown
Posted: Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Herald Reporter
Novembber 27, 2007
The Herald

UGANDAN President Yoweri Museveni last week outrightly rejected British Prime Minister Mr Gordon Brown's attempt to have the East African country meddle in Zimbabwe's internal affairs.

According to Press reports, during a session between the two leaders at the recent Commonwealth Heads of State and Government Meeting, Mr Brown asked President Museveni to "intervene in the Zimbabwe crisis".

He got more than he had bargained for when the Ugandan leader told him that he had misunderstood the country.

Mr Museveni is said to have told the British premier that "(President) Mugabe is a revolutionary who fought to emancipate his people. When you are talking to a revolutionary, you listen to his points rather than give him orders".

The Ugandan leader is understood to have told Mr Brown that what Zimbabwe required was an economic solution.

This came in the wake of attempts by MDC faction leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, with the backing of the British Royal Africa Society, to steer the public forum on the sidelines of the meeting to discuss Zimbabwe when the country left the club of former British colonies in 2003.

In an interview with Uganda's Daily Monitor, Mr Tsvangirai – who is facing a serious internal revolt over alleged dictatorial tendencies back home – tried to insinuate that President Museveni had a challenge to "control" President Mugabe.

The manner in which Mr Tsvangirai and the Royal Africa Society put their co-ordinated campaign across in Uganda hints at a plot to discredit Zimbabwe, masterminded by the British culminating in Mr Brown's ill-fated attempts to manipulate President Museveni.

Earlier in the year, Archbishop of York John Sentamu and his South African counterpart embarrassed themselves when they too embarked on a seemingly British co-ordinated attempt to paint Zimbabwe in a negative light.

Reacting to the latest shenanigans by Mr Brown, Mr Tsvangirai and the British Royal Africa Society, Secretary for Information and Publicity Cde George Charamba said President Museveni's reaction was "just a foretaste of Lisbon", in reference to the December European Union-Africa Summit in Portugal.

"Brown, who does not appear to have a sense of history, also does not appear to have realised that he was talking to a liberation war veteran in President Museveni. His political temperament would make him closer to President Mugabe than to Britain and its imperial ambitions, which Mr Brown represents.

"The British prime minister is trying to use Africa and its leaders as instruments of British foreign policy goals. The British Royal Africa Society was originally meant to make an impression on Commonwealth leaders by dominating the public forum, which Tsvangirai addressed, but that didn't quite work out, forcing Brown to deploy himself to do exactly that.

"Was Africa supposed to humiliate herself and betray her own interests in her own home?

"This is a foretaste of Lisbon. Europe had better take note of Africa's changing temperament. Africa will not be told what to do by erstwhile colonial masters and Europe must adapt to the second winds of change sweeping across Africa," said Cde Charamba.

King Midas in Reverse
Posted: Sunday, November 25, 2007

¤ The World Continues to Look Away. Don't.

¤ Preventing the Impending War on Iran
Rhetoric flowing out of the White House indicates the Bush administration is planning a military attack on Iran. Officials in Saudi Arabia, a close Bush ally, think the handwriting is on the wall. "George Bush's tone makes us think he has decided what he is going to do," according to Rihab Massoud, Prince Bandar ben Sultan's right-hand man. Saudi Social Affairs Minister Abdel Mohsen Hakas told Le Figaro, "We are getting closer and closer to a confrontation."

¤ US Friends and Foes Grabbing Power
¤ U.S. Financial Aid To Israel: Figures, Facts, and Impact
¤ Blasts cause carnage in Baghdad

¤ The Global Impact of Bush's War Crimes in Iraq: King Midas in Reverse
Journalist Robert Fisk recently explained the Bush/Cheney abomination in the Middle East quite succinctly, when he asserted: "The world in the Middle East is growing darker and darker by the hour. Pakistan. Afghanistan. Iraq. "Palestine". Lebanon. From the borders of Hindu Kush to the Mediterranean, we - we Westerners that is - are creating (as I have said before) a hell disaster. Next week, we are supposed to believe in peace in Annapolis, between the colorless American apparatchik and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister who has no more interest in a Palestinian state than his predecessor Ariel Sharon." [Robert Fisk, "Darkness falls on the Middle East," Independent.co.uk, 24 Nov. 2007]

¤ The Bush Rules of Evidence
In the history of the American Republic, perhaps no political family has been more protected from scandal than the Bushes.
When the Bushes are involved in dirty deals or even criminal activity, standards of evidence change. Instead of proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" that would lock up an average citizen, the evidence must be perfect.
If there's any doubt at all, the Bushes must be presumed innocent. Even when their guilt is obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense, it's their accusers and those who dare investigate who get the worst of it. Their motives are challenged and their own shortcomings are cast in the harshest possible light.

¤ The Hidden Holocaust
"...for five hundred years, hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples were slaughtered, decimated, deported, enslaved, starved, exterminated, impoverished, and forcibly assimilated into an emerging world system dominated by Western Europe.This was how the global values and politico-economic structures of our civilization came into being. Globalization... the bloody legacy of a 500-year killing machine."

¤ Nawaz Sharif returns to Pakistan

Another Bush Bootlicker Bites the Dust
Posted: Saturday, November 24, 2007

¤ Noam Chomsky on U.S. Policy Towards Iran
"Suppose it was true that Iran is helping insurgents in Iraq. I mean, wasn't the United States helping insurgents when the Russians invaded Afghanistan? Did we think there was anything wrong with that? I mean, Iraq's a country that was invaded and is under military occupation. You can't have a serious discussion about whether someone else is interfering in it. The basic assumption underlying the discussion is that we own the world."

¤ Darkness falls on the Middle East

¤ A Generalized Meltdown of Financial Institutions
Reality has finally caught up to the stock market. The American consumer is underwater, the banks are buried in dept, and the housing market is in terminal distress. The Dow is now below its 200-Day Moving Average -- the first big "sell" signal. Anything below 12,500 could trigger program-trading and crash the market. The increased volatility suggests that we are watching a "real time" meltdown.

¤ Forecast: U.S. dollar could plunge 90 pct

¤ Banks Gone Wild
"What were they smoking?" asks the cover of the current issue of Fortune magazine. Underneath the headline are photos of recently deposed Wall Street titans, captioned with the staggering sums they managed to lose.
The answer, of course, is that they were high on the usual drug — greed. And they were encouraged to make socially destructive decisions by a system of executive compensation that should have been reformed after the Enron and WorldCom scandals, but wasn't.
In a direct sense, the carnage on Wall Street is all about the great housing slump.

¤ Land of Broken Dreams

¤ Former US Commander Criticizes Bush on Iraq
¤ Iraq Money Down the Rat Hole

¤ Australian Labor Party sweeps Bush supporter Howard from office
John Howard was swept from power in Australia yesterday after 11 years in office, and appeared almost certain to lose his own seat, only the second Prime Minister in the country's history to be rejected by his own constituents.
Mr Howard looked close to tears last night as he conceded defeat to the Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, after a decisive swing that looks likely to give Labor a comfortable majority in the 150-seat parliament.

¤ Labor wins Australian elections
¤ Rudd romps to historic win
¤ Another Bush Bootlicker Bites the Dust
¤ Australia hails Rudd as it finally votes for Howard's end

¤ A plan to attack Iran swiftly and from above
Massive, devastating air strikes, a full dose of "shock and awe" with hundreds of bunker-busting bombs slicing through concrete at more than a dozen nuclear sites across Iran is no longer just the idle musing of military planners and uber-hawks.
Although air strikes don't seem imminent as the U.S.-Iranian drama unfolds, planning for a bombing campaign and preparing for the geopolitical blowback has preoccupied military and political councils for months.

¤ Bush: I would understand if Israel chose to attack Iran

¤ Israel in Darfur and Arab National Security
The Darfur province is of vital importance for the co-Israeli/American agenda and their planning for it. Darfur is geographically in a position that is adjacent to a great lake of oil reserves extending from the Sudanese province of Bahr Al-Ghazal through Chad, Niger, Mauritania, Mali, and Cameroon, thus taking control of it is considered a safety valve for them due, to the easiness of drilling and pumping oil produced in this region, and as being one of the biggest oil rich regions in the world, which has not yet been exploited, because of conflicts and wars that have been taking place in Sudan during the last twenty years.

¤ Darfurism, Uganda and the U.S. War in Africa The Spectre of Continental Genocide

¤ Who killed David Kelly?
¤ US media poodles
¤ US knew Musharraf planned to institute emergency rule: report

¤ One Million Dead in Iraq
Institutionally unwilling to consider America's responsibility for the bloodbath, the traditional media have refused to acknowledge the massive number of Iraqis killed since the invasion.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's flirtation with those who deny the reality of the Nazi genocide has rightly been met with disgust. But another holocaust denial is taking place with little notice: the holocaust in Iraq. The average American believes that 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US invasion in March 2003. The most commonly cited figure in the media is 70,000. But the actual number of people who have been killed is most likely more than one million.

¤ 'Wave Of Violence' Against Women In Iraq Undercuts White House's Claims Of Success
¤ Cholera remains a threat in Iraq
¤ Hey Rupert? What Happened To All Those Post-Saddam $20 Barrels Of Oil?
¤ Institutionalized Glorification of our Greed and Gluttony
¤ Spreading Democracy

¤ An unwinnable war
There is something seriously dysfunctional about international thinking on Afghanistan now. It is six years now that many countries have had their forces in Afghanistan, including the UK, the US, Germany and Italy. It is six years since the Taliban and their al-Qaida allies were turfed out of Kabul.
Six years is a long time in war, longer than either of the two world wars, and respectively four times and twice the duration of US military operational commitment, respectively, to the first and second world wars.

¤ Sleight of Hand Surge
¤ Building a New Global Movement
¤ Trashing Chavez
¤ USA may introduce sanctions against Russia for its lucrative arms deals

Oil closes on $100
Posted: Thursday, November 22, 2007

¤ The Mega-Bunker of Baghdad
The new American Embassy in Baghdad will be the largest, least welcoming, and most lavish embassy in the world: a $600 million massively fortified compound with 619 blast-resistant apartments and a food court fit for a shopping mall. Unfortunately, like other similarly constructed U.S. Embassies, it may already be obsolete.

¤ The Real Price of Sugar
The Price of Sugar is a powerful documentary about the plight of Haitians toiling on sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic. These workers cross the border from Haiti to labor in conditions that the film's central protagonist, Father Christopher Hartley, calls "quasi-slavery." They are housed in sugar company towns called bateyes. Stripped of identification papers, they cannot legally travel elsewhere in the country.

¤ Isolation Torture Routine at Guatánamo

¤ Our Dictator, Their Democracy
Chaos spawns rumors. Word traveled like wildfire across Pakistan in the early days of emergency that General Ashfaq Kiyani had taken General Pervez Musharraf into custody and assumed power. And that the loyalist General, who was chosen as his successor, replaced Musharraf who had lost his way in political intrigue. The rumor was not so misplaced. Similar stories traveled around Washington, D.C., from the State Department to journalists to embassies.

¤ Iraq's Laboratory of Repression
The Bush administration is turning Iraq into a test tube for modern techniques of repression, from sophisticated biometrics that track populations to devastating weapons systems that combine night-vision optics from drone aircraft, heat resonance imaging and deadly firepower from the sky to kill suspected insurgents.

