May 2007

War Is a Government Program
Posted: Thursday, May 31, 2007

¤ Rice's #2 at the State Department
To what degree do neoconservatives and militarists control U.S. foreign policy? And how much influence do the less ideological figures like former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice have over President Bush?
Those were questions continually debated by foreign policy observers during last three years of the first Bush administration. And at the onset of Bushs second term, assessing the new ideological/realist balance in the foreign policy team is the main topic of Washingtons foreign policy community.

¤ The Sixty Year Wound
¤ The Political Censorship of Hip Hop
¤ Lebanon and the Planned US Airbase at Kleiaat
¤ Iraq's Militias Under the US Surge

¤ Mr. Hardball Goes to the World Bank
Nine days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, I opened up The Washington Post and stared right into the flinty mind of one Robert B. Zoellick, the Bush administration's pick for new World Bank president.
While the rest of the country was still in a haze of horror and confusion, Zoellick had seized the moment to advance his agenda as U.S. trade representative. In a commentary titled "Fighting Terror with Trade," he argued that Congress needed to pass fast track trade negotiating authority as part of their support for the "War on Terror."
Having failed to sell the legislation on its merits, Zoellick had moved with breathtaking speed to take advantage of public fears and pressure on lawmakers to stand with the president during a national crisis.

¤ Goldman Sachs Marches on with Bush's Candidate for World Bank
¤ Pentagon concedes a 'tough' month in Iraq
¤ Report: In Meeting, 'Wild-Eyed' Bush Thumped Chest While Repeating 'I Am The President!'
¤ Tribunals, Trials and Tribulations in Lebanon?
¤ Miss Universe: Everyone Hates Miss USA
¤ Baghdad embassy plans turn up online

¤ Dems Wimp Out on Bush & Prewar Intelligence
As part of its much belated inquiry into the prewar intelligence, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a 229-page report on Friday on the intelligence produced by US intelligence agencies on what could be expected to occur in Iraq following a US invasion. No surprise: the intelligence community foresaw the likelihood of chaos and trouble inside and outside Iraq.

¤ Bloody month for US troops in Iraq
¤ War Is a Government Program
¤ The Appropriate Disillusionment of Andrew Bacevich and Cindy Sheehan
¤ Afghans dispute U.S. version of raid casualties
¤ U.S. ranks low, just above Iran on new peace index

¤ Ideas cannot be killed
A few days ago, while analysing the expenses involved in the construction of three submarines of the Astute series, I said that with this money "75,000 doctors could be trained to look after 150 million people, assuming that the cost of training a doctor would be one-third of what it costs in the United States." Now, along the lines of the same calculations, I wonder: how many doctors could be graduated with the one hundred billion dollars that Bush gets his hands on in just one year to keep on sowing grief in Iraqi and American homes. Answer: 999,990 doctors who could look after 2 billion people who today do not receive any medical care.

Getting Away with Murder
Posted: Tuesday, May 29, 2007

¤ Getting Away with Murder
This war will wind down when the oil distribution law, or whatever they call it, is signed. It was all about the oil, from day one (really from before day one). Once it is passed by the Iraqi Government that we set up for just this very reason, we will start winding down and leave just enough troops in Iraq to make sure that they don't renege on the law, and to keep Iran in line. If this turns out to be the case, than Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and everyone else in government and the oil companies should be put on trial for murdering almost a million human beings for profit. Big Oil has gotten its hands on all that light crude and can pump for another twenty years.

¤ Africa's 'cyber' currency

¤ Business Is Booming!
One thing that really gets my goat is all these Iraqi insurgents and militia running around with AK-47 Kalashnikovs! AK-47s aren’t stamped "Made in the USA!" As every Tom, Dick and Harry knows, AK-47s are manufactured in Russia, China and a whole host of interesting places. And, they are pieces of junk! Go ahead, drop the damn thing in the sand, kick it under your bed for a year and forget it. While it will spray out 700 rounds a minute and kill and maim a lot of people, the AK-47 is not a precision firearm.

¤ Should U.S. intervention in Sudan be supported? A Closer Look

¤ China and USA in New Cold War over Africa’s Oil Riches
To paraphrase the famous quip during the 1992 US Presidential debates, when an unknown William Jefferson Clinton told then-President George Herbert Walker Bush, "It's the economy, stupid," the present concern of the current Washington Administration over Darfur in southern Sudan is not, if we were to look closely, genuine concern over genocide against the peoples in that poorest of poor part of a forsaken section of Africa.
No. "It's the oil, stupid."

¤ Poisoning the Troops, Again
¤ Good Riddance Attention Whore
¤ How We Got Here
¤ Bush's New Middle East
¤ What Qualifies Bush to Lead Iraq War?
¤ We Are Your Bad Conscience
¤ The Bush take on Iraq opinion
¤ Human rights in Iraq: a case to answer
¤ Sheehan quits as face of US anti-war fight
¤ Hope dries up for Nicaragua's Miskito
¤ Texas Mother Hangs Herself, 3 Children

¤ Venezuela to sue CNN
Venezuela says it will file charges against US cable network CNN for linking President Hugo Chavez to Al Qaeda. It says it will also sue a Venezuelan TV network for encouraging Mr Chavez's assassination. The move comes a day after popular Venezuelan TV network RCTV went off the air after the Chavez Government cancelled its broadcast licence. Information Minister William Lara has presented what he says is CNN footage displaying pictures of Mr Chavez juxtaposed with those of an Al Qaeda leader.

¤ Mexicans boo Miss USA, showing discord
¤ Iraq: it's worse than you can possibly imagine, and worse than we can possibly know.
That was the message when the brilliant Middle East reporter, Patrick Cockburn, spoke on stage today at Hay, publicising his book about the British and American occupation of Iraq.
Iraq, he said, is a country that's been "hollowed out". Two million people have left. At least 3,000 civilians are murdered every month. The rest live in terror. He told of details that give a real sense of what's going on. Because there are no more open-air markets, since so many have been bombed, people have set up stalls in side streets or their back gardens instead. Before the war, there were 32,000 doctors in Iraq; now 2,000 are dead, 12,000 have left, and the remainder, who are seen as having money and are thus targets for kidnappers, must work from armed-guarded clinics.

¤ Israel Gets OK to Expand Gaza Operations
¤ Oil companies salivating over U.S. reserves
¤ Dead in Afghanistan: May 2007
¤ U.S. warplanes pound residential area in Mosul
¤ Top General underestimates Iraq War fatalities in Memorial Day media appearance
¤ Why the Iraq War was worth it

Venezuela to sue CNN
Posted: Tuesday, May 29, 2007

"Venezuela says it will file charges against US cable network CNN for linking President Hugo Chavez to Al Qaeda."

"Information Minister William Lara has presented what he says is CNN footage displaying pictures of Mr Chavez juxtaposed with those of an Al Qaeda leader.

Mr Lara says CNN also aired a story about the Venezuelan protests but used images taken in Mexico of an unrelated story.

'CNN broadcast a lie which linked President Chavez to violence and murder,' he said."

Denial

CNN has issued a statement strongly denying being "engaged in a campaign to discredit or attack Venezuela".

The news network has acknowledged a video mix-up and "aired a detailed correction and expressed regret for the involuntary error".

Regarding the Al Qaeda leader, the network says "unrelated news stories can be juxtaposed in a given program segment just as a newspaper page or a news website may have unconnected stories adjacent to each other".
Full Article : abc.net.au

Cartoon Coup D'Etat
Posted: Tuesday, May 29, 2007

by Paul Haste / May 28th, 2007

The Presidential Palace is in our hands; why don't you show that?' Chávez's supporters shouted to the journalists… instead, RCTV was broadcasting Looney Tunes cartoons.

Venezuela takes an important step towards democratizing its media on 28 May when a billion dollar media corporation loses its television broadcast license to 'those who almost never have a voice,' in President Hugo Chávez's words.

Radio Caracas Television — RCTV — and its multi-millionaire owner, Marcel Granier, who are about to lose their unceasing political war against Chávez and Venezuela's Bolívarian revolution, are claiming that 'independent media are being closed down,' that Chávez is a dictator intent on 'restricting freedom of expression and democratic rights.'

Reporters without Borders declares that RCTV losing its license is 'a serious attack on editorial pluralism', while editorials in US newspapers have predictably misrepresented the controversy, claiming Chávez is retaliating against his critics in the opposition media who 'disagree' with the Bolívarian revolution.

The reality is rather different. As Reporters without Borders doesn't mention, perhaps understandably so, given its financing by the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy — which also finances rightist opposition political parties in Venezuela — RCTV was an active participant in the violent coup d'etat that deposed President Chávez for almost 48 hours in 2002.
Full Article : dissidentvoice.org

Venezuela, RCTV, And Media Freedom
Posted: Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Venezuela, RCTV, And Media Freedom: Just The Facts, Please

There are a number of ways to curtail press freedom. You can charge a journalist with murder and put him on death row-Mumia Abu-Jamal, for instance. You can grant special favors, privileges, and access to corporate media giants while raiding and shutting down low-power, independent radio stations, which the FCC does with some regularity. You could arrest independent journalists at anti-war demonstrations-again, a regular occurrence. For instance, I recall my friend and Indy journalist, Jeff Imig, who has been repeatedly threatened with arrest, while recording anti-war demonstrations in Tucson, Arizona, for violating the statute against filming federal buildings. Jeff finally got arrested-for jaywalking! Corporate press, on the other hand, seems to have free reign to jaywalk and film federal buildings at these same events-behavior I and countless others have witnessed!
Full Article : venezuelanalysis.com

Google Deal Said to Bring U.S. Scrutiny
Posted: Tuesday, May 29, 2007

By STEVE LOHR

The Federal Trade Commission has opened a preliminary antitrust investigation into Google’s planned $3.1 billion purchase of the online advertising company DoubleClick, an industry executive briefed on the agency’s plans said yesterday.

The inquiry began at the end of last week, after it was decided that the Federal Trade Commission instead of the Justice Department would conduct the review, said the executive, who asked not to be identified because he had not been authorized to speak. The two agencies split the duties of antitrust enforcement.

An F.T.C. spokesman said yesterday that the agency did not comment on pending inquiries.

The deal, involving powerful forces in their respective niches of the online advertising business, prompted privacy advocates and competitors to raise concerns after it was announced last month. Those concerns and the deal’s size made a preliminary investigation all but certain, according to antitrust experts.

Within a few weeks, perhaps within days, the F.T.C. will decide whether to escalate its investigation into the Google deal, antitrust experts say. That step, known as a “second request” for information, would suggest that the proposed acquisition raises more serious antitrust issues.

Google said it was confident that the deal would withstand scrutiny.
Full Article : nytimes.com

Zimbabwe: Diamonds - Africa must get lion's share
Posted: Tuesday, May 29, 2007

By Isdore Guvamombe
The Herald
May 29, 2007

RECENTLY, diamond producing countries, mainly in Sadc, met in Luanda, Angola, under the auspices of the newly-formed African Diamond Producers' Association (Adpa) to establish a policy that should see the countries become masters and shapers of their own economic destiny on the world diamond market.

The diamond is regarded as the world's strongest mineral used both for industrial and commercial purposes and it continues to fetch high prices on the world market.

According to De Beers, the world diamond industry is currently valued at US$10 billion, with Africa producing 60 percent of the world's diamonds.

This is why Africa must be the main factor in influencing the prices.

There is no doubt that, years after gaining political independence, Sadc countries are mindful of the need to end the foreign stranglehold on the precious stone by introducing effective strategies and policies that are aimed at devolving sovereignty and recovering lost revenue for each member state.

As many as 12 African diamond producing countries, mainly in Southern Africa, formed the association, that is headquartered in Luanda, Angola, to influence the world diamond market.

Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo, Central Africa Republic and South Africa have sent a clear message that the time has come for them to influence the marketing and pricing of their mineral product.

They now need the lion's share.

The countries have also sought knowledge and co-operation of the Kimberly process.

This is a clear sign that Africa is rising from the ashes of mineral exploitation to self-determination against monopolistic Eurocentric companies like De Beers, Anglo-American and Rio Tinto.

Since colonial times, the Anglo-Saxons, through De Beers and Rio Tinto have, like moles, dug an array of tunnels through African soils for diamonds, mostly for the benefit of their kith and kin in Europe.

Ironically Africa, which produces about 60 percent of the world's diamonds, has been receiving crumbs from the periphery of the market yet the mineral was being extracted from its soil using Africans as cheap labour.

The move to control diamond trade by African countries should be taken seriously by all governments on the continent as a major step towards fair deals and fair trade, that is mutually beneficial.

African countries must insist on benefiting through local cutting and polishing of diamonds and jewellery production to generate more employment for the people.

African countries are certainly moving fast to become masters of their own economic destiny and fair play companies from Russia, China and others from the Far East should also be given a chance to clinch deals with diamond producing companies in Africa in general and Sadc in particular. This will broaden the market.

Since the Zimbabwean diamond fields are expected to produce 15,5 million tonnes of diamonds, it is worthwhile trying new partnerships with the Chinese and Russians, who also have vast experience in diamond mining and processing.

This would effectively end the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the mineral's exploitation, as other investors would have to buy a huge stake in order to get real value and fair price.