¤ Award-winning Photojournalist Held Incommunicado in Iraqi Torture Dungeon
¤ US general says Iran helping stop Iraq bloodshed
¤ Occupying Justice
¤ "We Are Living Through Another Hiroshima," Iraq Doctor Says
¤ Annapolis Meeting: Institutionalization of Racism
¤ The Annapolis illusion
¤ Pak nukes already under US control: Report
¤ Oil closes on $100 as Asia tumbles over US fears

¤ Look Who's Downplaying Iran's Nuclear Threat
Imagine Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telling a group of leading U.S. policymakers that Iran's nuclear weapons program does not pose a direct threat to U.S. security, or former CIA Director George Tenet making the same kind of argument in a public forum. Imagine also that their views are reported in front-page news stories in the Washington Post and the New York Times

¤ Chavez Warns Europeans On Backing US Over Iran Nuclear Standoff
¤ Bush Now Praises Musharraf
¤ US to spend $97 mn to equip Pakistan's Frontier Corps
¤ Pakistan army kills 75 militants in north-west valley (Roundup)
¤ Needing Peace
¤ U.S. aircraft carrier denied access to Hong Kong
¤ Iran leader vows no concessions on nukes
¤ Brown loses it in The Mail

¤ Shocked in Death, Shocked in Life: More Than a Taser Story
The world saw a video last week of Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers using a Taser against a Polish man in the Vancouver International Airport in October. The man, Robert Dziekanski, died soon after the attack. In recent days, more details have come out about him. It turns out that the 40-year-old didn't just die after being shocked — his life was marked by shock as well.
Dziekanski was a young adult in 1989, when Poland began a grand experiment called "shock therapy" for the nation. The promise was that if the communist country accepted a series of brutal economic measures, the reward would be a "normal European country" like France or Germany. The pain would be short, the reward great.

¤ A Bitch for President

The EU is Bullying the World's Poor
Posted: Tuesday, November 20, 2007

¤ Musharraf 'to quit army by end of the week'
President Musharraf of Pakistan has decided to resign as Army chief by the end of the week, it emerged today.
Sources close to the Pakistani President indicated that he wanted to stand down almost immediately if a Supreme Court newly packed with his supporters decides, as expected, to reject the final legal challenge to his victory in last month's election on Thursday.

¤ Court dismisses challenges to Musharraf

¤ Venezuela's Chavez visits Iran
¤ The Middle East has had a secretive nuclear power in its midst for years

¤ UK 'cover-up' on Israel's nukes
Britain is being accused of trying to cover up its role in helping Israel develop its nuclear weapons programme.
In August, Newsnight revealed that more than 40 years ago, Britain sold heavy water, a key substance, to Israel.
MPs now allege that minister Kim Howells tried to mislead the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over Britain's role.

¤ How Britain helped Israel make its A-bomb
Mirage jets swoop from the sky to destroy the Egyptian air force before breakfast; tanks race across the desert to the Suez Canal; Moshe Dayan, the defence minister, poses with eyepatch after the Jerusalem brigade has fought its way into the Old City. These are the heroic images of the Six Day War and they defined Israeli daring: here was a people who, it seemed, risked everything on a throw of the dice. Years later the world discovered that there was an insurance policy.

¤ Italy cracks down on gossip in media
¤ After the cyclone, Bangladesh begins to bury its dead
¤ Lost in the post: the personal details of 25 million people
¤ Musharraf Plays Bush for a Fool

¤ Likelihood of Iran Attack Gains Credence
As someone who has been writing about this crazed administration's plans to launch an attack on Iran now for over a year, I have always noted that the real sign that it might happen would be when oil industry analysts started to worry about it.
That's because the oil industry is probably more plugged into the inner sanctum of the Bush administration than any other entity. If the analysts, who have their fingers on the pulse of the oil industry, start worrying that an attack could happen--with the resulting shutdown of oil shipments through the Persian Gulf, from which the world gets roughly a third of its oil--then we need to take the threat very seriously.

¤ The Middle East Has Had a Secretive Nuclear Power in Its Midst for Years
¤ US Media Poodles
¤ Bushes Thankful for Stupid Voters
¤ Hurricane Katrina Blows Apart New Orleans Politics
¤ The EU is Bullying the World's Poor to Rush into a Dubious Deal on Trade

¤ You silly boys: blondes make men act dumb
WHEN men meet fair-haired women they really do have a "blonde moment". Scientists have found that their mental performance drops, apparently because they believe they are dealing with someone less intelligent.
Researchers discovered what might be called the "bimbo delusion" by studying men's ability to complete general knowledge tests after exposure to different women. The academics found that men's scores fell after they were shown pictures of blondes.

¤ The Lessons of Annapolis
¤ McClellan points finger at Bush, Rove
¤ Alarm Over Case Against AP Photographer
¤ In the U.S. of A., we are all suspects now
¤ Bristling with 7,000 nukes, U.S. would deny Iran 1?

¤ Ex-Rhodesian leader Ian Smith dies

¤ Coup D'Etat Rumblings in Venezuela
The Bush administration tried and failed three prior times to oust Hugo Chavez since its first aborted two-day coup attempt in April, 2002. Through FOIA requests, lawyer, activist and author Eva Golinger uncovered top secret CIA documents of US involvement that included an intricate financing scheme involving the quasi-governmental agency, National Endowment of Democracy (NED), and US Agency for International Development (USAID). The documents also showed the White House, State Department and National Security Agency had full knowledge of the scheme, had to have approved it, and there's little doubt of CIA involvement as it's always part of this kind of dirty business. What's worrying now is what went on then may be happening again in what looks like a prelude to a fourth made-in-Washington attempt to oust the Venezuelan leader that must be monitored closely as events develop.

¤ American "justice"

¤ One child dies every five minutes in Iraq because of the conflict
Looking at photographs of Iraqi children maimed by the war makes the conflict unforgettable. Reflecting on the causes that led to that war makes it unforgivable. Slowly but steadily new information is coming out on the effects of the war on children, and how it has affected not only their health but also their quality of life and prospects for the future.
The International Children's Day is celebrated throughout the world today, but certainly not in Iraq, where children have become the most tragic victims of the conflict.

¤ Hi-tech Torture
¤ Did you forget about Fallujah? Fallujah didn't forget
¤ Be Good Victims

Coup D'Etat Rumblings in Venezuela
Posted: Monday, November 19, 2007

The Bush administration tried and failed three prior times to oust Hugo Chavez since its first aborted two-day coup attempt in April, 2002. Through FOIA requests, lawyer, activist and author Eva Golinger uncovered top secret CIA documents of US involvement that included an intricate financing scheme involving the quasi-governmental agency, National Endowment of Democracy (NED), and US Agency for International Development (USAID). The documents also showed the White House, State Department and National Security Agency had full knowledge of the scheme, had to have approved it, and there's little doubt of CIA involvement as it's always part of this kind of dirty business. What's worrying now is what went on then may be happening again in what looks like a prelude to a fourth made-in-Washington attempt to oust the Venezuelan leader that must be monitored closely as events develop.
Full Article : trinicenter.com

Covering up corruption in Iraq
Posted: Sunday, November 18, 2007

¤ Pakistan seeks Trinidad and Tobago's help
Pakistan wants this country and other Commonwealth countries to convince the international community that its President General Pervez Musharraf is no dictator and democracy is not being undermined in that country.
» President General Pervez Musharraf IS a dictator. Why did he not come to us before he joined the U.S. in their dubious 'War on Terror'? Is it that he does not need us little people once the U.S. is on his side? — Ayinde

¤ U.S. Secretly Aids Pakistan in Guarding Nuclear Arms
Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly classified program to help Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, secure his country's nuclear weapons, according to current and former senior administration officials.
But with the future of that country's leadership in doubt, debate is intensifying about whether Washington has done enough to help protect the warheads and laboratories, and whether Pakistan's reluctance to reveal critical details about its arsenal has undercut the effectiveness of the continuing security effort.

¤ Pakistan's Musharraf Faces US Pressure
¤ Pakistan rejects calls to end emergency
¤ Musharraf widens his sphere of punishment
¤ Video of Taser Death in Canada Sparks Probe
¤ Video shows Taser death in Canada airport
¤ 'Safe' uranium that left a town contaminated

¤ Bangladesh storm toll exceeds 3,000
More than 3,000 people have been killed and millions made homeless after Bangladesh was hit by its worst cyclone in a decade, an aid agency said.
Rescue teams are working to reach hundreds of thousands of people who have been trapped for three days without food or water, officials told Al Jazeera on Sunday.

¤ Fears for thousands in remote areas as Bangladesh storm toll hits 2,300

¤ 15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War?
The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it.
CBS's Investigative Unit wanted to do a report on the number of suicides in the military and "submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense". After 4 months they received a document which showed--that between 1995 and 2007-- there were 2,200 suicides among "active duty" soldiers.
Baloney.

¤ Somalia: What the News Failed to Report

¤ Preparing for Life After Oil
This past May, in an unheralded and almost unnoticed move, the Energy Department signaled a fundamental, near epochal shift in US and indeed world history: we are nearing the end of the Petroleum Age and have entered the Age of Insufficiency. The department stopped talking about "oil" in its projections of future petroleum availability and began speaking of "liquids." The global output of "liquids," the department indicated, would rise from 84 million barrels of oil equivalent (mboe) per day in 2005 to a projected 117.7 mboe in 2030 -- barely enough to satisfy anticipated world demand of 117.6 mboe. Aside from suggesting the degree to which oil companies have ceased being mere suppliers of petroleum and are now purveyors of a wide variety of liquid products -- including synthetic fuels derived from natural gas, corn, coal and other substances -- this change hints at something more fundamental: we have entered a new era of intensified energy competition and growing reliance on the use of force to protect overseas sources of petroleum.

¤ George Galloway addresses a meeting of respect Video
¤ Seizure of Iranians Failed to Validate Bush Line
¤ The White House Press Office

¤ On the Verge of Democracy Collapse Disorder
Colony Collapse Disorder: this is the name given to the dying off of the world's bees, which spells an impending global crisis. It's not that I want to make light of this diagnosis. Quite the reverse; it's that the name could just as easily be applied to the state of the nation. Though Democracy Collapse Disorder is what comes to mind.
When historians look back to examine the origins of this latter disorder, it will be determined that it began in 2000, compliments of the U.S. Supreme Court when its intervention resulted in the ascension of George W. Bush to the presidency of the United States.

¤ Musharraf Feels the Heat
¤ Strange Bedfellows - George W. Bush & the New York Times
¤ Chavez warns US at Opec summit

¤ Leaked Guantanamo Document Confirms Routine Use of Isolation as Psychological Torture.

¤ Covering up corruption in Iraq
As if the calamities that befell Iraq courtesy of the Bush Administration were not enough, we now learn that the Bush administration is trying to cover up one of its many failures: its own assessment of the extent of corruption in Iraq, described by Transparency International as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
In an official report, a copy of which was obtained by US Public Radio's Corey Flintoff in Baghdad, US State Department investigators in Iraq said that the extent of corruption in the Iraqi government was such that the Iraqi government was not even capable of the most rudimentary enforcement of anti-corruption laws. The report was marked "sensitive but unclassified".

¤ America's Invisible Empire
¤ A Review of America's 'Investment' in El Salvador
¤ Paying The Price: Killing The Children Of Iraq
¤ Suffer the Children
¤ US and Israel 'face up to' Iran bomb

¤ OPEC interested in non-dollar currency
- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that OPEC's members have expressed interest in converting their cash reserves into a currency other than the depreciating U.S. dollar, which he called a "worthless piece of paper."
His comments at the end of a rare summit of OPEC heads of state exposed fissures within the 13-member cartel - especially after U.S. ally Saudi Arabia was reluctant to mention concerns about the falling dollar in the summit's final declaration.

How Cheney Cooked the Intelligence on Iran
Posted: Friday, November 16, 2007

¤ America and the world's executioners join efforts to block UN moves to end death penalty
¤ U.S. has become haven for war criminals

¤ Iran wants Western "apology" after IAEA report
Iran called on its Western foes on Friday to apologize to the Islamic Republic after the release of a U.N. nuclear agency report which Tehran said showed it had been telling the truth about its atomic plans, according to state media.
The United States, which accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear bombs, said Thursday's report showed Tehran still defying the international community and that Washington would proceed with allies to draft broader United Nations sanctions against it.

¤ Ahmadinejad Says U.N. Report Vindicates Iran
Iran said on Thursday it had been vindicated in a report by the U.N. atomic watchdog and there would be no legal basis for further discussion at the U.N. Security Council of its nuclear plans.
"We welcome this, that the International Atomic Energy Agency has found its role and with the publication of (IAEA chief Mohamed) ElBaradei's report the world will see that the Iranian nation has been right and the resistance of our nation has been correct," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said.

¤ Intel Chief Blasts 'Cherry Picked' Intel

¤ How Cheney Cooked the Intelligence on Iran
As I reported for Inter Press Service this week, Dick Cheney has been trying to pressure intelligence analysts who have not drunk the neocon kool-aid on Iran to go along with his line on the issues at stake in a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that the White House has been holding up for more than a year. Think Progress immediately noted the parallel between the Cheney's effort to get an Iran NIE that is more to his liking and the way he pushed intelligence analysts to accept the fabrications the neocons were pushing in on Iraq in 2002.
The similarities between Cheney's efforts to cook the intelligence on Iraq and on Iran are worth noting, but so are the differences. Cheney may have had a bigger impact in shaping the intelligence estimate on Iran to fit the policy he is pursuing than was the case on Iraq in 2002.

¤ Under Pressure, China Agrees to Meeting on Iran Sanctions
¤ Saudi Arabia Won't Include U.S. Dollar in OPEC Talks
¤ In the Hands of the Military

¤ Princess Ferragamo at the Barricades
It doesn't take a genius to figure out why the crooked Princess Ferragamo--Benazir Bhutto—has returned to Pakistan. Bhutto's been traipsing all over Washington trying to garner support from think-tank heavies and establishment powerbrokers to help her stage a political come-back in Islamabad. She even hired a high-powered public relations firm to polish her image so the media wouldn't focus too much attention on her past transgressions. Allegations of money laundering and corruption have haunted Bhutto ever since she was driven from office in 1996. Last month, General Musharraf cut a deal with Bhutto which freed her from the prospect of criminal prosecution and allowed her to return home. The arrangement ignored the judicial system entirely. The $1.5 billion that she and her husband allegedly “received in a variety of criminal enterprises” has simply disappeared down the memory hole.

¤ Army desertion rate up 80 pct. since '03
¤ 'Jena Six' case sparks march on DC
¤ Torturing Palestinian Detainees

¤ "The Assassination of Hugo Chavez"
You'd think George Bush would get down on his knees and kiss Hugo Chavez's behind. Not only has Chavez delivered cheap oil to the Bronx and other poor communities in the United States. And not only did he offer to bring aid to the victims of Katrina. In my interview with the president of Venezuela on March 28, he made Bush the following astonishing offer: Chavez would drop the price of oil to $50 a barrel, "not too high, a fair price," he said — a third less than the $75 a barrel for oil recently posted on the spot market. That would bring down the price at the pump by about a buck, from $3 to $2 a gallon.
But our President has basically told Chavez to take his cheaper oil and stick it up his pipeline. Before I explain why Bush has done so, let me explain why Chavez has the power to pull it off — and the method in the seeming madness of his "take-my-oil-please!" deal.

¤ Knives out for Musharraf as US loosens ties
¤ Canada Shuts Doors to U.S. War Resisters
¤ Charges dropped against last of 'Los Angeles Eight'
¤ A TRILLION HERE, A TRILLION THERE
¤ Defense, oil and trade most corrupted ministries, commission says
¤ New Iraq, the showdown
¤ Musharraf shuts down Geo TV
¤ USA may introduce sanctions against Russia for its lucrative arms deals
¤ Bangladesh cyclone kills more than 600
¤ Australians named as world's worst polluters
¤ The dollar's decline
¤ Cyclone Toll Reaches 1,100 in Bangladesh

¤ U.S. Role in Bringing Pakistan to the Abyss
"The first step toward a smarter policy in the region is to recognize that the United States is part of the problem. In Afghanistan, the United States still could do what it should have done after 9/11; withdrawing its forces would extinguish the fire of the Taliban resurgence. In Pakistan, Musharraf is likely to fall, but such a close U.S. hug for him makes it more likely that Islamists could eventually win power. So the U.S. should use Musharraf's declaration of martial law as a reason to terminate all aid to his regime. The United States is so unpopular in the region that supporting a governing alliance between Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would probably delegitimize even the middle ground in Pakistan. For moderate forces to have the best chance in that nuclear-armed nation, the United States, paradoxically, should refrain from supporting them, and stay out of Pakistani politics."

The Grand Delusion
Posted: Thursday, November 15, 2007

¤ Congressmen corner Yahoo! over jailed Chinese dissident
The head of the American internet company Yahoo! delivered a personal apology today to the tearful mother of a Chinese journalist who was jailed using email information provided by the firm to secret police in Beijing.
Members of Congress are furious with the company for passing confidential files to the Chinese authorities – and for giving misleading testimony when the case was first raised in Washington last year.
» The US government has got to have some of the blindest hypocrites on this planet. What about the people (uncharged and held illegally without any timeframe for release) in Guantanamo? — Kae
» Is Yahoo! morally better when they hand over info to the US government about people who do not support their war? — Ayinde

¤ US Economy–Recession, Depression, or Collapse?

¤ Venezuela Between Ballots and Bullets
Venezuela's democratically elected Present Chavez faces the most serious threat since the April 11, 2002 military coup.
Violent street demonstrations by privileged middle and upper middle class university students have led to major street battles in and around the center of Caracas. More seriously, the former Minister of Defense, General Raul Isaias Baduel, who resigned in July, has made explicit calls for a military coup in a November 5 press conference which he convoked exclusively for the right and far-right mass media and political parties, while striking a posture as an 'individual' dissident.

¤ Bush Stands by His Dictator
The war on terror" made me do it. That's the excuse that works for George W. Bush to rationalize his assaults on the rule of law, from arbitrary arrest to torture. So why not try some war-on-terror obfuscation to bail out his president-dictator buddy over in Pakistan?

That's the card Bush played at his Saturday press conference when he once again celebrated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as a strong ally in the war on terrorism: "If you're the chief operating officer of al-Qaida, you haven't had a good experience. There has been four or five No. 3s that have been brought to justice one way or the other, and many of those folks thought they had found safe haven in Pakistan. And that would not have happened without President Musharraf honoring his word."

¤ The Making of Hillary Clinton
¤ US eyes Pakistan's nuclear arsenal
¤ Stop the Lies, Stop the Funding, Stop the Genocide
¤ What Celebrities Can Teach Us About Healthcare

¤ George W. Musharraf
The leader says the nation must crack down on liberties to fight the war against terrorism.
The leader is surrounded by profiteers who make huge sums of money corrupting military budgets and political power.
The leader believes he is specially ordained from above to pursue his policies, which he believes are endorsed by higher authorities that exempt him from the rules of law and conduct that define democratic nations and democratic values.

¤ Hillary's Musharraf

¤ Drowning the economy in the bathtub
¤ You All Know Hanoi Jane, Now Meet Tehran Todd
¤ US looks to alternate supply lines for forces in Afghanistan
¤ The Coming Foreclosure Tsunami
¤ Here's What America Really Spends on Security
¤ F.B.I. Says Guards Killed 14 Iraqis Without Cause

¤ U.S. accused of ignoring crisis for 4.5 million displaced Iraqis
The U.S. government is "unforgivably slow" in resettling Iraqi refugees and has failed to coordinate with its Arab allies to address the suffering of an estimated 4.5 million displaced Iraqis, according to a report released Tuesday by a leading Washington-based refugee advocacy group.
Nearly five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has made little effort to speed up relief for a population that's growing more vulnerable by the day, Refugees International concluded after its most recent trip to Iraqi refugee communities in the Middle East. The group's advocates said the White House appeared oblivious to the magnitude of the war's humanitarian disaster.

¤ Experts: Danger of nuclear-armed Iran may be hyped
¤ The Stories of the 14 Saudis Just Released From Gitmo
¤ Why would the state department protect Blackwater?

¤ Latin America's Shock Resistance
In less than two years, the lease on the largest and most important US military base in Latin America will run out. The base is in Manta, Ecuador, and Rafael Correa, the country's leftist president, has pronounced that he will renew the lease "on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami–an Ecuadorean base. If there is no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."
Since an Ecuadorean military outpost in South Beach is a long shot, it is very likely that the Manta base, which serves as a staging area for the "war on drugs," will soon shut down. Correa's defiant stand is not, as some have claimed, about anti-Americanism. Rather, it is part of a broad range of measures being taken by Latin American governments to make the continent less vulnerable to externally provoked crises and shocks.

¤ The Grand Delusion
¤ In Iraq, the silence of the lambs

Venezuela: Between Ballots and Bullets
Posted: Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Venezuela's democratically elected Present Chavez faces the most serious threat since the April 11, 2002 military coup.

Violent street demonstrations by privileged middle and upper middle class university students have led to major street battles in and around the center of Caracas. More seriously, the former Minister of Defense, General Raul Isaias Baduel, who resigned in July, has made explicit calls for a military coup in a November 5th press conference which he convoked exclusively for the right and far-right mass media and political parties, while striking a posture as an 'individual' dissident.
Full Article : dissidentvoice.org

A Nation on borrowed time
Posted: Wednesday, November 14, 2007

¤ USA treats its war veterans like garbage

¤ Washington Stirs a Witch's Brew in Pakistan
Plans by President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to attack Iran have been at least temporarily derailed by the mounting crisis in Pakistan. Not only is this important South Asia nation a key US ally in its conflict with anti-western Muslim groups (aka "the war of terror"), the US also planned to use three Pakistani air bases it now controls to launch air attacks against Iran.
I’ve been in regular contact with former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. She calls the situation "grim." On Friday, she was temporarily put under house arrest, preventing her from leading a mass demonstration in Islamabad. On Tuesday, she plans to lead a mass protest march from Lahore, to which she flew over the weekend, to Islamabad, mobilizing her party faithful and challenging the Musharraf regime.

¤ A Nation on borrowed time
¤ US, Iraqi forces kill 15 gunmen in big battle
¤ War clouds in the Horn of Africa

¤ U.S. finds a way to pacify Iraqi town — by using cash
In this desolate tiny town in what was once called the Triangle of Death, signs of the violent past mix oddly with evidence of today's more tranquil life.
Large plots of land emptied by car bombs sit next to refurbished buildings. A new water treatment plant looks out to blast walls that haven’t been necessary for months. A newly opened clothes shop is next to one that's been shut for ages.
The U.S. calls this former al Qaida stronghold a paragon of post-surge Iraq. Violence has come to a near-standstill. Yet the government that's emerged is far from the democratic republic that the Bush administration once promised.