It is true that Africa has predominantly remained as a source of raw material while countries that add value to the precious stones have significantly benefited and this has been to our detriment.

This is why there is now serious need to understand that if the local industries are transformed from being mere primary producers into full-fledged industries, there are a lot of benefits that will accrue from that.

In terms of fighting colonialism and defending political sovereignty Africans have, since the 1960s stood the test of time, in most cases cuddling together against the predatory instincts of American and British political hawks.

Of course, sell-outs have been noticed here and there but Africa will never be a colony again, politically, yet economically the journey is still too long.

Signs are clear that the time has now come for Africa to end western countries' hegemony on its important resources, especially the land and diamonds.

The host country Angola's Minister of Mines Mr Victor Kasongo summed up the intentions of the African countries.

"It is an African initiative trying to ensure that there is value addition to our resources with the support from our members in Southern Africa.

"We have to amend our laws to enable the governments to realise this. Benefaction is the key priority," he said.

Andre' Action Diakite' Jackson of DRC chairs Adpa with a secretariat headed by Edgar Diogo de Cavalho Santos, the former secretary general from Angola.

Unless Adpa is taken seriously and its principles implemented, the negative trade balance that has existed since colonial times will persist through the systematic plunder of resources for the benefit of other countries.

In Iraq, Every Day Is Memorial Day
Posted: Monday, May 28, 2007

¤ A Day on the Bush Chain Gang
¤ The Paranoid and the Dead
¤ Japanese minister commits suicide
¤ Car bomb kills at least 21 in Baghdad
¤ Inside Nahr el-Bared
¤ Inside Nahr el-Bared, exclusive images
¤ Hamas, Mickey Mouse and other horror stories

¤ Bush Pens Dictatorship Directive, Few Notice
It is hardly surprising not a single corporate newspaper reported the death of the Constitution. Go to Google News and type in "National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive" and hit enter. Google returns ten paltry results, not one from the New York Times, the Washington Post, or related corporate media source. Google Trends rates the story as "mild," that is to say it warrants nary a blip on the news radar screen. Of course, another death blow to the Constitution, already long on life support, is hardly news. Few understand we now live in a dictatorship, or maybe it should be called a decidership.

¤ Passive Genocide With Collaboration of Mainstream Media

¤ The Politics of Murder, and the Democrats' War
With regard to the general contours of United States foreign policy for the last hundred years, and especially in the six decades following World War II, the catastrophe of Iraq has always belonged to both the Republicans and the Democrats. Both parties, and all leading national politicians, subscribe to the goal of American world hegemony, and America's "right" to encircle the globe with a military empire and intervene anywhere, anytime, for any reason we contend is related to "national security," a phrase purposely defined so broadly as to encompass any imaginable set of circumstances.

¤ Dissent spreads through U.S. military ranks

¤ Memorial Day
As the owners order up their Memorial Day spectacles in the USA entity, calling on the constantly cultivated reservoir of ignorant hatred and servility, exulting in the prospect of continuing to get the sucker-soldiers to die for their banker-gangster Godfathers and getting the sheeple to low in hapless assent to the Freedom whims of their Overlords, let us remember and memorialize some of those who deserve to be commemorated for their true heroism in the service of liberation and resistance to oppression.

¤ In Iraq, Every Day Is Memorial Day
The Shi'ite militias that forced Azhour Ali Mohammed from her home in Baghdad's al-Dolai district last month shot her husband Amer dead before her eyes and torched all her worldly possessions. And the fear that the killers may come back for her and her two little children prevented her from mourning her husband. "I could not hold a proper wake for him," says the young widow. "He deserved at least that."

¤ It's Time for Congress To Put Its Money Where Its Mouth Is
¤ More stop and quiz terror powers
¤ The Myth Of Al Qaeda Is Now Almost Totally Exposed

Zimbabwe: West's degrees conferred on leaders not sincere
Posted: Monday, May 28, 2007

EDITOR — Cde George Charamba's response in The Herald (April 25 2007) to calls from some quarters that want American and British universities to revoke President Mugabe's honorary degrees was spot on — the President does not suffer from a crisis of academic achievement.

I would like to add my voice as well.

Africans in general and Zimbabweans in particular must know that the honours, degrees, medals, and so forth conferred on African leaders, past or present, by the West, were never sincere.

They are meant to flatter our leaders so that they can work to further Western interests at the expense of the majority of Africans.

Just look at how they praise past and present African leaders who have done virtually nothing to empower indigenous black people but whose "success" is rated by how well they maintain the status quo of minority white privileges.

I am glad that we Zimbabweans have opted to die on our feet than live on our knees. We must never fear sanctions!

We must stand firm in our fight for self-reliance. Just look at how the Chinese and Koreans have done it.

All that we need are sacrifices across the board.

Godwin Hatitye

Harare

Who's Behind the Fighting in North Lebanon?
Posted: Saturday, May 26, 2007

Inside Narh al-Bared and Bedawi Refugee Camps

By Franklin Lamb, counterpunch.org
Tripoli, Lebanon.
May 24, 2007

Wearing a beat-up ratty UNCHR tee-shirt left over from Bint Jbeil and the Israeli-Hezbollah July probably helped. As did, I suspect, the Red Cross jersey, my black and white checkered kaffieyh and the Palestinian flag taped to my lapel as I joined a group of Palestinian aid workers and slipped into Nahr el-Bared trying not to look conspicuous.

Our mission was to facilitate the delivery of food, blankets and mattresses, but I was also curious about the political situation. Who was behind the events that erupted so quickly and violently following a claimed 'bank robbery'? A heist that depending on who you talked to, netted the masked bandits $ 150,000, $ 1,500 or $ 150!

It seems that every Beirut media outlet has a different source of 'inside information' based on which Confession owns it and 'knows' the real culprits pulling the strings. But then, even we who are particularly obtuse have realized, as the late Rafic Hariri often counseled: "In Lebanon, believe nothing of what you are told and only half of what you see!"

My friends made we swear out loud that I would claim to be Canadian instead of American if Al Qaeda types stopped us inside the Camp. My impression was that they were not so worried about my safety but for their own if they got caught with me. It would not be the first time that I relied on my northern neighbors to get me out of a potential US nationality jam in the Middle East, so I ditched my American ID.

We were advised as we approached the Fatah al Islam stronghold that we would be in the cross-hairs of Lebanese army snipers from outside of Nahr el-Bared Camp as well as Fatah al-Islam snipers from the inside, and that any false move or bad luck could prove fatal.

After three days of shelling and more than 100 dead and with no electricity or water, Nahr el-Baled reeks of burned and rotting flesh, charred houses with smoldering contents, raw sewage and the acrid smell of exploded mortars and tank rounds.

Press figures of 30,000-32,000 are not accurate. 45,000 live in Bared! Contrary to some reports food and water still not being allowed in.

15 to 70 percent of some areas destroyed. Some light shooting this morning and afternoon. Army shelling at rate of 10-18 shells per minute from 4:30 am to 10 am on Tuesday. Army will not allow Palestinian Red Crescent to move out civilians because they don't trust them. Only the Lebanese Red Cross is allowed. It is possible to enter Bared from the back (east side). The Army taking cameras of journalists they catch. The Lebanese government is controlling the information and don't want extent of damage known yet. Still unrecovered bodies. 40 per cent of the camp population have been evacuated. The rest don't want to leave out of fear of being shot or that they are losing their homes for the 5th time or more for some.

No electricity and cell phone batteries are dying. Relatives who fled are telling families to stay because there are not enough mattresses at Bedawi Camp. Bared evacuees are living up to 25 in one room in Badawi schools etc. 3,000 evacuees in one school in Bedawi. UN aid is starting to arrive at Badawi but workers not able so far to deliver it to Bared due to attack on relief convoy on Tuesday.

I met Abdul Rahman Hallab famous for Lebanese candy factory in Tripoli. Helped him unload 5,000 meals to evacuees from Bared staying in Badawi. He is Lebanese not Palestinian.

The camp population all say that Fatah Al-Islam came in September-October 2006 and have no relatives in the camp. They are from Saudi, Pakistan, Algeria, Iraq, and Tunisia and elsewhere. No Palestinians among them except some hanger ons. Most say they are paid by the Hariri group.

Reports that Fateh al-Islam helps people in Bared are denied. " All they do is pray, one woman told me..and do military training.. They are much more religious than the Shia" she said.

Population of Badawi camp was 15,000 and as of this morning it is 28,000. Four bodies arrived this morning at Safad, the only Palestinian Red Crescent Hospitals in north Lebanon.

I was told the army will have to destroy every house in Bared to remove Fateh al Islam.

I expect to stay in Bared tonight with aid workers. Some say FAI with die fighting others than a settlement could be negotiated. I may try the latter with NGO from Norway here. Not sure if anyone in government is interested. One minute ago a member of Fateh at_Islam walked into the medical office I am using at Safed Hospital and said they want a permanent ceasefire and do not want more people killed or injured.

They claim to have no problem with the army

Now some background about Nahr el-Bared. Like the other Palestinian camps in Lebanon, it is inhabited by Palestinians who were forced from their homes, land, and personal property in 1947-48, in order to make room for Jews from Europe and elsewhere prior to the May 15, 1948 founding of Israel.

Of the original 16 Refugee camps, set up to settle the more than 100,000 refugees crossing the border into Lebanon from Palestine during the Nakba, 12 official ones remain. The camp at Tal El-Za`tar was ethnically cleansed by Christian Phalange forces at the beginning of the 1975-1990, Lebanese Civil War and the Nabatieh, Dikwaneh and Jisr el-Basha camps were destroyed by Israeli attacks and Lebanese militia and not rebuilt. Those remaining include the following which currently house more than half of Lebanon's 433,276 Palestinian refugees:

Al-Badawi, Burj El-Barajna, Jal El-Bahr, Sabra and Shatilla, Ain El-Helwa, Nahr El-Bared, Rashidieh, Burj El Shemali, El-Buss, Wavel, Mieh Mieh and Mar Elias.

Nahr el-Bared is 7 miles north of Tripoli near the stunning Mediterranean coast and is home to more than 32,000 refuges many of whom were expelled from the Lake Huleh area of Palestine, including Safed. Like all the official Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, plus several 'unofficial' ones, Nahr el-Bared suffers from serious problems including no proper infrastructure, overcrowding, poverty and unemployment.

Tabulated at more than 25%, Nahr el-Bared has the highest percentage of Palestinian refugees anywhere who are living in abject poverty and who are officially registered with the UN as "special hardship" cases.

Its residents, like all Palestinians in Lebanon are blatantly discriminated against and not even officially counted. They are denied citizenship and banned from working in the top 70 trades and professions (that includes McDonald's and KFC in downtown Beirut) and cannot own real estate. Palestinians in Lebanon have essentially no social or civil rights and only limited access to government educational facilities. They have no access to public social services. Consequently most rely entirely on the UNRWA as the sole provider for their families needs.

It is not surprising that al-Qaeda sympathies, if not formal affiliations, are found in the 12 official camps as well as 7 unofficial ones. Groups with names such as Fateh al-Islam, Jund al-Shams (Soldier of Damascus) , Ibns al-Shaheed" (sons of the martyrs) Issbat al-Anssar which morphed into Issbat al-Noor - "The Community of Illumination" and many others.

Given Bush administration debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan and its encouragement for Israel to continue its destruction of Lebanon this past summer, the situation in Lebanon mirrors, in some respects, the early 1980's when groups sprung up to resist the US green lighted Israeli invasion and occupation. But rather than being Shia and pro-Hezbollah, today's groups are largely Sunni and anti-Hezbollah. Hence they qualify for US aid, funneled by Sunni financial backers in league with the Bush administration which is committed to funding Islamist Sunni groups to weaken Hezbollah.

This project has become the White House obsession following Israel's July 2006 defeat.

To understand what is going on with Fatah al-Islam at Nahr el-Bared one would want a brief introduction to Lebanon's amazing, but shadowy 'Welch Club'.

The Club is named for its godfather, David Welch, assistant to Secretary of State Rice who is the point man for the Bush administration and is guided by Eliot Abrams.
Key Lebanese members of the Welch Club (aka: the 'Club') include:

The Lebanese civil war veteran, warlord, feudalist and mercurial Walid Jumblatt of the Druze party( the Progressive Socialist Party or PSP)

Another civil war veteran, warlord, terrorist (Served 11 years in prison for massacres committed against fellow Christians among others) Samir Geagea. Leader of the extremist Phalange party and its Lebanese Forces (LF) the group that conducted the Israel organized massacre at Sabra-Shatilla (although led by Elie Hobeika, once Geagea's mentor, Geagea did not take part in the Sept. 1982 slaughter of 1,700 Palestinian and Lebanese).

The billionaire, Saudi Sheikh and Club president Saad Hariri leader of the Sunni Future Movement (FM).

Over a year ago Hariri's Future Movement started setting up Sunni Islamist terrorist cells (the PSP and LF already had their own militia since the civil war and despite the Taif Accords requiring militia to disarm they are now rearmed and itching for action and trying hard to provoke Hezbollah).

The FM created Sunni Islamist 'terrorist' cells were to serve as a cover for (anti-Hezbollah) Welch Club projects. The plan was that actions of these cells, of which Fatah el-Islam is one, could be blamed on al Qaeda or Syria or anyone but the Club.