¤ UN spotlights 'survival sex' among Iraqi women refugees
¤ The US Has Violated The Chemical Weapons Convention
¤ 'How can a dying man pose a security threat?'
¤ Rock it...
¤ A massacre in Afghanistan

¤ Red Crescent "sorry" for inaccurate statements on displaced people

¤ In the Mideast, America Casts an Imperial Shadow
Most Americans think that our role as a world power began with World War II, the "good war," and then continued with the similarly noble Cold War. We like to think that the United States acts in the world exclusively in the name of ideals such as freedom and democracy.
So it may come as a bit of a shock to learn that the United States has had an uninterrupted military presence in the Middle East for 65 years, dating to 1942. Most Americans would also bristle at the idea that this presence, from the arrival of GIs in North Africa onward, has essentially become a continuation of nearly a century and a half of European military adventures in the region. But history shows a disturbing continuity between what the European colonial powers did in the Middle East, starting with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, and what the United States is now doing in Iraq and elsewhere. Indeed, the United States has managed in a few short years to do more damage in the region than did the hated colonial powers that were finally driven out only a few decades ago.

¤ Report Puts Hidden War Costs at $1.6T
¤ Dear Mrs. Bhutto
¤ Chavez Blasts the Spanish King

¤ The Pakistan Fuel Connection
When it comes to America's relationship with Pakistan, remember one thing: it's all about the fuel.
The Bush Administration's muted reaction to the new dictatorial rule of Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf can be traced to the American military's logistics problems in Afghanistan. Without the cooperation of Musharraf's government, the 24,000 U.S. troops who are stationed in Afghanistan would likely run out of fuel within a matter of days.

¤ Bhutto deepens rift by telling 'contaminated' Musharraf to go
¤ In Iraq, the silence of the lambs
¤ Do Many Political Reporters Not Have Brains?
¤ Edwin Starr Was Wrong - War "Good" For Many
¤ Bush administration defies the U.N. Committee on Torture

Torture and pre-emptive strikes are similar
Posted: Monday, November 12, 2007

¤ Life Under the Brutal Emergency
[Editors' Note: The following was written by a Karachi based lawyer, Omar K. Throughout his legal career he has been active in social causes, including prisoner's rights and causes and the issue of forced evictions carried out by the state. Omar's friends are now incredibly worried for his safety as he continues to be outspoken and active in resisting the draconian measures passed to put down the judiciary and the lawyers in Pakistan. The following is his account of living as a lawyer under this increasingly brutal emergency]

¤ Pakistani government bans Bhutto rally
¤ The Barren, Deadly Wasteland Further Considered, and the New Normal
¤ Rice denies US on warpath with Iran

¤ Torture and pre-emptive strikes are similar
Arguments in favour of the legalisation of torture have not lost their capacity to shock. The fact that US attorneys-general and the senior legal adviser at the State Department have said they are in favour of it seems proof to many of America's slide into barbarism.
In reality, however, their pro-torture arguments are no different from the claims made in favour of "humanitarian war" and of other forms of military intervention — arguments that, unfortunately, have become increasingly popular since the end of the Cold War.

¤ American media assaults Arab and Islamic media out of guilt
¤ Another Surge Success Story
¤ Protesters defy Pakistan's dictator General Musharraf
¤ AIDS Virus Traveled to Haiti, Then U.S., Study Says

¤ Who Says Africans/ Haitians Gave AIDS to the World?
"Yet, somehow, Worobey's computer model finds this one descendant of deported Africans who leaves his native Haiti sometimes in the 1960s to go to Africa (please note there has never been a direct flight linking Haiti with any country in Africa), then beats all the frequent flyers and frequent boaters of his time to return to Haiti (which he was fleeing for fear of political persecution), under the same Duvalier dictatorship still in place upon his return. And, at last, our intrepid Haitian globetrotter extraordinaire, invades America to bring the HIV virus he was carrying where no HIV has gone before."

¤ Haitians May Sue Over HIV Research Claim

¤ Haiti defamed
¤ Don't let new AIDS study scapegoat Haitians
¤ AIDS study deals an injustice to Haitians

¤ Six dead after shootout at Arafat rally

¤ Terror case thrown out
A high profile terror case was abandoned before it got to trial today after a judge found that two ASIO officers had kidnapped and falsely imprisoned a young medical student, Izhar ul-Haque.
Mr ul-Haque's lawyer, Adam Houda, later accused authorities of launching a politically motivated and "moronic prosecution" against his client.
In a scathing judgment, NSW Supreme Court Justice Michael Adams found that two ASIO officers had broken the law in a deliberate attempt to coerce answers from Mr ul-Haque.

¤ Bhutto placed under house-arrest to prevent protest march in Pakistan
¤ Iraq and Afghanistan violated just war theory

¤ The Last Dead Bull on Wall Street
Whew! What a week for the stock market. On Wednesday the market took a 360 point nosedive followed, two days later, by a 220 point belly-flop. By the time it was over, the trading pits looked more like a sausage-packing plant than the world's financial epicenter. After the bell, downcast traders could be seen tiptoeing through the carnage on their way to the local liquor store to load up on "Stoly" and boxes of Franzia---anything that would steady their nerves and put the week behind them.
Everyone could see it coming; the train-wreck. It was mostly carry-over from the night before when Asian stocks took a thumping on reports of slower growth in the US and growing troubles in the credit markets. That put the first domino in motion. Fed chief Bernanke's announcement that the economy will face "a sharp slowdown from the housing market's contraction" and an "inflationary surge from sharply higher oil prices and the weaker dollar", didn't help either. His remarks triggered a blow-off in the currency markets while equities were frog-marched to the chopping-block.

¤ The Coup at Home
¤ A Lethal Year

¤ Talking about democracy in Pakistan - Which one?
"The biggest issue today in Pakistan is not to hold the election, form new assemblies and civil ministries. The important issue is civic understanding and liberty for the people of Pakistan to objectively achieve a process of fair and fruitful democraticisation. Pakistan needs a revolution - a complete reformation in all civil institutions - elimination of the feudal system, fanatic ideologies, involvement of the army in the civil government, the supremacy of the judiciary and freedom of speech. Pakistan needs a continuous and independent process of development whose control should not be in the hands of foreign powers."

Still waiting to cash in on Iraq's oil
Posted: Sunday, November 11, 2007

¤ Dog The Bounty Hunter's Interview on Fox News (Video)
Dog The Bounty Hunter's disgusting attempt to excuse his racism. This is typical of how some Whites speak about racism when they have never bothered to examine the issues and inform themselves. — Ayinde

¤ Bush's hawks size up Iran

¤ Venezuela Accuses U.S. of Instigating Student Violence
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro rejected statements from the US State Department yesterday, and accused the government of the United States of being involved in the violent events in Caracas. US spokesperson Sean McCormack had criticized the recent student violence in Venezuela, calling it "appalling," but Maduro claimed that the statement from the US is proof of their involvement in the acts.

¤ Pro-Chavez Students Blame Opposition Students for Violence at University
¤ Bhutto house arrest order lifted
¤ Finland to toughen gun laws after school massacre

¤ Iraq: Call an air strike
Amid the George W Bush administration's relentless campaign to "change the subject" from Iraq to Iran, how to "win" the war against the Iraqi resistance, Sunni or Shi'ite, now means - according to counter-insurgency messiah General David Petraeus - calling an air strike.

On a parallel level, the Pentagon has practically finished a base in southern Iraq less than 10 kilometers from the border with Iran called Combat Outpost Shocker. The Pentagon maintains this is for the US to prevent Iranian weapons from being smuggled into Iraq. Rather, it's to control a rash of US covert, sabotage operations across the border targeting Iran's Khuzestan province.

¤ Twenty Reasons against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran
There is no evidence of a nuclear weapons programme in Iran . The US and its allies pressure Iran to prove that it is not hiding a nuclear weapons programme. This demand is logically impossible to satisfy and serves to make diplomacy fail in order to force regime change. Numerous intrusive and snap visits by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, totalling more than 2,700 person-hours of inspection, have failed to produce a shred of evidence for a weapons programme in Iran . Traces of highly enriched uranium found at Natanz in 2004, were determined by the IAEA to have come with imported centrifuges.

¤ Our Man in Islamabad

¤ U.S. Aid to Musharraf is Largely Untraceable Cash Transfers
After Pervez Musharraf declared martial law this weekend, Condoleezza Rice vowed to review U.S. assistance to Pakistan, one of the largest foreign recipients of American aid. Musharraf, of course, has been a crucial American ally since the start of the Afghanistan war in 2001, and the U.S. has rewarded him ever since with over $10 billion in civilian and (mostly) military largesse. But, perhaps unsure whether Musharraf's days might in fact be numbered, Rice contended that the explosion of money to Islamabad over the past seven years was "not to Musharraf, but to a Pakistan you could argue was making significant strides on a number of fronts."

¤ Pakistanis' anger at Musharraf extends to U.S.
It takes almost no effort to find people who are angry with Pervez Musharraf on the streets of this bustling city. The Pakistani leader's name comes up quickly in casual conversation, yoked with unprintable adjectives and harsh denunciations of the emergency rule he has imposed.
But dig just a little deeper and another target of resentment surfaces: Musharraf's richest, staunchest and most powerful patron, the United States.
"We blame the U.S. directly for keeping us under the rule of the military," said Arfan Ghani, a 54-year-old professor of architecture. Musharraf, who heads Pakistan's army, is just "another dictator," Ghani told an American reporter, "serving the interests of your country."

¤ Former Top Cop Indicted on Federal Fraud, Conspiracy Charges
¤ Broken Supply Channel Sent Weapons for Iraq Astray
¤ Pakistan expels 3 reporters from British newspaper
¤ US to purchase $700m worth of arms from Israel
¤ Spanish King Tells Chavez to "Shut Up"
¤ Blair accused of 'gold-digging'
¤ Torturers: The Next Generation
¤ New Rulers of the World

¤ Saddam's Capture: The Perception Vs. The Truth
Saddam Hussein was not captured in a "spider hole" in December 2003. I wrote an article called "Saddam Hussein and Reality" that chronicled the capture and the following days.
Unfortunately, almost four years after the apprehension of the president of Iraq, many people still believe the fairy tale version given by the U.S. Even Fidel Castro recently said that, unlike Saddam, he would have never allowed his adversaries to capture him in a hole. He would have shot it out with the enemy.

¤ 17,000 sham names getting monthly salaries
¤ Eyewitness report: Another kangaroo court hearing at Gitmo
¤ A New Low in U. S. Behavior
Legitimizing Torture
¤ Torture in America
¤ The Ongoing War on Journalists in Haiti
¤ The White Man Unburdened
¤ Testing For Intelligence(s)
¤ The Price of Oil

¤ The Last Refuge
"Bush is dreaming again about a war without American casualties. A "surgical" air strike. A hail of "smart" bombs pours down on thousands of Iranian targets - nuclear, governmental, military and civil. What a sweet dream: Iran soon surrenders. The regime of the Ayatollahs collapses. The son of the late Shah takes his place on the throne of his father, who himself was once restored to power by American bayonets."

¤ Two Palestinian children killed in Gaza at the hands of IOF troops
¤ Suitcase nukes said unlikely to exist
¤ Still waiting to cash in on Iraq's oil

¤ How to Turn a Region Into a Graveyard
When the US decided that its backyard would in future be a greater Middle East --from Pakistan to Morocco --it imagined that it could rearrange the region to suit itself. The results have been disastrous and will be long-lasting.
The United States undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns, said this year: "Ten years ago Europe was the epicentre of American foreign policy. This was how things stood from April 1917, when Woodrow Wilson sent one million American troops to the Western Front, through to President Clinton's intervention in Kosovo in 1999. For the better part of the 20th century, Europe was our primary, vital focus." But, he added, everything had changed and the Middle East was now, for President George Bush and his successors, "the place that Europe once was for the administrations of the 20th century" .

¤ US among worst in world for infant death

Say No to Africom
Posted: Saturday, November 10, 2007

by Danny Glover
and Nicole C. Lee

With little scrutiny from Democrats in Congress and nary a whimper of protest from the liberal establishment, the United States will soon establish permanent military bases in sub-Saharan Africa. An alarming step forward in the militarization of the African continent, the US Africa Command (Africom) will oversee all US military and security interests throughout the region, excluding Egypt. Africom is set to launch by September 2008 and the Senate recently confirmed Gen. William "Kip" Ward as its first commander.

General Ward told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Africom would first seek "African solutions to African problems." His testimony made Africom sound like a magnanimous effort for the good of the African people. In truth Africom is a dangerous continuation of US military expansion around the globe. Such foreign- policy priorities, as well as the use of weapons of war to combat terrorist threats on the African continent, will not achieve national security. Africom will only inflame threats against the United States, make Africa even more dependent on external powers and delay responsible African solutions to continental security issues.
Full Article : thenation.com

Chavez: 'Latin America Is Waking Up, and No One Can Stop It'
Posted: Saturday, November 10, 2007

by Kiraz Janicke
November 9th 2007
Venezuelanalysis.com

"Latin America is waking up and no one can stop it" Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said in a brief statement to the media as he arrived in Chile for the 17th Latin American Summit, Friday. Chavez, who was received by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and other Latin American leaders in Club Hipico, Santiago, added, that he was "very happy to be in the land of Allende."

The principal theme of the summit, which concludes on Saturday, is ‘Social Cohesion' and the search for a more inclusive society in Latin America.

Chavez said he supported the deliberations of the summit, which will approve two documents; the Declaration of Santiago and a Plan of Action, which will propose joint initiatives to deal with labour, health, education, taxes and corruption issues in Latin American states.

Although, he argued, "I don't much like the word ‘cohesion.' It is better to speak of social transformation; it is a more dynamic term in comparison with the word cohesion, which denotes statism."

Latin America is waking up, he declared, and nothing nor anyone can stop it. "There is an awakening of millions of people, indigenous, women, campesinos, and this is the most important thing because individually we do not make history, rather it is the people that make history."

However, he warned, "The Latin American rightwing is lining up to attack the Bolivarian revolution." They aim to undermine, "the series of changes that we are carrying out...a process of changes that has resonance in the region," he said, "using the power of the mass media to externally sell a surreal image of what is happening in Venezuela."

"They are preoccupied with what is happening in Venezuela," the Venezuelan president continued, "because what is happening is a revolution; a moral, political, democratic and peaceful revolution."

The oligarchy and rightwing elites of the continent, Chavez said, "Fear the Bolivarian revolution, this is why the attack us so much and satanize us."

These same elites that attack the Bolivarian revolution, Chavez explained, "are those that failed when they had the destiny of Venezuela and the region in their hands.

"The neoliberal rightwing failed in the 1990s to reduce poverty and misery," and now "the cause of this failure is being defeated by the revolution," he explained.

Chavez also criticised "the obscene blockade of Cuba" by the United States, and demanded that they comply with international law and hand over terrorists Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, wanted for the Cuban airline bombing in 1976, that killed 73 people

Venezuela, with the support of Cuba, has solicited the extradition of Posada Carilles, a Venezuelan national, from the United States in order to charge him over the Cuban airline bombing. However, so far the US has refused to hand him over.

"I hope for the fall of North American imperialism, because this imperialism obeys no one. It only obeys its own obscene interests. This century, maybe in the first few years of this 21st century, North American imperialism, which has done so much damage to the Latin American people, will fall."

Chavez also plans to attend the parallel Summit of the Peoples at the University of Science and Art (USA) in Santiago, which opened this morning with a series of debates on social, environmental, economic and cultural themes, with an emphasis on the inequalities that afflict the continent.

Rector of the USA, Carlos Margotta, who inaugurated the summit, said it "aims to consolidate a platform of popular demands and strategic objectives for all the peoples and their organizations throughout the continent."

Forums throughout the summit will address the social problems experienced by millions of Latin Americans, and ways to end political exclusion and discrimination in the region. It will also deliver a document elaborated over three days of debate to the government leaders at the Latin American Summit.

The Summit of the Peoples will close on Saturday with a massive event in the Velodrome National Stadium, at which Chavez is expected to speak, along with Bolivian President Evo Morales and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, as well as Carlos Lage, the vice- President of Cuba.

Source: www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/2816

Opposition violence at Venezuelan university
Posted: Saturday, November 10, 2007

According to eyewitness reports from Hands Off Venezuela members, violence broke out yesterday in Caracas when opposition students arrived back from a peaceful demonstration against the proposed constitutional reforms. Apparently frustrated by the lack of violence, a group of about 250 of the opposition students (many from other universities) went straight to the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) to the School of Social Work which is a stronghold of revolutionary students inside UCV.

There, a group of revolutionary students was campaigning for a yes vote in the referendum. They had an assembly for students/teachers/non-teaching staff in the morning and were putting up posters and giving out leaflets.

They were then attacked by the opposition students who surrounded the School. Molotov cocktails and stones were thrown, the toilets were destroyed, the door of the Students Centre (Bolivarian dominated) was burned down, and around 150 people (students, teachers and non-teaching staff) were trapped inside the building for several hours, with the violent opposition students trying to force their way into the building to lynch them.
Full Article : handsoffvenezuela.org

The U.S. Dollar Crisis
Posted: Friday, November 9, 2007

¤ The Dollar Crisis

¤ Dollar's Fall Collapses American Empire
The US dollar is still officially the world's reserve currency, but it cannot purchase the services of Brazilian super model Gisele Bundchen. Gisele required the $30 million she earned during the first half of this year to be paid in euros.

Gisele is not alone in her forecast of the dollar's fate. The First Post (UK) reports that Jim Rogers, a former partner of billionaire George Soros, is selling his home and all possessions in order to convert all his wealth into Chinese yuan.

¤ US debt tops $9 trillion for first time-Treasury
¤ Dollar Slumps to Record on China's Plans to Diversify Reserves
¤ Oil blasts towards $99 on weak dollar

¤ A Market Without Parachutes
America is finished, washed up, kaput. Foreign investors and central banks around the world have lost confidence in US markets and are headed for the exits. The dollar is sinking, the country is insolvent, and its leaders are barking mad. That's bad for business. Investors are voting with their feet. They've had enough. Capital is flowing to China and the Far East in a torrent. It's "sayonara" Manhattan and "Hello" Tiananmen Square.
Want some advice? Learn Mandarin.
The dollar fell another 2% last night, gold soared to $840 per ounce, oil topped $98 per barrel, General motors reported a $39 billion loss after the market closed on Tuesday, the real estate market continued its downward slide, and the major investment banks are marching in lock-step towards bankruptcy.

¤ .S. national debt sets another record – 9.815 trillion dollars
The national debt of the United States of America exceeded the number of nine trillion dollars for the first time in history, the U.S. Treasury said. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told congressmen in the middle of September that the federal government would reach the legal limit of the national debt on October 1 – 8 trillion 965 billion dollars. The government would thus find itself in a state of technical default on its obligations, Paulson added.

¤ Study: 1 out of 4 homeless are veterans

¤ Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran
ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.
Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear "bunker-busters", according to several Israeli military sources.
The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

¤ U.S. Says Attack Plans for Iran Ready
¤ Defiant Iran reaches key nuclear target
¤ Iran Strikes Have Little Support in Europe and U.S., Poll Finds

¤ Blair 'knew Iraq had no WMD'
John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee (JIC), also "assented" that Saddam had no such weapons, says Cook.
His revelations, taken from a diary that he kept as a senior minister during the months leading up to war, are published today in The Sunday Times. They shatter the case for war put forward by the government that Iraq presented "a real and present danger" to Britain.
Cook, who resigned shortly before the invasion of Iraq, also reveals there was a near mutiny in the cabinet, triggered by David Blunkett, the home secretary, when it first discussed military action against Iraq.

¤ U.S. Congress approves $155 million weapons package for Israel

¤ Bush's Favorite Lie
When cataloguing George W. Bush's lies – even if you stick just to his fabrications about the Iraq War and the "war on terror" – there are so many to choose from, it's hard to pick a favorite.
There's the one about how before Sept. 11, 2001, Americans thought that "oceans protected us" – although perhaps not from Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads, which during the Cold War had school children hiding under desks and homeowners buying bomb shelters.

¤ How Blackwater Sniper Fire Felled 3 Iraqi Guards

¤ UN Praises Cuba's Ability to Feed People
A U.N. food expert hailed Cuba as a world model in feeding its population, some 18 years after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc ravaged the island's economy and sparked widespread hunger.
Jean Ziegler, who has been the United Nations' independent investigator on "the right to food" since 2000, spent 11 days in Cuba on a fact-finding mission, meeting with top officials and chatting up farmers, state managers and ordinary Cubans waiting in line for food allotted by ration cards.

¤ Sarkozy Throws Open His Arms to Bush, and U.S.

¤ Bhutto Piles Pressure On Gen Musharraf
Benazir Bhutto has told Sky News she will step up pressure on Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf to quit his military post.
The ex-prime minister was speaking after arriving in Islamabad for talks with political leaders aimed at ending martial law.
Ms Bhutto told Sky News she hoped to persuade the president to go ahead with January's elections.

¤ 8 Dead in Finland School Shooting
¤ Schoolboy gunman posts threat on the internet then kills eight

¤ Will 'armloads' of US cash buy tribal loyalty?
¤ Iran's masterly gamble
¤ Lest we forget Iraq
¤ Iraq: Hearts and Minds
¤ I Knew It!
¤ The Clinton Policy is the Bush Policy

¤ All Cowboys Out Now
Jan Schakowsky is one of the few members of Congress who have made confronting the radically privatized war machine a legislative priority. Even before Blackwater operatives gunned down seventeen Iraqis and wounded some twenty-four others in Baghdad in September, propelling the issue of private forces to front-page news, Schakowsky had mercenaries in her scope. Now she is introducing legislation that seeks to end the use of companies like Blackwater in US war zones by 2009.

¤ Stanford Students Protest Rumsfeld Appointment
¤ Water Is Gold
¤ Bush's father comes to his defense on Iraq war

¤ The Boy Who Cried Terror
Message to Congress: No one believes Bush and this is dangerous to the country!
There is an urgent warning today from the FBI, that Al-Qaeda might attack shopping malls over the holiday season. See Exclusive: FBI: Al Qaeda May Strike U.S. Shopping Malls in LA, Chicago,
The FBI is warning that al Qaeda may be preparing a series of holiday attacks on U.S. shopping malls in Los Angeles and Chicago, according to an intelligence bulletin distributed to law enforcement authorities across the country this morning.
Is there a single person in this country who doesn't wonder if this is another Bush trick? Be honest, it crossed your mind, didn't it?

¤ Bush's old world disorder
¤ Afghan suicide attack killed 59 children, ministry confirms
¤ Bhutto not allowed to leave her home
¤ Afghan suicide bomber kills 90, wounds 50
¤ Cuba's Sin

Protesters defy Pakistan's dictator General Musharraf
Posted: Wednesday, November 7, 2007

by Esme Choonara
November 06, 2007
socialistworker.co.uk

Pakistan's dictator Pervez Musharraf has launched a wave of repression by imposing martial law, banning public assemblies and shutting down independent TV stations.