To staff the new militias, FM rounded up remnants of previous extremists in the Palestinian Refugee camps that had been subdued, marginalized and diminished during the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Each fighter got $700 per month, not bad in today's Lebanon.

The first Welch Club funded militia, set up by FM, is known locally as Jund-al-Sham (Soldiers of Sham, where "Sham" in Arabic denotes Syria, Lebanon, Palestine & Jordan) created in Ain-el-Hilwa Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon. This group is also referred to in the Camps as Jund-el-Sitt (Soldiers of the Sitt, where "Sitt" in Sidon, Ain-el-Hilwa and the outskirts pertain to Bahia Hariri, the sister of Rafiq Hariri, aunt of Saad, and Member of Parliament).

The second was Fateh-al-Islam (The name cleverly put together, joining Fateh as in Palestinian and the word Islam as in Qaeda). FM set this Club cell up in Nahr-al-Bared refugee camp north of Tripoli for geographical balance.

Fatah el-Islam had about 400 well paid fighters until three days ago. Today they may have more or fewer plus volunteers. The leaders were provided with ocean view luxury apartments in Tripoli where they stored arms and chilled when not in Nahr-al-Bared. Guess who owns the apartments?

According to members of both Fatah el-Islam and Jund-al-Sham their groups acted on the directive of the Club president, Saad Hariri.
So what went wrong? "Why the bank robbery" and the slaughter at Nahr el-Baled?

According to operatives of Fatah el-Islam, the Bush administration got cold feet with people like Seymour Hirsh snooping around and with the White House post-Iraq discipline in free fall. Moreover, Hezbollah intelligence knew all about the Clubs activities and was in a position to flip the two groups who were supposed to ignite a Sunni Shia civil war which Hezbollah vows to prevent.

Things started to go very wrong quickly for the Club last week.
FM "stopped" the payroll of Fateh el-Islam's account at the Hariri family owned back.

Fateh-al-Islam, tried to negotiate at least 'severance pay' with no luck and they felt betrayed. (Remember many of their fighters are easily frustrated teenagers and their pay supports their families). Militia members knocked off the bank which issued their worthless checks. They were doubly angry when they learned FM is claiming in the media a loss much greater than they actually snatched and that the Club is going to stiff the insurance company and actually make a huge profit.

Lebanon's Internal Security Forces (newly recruited to serve the bidding of the Club and the Future Movement) assaulted the apartments of Fatah-al-Islam Tripoli. They didn't have much luck and were forced to call in the Lebanese army.

Within the hour, Fatah-al-Islam retaliated against Lebanese Army posts, checkpoints and unarmed, off-duty Lebanese soldiers in civilian clothing and committed outrageous killings including severing at four heads.

Up to this point Fatah-al-Islam did not retaliate against the Internal Security forces in Tripoli because the ISF is pro-Hariri and some are friends and Fatah al-Islam still hoped to get paid by Hariri. Instead Fatah al Islam went after the Army.

The Seniora cabinet convenes and asks the Lebanese Army to enter the refugee camp and silence (in more ways than one) Fatah-al-Islam. Since entrance into the Camps is forbidden by the 1969 Arab league agreement, the Army refuses after realizing the extent of the conspiracy against it by the Welch Club. The army knows that entering a refugee camp in force will open a front against the Army in all twelve Palestinian refugee camps and tear the army apart along sectarian cracks.

The army feels set up by the Club's Internal Security Forces which did not coordinate with the Lebanese Army, as required by Lebanese law and did not even make them aware of the "inter family operation" the ISF carried out against Fatah-al-Islam safe houses in Tripoli.

Today, tensions are high between the Lebanese army and the Welch Club. Some mention the phrase 'army coup'.

The Club is trying to run Parliament and is prepared to go all the way not to 'lose' Lebanon. It still holds 70 seats in the house of parliament while the Hezbollah led opposition holds 58 seats. It has a dutiful PM in Fouad Siniora.

The club tried to seize control of the presidency and when it failed it marginalized it. Last year it tried to control of the Parliamentary Constitutional Committee, which audits the government's policies, laws and watch dogs their actions. When the Club failed to control it they simply abolished the Constitutional Committee. This key committee no longer exists in Lebanon's government.

The Welch Club's major error was when it attempted to influence the Lebanese Army into disarming the Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah. When the Army wisely refused, the Club coordinated with the Bush Administration to pressure Israel to dramatically intensify its retaliation to the capture of the two soldiers by Hezbollah and 'break the rules' regarding the historically more limited response and try to destroy Hezbollah during the July 2006 war.

The Welch Club now considers the Lebanese Army a serious problem. The Bush administration is trying to undermine and marginalize it to eliminate one of the last two obstacles to implementing Israel's agenda in Lebanon.
If the army is weakened, it can not protect _over 70% of the Christians in Lebanon who support General Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement. The F.P.M. is mainly constituted of well educated, middle class and unarmed Lebanese civilians. The only protection they have is the Lebanese Army which aids in maintaining their presence in the political scene. The other type of Christians in Lebanon is the minority, about 15% of Christians associated with Geagea's Lebanese Forces who are purely militia. If the Club can weaken the Army even more than it is, then this Phalange minority will be the only relatively strong force on the Christian scene and become the "army" of the Club.

Another reason the Club wants to weaken the Lebanese Army is that the Army is nationalistic and is a safety valve for Lebanon to ensure the Palestinian right of return to Palestine, Lebanese nationhood and the resistance culture led by Hezbollah, with which is has excellent relations.

For their part, the Welch Club wants to keep some Palestinians in Lebanon for cheap labor, ship others to countries willing to take them (and be paid handsomely to do so by American taxpayers) and allow at most a few thousand to return to Palestine to settle the 'right of return' issue while at the same time signing a May 17th 1983 type treaty with Israel with enriches the Club members and gives Israel Lebanon's water and much of Lebanon's sovereignty.

Long story short, Fatah el-Islam must be silenced at all costs. Their tale, if told, is poison for the Club and its sponsors. We will likely see their attempted destruction in the coming days.

Hezbollah is watching and supporting the Lebanese army.

Franklin Lamb's recent book, The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel's use of American Weapon's against Lebanon (1978-2006) is available at Amazon.com.uk. Hezbollah: A Brief Guide for Beginners is expected in early summer.

Dr. Lamb can be reached at fplamb @ gmail.com.

Reprinted from:
www.counterpunch.org/lamb05242007.html

US master of blame-shifting
Posted: Saturday, May 26, 2007

¤ US master of blame-shifting
The fighting that began in northern Lebanon last Sunday may drag the country back into a civil war, or it may not. It may be the result of a Syrian plot, or it may not. As a rule, if you claim to understand what is going on in Lebanon, you simply reveal the depths of your ignorance. And yet people do claim to understand it.

White House spokesperson Tony Snow does. "We believe those behind the attack have two clear goals: to disrupt Lebanon's security and to distract international attention from the efforts to establish a special tribunal for Lebanon. We will not tolerate attempts by Syria, terrorist groups or any others to delay or derail Lebanon's efforts to solidify its sovereignty or to seek justice in the Hariri case."

¤ Cheney, Israel and Iran
"There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy," writes Washington insider Steven C. Clemens on his Washington Note blog. "On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney's team and acolytes -- who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy." This is "worrisome" because the "person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney."

¤ Imperial Rot

¤ Memorial and Veterans Day Hypocrisy
Because both days are related, they’re discussed together. The first, Memorial Day, is commemorated on the last Monday in May and was first observed in 1866 and called Decoration Day beginning in 1868. Usage of Memorial Day wasn’t common until after WW II and wasn’t the holiday’s official name until federal law called it that in 1967. The day is an occasion to honor the nation’s men and women who died in military service to the country. More on that shortly.

Veterans Day was formerly known as Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day in Europe, that originally commemorated the end of WW I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year in 1918 when the guns went silent, or were supposed to. It was first observed in the US in 1919 and made a legal holiday here in 1938. In June, 1954, Congress enacted legislation changing the holiday’s name to Veterans Day.

¤ Strange Bedfellows
¤ Behind the eyes of the warmongering US hawks

¤ How Can Bush Free Iraq When He Brings Tyranny to America?
The Washington, DC, think-tank, The American Enterprise Institute, camouflages its purpose with its name. There is nothing American about AEI, and the organization’s enterprise is fomenting war in the Middle East against Israel’s enemies. Its real name should be The Likud Center for Middle East War. AEI has the largest collection of warmongers in America. AEI "scholars" have agitated for war in the Middle East for years. A moronic president and 9/11 gave them their opportunity. Now that the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have failed, the AEI warmongers are conspiring with Vice President Cheney to foment war with Iran.

¤ Britons Blast Blair, Bush for Iraq War
Adults in Britain are particularly critical of their prime minister and the American president over their Iraq policies, according to a poll by Ipsos-MORI. Only 17 per cent of respondents approve of the way Tony Blair is handling the current situation with Iraq, and just nine per cent feel the same way about George W. Bush. Britain committed troops to both the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and the U.S.-led coalition effort in Iraq. The conflict against Saddam Hussein’s regime was launched in March 2003. At least 3,711 soldiers have died during the military operation in Iraq, including 149 Britons. Only 11 per cent of respondents say they still support the war in Iraq.

¤ U.S. funding Mexico's wiretaps
¤ Infants Have 'Amazing Capabilities' That Adults Lack
¤ Democratic Blood Money

¤ 8 killed in market explosion in India
A bomb exploded in a busy market in India's restive northeast Saturday, killing eight people and injuring 19, and authorities said they discovered and defused a large bomb hidden on a crowded passenger train headed for the area.

¤ Israel attacks Hamas facilities
¤ Pounding Gaza
¤ US military says five Iraqi militants killed in Sadr City raid
¤ Curse of Oil and Iraq’s Disintegration

¤ Why Congress caved to Bush
The anti-war Democrats are crying betrayal – and justifiably so.
For a Democratic Congress is now voting to fully fund the war in Iraq, as demanded by President Bush, and without any timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal. Bush got his $100 billion, then magnanimously agreed to let Democrats keep the $20 billion in pork they stuffed into the bill – to soothe the pain of their sellout of the party base.
Remarkable. If the Republican rout of 2006 said anything, it was that America had lost faith in the Bush-Rumsfeld conduct of the war and wanted Democrats to lead the country out.

¤ "Privatizing Iraq's Oil is Theft!"

¤ Israel attacks Hamas facilities

Coup Co-Conspirators as Free-Speech Martyrs
Posted: Friday, May 25, 2007

By FAIR, fair.org
May 25, 2007

The story is framed in U.S. news media as a simple matter of censorship: Prominent Venezuelan TV station RCTV is being silenced by the authoritarian government of President Hugo Chávez, who is punishing the station for its political criticism of his government.

According to CNN reporter T.J. Holmes (5/21/07), the issues are easy to understand: RCTV "is going to be shut down, is going to get off the air, because of President Hugo Chávez, not a big fan of it." Dubbing RCTV "a voice of free speech," Holmes explained, "Chavez, in a move that's angered a lot of free-speech groups, is refusing now to renew the license of this television station that has been critical of his government."

Though straighter, a news story by the Associated Press (5/20/07) still maintained the theme that the license denial was based simply on political differences, with reporter Elizabeth Munoz describing RCTV as "a network that has been critical of Chávez."

In a May 14 column, Washington Post deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl called the action an attempt to silence opponents and more "proof" that Chávez is a "dictator." Wrote Diehl, "Chávez has made clear that his problem with [RCTV owner Marcel] Granier and RCTV is political."

In keeping with the media script that has bad guy Chávez brutishly silencing good guys in the democratic opposition, all these articles skimmed lightly over RCTV's history, the Venezuelan government's explanation for the license denial and the process that led to it.

RCTV and other commercial TV stations were key players in the April 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chávez's democratically elected government. During the short-lived insurrection, coup leaders took to commercial TV airwaves to thank the networks. "I must thank Venevisión and RCTV," one grateful leader remarked in an appearance captured in the Irish film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The film documents the networks' participation in the short-lived coup, in which stations put themselves to service as bulletin boards for the coup—hosting coup leaders, silencing government voices and rallying the opposition to a march on the Presidential Palace that was part of the coup plotters strategy.

On April 11, 2002, the day of the coup, when military and civilian opposition leaders held press conferences calling for Chávez's ouster, RCTV hosted top coup plotter Carlos Ortega, who rallied demonstrators to the march on the presidential palace. On the same day, after the anti-democratic overthrow appeared to have succeeded, another coup leader, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, told a Venevisión reporter (4/11/02): "We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you."

That commercial TV outlets including RCTV participated in the coup is not at question; even mainstream outlets have acknowledged as much. As reporter Juan Forero, Jackson Diehl's colleague at the Washington Post, explained (1/18/07), "RCTV, like three other major private television stations, encouraged the protests," resulting in the coup, "and, once Chávez was ousted, cheered his removal." The conservative British newspaper the Financial Times reported (5/21/07), "[Venezuelan] officials argue with some justification that RCTV actively supported the 2002 coup attempt against Mr. Chávez."

As FAIR's magazine Extra! argued last November, "Were a similar event to happen in the U.S., and TV journalists and executives were caught conspiring with coup plotters, it's doubtful they would stay out of jail, let alone be allowed to continue to run television stations, as they have in Venezuela."