Socialist Worker went to press just three days after Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan, but already several thousand human rights activists, lawyers and left wing campaigners had been arrested.

In Lahore last Sunday police brutally attacked a demonstration of 2,000 people outside the high court. Eyewitnesses say many lawyers and their supporters were viciously beaten with batons.

However, the popular resistance to the crackdown has been inspiring, says Riaz Ahmad from the International Socialists group in Pakistan.

"For the first time ever in Pakistan there has been an immediate response to the imposition of martial law," he told Socialist Worker. "Within 24 hours of the declaration of a state of emergency, thousands had protested."

Musharraf cites the growing "chaos" in the country and the need to tackle terrorism as reasons for imposing the emergency.

But most people believe he suspended the constitution to stop the supreme court from challenging the legitimacy of his recent reinstallation as president.

In fact this is just the latest escalation in an ongoing crisis in Pakistan that is ultimately driven by the country's role in the US-led "war on terror".

This crisis has unfolded dramatically over the past six months as Musharraf has escalated military operations on the border with Afghanistan and simultaneously faced a mass opposition movement led by lawyers and the judiciary.

Justice

The crisis led to the sacking and reinstatement - and now sacking again - of Pakistan's chief justice Iftikhar Chaudry.

It has also led to the dramatic return of exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who hopes to benefit from the chaos.

Musharraf is a key US ally and has presented himself as the only force in the region capable of taking on the Taliban.

But his commitment to the deeply unpopular "war on terror" has meant he has turned on his former allies in Pakistan - thus increasing unrest and instability.

The US and British governments have issued statements criticising the state of emergency and suggested they may "review" aid to the country.

But US defence secretary Robert Gates gave the game away when he stated, just hours after martial law was imposed, that the US would be "mindful not to do anything that would undermine ongoing counter-terrorism efforts".

He underlined that "Pakistan is a country of great strategic importance to the US and a key partner in the war on terror".

The US has given more than £5 billion in aid to Pakistan since 2001 - mostly for military use.

Last November the British government signed a ten year partnership deal with Pakistan pledging to double aid to £480 million pounds over three years - and gave a one-off donation of £8 million to Pakistani intelligence services.

Unpopular

There are currently more than 100,000 Pakistani troops fighting an expanding and increasingly unpopular war in the Waziristan border region with Afghanistan and across northern Pakistan.

Since the summer, Pakistan has increased military operations, killing more than 740 people in Waziristan in the last four months. And as the crisis deepens, the war has become more bloody.

The established parties in Pakistan have failed to organise effective opposition to Musharraf, says Riaz.

"No single major political party has called for people to demonstrate. It has been left to the lawyers and NGOs, left groups, smaller parties, trade unions and students to organise the demonstrations.

"Bhutto has not yet called for her supporters to demonstrate against Musharraf. Like Musharraf, she supports the war and wants US backing."

The Islamist parties built up support by opposing US attacks on Afghanistan. But they are worried about losing out to Bhutto if Musharraf falls.

Much of the left in Pakistan is hampered by confusion over the "war on terror" and by seeing the Islamists, not the imperialists, as the main enemy.

Protests are currently being led mainly by the judiciary and sections of middle class professionals. However, as Riaz points out, "There is panic in the ruling class and that is giving openings to new forces."

The two weeks before the state of emergency saw the beginnings of some new struggles from workers in the state airline, hospitals and among post workers.

At the same time, hundreds of workers at a major textile factory in Karachi staged demonstrations in response to the killing of a leading trade unionist.

"The stakes are very high," says Riaz. "A defeat for Musharraf would be a defeat for imperialism. The working class has a huge stake in resisting this state of emergency."

The following should be read alongside this article:
Pakistan crisis: eyewitness report from Karachi

© Copyright Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original and leave this notice in place.
Source: www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=13492

A financial crisis that began in the US is coming
Posted: Wednesday, November 7, 2007

¤ Iraq, With U.S. Support, Voids a Russian Oil Contract

¤ Warning... this film could make you angry
At university, we male students used to say that it was impossible to take a beautiful young woman to the cinema and concentrate on the film. But in Canada, I've at last proved this to be untrue. Familiar with the Middle East and its abuses - and with the vicious policies of George Bush - we both sat absorbed by Rendition, Gavin Hood's powerful, appalling testimony of the torture of a "terrorist suspect" in an unidentified Arab capital after he was shipped there by CIA thugs in Washington.

Why did an Arab "terrorist" telephone an Egyptian chemical engineer - holder of a green card and living in Chicago with a pregnant American wife while he was attending an international conference in Johannesburg? Did he have knowledge of how to make bombs? (Unfortunately, yes - he was a chemical engineer - but the phone calls were mistakenly made to his number.)

¤ The Iraq war has become a disaster that we have chosen to forget

¤ A financial crisis that began in the US is coming to a home near you
No one knows where the bodies are buried. Indeed, no one is quite sure exactly how many bodies there are. But they are out there, and there are plenty of them: underperforming loans, worthless securities and overvalued assets, all safely buried well away from the banks' balance sheets. Buried - but not quite dead.
Increasingly they are surfacing, and these financial zombies are every bit as frightening as any you'll encounter in a horror flick. No less terrifying are the other ghouls haunting the global economy: oil at $97 a barrel; the price of commodities from copper to wheat at historic highs and a White House seemingly intent on scaring everyone witless with the prospect of a fresh conflagration in the Middle East.

¤ The worst crisis I've seen in 30 years
¤ Humpty Dumpty Rides The Waves On Wall Street
¤ Gushing Oil Touches $97 a Barrel

¤ Who Determines the Price of Oil?
Question of the day: who and what is determining the price of oil and your gasoline and home heating bills? Don't ask Uncle Sam, because George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are running a regime marinated in oil that does not issue reports which explain the real determinants of petroleum pricing beyond the conventional supply-demand curves.
First, let us create a historical framework to provide some background. In the good 'ole oil days, before the producer-countries' cartel in the Third World gained pricing power, there were seven giant oil companies called the 'seven sisters' led by Standard Oil (now Exxon) and Shell. As chronicled in Robert Engler's classic book, The Brotherhood of Oil, they were able to affect pricing through extra-market means. Economists called them a tight oligopoly.

¤ Sinking Currency, Sinking Country
The euro, worth 83 cents in the early George W. Bush years, is at $1.45.
The British pound is back up over $2, the highest level since the Carter era. The Canadian dollar, which used to be worth 65 cents, is worth more than the U.S. dollar for the first time in half a century.
Oil is over $90 a barrel. Gold, down to $260 an ounce not so long ago, has hit $800.
Have gold, silver, oil, the euro, the pound and the Canadian dollar all suddenly soared in value in just a few years?
Nope. The dollar has plummeted in value, more so in Bush's term than during any comparable period of U.S. history. Indeed, Bush is presiding over a worldwide abandonment of the American dollar.
Is it all Bush's fault? Nope.

¤ The Western Appetite for Biofuels Is Causing Starvation in the Poor World
It doesn't get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty per cent of its people are facing acute food shortages. So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava. The government has allocated several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production in the district of Lavumisa, which happens to be the place worst hit by drought. It would surely be quicker and more humane to refine the Swazi people and put them in our tanks. Doubtless a team of development consultants is already doing the sums.

¤ US Hypocrisy, and Worse, on Pakistan Democracy
Sometimes you get the real news only by reading between the headlines. Consider the New York Times front page, November 5. Top story: "Pakistan Rounds Up Musharraf's Political Foes." Below it: "U.S. Is Likely To Continue Aid to Pakistan."
The headline that told the most important news jumped out from between those two printed headlines. Although it remained unwritten, you could see it in bold letters: "Bush Administration Supports Dictator, Betrays Commitment to Democracy." In case you missed the point, between the two headlines the Times put a haunting photo of two Musharraf foes caged behind bars.
Remember the president's stirring inaugural address of 2005: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. ... All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

¤ Musharraf Plays His Hand Craftily
¤ Pakistan - Back to the Past Again
¤ With Iraq Obsession, Bush Is Now Losing Pakistan
¤ Pakistan is in a serious mess - but did anyone notice?
¤ Besieged Musharraf plays for time

¤ Bhutto rallies against emergency
Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's former prime minister, has flown into the capital, Islamabad, to rally her supporters against the president and his emergency rule.
She said her party had planned to hold an election rally in Rawalpindi on November 9, "but now we have decided it will be a protest meeting against imposition of emergency".
Bhutto held talks with leaders of other political parties on the emergency on Tuesday to "chalk out a joint strategy with them".

¤ An ugly image that requires a mamoth task to repair
¤ The Origins of America's World Wide Image Problem in Bush's Embrace of the 'Science of Lying'
¤ Military may ease standards for recruits
¤ Afghanistan mourns killed lawmakers
¤ The West's Deal With the Devil
¤ Cuba and Original Sin
¤ The Last "Enemy Combatant" on the U.S. Mainland
¤ The Presidency Is Now a Criminal Conspiracy
¤ Five MPs among up to 50 killed as insurgents switch focus from military to civilian targets
¤ Oprah "cleans house" in school abuse case

South Africa will not betray Zimbabwe
Posted: Tuesday, November 6, 2007

By Reason Wafawarova
November 06, 2007

SINCE the British government began attempting to strengthen the cause of its MDC political project in 1999, South Africa, more than any other country, has been saddled with the task of "doing something in Zimbabwe."

The Western coalition has repeatedly tried to draw South Africa into its corner for the fight against President Mugabe and the most frequently asked question in all Western propaganda talk shows has been: Why is President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa dragging his feet over Zimbabwe?

This writer has once again been challenged by a few readers to comment on the role of South Africa in solving the challenges facing Zimbabwe. The short answer to this task is that South Africa is just doing fine leading the ongoing dialogue between Zanu-PF and the MDC.

It is what South Africa has not done, is not doing and will not do about the situation in Zimbabwe that has made the West and their insidious lackeys in the MDC express the chagrin of a ditched spouse. South Africa has not condemned President Mugabe, has not placed an embargo on Zimbabwe, has not condemned the policies of Zanu-PF and its Government; and for Morgan Tsvangirai, has not cut off power and fuel lines to Zimbabwe. Doing all these things would make the western alliance's day, as it considers such decisive and swift, not "the feet dragging diplomacy" President Mbeki has been following.

What the ever-blundering Western politicians do not seem to realise is that by attempting to drag President Mbeki to their side, all they do is drag the South African masses into the debate. It is amazing that these western politicians are so short-sighted that they cannot foresee the dire consequences of a South African mass beginning, as they have already begun, to ask about their own place in the sun in post-apartheid South Africa.

President Mbeki is on record as saying, "There are those who would like to do certain things in Zimbabwe and they want us to do those things for them. That, we will not do. Zimbabwe is not a province of South Africa."

In the West, Tony Blair is the author and founder of the Western fight "for democracy" in Zimbabwe and he had to leave the ring with a bloodied nose in June this year and his chosen successor, Gordon Brown has already taken a humiliating battering in response to his uncalculated punches in the air. The most humiliating miss has of course been the attempt to bar President Mugabe from attending the EU-Africa Summit scheduled for Portugal in December, an attempt that has left Brown with the shame of a primary school kid.

The Sadc initiative on dialogue is far less than the least of what Blair would have wanted done on Zimbabwe and Brown is just as stranded as can be expected of an unelected Prime Minister, waking up with un-mandated power just thrust upon him; as William Shakespeare would put it.

In South Africa, the Western voice has been dutifully fronted by Tony Leon, the opposition Democratic Alliance face, that man who commands an amazing delusion that he can wedge "a fight for democracy" in Zimbabwe from within the walls of the South African parliament. Tony Leon's idea of democracy involve things like championing the ouster of Winnie Mandela from parliament and the demand for the harshest of sentences to deter crime in South Africa, while conspicuously being the tightest mouth zipper over racially motivated murders of black South Africans by post-apartheid whites.

In Zimbabwe, the Western voice has been dutifully represented by the white element in the MDC, the likes of David Coltart, Eddie Cross and Roy Bennet, while Morgan Tsvangirai has dutifully played the loud cry-baby in order to dupe outsiders that he is the unfortunate victim of a ruthless dictatorship. He has had willing allies from the likes of the disgraced bishop, Pius Ncube and Lovemore Madhuku.

President Mbeki – unlike the likes of Tony Leon, Tsvangirai and many of the Western charlatans, does appear to have a genuine concern and deep care for the welfare of the people of Zimbabwe. He has resolutely refused to subscribe to the ruthless philosophy that says making the people of Zimbabwe suffer should be construed as a way of helping them.

This is the philosophy that has made Tsvangirai look a stooge before the rest of Africa while his party now ranks among one of the saddest jokes in post independent Africa. The Zambians and the Ghanaians just showed the MDC exactly what they think about them and Thokozani Khupe would love to quickly forget her misadventures to these two countries this year.

What makes it easy for the United States to drag its allies into Iraq and to bomb the civilians of Iraq in the name of democracy is that the US in particular, and the` West in general, cares nothing about the welfare of people of colour such as Iraqis. On the other hand, President Mbeki cannot comprehend any form of democracy that requires the sanctioning and suffering of the people of Zimbabwe. The difference between President Mbeki and George W. Bush is that Mbeki would never ever bomb or deliberately starve the people of Zimbabwe for whatever cause while Bush will create whatever excuse he can in order to bomb any people whose resources his country's corporations covert.

President Mbeki can be showered with 10 BBC stories a night on alleged lack of democracy in Zimbabwe but that will never make him forget that there was no democracy in Zimbabwe before the coming of majority rule in 1980. He, like many of us do, knows that this democracy may be imperfect but it is the only democracy Zimbabwe has ever had and it came at a cost of tens of thousands of Zimbabwean lives as well as the lives of other Africans from Southern Africa.

This is the price the West wants to explain away as part of forgotten history but Africa will not easily let go of the prize of independence. Many of the MDC supporters will be the first to testify what it means to try to coerce Africa into giving away the liberation legacy. They have learnt that it is mission impossible as the current solidarity in smarting with Gordon Brown, whose empty threats over Lisbon have just made him a world-class clown; can easily reveal.

One can almost hear the loud comforting words from the MDC supporters, particularly those in the UK – "Oh don't worry Mr Brown, this dictator will one day die." Is this the last that a hopeless man can ever say?

President Mbeki and the generality of the ANC are quite clear that what is at stake in Zimbabwe is much more than democracy and the economic plight of the Zimbabweans. As for democracy, they are well aware that allegations of rigging elections levelled against Zanu-PF are not proven and for that they dismiss the subsequent sanctions by the EU, Commonwealth and the United States as illegal.

In fact the South African observer mission pronounced the 2002 presidential elections free and fair. On allegations of violence, the SA observer mission disagreed with the assertion that the MDC was a victim of one-sided, state-sponsored violence. The mission produced several reports that accused members of the opposition of intimidation of voters plus one damning report that implicated a youth gang from the opposition in attacks on a convoy of international observers in Kwekwe.

It is against this backdrop that the Western propaganda drive has had no takers among many in the ANC and certainly not with President Mbeki. He knows too well what kind of a party the MDC is and he knows just too well what the West mean when they claim to be after democracy in Zimbabwe. This clarity of mind has led President Mbeki to travel the road that has culminated in the current Sadc initiative – an initiative quite stunning to the West, but vitally essential and acceptable to the African community in general and to all progressive Zimbabweans in particular.

Tsvangirai has in the past expressed anger at President Mbeki, clearly on behalf of his disgruntled Western masters. Him and his MDC have variously labelled President Mbeki a dishonest broker, a liar, weak in leadership and failing "to restore democracy" in Zimbabwe.

Those who are accusing President Mbeki of relishing the status quo in Zimbabwe "for purposes of benefiting from the crisis" are clearly taking a mindless approach to his position.

It is naïve if not plain stupid to assume that a shrinking economy next door can be preferable to a thriving one, just because economic sense would tell that an economically strong neighbour is a better trading partner than a weaker one. South Africa is Zimbabwe's biggest trading partner in Africa and vice versa and it benefits neither country if one of the economies went on the decline.

If Zimbabwe is losing skilled manpower it is all because of the challenges brought about by the illegal sanctions imposed by the Western alliance and it has nothing to do with South Africa "dragging its feet on Zimbabwe" or enjoying poaching the skills of Zimbabweans. In fact if the truth were to be told, South Africa would have just worsened the situation if they had chosen to play the Western bidding on Zimbabwe.

One can imagine the consequences if South Africa had cut off fuel and power supplies as requested by Tsvangirai. The suffering of the ordinary person would worsen and so would be the brain drain. If indeed South Africa can be better off with such a scenario then one would wonder why they just did not join the West in sanctioning Zimbabwe – all for purposes of "benefiting more from the crisis".

The argument that President Mbeki enjoys the crisis in Zimbabwe is just ludicrous and the fact that it is raised from the MDC quarters is not at all surprising. This is the same MDC that says the only valid election results are those where its own candidates win. It is the same MDC that keeps telling the electorate that it will not participate in elections and then wonder why its supporters do not appear on the voters' role.

They do not register because their party keeps saying they wont be participating and the MDC cannot figure this out, opting to adopt the worn out claim that says it's all to do with Tobaiwa Mudede's supernatural rigging ways.

Well, it is the same MDC that thinks sanctions can cause an uprising and a change of government, isn't it?

Now that President Mbeki has taught pro-Tsvangirai MDC secretary general Tendayi Biti and pro-Arthur Mutambara faction secretary general Professor Welshman Ncube how to be Africans, one hopes the MDC will use the Mbeki-led initiative to mutate into an acceptable and responsible political party.

Those who are crying for a combative Western-driven South Africa must come home to themselves and understand that Africa is a continent for black people and the time for puppet politics long ended with the likes of Moise Tshombe, Idi Amin and Mobutu Sese Seko.

It is time we Zimbabweans together with our South African brothers, indeed with the rest of Africa, show these Westerners that Africa can run its own affairs without their supervision. After all they are only our former oppressors and colonisers and we really have nothing to admire from them. Africa was liberated from Western domination and the idea was never that we liberate ourselves from the West in order to allow ourselves to be ruled by the West.

Let the British tell Zimbabweans what we got for our forgiveness. What was our reward for not prosecuting Ian Smith for Chimoio and Nyadzonia? What did we get for allowing white farmers continuity on the lands stolen from our forefathers? What did we get for our policy of reconciliation at independence?

Equally, what was Nelson Mandela's reward for not prosecuting the butchers of Soweto? What did he get for allowing multinational corporations free reign in his country? What did the blacks of South Africa get for their forgiveness?

Surely suspicious Nobel Peace Prizes, knighthoods and statues among ruthless slave traders and colonisers cannot count for Africa's reward for all the goodwill we have shown in dealing with our former oppressors.

South Africa has the largest concentration of whites in Africa and the reconciliation experiment has not yielded any meaningful success for the ordinary black person and we do not want South Africa to turn out to be a lost opportunity for those currently enjoying its wealth at the expense of others. They should ask Claire Short and those who thought Zimbabwe's land issue could be explained away by simply refusing to wear the black armband of history.

This writer continues to wish well those involved in the Mbeki-led dialogue and we hope the long promised African solution has now dawned.

Together we will overcome.

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk

More pontification, more propaganda on Iraq
Posted: Monday, November 5, 2007

¤ Deja vu all over again
When it comes to Iran's nuclear capabilities, whose word would you rather take: that of a Nobel prize-winning head of an international agency specializing in nuclear issues who was proved triumphantly right about Iraq, or that of a bunch of belligerent neocons who make no secret of their desire to whack Iran at the earliest opportunity and who made such a pigs ear of Iraq?
That is the stark choice facing the sane people of the world, given the smearing of IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei for not joining the hysterical lynch mob building up against Iran. Criticised by Condoleezza Rice and others in the Bush administration, it is uncannily reminiscent of the slurs against him and UN weapons inspector Hans Blix in the run up to the invasion of Iraq - and we should remember that the US vindictively tried to unseat him afterwards for not joining in the lying game.

¤ No evidence of Iranian nuclear-weapons program, experts say
¤ US Cannot Be Said To Be Good
¤ Mass grave containing remains of 40 found in W Iraq

¤ Iraq, With U.S. Support, Voids a Russian Oil Contract

¤ Hamas Is Not An Occupier: Israel Is
Despite charges against Hamas by Abbas, Israel and the United States, there was no coup in Gaza. Hamas was ELECTED to represent the Palestinian people in January of 2006. It was a fair and democratic election.
If anyone is GUILTY of usurping power illegally it is Abbas, Israel and the United States for establishing an ILLEGAL government in the Occupied West Bank.
Recent claims that Hamas is prepared to 'take over' the West Bank are denied by the Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. It is dealt with in the following report from the Associated Press.

¤ Pakistani police detain 350 protesters
¤ Pakistan Stifles Media, Cuts Phone Lines

¤ Musharraf snubbed Brown and Rice on emergency rule
¤ Musharraf Adopts Bush-Cheney Doctrine of "Lawfare"
¤ This is one dangerous man: it's George Bush with brains
¤ 3,000 years old: the face of Tutankhamun
¤ US threatens to withhold aid as Pakistan swings from democracy to dictatorship
¤ Top US legal adviser refuses to rule out 'torture' technique
¤ Not White Enough

¤ More pontification, more propaganda on Iraq
"One doesn't need to be a historian of empire to know that divide-and-rule is a rather standard strategy of imperial domination. It was deployed by the British, for example, to great effect in key colonies in North America and India against natives who, once divided along artificially exacerbated ethnic, religious and tribal classifications, were far easier to play off against one another, and thus control to the benefit of the colonial regime."

¤ Why Bush needs bin Laden
¤ He's ba-a-a-ack! Imus Returns
¤ Food, water scarce in Mexico floods
¤ Fiji foils 'plot' to kill PM

Oil, China and Automobiles
Posted: Saturday, November 3, 2007

¤ USAF Struck Syrian "Nuclear" Site

¤ Hegemony's Cost
When he departs the White House on 20 January, 2009, the current resident will bequeath to the American people and the next administration an interminable war in the Middle East and a depreciated currency.
And that’s the good news. It assumes there is a successor administration and that no Cheney-contrived "national emergency" will make it possible for Bush to test drive National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD-51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20 to cancel the 2008 election.
Neoconservatives led by vice president Dick Cheney remain determined to effect "regime change" in Iran. The allegation of weapons of mass destruction falsely brought against Iraq is now being deployed against Iran.