When Chávez returned to power the commercial stations refused to cover the news, airing instead entertainment programs—in RCTV's case, the American film Pretty Woman. By refusing to cover such a newsworthy story, the stations abandoned the public interest and violated the public trust that is seen in Venezuela (and in the U.S.) as a requirement for operating on the public airwaves. Regarding RCTV's refusal to cover the return of Chavez to power, Columbia University professor and former NPR editor John Dinges told Marketplace (5/8/07):

What RCTV did simply can't be justified under any stretch of journalistic principles…. When a television channel simply fails to report, simply goes off the air during a period of national crisis, not because they're forced to, but simply because they don't agree with what's happening, you've lost your ability to defend what you do on journalistic principles.

The Venezuelan government is basing its denial of license on RCTV's involvement in the 2002 coup, not on the station's criticisms of or political opposition to the government. Many American pundits and some human rights spokespersons have confused the issue by claiming the action is based merely on political differences, failing to note that Venezuela's media, including its commercial broadcasters, are still among the most vigorously dissident on the planet.

When Patrick McElwee of the U.S.-based group Just Foreign Policy interviewed representatives of Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists—all groups that have condemned Venezuela's action in denying RCTV's license renewal—he found that none of the spokespersons thought broadcasters were automatically entitled to license renewals, though none of them thought RCTV's actions in support of the coup should have resulted in the station having its license renewal denied. This led McElwee to wonder, based on the rights groups' arguments, "Could it be that governments like Venezuela have the theoretical right to not to renew a broadcast license, but that no responsible government would ever do it?"

McElwee acknowledged the critics' point that some form of due process should have been involved in the decisions, but explained that laws preexisting Chávez's presidency placed licensing decision with the executive branch, with no real provisions for a hearings process: "Unfortunately, this is what the law, first enacted in 1987, long before Chávez entered the political scene, allows. It charges the executive branch with decisions about license renewal, but does not seem to require any administrative hearing. The law should be changed, but at the current moment when broadcast licenses are up for renewal, it is the prevailing law and thus lays out the framework in which decisions are made."

Government actions weighing on journalism and broadcast licensing deserve strong scrutiny. However, on the central question of whether a government is bound to renew the license of a broadcaster when that broadcaster had been involved in a coup against the democratically elected government, the answer should be clear, as McElwee concludes:

The RCTV case is not about censorship of political opinion. It is about the government, through a flawed process, declining to renew a broadcast license to a company that would not get a license in other democracies, including the United States. In fact, it is frankly amazing that this company has been allowed to broadcast for 5 years after the coup, and that the Chávez government waited until its license expired to end its use of the public airwaves.

Reprinted from:
www.fair.org/index.php?page=3107

So You Thought They'd End the War
Posted: Friday, May 25, 2007

¤ Coup Co-Conspirators as Free-Speech Martyrs
RCTV and other commercial TV stations were key players in the April 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chávez's democratically elected government. During the short-lived insurrection, coup leaders took to commercial TV airwaves to thank the networks. "I must thank Venevisión and RCTV," one grateful leader remarked in an appearance captured in the Irish film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The film documents the networks' participation in the short-lived coup, in which stations put themselves to service as bulletin boards for the coup—hosting coup leaders, silencing government voices and rallying the opposition to a march on the Presidential Palace that was part of the coup plotters strategy.

¤ We Should Back Chávez
Neoconservative forces, via compliant media outlets and Christian right groupings within the European parliament, are preparing their latest attack on Hugo Chávez and the government of Venezuela. The latest focus of the campaign is the decision of Venezuela’s broadcasting authorities not to renew the licence of the private television channel RCTV. The anti-Chávez apparatus once again presents a test for Foreign Office ministers.

¤ Venezuela and RCTV: Is Free Speech Really at Stake?
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has been the subject of many controversies. His critics often accuse him of laying the groundwork for dictatorship, despite the democratic credentials of his government. Chávez was democratically elected in 1998 and again in 2000 under a new constitution. He then won a recall election in 2004, which was certified by observers from the Carter Center and the Organization of American States. Chávez was re-elected last December by 63 percent of voters, a result again certified by international observers including the OAS and the European Uni0n. Chávez has pledged to accelerate policies that have given poor Venezuelans vastly increased access to health care, education, and subsidized food, and in the last three and a half years of political stability, a remarkable 40 percent increase in the economy.

¤ Why is Cuba Exporting Its Health Care Miracle To The World’s Poor?
Cubans say they offer health care to the world’s poor because they have big hearts. But what do they get in return?

They live longer than almost anyone in Latin America. Far fewer babies die. Almost everyone has been vaccinated, and such scourges of the poor as parasites, TB, malaria, even HIV/AIDS are rare or non-existent. Anyone can see a doctor, at low cost, right in the neighborhood.

¤ Secret memo shows Israel knew Six Day War was illegal
¤ Venezuela and RCTV
¤ Congress Gives War Profiteers Another $100 Billion

¤ So You Thought They'd End the War
Welcome to the Show, kid.
The Democrats have "surrendered" on Iraq. Liberals are "shocked." And all the innocents who didn't know any better, didn't see it coming, feel "betrayed."
Poor Duncan Black, better known as "Atrios," is nearly at a loss for words: "People hate Bush, hate Republicans, and hate this war," he protests, and yet the Democrats caved!
"I don't understand these people," he wails.
Precisely.

¤ Bush's Pick for Surgeon General Makes Us Sick
¤ Anger at Aborigine school plan
¤ Unsuitable, unsustainable
¤ Bush signs $100 billion Iraq war funding bill
¤ Will Most Certainly Be Fooled Again
¤ Rampage & Massacres on Gaza Strip
¤ Israel Leading 'War Criminals Championship' in Amnesty Report

Venezuela and RCTV: Is Free Speech Really at Stake?
Posted: Friday, May 25, 2007

By Patrick Mcelwee, counterpunch.org
May 25, 2007

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has been the subject of many controversies. His critics often accuse him of laying the groundwork for dictatorship, despite the democratic credentials of his government. Chávez was democratically elected in 1998 and again in 2000 under a new constitution. He then won a recall election in 2004, which was certified by observers from the Carter Center and the Organization of American States. Chávez was re-elected last December by 63 percent of voters, a result again certified by international observers including the OAS and the European Union. Chávez has pledged to accelerate policies that have given poor Venezuelans vastly increased access to health care, education, and subsidized food, and in the last three and a half years of political stability, a remarkable 40 percent increase in the economy.

Throughout this process of increasing voter and citizen participation and electoral democracy, the Venezuelan opposition and their allies in the U.S. press have told us that authoritarianism was just around the corner. They now say it has arrived. The immediate focus of their concern is the president's decision not to renew the broadcast license of a major television network that is openly opposed to the Chávez government. Their free speech concerns have been echoed by Human Rights Watch, Reporters without Borders, and the Committee to Protect Journalists. On the other hand, the vice-chair of the European Parliament's Freedom Commission, ruling out a resolution on the issue, has said the non-renewal has nothing to do with human rights.

Here are the basic facts. Rádio Caracas Televisión (RCTV) is one of the biggest television networks in Venezuela. It airs news and entertainment programs. It is also openly opposed to the government, including by supporting a military coup that briefly ousted Chávez in 2002. During the oil strike of 2002-2003, the station repeatedly called upon its viewers to come out into the street and help topple the government. As part of its continuing political campaign against the government, the station has also used false allegations, sometimes with gruesome and violent imagery, to convince its viewers that the government was responsible for such crimes as murders where there was no evidence of government involvement.

According to a law enacted in 1987, the licenses given to RCTV and other stations to use the public airwaves expire on May 27. President Chávez has publicly declared that RCTV's license will not be renewed, citing its involvement in the coup. Although it will not be able to continue to use the public broadcast frequencies, the station will still be able to send its signal out over cable, satellite, and the Internet.

The U.S. media, much of which has been unsuccessfully predicting dictatorship under Chávez for years, has used this case to make accusations of censorship and the end of press freedom in Venezuela.

To understand the issue better, I decided to talk to the human rights and press freedom groups who have criticized the action.

José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch clarified for me that "broadcasting companies in any country in the world, especially in democratic countries, are not entitled to renewal of their licenses. The lack of renewal of the contract, per se, is not a free speech issue. Just per se." A free speech issue arises if the non-renewal is to punish a certain editorial line.

Still, Benoît Hervieu of Reporters Without Borders in Paris said that, while he could not be certain, he thought US and European governments would stop short of non-renewal despite RCTV's "support for the coup."

"I think that there would be pressure to make a replacement at the head of the channel. But I don't think that they would not renew the concession. There is a risk in that story. There are 3000 employees at RCTV. So I don't think that even in a country like [the United States or France], a government would risk putting 3000 people in the streets," he said.

Could it be that governments like Venezuela have the theoretical right not to renew a broadcast license, but that no responsible government would ever do it? In the United States, this may seem plausible, since broadcast licenses here seem to be forever. (Who could imagine life without ABC, CBS, or NBC?) Still, the government sometimes takes actions in other parts of the economy that result in a company going out of business.

Actually, in other democratic countries, broadcast companies sometimes do not get their licenses renewed. For example, in Britain in 1992, in a process based in part on a subjective assessment of "quality of service," Thames Television lost its license after 24 years of service. Several British commentators speculated that the Thatcher government had influenced the result.

So democracies do occasionally find reasons not to renew a license. So what about this case in particular: Would RCTV have had its license renewed in the United States or Europe?

While the two US-based human rights advocates I spoke with declined to answer that question directly, they acknowledged that non-renewal would not be out of the question here.

Vivanco said, "I don't know. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could decide that they're not going to renew, for instance, Fox News or MSNBC because they're in violation of the contract, according to the conditions of the contract. Normally you settle those things in court."

Carlos Lauría of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) spoke similarly: "I don't think you can translate what's going on there [in Venezuela] to the United States. That's a very difficult question. I mean, if RCTV had violated the law, I assume they wouldn't get the concession renewed."

For Lauría, non-renewal itself is not the problem. His concern is the process by which the decision was reached. "I assume in the US there would be a process. The FCC would follow protocol. This is what hasn't happened in Venezuela. We're not arguing that the concession should be renewed, should be given to RCTV. We're just saying that there's no process to evaluate if it should be."

Vivanco also complained about the process, saying that if the government argues there is a violation of the contract, "that would be settled normally in court. Second, if there's some crimes committed, the individuals who were involved in those crimes should be prosecuted in a court of law."

On process, they have a legitimate point. The government seems to have made the decision without any administrative or judicial hearings. Unfortunately, this is what the law, first enacted in 1987, long before Chávez entered the political scene, allows. It charges the executive branch with decisions about license renewal, but does not seem to require any administrative hearing. The law should be changed, but at the current moment when broadcast licenses are up for renewal, it is the prevailing law and thus lays out the framework in which decisions are made.

However, Vivanco's critique goes beyond process to the government's justification for non-renewal. "You have the president saying, forget it, the license is not going to be renewed, it's a bunch of golpistas [coup-mongers] or fascists or whatever which is clearly some sort of censorship. That sounds like an arbitrary decision made by the president on political grounds. And that is not acceptable."

Lauría also told me that RCTV was "selectively chosen because of opposition views."

But is support for the violent overthrow of an elected government really protected political speech? Vivanco acknowledges that RCTV "obviously probably sympathized with the coup." But, he says, "it is a matter of free speech."

Vivanco understates RCTV's connection to the coup. RCTV encouraged viewers to attend a rally that was part of the coup strategy, invited coup leaders to address the country on their channel, and reported the false information that the president had resigned. After Pedro Carmona declared himself president and dissolved the National Assembly, Supreme Court, and other democratic institutions, the head of RCTV Marcel Granier met with him in the Presidential Palace. The following day, when mass protests and loyal army units brought back President Chávez, RCTV and other stations blacked out the news, showing movies and cartoons instead.

Such actions clearly go beyond protected free speech, at least in the United States. Imagine the consequences if NBC took such actions during a coup against Bush.

In fact, RCTV's participation in the oil strike of 2002-2003, and even their joining in legal political campaigns would be grounds for revoking their broadcast license in the United States.

Consider this episode in the US. Two weeks before the 2004 presidential election, it was reported that the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which operates the largest number of local TV stations in the United States, planned to order its affiliates to replace prime-time programming with a documentary critical of John Kerry.

Democrats were outraged. The Democratic National Committee filed a case with the FCC arguing that such "partisan propaganda" was inappropriate. And, yes, at least one powerful Democratic politician swore that if the documentary was aired, there would be no Sinclair Broadcast Group by the 2008 election. A Kerry spokesman said, "You don't expect your local TV station to be pushing a political agenda two weeks before an election. It's un-American." Couldn't it be un-Venezuelan too? (The political pressures above led Sinclair to cancel the anti-Kerry broadcast).

If RCTV were the only major source of opposition to the government, the loss of its voice would be troubling. It would also be disturbing if the RCTV case forced others to tone down legitimate opposition. But Greg Wilpert, a sociologist living in Venezuela, declares, "It is the height of absurdity to say that there's a lack of freedom of press in Venezuela."

Of the top four private TV stations, three air mostly entertainment and one, Globovisión, is a 24-hours news channel. On Globovisión, Wilpert says, "the opposition is very present. They pretty much dominate it. And in the others, they certainly are very present in the news segments."

Regarding the print media, Wilpert told me, "There are three main newspapers. Of those three, two are definitely very opposition. The other one is pretty neutral. I would say, [the opposition] certainly dominates the print media by far. There's no doubt about that."

"I think some of the TV stations have slightly moderated [their opposition to the government] not because of intimidation, but because they were losing audience share. Over half of the population is supportive of Chávez . They've reduced the number of anti-Chávez programs that they used to have. But those that continue to exist are just as anti-Chávez as they were before."

The RCTV case is not about censorship of political opinion. It is about the government, through a flawed process, declining to renew a broadcast license to a company that would not get a license in other democracies, including the United States. In fact, it is frankly amazing that this company has been allowed to broadcast for 5 years after the coup, and that the Chávez government waited until its license expired to end its use of the public airwaves.

Once again, it seems, the warnings of a move from democracy to dictatorship in Venezuela have been loud but lacking in evidence.

Patrick McElwee is a policy analyst with Just Foreign Policy. He can be reached at patrick@justforeignpolicy.org

Reprinted from:
www.counterpunch.org/mcelwee05252007.html

Also Read:

Hugo Chávez and RCTV: Censorship or a legitimate decision?
Wednesday, Feb 07, 2007

Zimbabwe: When the bully cries foul...
Posted: Friday, May 25, 2007

By Peter Mavunga
The Herald
May 25, 2007

I HAVE just been reading Rian Malan's article in the Spectator (May 19 2007) titled "Shame on the white liberals and black Africans who cheer on Mugabe."

It is another instalment of the anti-Mugabe brigade that deliberately chooses to misrepresent the facts about the problems in Zimbabwe.

To them, Zimbabwe's problems are a consequence of President Mugabe's "misrule" fullstop.

It is about "dictatorship and human rights abuses". Above all, it is about an African leader who has no support in his country but who is trying to hang on to power by crushing his opponents.

So says Malan, writing from Johannesburg.

What bugs him is that African diplomats at the UN in New York should support Zimbabwe. Malan is "appalled" that Zimbabwe is put in charge of Sustainable Development by the UN and says this is symptomatic of the way in which President Mugabe is indulged by foolish do-gooders from New York to South Africa.

He may accuse others of indulging the President but he seems to be guilty of the same thing himself.

Malan says he had gone to Johannesburg to participate in the inaugural Franschhoek Literary Festival but his thoughts were with Ian Pearson, UK Environment Minister (poor thing) who "was attempting to explain to African diplomats that one could not appoint a malignant regime like Zimbabwe to the chairmanship of anything, let alone a committee on development."

He seemed so sorry for the UK Minister to have the task of explaining this to these "unthinking" people. Malan concedes the African bloc did not like this at all. And when Cde Boniface Chidyausiku, Zimbabwe's UN ambassador, said he thought the Minister's lecture was: "an insult to our intelligence," he seemed surprised that others agreed, "with Pearson going down in flames", as he put it.

Malan gets too big for his boots very quickly. He says he stood shoulder to shoulder with the UK Minister in this "righteous" fight. Yes, his is a righteous fight against evil, the evil of a regime that dares to challenge its former colonial master.

Malan's "righteous fight" was at a posh dinner in Johannesburg attended, he says, by such "grandees as Bevil Rudd, grandson of Rhodes's right-hand man" and others. There, for standing shoulder to shoulder with the UK Minister in New York in this "righteous fight", he says he was shouted down as "pathetic" by an eminent white liberal.

Such white liberals and black Africans he says should be ashamed of themselves for cheering on President Mugabe. I don't know about white liberals but I write as a black African who knows the effect of white racism in Rhodesia where I grew up. It is a bit rich for Malan to be lecturing us on who to cheer and who not to cheer.

Malan says he first saw President Mugabe in the flesh in Johannesburg in 2002 at the UN Earth Summit. While both Colin Powell, US Defence Secretary and Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister were booed and jeered, Cde Mugabe was greeted with a tumultuous standing ovation.

"I wrote it off as a passing fad," says Malan and hoped that black power fantasies would soon wear off once the folly of Mugabe's 'ethnic cleansing of white farmers' began to take effect".

This is what righteous Malan thinks of an ovation acknowledging the man who led the war to restore dignity to an oppressed people. Passing fad, he calls it.

He was nevertheless surprised that although by 2004 the Zimbabwean economy was in "free-fall", the President was more popular than ever but then he qualifies this by saying this popularity was not in Zimbabwe but in many African capitals and at President Mbeki's swearing-in ceremony.

He says it was clear by then the fast-track land reform programme had not reversed President Mugabe's unpopularity at home and he had "already taken to bludgeoning black opponents and rigging elections in order to stay in power.

He goes on: "His black supporters didn't care. Mugabe was giving the whites hell. Mugabe was therefore a hero. 'Mugabe is speaking for black people worldwide,'" he quotes Harry Mashabela as saying.

Malan of course, does not even attempt to explore why President Mugabe, while giving whites hell, was receiving standing ovations.

Might it be true that self-respecting Africans, because of their experience at the hands of colonials have a different mindset that the likes of Malan cannot begin to understand even if they tried?

Malan does not understand why when Western members of the Commonwealth moved to expel Zimbabwe, South Africa helped to block them.

He says South Africa also thwarted attempts to place his "atrocities on the agenda at the UN Security Council and the UN Human Rights Committee," but he does not attempt to understand why. Neither does he want to know why President Mugabe's popularity appears to increase to rock star proportions world wide, as he puts it.

He makes a passing comment on "the wounds of history" though, but then goes on to brush it aside by expressing he hoped a time would soon come when "Mugabe's militant fans realised their behaviour was restoring the reputation of Ian Smith, "who prophesised that Rhodesia would be 'buggered' if the blacks took over."

Of course, there are different kinds of reputation and it depends on the point of view of who is speaking.

No doubt Malan has nostalgic fond memories of Rhodesia under Smith. What I have are memories of Smith the human rights abuser. Memories of a man whose Rhodesia project was about protecting the privileges of the few white settlers on the burning backs of black Africans.

For was it not only on November 24 1977 that Smith, faced with an increasingly bitter guerrilla war, for the very first time announced publicly that he was abandoning his opposition to universal suffrage?

Until then his stance, which he sincerely believed in, was that Africans were second class citizens. This is what the restoration of Smith's reputation means to a self-respecting African.

Rhodesia was a regime of violence and racial injustice as observed by David Caute in his fascinating book: "Under the Skin".

He reported the case of Wilfred and Darryl Collett, father and son, who had taken their black foreman, Mac Maduma from Mphoengs police station after the African had admitted stealing their money but had promised to pay it back.

"Arriving back at Ingwesi Ranch, Plumtree," wrote Coate, "the Colletts stripped him naked, secured him to a block and tackle by handcuffs, had him hoisted from the ground and given twelve strokes."

He goes on: "When the case came to court in February 1978, the magistrate told the two whites that they were guilty of a form of terrorism and fined the 70-year-old father R$500 with a three-month prison sentence conditionally suspended; the son got ten months in gaol, of which six months were conditionally suspended.

"But Chief Justice Hector Macdonald didn't like to see a white man gaoled for beating a black one; in April the Appeal Court set aside Darryl Collett's prison sentence and reduced the verdict from 'assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm' to 'common assault.'"

Caute also cites another case widely reported in the Press in March 1977. Basil Rowlands, was a white farmer, "who kicked a 65 year-old labourer to death, and later pleaded that the man was not correctly planting maize pips along a furrow."

According to Caute, an erudite historian and journalist, V. J. Kock, the Magistrate at Salisbury Regional Court commented that "although the consequences had been unfortunate he did not consider the assault a serious one". Rowlands was sentenced to a fine of R$300 or two months in jail. (This episode is reported by Denis Hills in his book, Rebel People.)"

This was Smith's Rhodesia and this was the kind of "justice" that he meted out to black people.

So when Malan says President Mugabe's militant supporters in New York and Africa had better realise that "their behaviour was restoring the reputation of Ian Smith" it is clear he is talking gibberish.

But Malan would probably say he was comparing Smith and Mugabe in their economic management. He says by January this year, Smith was utterly vindicated. "Eight out of 10 Zimbabweans were jobless and those who had work were screwed anyway, because inflation was 2 200 percent and they couldn't afford anything."

Malan would also say he was talking about President Mugabe's repression against his political opponents.

For he indeed expresses "righteous indignation at the violence in Zimbabwe".

These are issues David Gazi explores carefully in his book: Racism and the Land Question — A Colonial Legacy. He finds inter party violence in Zimbabwe between Zanu-PF and ZUM youths.

He observes that on March 24 1990, for instance, "there were running battles between Zanu and ZUM youths after a car belonging to Vice-President Muzenda had been set alight."

He goes on: "Kombayi's shops were ransacked and looted by Zanu youths and several ZUM youths were injured in the factional fighting. One of Kombayi's trucks was commandeered to take the injured ZUM youths to hospital," he says.

The violence was considerable and Kombayi's injuries "necessitated his removal to the specialist Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore, North London, England where he was hospitalised for 200 days at a cost of nearly £100 000."

Gazi cites this incident that occurred back in 1990 to make the point that such violence did not elicit the kind of hysteria that has characterised the West's support for another opposition party in Zimbabwe, the MDC.

There were no calls from Western "democracies" for punitive measures to be taken against Zimbabwe despite the heavy-handed manner in Pwhich the state agency, the CIO, by its own admission, had dealt with the national Organising Secretary of ZUM who was due to stand in elections against the Zanu candidate, Vice-President Muzenda.

This and other attacks on opposition party members took place three years after the conclusion of the Fifth Brigade forays into Matabeleland — time enough, says Gazi, for all those whose consciences were pricked by these events to have made their displeasure known.

But no, it took another decade before the West and the new opposition party in Zimbabwe voiced their concerns about political violence in Zimbabwe.

So the question is: why did all the people, who now claim outrage at violence against the opposition, not protest on ZUM's behalf when it was under attack? Why did ZUM not receive Western support?

Gazi speculates that perhaps it is because the violence was being committed on both sides and the West felt it inappropriate to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state! If so, what has changed now?

There are many instances where the MDC has carried out acts of violence against Government supporters and it has received much support from the West — why?

For an answer, Gazi suggests we look elsewhere as to why the West never actively supported ZUM while it did support the MDC.

He says: "From the outset Edgar Tekere, the ZUM leader, had shown himself willing to ignite the powder keg of Zimbabwe's politics — the land issue."

Tekere was sympathetic to the very first land reclamations that took place more than 20 years ago in Matabeleland and Manicaland (Headlands occupations of 1981). This was at a time when the new black government's policy on the land question was one of appeasement.

Also at the time of the attacks on ZUM, President Mugabe had agreed to the introduction of ESAP, one of the cornerstones of the New World Order and forerunner to the introduction of globalisation in Africa.

In the eyes of the West, Zanu-PF was pro-West and the West did not wish to interfere in the internal affairs of a friendly, sovereign state.

Gazi says these events demonstrated that Western democracies do not usually intervene in an African country over questions of democracy or the rule of law, they do so when they sense an opportunity for regime change in favour of a more accommodating candidate.

And they moved in with a vengeance – propaganda, sanctions and all - against Zimbabwe once President Mugabe took a stance on the land question a decade later. The poor showing of Zimbabwe's economy ought to be seen in this context rather than President Mugabe's alleged misrule.

Yet the West will always claim and use its powerful influence to create this impression in a fashion similar to what goes on between a bully and his victim. The bully attacks the victim telling him to shut up and say nothing about his injuries or else more will follow.

Palestine: Forty Years of Occupation
Posted: Thursday, May 24, 2007

¤ Most Palestinians killed in Israeli raids were civilians

¤ Regional currency to replace dollar in Argentina-Brazil trade
Argentina and Brazil, South America's two largest economies, will drop the U.S. dollar in favor of a regional currency in their bilateral trade starting in October 2007, Argentine Economics Minister Felisa Miceli said.
The countries' transition to a new currency, as yet unnamed, is part of a pilot project by the South American continent's major trade alliance, Mercosur, to replace the U.S. currency in internal transactions with money of its own, Miceli said.

¤ 'US would leave if Iraq asks'
Sure...

¤ Kucinich Claims War Masks the Real Objective: Iraqi Oil
It’s all about Iraq’s oil - rich, abundant, and coveted by multinational companies waiting to line their deep pockets. Or so said Rep. Dennis Kucinich Wednesday in an unusual hourlong address on the House floor. He laid out his contention that the White House and Democratic-led Congress are helping oil companies grab a stake in Iraq’s vast oil fields while claiming to be interested merely in winding down the Iraq war.

¤ Is U.S. Occupation of Iraq Legal?
What is lost in the media attention to the fight between President Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress over funding the troops in Iraq is the fact that the military occupation of Iraq is illegal. From the early orders of Paul Bremer to the present Bush effort to push an oil law through the Iraqi Parliament, the occupation has attempted to control the political and economic life of Iraq.
According to the treaty of The Hague in 1907, which was ratified by Congress and is the “supreme Law of the Land,” an occupying power “shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.”