¤ Behind the Facade of Incompetence
¤ Destroyed Homes, The Media and Public Knowledge
¤ The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran
¤ Beyond the Green Zone

¤ Guantanamo mission came straight from Bush, Rumsfeld
When military investigators questioned Erie County Judge Michael E. Dunlavey about reported prisoner abuse during his tenure at the Guantanamo Bay camp for suspected terrorists, Dunlavey told them he got his "marching orders" from President Bush, according to a new book about U.S. policies regarding torture.
The book, "Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond," relies on government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act to trace the development of what the authors claim was prisoner abuse and torture that emerged in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

¤ Emergency imposed in Pakistan

¤ HE TOLD US
If you look at the current travesties occurring in the Middle East, one may be hard pressed to describe how the present scenario occurred. It did not happen overnight, but in 1990, Saddam Hussein gave various accounts of what could happen to the Arab world. One was optimistic, and the other pessimistic. It is uncanny that he talked of resisting the U.S. military and how it could be accomplished.
On February 24, 1990, at the Amman Summit in Amman, Jordan, Saddam gave the following speech to delegates from the Arab world. It’s a pity they did not listen

¤ What The Media Doesn't Tell You About Torture
¤ Meltdown at the US State Department
¤ Behind the Facade of Incompetence
¤ Deadly month in Iraq dulls US claims of progress
¤ One million people affected by Mexico floods
¤ S.Africa arrests woman in Oprah school abuse case
¤ The mouse that shook the world
¤ Gene Tweak Makes for Mighty Mice
¤ Why the U.S. is Safeguarding Iraq's War Criminals

¤ A&E pulls 'Dog' series from schedule

¤ Dog The Bounty Hunter In Hot Water For Racial Slurs

¤ Racism in High Places
The fault lies not with its proprietor, but with his tongue. It keeps saying things that surprise both proprietor and hearer and in two recent cases its utterances were completely unexpected and, indeed, unwelcomed, suggesting as they did, a bigotry to which neither of the tongues' proprietors acknowledges subscribing. In mid-October their tongues separately took off with startling pronouncements. The first came from the tongue of former Nobel Prize winner, James D. Watson.

¤ Oil, China and Automobiles
¤ Warning, This Film Could Make You Very Angry
¤ Why war with Iran is likely
¤ Saw V (War With Iran)
¤ Waterboarding: Don't Ask. Don't Tell. SHOW.

They Met the Resistance in Iraq
Posted: Friday, November 2, 2007

¤ Africans Need True Independence
I found a 2005 article that reflects much of what I have been saying on this blog about Africa's relationship with the West.

As I have said before, what galls me is the hypocrisy that permeates everything the Western world, or at least its governments, would like us to believe about ourselves. The article that follows is reproduced with the kind permission of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). It reflects the socio-economic and political views of its author, and while I do not consider myself to be a socialist or communist, I was struck by the careful research that produced it. It shows what people can do when they start thinknig for themselves.

¤ Condemn Sanctions on Zimbabwe
¤ Russia, China have blocked tough Iran sanctions: U.S.
¤ Shock Jock Don Imus Returns to Airwaves
¤ UN Spurns Cuba Embargo for 17th Year
¤ Oil Above $96 on Drop in US Supplies
¤ Japan pulls out of Afghanistan coalition
¤ US supreme court calls a halt to executions
¤ France rejects nuclear watchdog claims on Iran
¤ 52% of Americans support military strike against Iran
¤ Letting the Cat Out of the Bag

¤ From the Desk of Donald Rumsfeld
In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and wrote of the need to "keep elevating the threat," "link Iraq to Iran" and develop "bumper sticker statements" to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.
The memos, often referred to as "snowflakes," shed light on Rumsfeld's brusque management style and on his efforts to address key challenges during his tenure as Pentagon chief. Spanning from 2002 to shortly after his resignation following the 2006 congressional elections, a sampling of his trademark missives obtained yesterday reveals a defense secretary disdainful of media criticism and driven to reshape public opinion of the Iraq war.

¤ Stop the Insanity: No War With Iran
¤ IAEA gets all necessary information on Iran program - Vaeedi
¤ Iraqi's Fabricated Story Of Biological Weapons Drove U.S. Arguments For Invading Iraq
¤ 2 children die in US raid in Afghanistan
¤ The Mega-Bunker of Baghdad
¤ Video: Is Bush Crazy??
¤ Bush & Blair Holocaust Commission
¤ US downplays talk of Iran attack

¤ They Met the Resistance in Iraq
On one of those beautiful, fall Sunday mornings that can make you feel all is right with the world, filmmakers Molly Bingham and Steve Connors discussed their new documentary about Iraqis fighting the U.S. occupation, Meeting Resistance, 84 minutes of unflinching wallop destined to unhinge the way millions of Americans see their country's role in the world.
In May 2003, the same month that George W. Bush stood on an aircraft carrier off California declaring "Mission Accomplished," and a month after Iraqis began organizing a grassroots armed resistance, Bingham, was on assignment in Baghdad's Adhamiya district, hot on the trail of the last sighting of Saddam Hussein.

¤ The War on Telephone Privacy
¤ Ask Your Doctor Today About Ripofferol

UN Spurns Cuba Embargo for 17th Year
Posted: Thursday, November 1, 2007

The United Nations General Assembly Tuesday snubbed the United States for its hostility towards Cuba, amid fresh calls for an end to the 45-year economic and financial embargo imposed on the socialist island.

On Tuesday, as many as 184 countries voted in favor of a General Assembly resolution demanding the U.S. lift 45-year-old restrictions on international trade with Cuba.

The vote broke last year's record, when 183 countries endorsed the resolution against the U.S. embargo. The 192-member General Assembly has adopted 16 similar resolutions since 1992.

Like last year, in addition to the United States itself, the negative votes were cast by just three countries: Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau. The only abstention was the small island nation of Micronesia.

Before and after the vote, speaker after speaker deplored the U.S. policy and said the sanctions against Cuba violate international law and the U.N. Charter.
Full Article : commondreams.org

Condemn sanctions on Zimbabwe
Posted: Thursday, November 1, 2007

The Herald

Dr John Sentamu The Archbishop of York England Re: Appeal to lift sanctions against Zimbabwe I am writing in my personal capacity, in response to your radio interview which came over the BBC last night (September 16 2007) in which you vehemently attacked, and condemned President Mugabe's rule and called him a racist and compared him with Idi Amin.

You heaped all the blame on President Mugabe, not so much on his Government, for inflation, for alleged mass starvation, for mass migration of people, for lack or scarcity of essential common commodities, for harassing the members of the opposition, for the abuse of human rights, and for lack of Press freedom, etc.

You went on to call upon the British and others to do something in order to restore democracy, the rule of law and prevent starvation, and suggested further sanctions as one of the ways to bring about change.

Your radio interview distressed me considerably because you jumped onto the bandwagon of groups of people and media who condemn President Mugabe for the appalling situation now obtaining in Zimbabwe without trying to understand what went wrong.

I, however, sympathise with you and I am equally concerned about the situation in Zimbabwe, but I cannot excuse you for siding with all and sundry who stage-managed the destruction of Zimbabwe.

Now here is the basic information:

Zimbabwe is a large country; it covers 390 757 square kilometres; it is about 1½ times the size of Uganda with a population of 12 million, or about half that of Uganda, 80 percent of whom are Shona, 14 percent are Ndebele, 1 percent are European and the rest are natives of different tribes (The World Almanac, 2006:850).

The current situation has its origin in the unequal ownership of land. At the time of independence in 1980, the Europeans, 1 percent of the population, owned 87 percent of the land, and the Africans, who made up 99 percent of the population, lived on 13 percent of the land.

In 1988, I was Uganda's High Commissioner to Zimbabwe, and while attending the annual agricultural show in Bulawayo, sitting next to the late Dr Herbert Ushewokunze and Dr Stan Mudenge, I asked them why there were no Africans taking part in the show. The two ministers relayed my question to Mr Robert Mugabe, who, by then, was Prime Minister.

I was seated about two or three places from Mr Mugabe. He went on to explain to me that the Africans could not participate in the exhibition because they had nothing to show, they owned no business, no farms and the majority survived by working as porters on the settlers' farms and on small land holdings on which they could not farm or practice animal husbandry.

Mr Mugabe told me that the land issue had been raised at Lancaster House when the independence terms were being discussed and it had been agreed that the question of land redistribution could be discussed after a period of 10 years after independence and Mr Mugabe assured me that he intended to raise the issue in 1990 and, sure and certain, that is what he did.

As soon as Mr Mugabe called for a serious discussion regarding the redistribution of land, the European settlers went wild! Mr Mugabe was rubbished, condemned and called a racist and despotic dictator who did not care for the welfare of his people. The more he called for something to be done so that the African people could get some piece of land which they could call their own, the louder the condemnation became.

It is regrettable that Archbishop Desmond Tutu, like you, would have preferred President Mugabe kept quiet!

The settlers owned large expanses of land, owned ranches and estates on which they grew maize, sugarcane, beans, rice, wheat. They raised cattle, pigs, sheep, and horses. They were the only ones who owned butcheries, banks, textiles, factories, bakeries, and beer factories. They owned petrol stations, beer bars, bookstores. They were the accountants, lawyers, doctors, and garage owners. They were the senior personnel in every government department as well as in every private business. The Africans were porters, gatekeepers, cooks, drivers, and worked in mines, and owned nothing.

Now, Sir, consider this: The more Robert Mugabe intensified his land acquisition efforts, the more bitter the settlers and their media became and began to dismantle their manufacturing plants, they stopped to grow any more food, remember Europeans grew maize and processed it, but did not eat it, it constituted the staple diet for nearly all Africans; and so by not growing this crop, shortage of maize meal was certain (Editor's note – actually the bulk of maize came from communal farmers as white farmers grew mainly cash and industrial crops).

Now, I would like to know from those who condemn Mr Mugabe, including Archbishop Tutu, to let us know what Mugabe could have done. Could he be advised to leave the land question; so that his 12 million Africans remained on 13 percent of their ancestral land in order to earn endless praises as a foresighted democratic, non-racial leader, an example for all African despots to emulate? Should he have resigned in order to make way for the MDC leadership and the Roman Catholic bishop for Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, to take over whom the settlers and the Press considered more efficient, capable and understanding than the Mugabe administration?

By calling for further sanctions, Dr Sentamu, you are demanding the intensification of the suffering of the African people and I would like to point out that for all I know, sanctions seem not to work and would like to know where, on the African continent or elsewhere, have they been able to bring about a more beneficial political system?

Finally, I would like to suggest that instead of calling for further sanctions (on Zimbabwe), you should:

♦ Advise the anti-Mugabe groups to understand the origin of problems in Zimbabwe.

♦ Advise the British and their friends to avoid blaming Mr Mugabe as the cause of the problem, but as an unfortunate leader who found himself in a situation to settle the problem he did not create.

♦ Instead of calling for sanctions, you should call upon the international community to come to the rescue of Zimbabwe by stepping in to arrange the redistribution of land by compensating the aggrieved settlers.

♦ You and Archbishop Tutu should lead a campaign for the international community to get essential supplies of maize meal, sugar and medicine and to send health works to assist in the rehabilitation effort. Mr Mugabe and his Government deserve our empathy and sympathy, but not condemnation.

♦ I seriously request you and Archbishop Tutu to appeal to the African Union leaders, it would be the most grotesque sin we all would be committing to approve, leave alone, or impose sanctions on Zimbabwe.

♦ The African Union should come to the rescue of Zimbabwe, sanctions must be avoided.

I feel a little bit unsettled that President Mugabe has had no outright support from his African colleagues with the exception of Mr Kenneth Kaunda and South African President Thabo Mbeki and a few others. These and others are being accused of being unable to remove Mr Mugabe from power, but the reason is that they understand a bit more of what led to the present situation, and that makes them less likely to condemn the Zimbabwe leadership.

I am, Sir,

Professor Mwene Mushanga

PO Box 46

Kabwohe, Bushenyi

Uganda.

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