¤ Did The U.S. Lie About Cluster Bomb Use in Iraq?
¤ Deadly Illusions, Rest in Peace
¤ A Less "White" USA

¤ An Urgent Warning to Critics of the Iraq Wars
Consider these familiar assertions:

1. If Donald Rumsfeld had listened to the generals and invaded with more troops, Iraq would be stable today.
2. If the U.S. had provided security and basic services after the initial invasion, Iraqis would have embraced America's presence and agenda by now.
3. If Paul Bremer had neither de-Ba'athified nor disbanded the Iraqi army after the invasion, the insurgency would have been manageable or non-existent.

If you agree with any of these claims, you are an unwitting participant in American Imperialism.

¤ DEADLIEST "FRIEDMAN UNIT" YET
¤ Contractors dying in increasing numbers in Iraq
¤ They want to watch, but you can avoid them
¤ Chagos islanders win right to return
¤ Venezuela to Lower Phone Rates 20% Following Nationalization

¤ Venezuelan Authorities Warn of Destabilization Plans
In recent days, Venezuelan government officials have increasingly warned of plans to destabilize the country in the lead up to the May 27th protests in support of the private TV station RCTV. Authorities have warned of a U.S.-organized plan to infiltrate the country with Colombian paramilitaries, among other rumored plots. But President Chavez assured yesterday that the government would not allow them to achieve their goals.

¤ New files 'link Chirac to secret Japanese bank account'
¤ Choreographed Victory, Dishonorable War

¤ Innocent victims caught up in a war of endless revenge
It is a place of Palestinian fury - and almost as much Palestinian blood. The bandage-swaddled children whimpering in pain, frowning at the strange, unfatherly doctors, the middle-aged woman staring at us with one eye, a set of tubes running into her gashed-open stomach, a series of bleak-faced, angry, young men, their bodies and legs torn apart.
There was eight-year Youssef al-Radi who was cut open by shrapnel in the arm and back yesterday morning and brought to the Palestinian Safad hospital at Badawi, another refugee camp in Tripoli, his feet bleeding, a tiny figure on a huge stretcher. He hasn't been told that his mother died beside him. Nor that his father is still in the Nahr el-Bared camp.

¤
As the Israeli army attempts to imprison an entire nation, it is the youngest who suffer most. Half of all Palestinians killed in the past six years are children.
Israel is destroying any notion of a state of Palestine and is being allowed to imprison an entire nation. That is clear from the latest attacks on Gaza, whose suffering has become a metaphor for the tragedy imposed on the peoples of the Middle East and beyond. These attacks, reported on Channel 4 News, were "targeting key militants of Hamas" and the "Hamas infrastructure". The BBC described a "clash" between the same militants and Israeli F-16 aircraft.

¤ Methane gas explosion at Siberian coal mine kills 38

Venezuelan Authorities Warn of Destabilization Plans
Posted: Wednesday, May 23, 2007

In recent days, Venezuelan government officials have increasingly warned of plans to destabilize the country in the lead up to the May 27th protests in support of the private TV station RCTV. Authorities have warned of a U.S.-organized plan to infiltrate the country with Colombian paramilitaries, among other rumored plots. But President Chavez assured yesterday that the government would not allow them to achieve their goals.

Speaking in Caracas yesterday, Chavez made reference to rumors of destabilization plans that have circulated in recent days. Talk of plots against the government by opposition groups has increased as the date of the May 27th opposition protest approaches.

"There are groups that keep thinking that with riots, with Colombian paramilitaries, with rumors and media campaigns against the National Armed Forces that they will destabilize the country, but they won't do it, we won't allow it," assured Chavez during his speech yesterday.
Full Article : venezuelanalysis.com

Venezuela to Lower Phone Rates 20% Following Nationalization
Posted: Wednesday, May 23, 2007

With the swearing in of the new board of directors for Venezuela's main telecommunications company CANTV, which was recently nationalized, President Hugo Chavez declared that phone rates would be lowered by as much as 20%, among a number of other changes.

"We have nationalized [CANTV] after so many years [after privatization], but it will not become what it was prior to privatization, when it was a company of a capitalist state. Now we have to make a leap from a private capitalist company to a socialist state-owned company, which is not seeking profit, even when with a good management there will not be economic losses," declared Chavez during yesterday's ceremony, which was broadcast on all TV channels.

"More important than economic gain is the social gain – social service for the integral development of all inhabitants of Venezuela," added Chavez.
Full Article : venezuelanalysis.com

Chagos islanders win right to return
Posted: Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Families who were expelled from the Chagos Islands to make way for the Diego Garcia US airbase 30 years ago won their legal battle to return home today.

The families - ordered from the islands by the British government - packed the court of appeal to hear the ruling, which condemned government tactics preventing their return as unlawful and an abuse of power.

The court ruled that thousands of people who were tricked, starved and even terrorised from their homes could return immediately, with the decision likely to draw a line under what is widely seen as one of the most shameful episodes in British colonial history.
Full Article : guardian.co.uk

Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran
Posted: Wednesday, May 23, 2007

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.
Full Article : commondreams.org

The West never learns
Posted: Wednesday, May 23, 2007

¤ An Investigation of Zimbabwe's Different Path
Zimbabwe's different path and the penalty it has incurred: The academic and media framing of Zimbabwe's difficulties, and an investigation of external and internal causes.

¤ Zimbabwe gets top Comesa post

¤ A front-row seat for this Lebanese tragedy
There is something obscene about watching the siege of Nahr el-Bared. The old Palestinian camp - home to 30,000 lost souls who will never go "home" - basks in the Mediterranean sunlight beyond a cluster of orange orchards. Soldiers of the Lebanese army, having retaken their positions on the main road north, idle their time aboard their old personnel carriers. And we - we representatives of the world's press - sit equally idly atop a half-built apartment block, basking in the little garden or sipping cups of scalding tea beside the satellite dishes where the titans of television stride by in their blue space suits and helmets.

¤ Plague strikes Denver Zoo
¤ An Investigation of Zimbabwe's Different Path
¤ The West never learns
¤ 'Sicko' spawns Moore fever in Cannes
¤ Bush may turn to UN in search for Iraq solution
Flashback ¤ Former UN head calls Iraq war 'illegal'
¤ A UN mandate does not make war on Iraq right!

¤ Opium: Iraq's deadly new export
¤ Iran accuses US academic of instigating 'soft revolution'
¤ Drop Dead, New Yorkers
¤ Looking More and More Like Vietnam
¤ Why Bush Hasn't Been Impeached
¤ 'The Darkest Moment In Palestinian History'
¤ Early Arrival of Butterflies Demonstrates Impact of Climate Change
¤ Bush Anoints Himself as the Insurer of Constitutional Government in Emergency
¤ The Powerful Odor of Mendacity
¤ 15 killed in Iraq suicide blast

¤ Israel continues to pound Gaza
Israel has launched new attacks in Gaza on buildings it said held Hamas weapons caches.
Israeli jets carried attacked four suspected arms caches and three other Hamas facilities across Gaza in the early hours of Wednesday, and an Israeli helicopter strafed a rocket launch site with machine-gun fire.

¤ IRAQ: Where Nobody Is Accountable
Killings, crime, lack of medical care, collapse of educationàthe list goes on. But with the occupation by U.S.-led forces now into a fifth year, and a supposedly democratic government in place, no one knows who to hold accountable for all that is going wrong.
It is the occupation forces, particularly the United States and Britain, that must be held accountable, many Iraqis say.

¤ Bush administration arranged support for militants attacking Lebanon
In an interview on CNN International's Your World Today, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh explains that the current violence in Lebanon is the result of an attempt by the Lebanese government to crack down on a militant Sunni group, Fatah al-Islam, that it formerly supported.
Last March, Hersh reported that American policy in the Middle East had shifted to opposing Iran, Syria, and their Shia allies at any cost, even if it meant backing hardline Sunni jihadists.

¤ The Surge - Here To Help

¤ Cheney's Iran?
¤ What is happening in Lebanon?

Zimbabwe gets top Comesa post
Posted: Wednesday, May 23, 2007

From Itai Musengeyi in NAIROBI, Kenya
The Herald
May 23, 2007

ZIMBABWE was yesterday elected vice chairman of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa at the start of the trading bloc's 12th summit of heads of state and government here, in another show of confidence in Harare's leadership in regional and international fora.

Zimbabwe will host the 13th summit next year while President Mugabe will deputise host President Mwai Kibaki, who assumed the chairmanship of the Comesa Authority yesterday until the 2008 meeting.

Mr Kibaki took over from President Omar Ismail Guelleh of Djibouti, who now becomes the rapporteur, succeeding Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

The election of Zimbabwe as vice chair of Comesa – Africa's largest trading bloc – comes on the back of its selection to lead the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Economic Development and the executive board of the African Development Bank.

Environment and Tourism Minister Cde Francis Nhema will chair the UN Commission for the next year while the Secretary for Economic Development, Mr Andrew Bvumbe, will be one of the 14 executive directors of the ADB for the next three years based in Tunis, Tunisia.

Speaking to Zimbabwean journalists, Foreign Affairs Minister Cde Simbarashe Mumbengegwi said Zimbabwe was elected into the bureau after offering itself for selection and was chosen as per the rules and procedures of Comesa.

He said Zimbabwe was chosen because it was a long-standing and important member of the trading bloc.

Cde Mumbengegwi said no amount of demonisation by Western countries – which are on a relentless campaign to isolate Zimbabwe – would influence decisions in bodies like Comesa.

"This is a decision of Comesa," he said.

The two-day summit is reviewing regional integration, implementation of ongoing projects and programmes and assessing progress on decisions made at the Djibouti meeting last year.

"The annual Comesa summit is a forum through which we express our solidarity to the regional cause as well as provide political guidance to the ongoing integration process," said President Kibaki in his welcoming remarks at the opening ceremony.

Mr Kibaki said the summit should build on past achievements to propel Comesa to greater heights of integration.

He urged the grouping to intensify dialogue with other regional groups to deepen integration.

"As we collectively position ourselves towards deepening our regional integration, it is imperative that we also intensify our dialogue with other regional economic communities, notably the Southern African Development Community and the East African Community.

"This is of critical importance to all of us by virtue of the prevailing need to harmonise projects and programmes under these regional organisations and also in recognition of the ongoing negotiations with the European Union and the World Trade Organisation," said the Kenyan leader.

Mr Guelleh said Comesa had replaced the EU as the largest market for goods from member states of the trading bloc.

He said this should be strengthened and proposed the establishment of a taskforce to spearhead joint projects among member states.

The summit will address consolidation of the free trade area, progress on Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations with the European Union and the peace and security situation in the bloc, as stability is crucial to trade and investment.

It will explore possibilities of putting in place the customs unions by 2008 and promote regional trade and investment.

Comesa is moving towards transforming the free trade area into a customs union by next year, characterised by deeper integration and the merger of customs territories into a single customs territory.

Under the arrangement, countries would eliminate tariffs and other restrictive regulations on trade to create a more conducive trade environment.

The bloc was founded in 1994 when it replaced the Preferential Trade Area that had been in existence since 1981.

President Mugabe is expected to address the summit today.

He arrived here on Monday night and was met at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport by Zimbabwe's Ambassador to Kenya Mr Kelebert Nkomani, Cde Mumbengegwi, Industry and International Trade Minister Cde Obert Mpofu and Transport and Communications Minister Cde Chris Mushohwe, who were already here to attend ministerial meetings.

Mr Kibaki was last night expected to host a state banquet for the seven leaders in attendance and other dignitaries.

Robert Fisk: A front-row seat for this Lebanese tragedy
Posted: Tuesday, May 22, 2007

There is something obscene about watching the siege of Nahr el-Bared. The old Palestinian camp - home to 30,000 lost souls who will never go "home" - basks in the Mediterranean sunlight beyond a cluster of orange orchards. Soldiers of the Lebanese army, having retaken their positions on the main road north, idle their time aboard their old personnel carriers. And we - we representatives of the world's press - sit equally idly atop a half-built apartment block, basking in the little garden or sipping cups of scalding tea beside the satellite dishes where the titans of television stride by in their blue space suits and helmets.

And then comes the crackle-crackle of rifle fire and a shoal of bullets drifts out of the camp. A Lebanese army tank fires a shell in return and we feel the faint shock wave from the camp. How many are dead? We don't know. How many are wounded? The Red Cross cannot yet enter to find out. We are back at another of those tragic Lebanese stage shows: the siege of Palestinians.
Full Article : independent.co.uk

Plague strikes Denver Zoo
Posted: Tuesday, May 22, 2007

An 8-year-old hooded capuchin monkey at the Denver Zoo was a victim of the bubonic- plague outbreak moving through the City Park neighborhood near the zoo.

Twenty-three animals - mostly tree squirrels - have tested positive for the disease out of 144 examined, said John Pape, epidemiologist with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Twenty animals were found in the City Park area. One specimen each has come from Jefferson County, Arapahoe County and near the old Lowry Air Force Base on the border of Denver and Aurora.
Full Article : denverpost.com

An Investigation of Zimbabwe's Different Path
Posted: Tuesday, May 22, 2007

By Brendan Stone
May 22, 2007

Zimbabwe does not suffer from any single problem. Scholars and Zimbabwean dissidents, such as Kagoro, agree that the country's problems, complex and interlinked, result from multiple causes. According to Kagoro, and supported by comments from Moss and Patrick, Zimbabwe is experiencing "a state of unprecedented crisis," and "there is no doubt that the legitimacy of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is now seriously disputed in many quarters." Mugabe's policies - economic, political, and social - in short, the whole gamut, are "questionable," or "disastrous."

Charges leveled against the Mugabe government are numerous. Politically, scholars refer to authoritarian state practices, the militarization of politics, governmental immunity from prosecution, selective justice, and the absence of rule of law. Economically, the government is criticized for failing to manage the agrarian sector, for corruption, asset stealing, decline of the agricultural export sector, and general mismanagement leading to capital flight and "brain drain." Zimbabweans are said to suffer "war-like trauma" from state-driven political violence directed against political opponents, use of "food as a weapon," government death squads, ethnic cleansing, and even "genocide" against a rebellious region.
Full Article : raceandhistory.com

Zimbabwe: The West never learns
Posted: Monday, May 21, 2007

By Campion Mereki
May 22, 2007

THE call by Canadian opposition Liberal Member of Parliament and Foreign Affairs critic Dr Keith Martin for the expulsion of our ambassador Florence Chideya, deserves to be ignored and condemned with the contempt it deserves.

Dr Martin argues that "the envoy represents a brutal regime".

What is brutality, Dr Martin?

The term is now being used against the Government of Zimbabwe because Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of a faction of the MDC, was beaten by the police for failing to observe the very rule of law they say is deficient in Zimbabwe.

The State merely applied the rule of law on Tsvangirai. What's the hue and cry for?

What about the violence the opposition is perpetrating against the Government and innocent citizens?

Dr Martin and the West are mum on it because they are aiding and abetting it.

They want to remove the Government through force.

Dr Martin is in opposition in Canada and I wonder if the Canadian opposition is perpetrating acts of barbarism against the government.

The world over, democracy entails that one assumes power through the ballot box; anything short of that is unconstitutional.

It is clear Dr Martin's discontent with the Zimbabwean envoy is because she represents a government that will not kow-tow to Western machinations, period.

Can Dr Martin stand up in his country's parliament and demand the expulsion of the American diplomat to Ottawa because the Yankees illegally invaded Iraq and caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and several thousand American troops?

He can't do that because blood is thicker than water.

He can't do that because the Americans are his kith and kin.

Why is Dr Martin and the West concerned about Zimbabwe now? They think they can install their puppets and reverse the land reform programme and take us back to the pre-2000 era.

No way, that is anachronism now, Dr Martin.

That will never happen. What's done in Zimbabwe, Dr Martin, can never be undone. You can grown and howl in your capitals to no avail.

In a bid to impress his long-nosed masters and ensure continued stay in the West, one Andrew Manyewere, purportedly the MDC chairman for Toronto, delivered a petition to the Zimbabwean embassy demanding that President Mugabe and the Government leave office and allow "a return of democracy in Zimbabwe".

What is democracy, Andy?

Did you know it before President Mugabe brought it in 1980?

There is now one-person one-vote in Zimbabwe, in case you did not notice.

Does your concept of democracy merely mean the sacrilege when our erstwhile colonisers did not allow us the vote, let alone an innocent walk down First Street Mall?

Andy, for your own information, my father was arrested during the colonial era for being seen buying clear beer in the city centre.

He was detained at then Salisbury Central Police Station and interrogated about where he had got the money to buy clear beer.

He was told that the little black people earned was not enough to buy clear beer, and that his forte was opaque beer — Chibuku and Rufaro Mhamba.

Is this the democracy you want Zimbabwe to return to?

Andy, if you want to continue staying in Canada, find other means like legalising your stay, or applying for permanent residence and not to concoct nonsense just to placate your hosts.

We are not short of people in Zimbabwe and you can stay in Canada until kingdom come.

Then there were blue lies by one Rob Fox, executive director of Oxfam Canada in Zimbabwe, who said he saw people whose economy can no longer sustain their needs and a nation that is being brutally oppressed politically.

Yes, the economy cannot meet most of the needs of the people because of the economic sanctions that it is under. The West claims they are smart sanctions. Sanctions are never smart; they are the dirtiest of coercive measures and are hurting the people Rob saw.

The sanctions are hurting the economy and the people.

Why is Rob mum on sanctions? He thinks Zimbabweans will revolt against the Government, but they are wiser and know which side of their bread is buttered.

That the nation is being brutally oppressed politically is a figment of his imagination.

We have an opposition party well represented in Parliament. What Rob characterised as brutal political oppression is, in fact, the State's reaction to opposition violence.

Life and property are to be protected.

Where in the world is violence condoned?

'Sicko' spawns Moore fever in Cannes
Posted: Monday, May 21, 2007

In Cannes, Michael Moore is a rock star – mobbed by fans, assailed by cameras and forced to wolf down a plate of pasta between his latest interview and his next live TV appearance.

Moore's documentary "Sicko" – a ferocious attack on the U.S. health care industry – is the talk of the film festival, and he is hot property. Moore caught his breath Monday to tell The Associated Press about the urgent need to reform America's health system, and why he thinks the Bush administration is out to get him.
Full Article : yahoo.com

Venezuela giving $18m for film on epic Haitian slave revolt
Posted: Monday, May 21, 2007

Venezuela giving Danny Glover $18m to direct film on epic slave revolt

Venezuela is to give the American actor Danny Glover almost $18m (£9m) to make a film about a slave uprising in Haiti, with President Hugo Chávez hoping the historical epic will sprinkle Hollywood stardust on his effort to mobilise world public opinion against imperialism and western oppression.

The Venezuelan congress said it would use the proceeds from a recent bond sale with Argentina to finance Glover's biopic of Toussaint Louverture, an iconic figure in the Caribbean who led an 18th-century revolt in Haiti.
Full Article : guardian.co.uk

The US war and occupation of Iraq
Posted: Monday, May 21, 2007

¤ Assessments Made in 2003 Foretold Situation in Iraq
Two intelligence assessments from January 2003 predicted that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and subsequent U.S. occupation of Iraq could lead to internal violence and provide a boost to Islamic extremists and terrorists in the region, according to congressional sources and former intelligence officials familiar with the prewar studies.
The two assessments, titled "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq" and "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq," were produced by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and will be a major part of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's long-awaited Phase II report on prewar intelligence assessments about Iraq. The assessments were delivered to the White House and to congressional intelligence committees before the war started.

¤ Blair's Lies and Linguistic Manipulations
By great good fortune, I studied linguistics at Lancaster University. Indeed, I read the books of Noam Chomsky, many years before he became a good friend of mine; to be honest, when I read his work, I thought Chomsky was dead. What a pleasure, therefore, to discover that he shared my world - and my views on Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara.
But I have to admit a moment of regret this weekend. Lord Blair is going from us. His self-serving memoirs will, of course, remind us of his God-like view of himself (and, heaven spare me, we share the same publishers) but I doubt if Chomsky's "foregrounded elements" will save him. A "foregrounded element" was something unusual, a phrase placed in such a way that it warned us of a lie to come.

¤ No regrets, Blair tells Iraq in final visit
¤ Tony Blair in Iraq: War Criminal Admits Guilt

¤ The US war and occupation of Iraq
¤ Sniper commits suicide after killing 2 in American Moscow
¤ US Army Recruiting Mentally Sick
¤ Iraqi "president" Jalal Talabani flies to US to lose weight
¤ The Iraqi Holocaust - Reconcile This!
¤ 14 Citizens Killed, 75 Wounded on Israeli Offensive on Gaza Strip During 48 Hours
¤ Corporate Media Embraces 9/11 Blowback Theory
¤ State Terrorism and the United States
¤ $6 million to protect Iraqi deputies from attack
¤ Blasts hit Green Zone during Blair visit
¤ A good kicking
¤ The US war and occupation of Iraq
¤ 50 killed as Lebanese army fights Islamists
¤ Secret US plot to kill Al-Sadr

¤ Why America Lost the War in Iraq
Rumsfeld loved Future Combat Systems (FCS), and would list its development as one of his major accomplishments at the end of his six years at the Pentagon, by which time the overall cost of FCS, as estimated by his own office, had climbed to $307.2 billion. But complex as it was, FCS was only one aspect of a truly esoteric concept of war fighting that flourished under his patronage. It was dubbed Effects Based Operations, or EBO, a theory that emerged from the experience of a group of targeteers on the air staff in the first Gulf War.

¤ Bush's Accomplishments
¤ Venezuela Giving Danny Glover $18M to Direct Film on Epic Slave Revolt
¤ Oh Yes, He's Got An Agenda
¤ What Is It That You Fear, Mr. Bush?
¤ International oil companies could receive sole control of Iraq's oil
¤ Why the US Government Is Hated All Over the World
¤ Giuliani a Fake
¤ We're #1! A Nation of Firsts Arms the World

Carter attacks Blair for 'blind' support of US in Iraq
Posted: Saturday, May 19, 2007

Former US president Jimmy Carter on Saturday attacked outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair for his "blind" support of the Iraq war, describing it as a "major tragedy for the world".

In an interview with BBC radio, Carter was asked how he would describe Blair's attitude to US President George W. Bush. He replied: "Abominable. Loyal, blind, apparently subservient.

"I think that the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world."
Full Article : breitbart.com

Tomatoes No Magic Bullet For Prostate Cancer
Posted: Saturday, May 19, 2007

THURSDAY, May 17 (HealthDay News) -- Lycopene, the much-touted cancer fighting antioxidant found in tomatoes and ketchup, is ineffective in preventing prostate cancer, a new study finds.

In fact, higher intake of another antioxidant found in many vegetables, beta-carotene, appears to increase the risk for aggressive prostate cancer, researchers report. Many Americans also take beta-carotene in supplements.
Full Article : yahoo.com

Air bags may harm tall, small people: study
Posted: Saturday, May 19, 2007

For short and tall passengers, safety air bags may pose a serious injury hazard, U.S. researchers say in a study calling for new safety standards to be introduced.

Craig Newgard, an emergency medicine and public health professor at Oregon Health and Science University, studied data from over 65,000 crashes that took place over 11 years and found that air bags were harmful to people smaller than four foot 11 and taller than six foot three.
Full Article : cbc.ca

The Art of Selling War
Posted: Friday, May 18, 2007

¤ Kidnap and torture: new claims of Army war crimes in Iraq
¤ SPIN: The Art of Selling War
¤ Murder In Gaza - Video
¤ The Imposition Of Great Power On Powerless People

¤ Condoleezza Rice-Cooked in Oil?
Now that Paul Wolfowitz has been more or less sidelined, how about some questions for Condoleezza Rice? What’s to ask Condi? Well, for starters about her role in the Oil-for-Food scandal–a role she might have played first in private industry, and then, as President Bush’s National Security Advisor. This week an investigation by the International Herald Tribune and the Italian business daily Il Sole 24 Ore revealed that Total, France’s largest company, indirectly paid up to $1 million dollars in illegal surcharges to Saddam’s regime on oil it bought from Iraq from 2000 to 2002.

¤ The British media does not do responsibility. It does stories

¤ Now, I Am Become Death, The Destroyer of Worlds
The destructive force of Hurricane Bush continues to roll across the countryside, leaving in its wake devastation worthy of a Cormac McCarthy novel.
And still, a third of all Americans think this guy is doing well in his job. What’s up with these people? Are they learned students of philosophy who crave the nihilism of their intellectual hero, Friedrich Nietzsche? Are they a secret army of Charles Lindbergh clones, trained to believe that fascism is pretty good stuff? Was Joseph McCarthy even more right than he knew, after all, and America is actually riddled with a hundred million spies devoted to its destruction?
Who knows. What is clear is that the literal and figurative stacks of bodies continue to pile up unabated. At this rate it is no small question as to who will be left around to bury the dead once the killing stops.

¤ Blair tipped to be World Bank president as disgraced Wolfowitz resigns
Tony Blair may be asked to head the World Bank after its president quit in a sleaze row.
One of America’s top economists today revealed that the retiring prime minister is being considered as a replacement for disgraced Paul Wolfowitz.

¤ We Bought An Alexa Ranking
¤ Venezuela is None of our Business!

¤ The Iraq War: Going, Going...
How should the American people interpret the extraordinary fact that George W. Bush couldn’t convince a single retired four-star general to sign up as the new "war czar" for coordinating the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan – and finally had to settle for an active-duty three-star general who had opposed Bush’s "surge" in Iraq?
After an embarrassing failure to convince at least five former generals, including one of the original "surge" architects, retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, to take the new high-powered job, Bush finally gave the "war czar" role to Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, a known critic of Bush’s troop escalation in Iraq

¤ 13 die in explosion, clashes in India
¤ When Does Genocide Purify?
¤ Of Snoops and Dupes

US soldiers rape and kill innocent Iraqis
Posted: Thursday, May 17, 2007

¤ Starving the poor
The chaos that derives from the so-called international order can be painful if you are on the receiving end of the power that determines that order’s structure. Even tortillas come into play in the ungrand scheme of things. Recently, in many regions of Mexico, tortilla prices jumped by more than 50 per cent.
In January, in Mexico City, tens of thousands of workers and farmers rallied in the Zocalo, the city’s central square, to protest the skyrocketing cost of tortillas.
In response, the government of President Felipe Calderon cut a deal with Mexican producers and retailers to limit the price of tortillas and corn flour, very likely a temporary expedient.

¤ Iraq is on the verge of collapse
Iraq's government has lost control of vast areas to powerful local factions and the country is on the verge of collapse and fragmentation, a leading British think-tank said on Thursday.
Chatham House also said there was not one civil war in Iraq, but "several civil wars" between rival communities, and accused Iraq's main neighbours -- Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey -- of having reasons "for seeing the instability there continue".
"It can be argued that Iraq is on the verge of being a failed state which faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation," it said in a report.

¤ IDF troops, tanks enter Gaza; 6 dead, including 4 Hamas men, in IAF strikes
¤ Wolfowitz crisis challenges U.S. leadership
¤ Democracy inaction
¤ Symbols
¤ Car bomb kills 32 in Iraq

¤ The 'rules' of American capitalism
Capitalism in America is covertly governed by three unwritten rules. The first two rules work in tandem: 1). Treat others the way you would NOT want to be treated; 2). Always measure the value of human beings by your self-interest, not theirs.

¤ The Democrats and the "Human Shields" Myth
¤ The Iraqi Memoir Industry

¤ US soldiers rape and kill innocent Iraqis
A U.S. soldier under court-martial at a Kentucky military base broke down in tears on Wednesday as he described how he and others planned the rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, murdered along with her family. Sgt. Paul Cortez, 24, is the second U.S. soldier to plead guilty to raping the girl and killing her and her family in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, in March 2006. The soldiers then poured kerosene on the girl's body and lit her on fire in an attempt to cover up the crime.

¤ General Strike Paralyzes Pakistan
¤ Pope Rat in Brazil
¤ "Be Careful What You Say"
¤ Casualties Rise In Iraq While U.S. Dithers

¤ Iraq: The Web of Lies
Who knows what to believe about the bloody catastrophe that is Iraq? Faced with the serial deceptions of Richard Cheney and George W. Bush, layer upon layer, we tend to become inured. We do know now that what we were told back then by the White House was hogwash. Yes, I am referring, once more, to the run-up, to the origins, and to the actual reason for the fraudulent enterprise, resulting in a full-blown fiasco, code-named "Operation Iraqi Freedom". This is not beating a dead horse.

¤ Clash of Hope and Fear as Venezuela Seizes Land
¤ Suddenly we need a "War Czar"?

¤ Wolfowitz resigning from World Bank
President Paul Wolfowitz will resign at the end of June, he and the bank said late Thursday, ending his long fight to survive pressure for his ouster over the generous compensation he arranged for his girlfriend. His departure ends a two-year run at the development bank that was marked by controversy from the start, given his previous role as a major architect of the Iraq war when he served as the No. 2 official at the Pentagon.

Operation Iraq Forever
Posted: Wednesday, May 16, 2007

¤ Nigerian charade exposes West's double standards
¤ Cheney Sabotages Talks with Tehran
¤ Preaching Hate Farewell, Falwell ...

¤ Black Labor and the Big Mission
For Black workers, the Bush regime's six-year, blitzkrieg-like offensive against the last vestiges of the social contract is not a totally unfamiliar experience - African Americans have never been more than partially covered by the U.S. social contract, which has at any rate always been tissue-thin and non-binding on the rich. Today, all pretense of social reciprocity and fairness is being systematically eliminated as a matter of boardroom and public policy, a prerequisite of the corporate-engineered global Race to the Bottom.

¤ Jerry Falwell Has Died and Gone To Hell

¤ Chalabi Speaks

¤ Who's a Patriot,
Who's an Oppressor?
If 500 years from now American soldiers are still on patrol in Iraq, they won't be called Iraq's "liberators." After five centuries of armed occupation, it would be hard to describe them as anything other than an oppressive imperial force. And Iraqis who attack U.S. troops in 2507 will no longer be "terrorists" in anyone's eyes. What could one call them but patriots, trying to rid their nation of invaders?
The question we Americans have to ask ourselves is: At what point do our soldiers become occupiers and those fighting against them become patriots? Four years? Twenty years? One hundred years?

¤ The Terrorist We Tolerate
LIKE PIRATES, terrorists are supposedly hostis humani generis — the "enemy of all mankind." So why is the Bush administration letting one of the world's most notorious terrorists stroll freely around the United States?
I'm talking about a man who was — until 9/11 — perhaps the most successful terrorist in the Western Hemisphere. He's believed to have masterminded a 1976 plot to blow up a civilian airliner, killing all 73 people on board, including teenage members of Cuba's national fencing team. He's admitted to pulling off a series of 1997 bombings aimed at tourist hotels and nightspots. Today, he's living illegally in the United States, but senior members of the Bush administration — the very guys who declared war on terror just a few short years ago — don't seem terribly bothered.
I'm talking about Luis Posada Carriles. That's not a household name for most U.S. citizens, but for many in Latin America, Posada is as reviled as Osama bin Laden is in the United States.

¤ So Iran Gets Nukes. So What?

¤ 19,000 Iraqis Disappear Into U.S.-Run Prisons
Last summer, the Associated Press and New York Times each did stories on the detention facilities operated by the United States inside of Iraq. The conclusions of each investigation were roughly the same. At the time, they noted roughly 14,000 Iraqis were being held in a "legal vacuum." The detention facilities were chaotic, a large portion of the persons held were taken in on sweeps through their neighborhoods and were suspected and charged with nothing. No trials occur, but the detainees languish often for many months – in some cases for more than a year. "They may not be enemies when they enter these prisons," one Army officer told me, "but you can count on it that they are insurgent sympathizers by the time they leave."

¤ Iraq - too risky for Prince, just right for Paupers
¤ Ending the Empire
¤ The FDA Has Blood on Its Hands
¤ Bush's royal crush
¤ Just Shut Up and Listen to Your Enemy

¤ Cancer: The good news

¤ Starving The Poor
The chaos that derives from the so-called international order can be painful if you are on the receiving end of the power that determines that order's structure. Even tortillas come into play in the ungrand scheme of things. Recently, in many regions of Mexico, tortilla prices jumped by more than 50 per cent.
In January, in Mexico City, tens of thousands of workers and farmers rallied in the Zocalo, the city's central square, to protest the skyrocketing cost of tortillas.
In response, the government of President Felipe Calderon cut a deal with Mexican producers and retailers to limit the price of tortillas and corn flour, very likely a temporary expedient.

¤ Four-letter Word for Tenet: Liar
Mercifully, the flurry of media coverage of former CIA director George Tenet hawking his memoir, "At the Center of the Storm," has abated. Buffeted by those on both right and left who see through his lame attempt at self-justification, Tenet probably now wishes he had opted to just fade away, as old soldiers used to do.
He listened instead to his old PR buddy and "co-author" Bill Harlow who failed miserably in trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. By this point, they may be having second thoughts. But, hey, the $4 million advance is a tidy sum, even when split two ways. Aside from the money, what else could they have been thinking?
Tenet's book is a self-indictment for the crimes with which Socrates was charged: making the worse cause appear the better, and corrupting the youth.

¤ Operation Iraq Forever
The occupation of Iraq, still illegal and immoral by any sense of human understanding, has now run into its fourth bloody and horrific year, becoming a quagmire for America and a vast killing field for Iraqis. Indeed, for Iraqis, America's invasion and subsequent occupation has been and will continue to be one massive war crime, an onslaught of criminality against humanity not seen since World War Two. It is they, the Iraqi people, who have undergone tremendous hardship, and it is they who will continue to suffer in horrific ways, due to the lunacy and delusions of America's miscreant leaders. Indeed, hell on Earth has been imported into Iraq without so much as a care, concern or bother from the American people, without so much as a protest or two by the world entire.

¤ US health system ranks last compared to other countries: studies
¤ Chomsky Takes on the World (Bank)
¤ Rank Order - Current account balance

¤ Translation and propaganda
With just a bit of spin, the kids' show in question was turned from merely propagandistic to verging on Bond-villain-esque:
* nqawim, "we will resist", is rendered as "we will fight";
* bit?uxxuna l-yahud "the Jews shoot us", is rendered as "we will kill the Jews" (!);
* 'astašhid "I will be a martyr" as "I will commit martyrdom" (I don't think that's even an English expression, but never mind);
* 'ustadiyyat al-`alam, literally "professorship of the world" (in context, they clearly mean being at the intellectual forefront of the world), is rendered as "masters of the world".

¤ Maybe it's time to stop lying, Sir Bremer
Thank God who forced the occupation forces ugly figures to blame each other in public for the disastrous mistakes they encountered during the "Bringing Democracy Play" they acted here in Iraq. The play which caused all the destructions we are suffering from today.
Thank God again for making them admit their loss in the war they tried to fool the world about to end with a scene filled with the sound of them blaming each other for doing so or so mistakes here or there in our beloved country just to whiten their faces which turned black with the lies aroused during this occupation and started to darken even more and more each day.

Nigerian charade exposes West's double standards
Posted: Wednesday, May 16, 2007

By Mukanya Makwira
May 16, 2007
The Herald

OUTGOING Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo must be a very worried man as he ponders how to extricate himself from the mess he presided over.

The man who, like the proverbial cat, had managed to live nine lives due to his cunning ability to reinvent himself, must be cursing himself over the turn of events in the "democracy" under his stewardship.

The recent "elections" in Nigerian, apart from the shambolic way in which they were held, also exposed the West's naked hypocrisy in the extent to which they can lower the bar in order to suit their ends.

Let it be emphasised that Africa does not need outsiders to authenticate its elections. Even as he awakened from his slumber, the embattled Obasanjo acknowledged that elections cannot be judged using the European barometer.

This exposed his folly for playing to the Western gallery at the height of Zimbabwe's land reform programme. Those who tried to knock some sense into his head must have appeared like fools, but now as the sun sets on Obasanjo's tenure, he is undoubtedly seeing the light.

For how could the West dignify a process which Obasanjo himself grudgingly condemned?

Like the average African who has become accustomed to Nollyhood through exposure to Nigerian movies, the recent Nigerian elections could have passed for the Tom and Jerry rumblings, minus the violence, of course.

It was in Nigeria, albeit with the complicity of the West, that an election was openly rigged, disenfranchising millions of voters amid widespread violence.

One of the key contestants, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, was only given the green light to contest with only 72 hours left before the elections. Thus, he was literally given three days to sell his candidature to over 60 million voters, a feat that could easily have got him into the Guinness Book of Records had he won.

After facing an unexpected revolt from his inner circle in his bid to bend the rules to run for a third term, Obasanjo opted to settle scores with his deputy by sabotaging his bid to succeed him.

Obasanjo threw away all democratic etiquette to throw spanners into the opposition campaign, and ensuring in the process that his hand-picked successor, the little known Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, held sway.

With vast oil resources at his disposal and with his country being a major exporter of this much-needed resource to the Western world, who could raise a finger at the goings-on?

Talk is cheap, the bespectacled leader can today testify. Who can forget his globetrotting ostensibly on Commonwealth business (read British service) as Zimbabwe was facing increasing Western pressure in the wake of the land reform programme?

It was during Obasanjo's tenure as chair of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting that punitive sanctions were imposed on Zimbabwe amid allegations that our elections had not been free and fair.

What had not been clear to him was that to the West, as the Nigerian case exemplifies, free and fair elections can only be said to have taken place provided Western interests are secured.

The British sought a reversal of the land reform programme, hence their explosive anger when their puppet Morgan Tsvangirai lost.

To the West, the concept of free and fair elections is interpreted within the context of safeguarding their interests in former colonies. With the prevailing global political climate having moved away from colonialism, the West has sought to promote neo-colonial thinking across the world in order to maintain influence over developing world resources.

Thus, Nigerians had to vote with their blood, over 200 perishing, the elections still being applauded for reflecting the wishes of the people. Which people, the dead or European masters, one might ask?

The so-called policemen of the world will not shy away from validating any political outcome that would install their proteges in power. What concerns them is the smooth flow of British Petroleum, Shell and Exxon oilfields from the Niger Delta. They have sometimes in history gone on to support undemocratic means of unseating legitimately elected governments in order to satisfy their resource exploitation agenda.

Take, for example, the issue of Venezuela. In 2002, the United States of America and its allies shamelessly supported a botched-up coup against the sitting government of Hugo Chavez.

Credibility of an election to the West lies in its outcome, never mind the process. If their surrogate wins, by whatever means, there is no rigging. Has anybody ever wondered the silence of these "champions of democracy" whenever the opposition won some constituencies?

The opposition has participated in the elections which have seen them having a foothold in virtually all the urban centres under the very electoral regulations which have been said to be defective by our detractors.

So nauseating was the Nigerian process and outcome that even senior political figures within the ruling party could not stomach it. The Senate president, a ruling People's Democratic Party member, publicly disowned the process, a stance that got him a rebuke and threats of imprisonment from the government.

The Nigerian elections probably made modern history by becoming the first to be held under classroom regulations where pieces of paper, no serial numbers and all were used to elect class monitors. The only difference was that the monitor being chosen this time was for a class of about 120 million citizens.

In what could be seen as largely an afterthought, probably instigated by the refusal of the majority of world leaders to authenticate the poll, the European Union issued a thinly-veiled statement on the election process. The statement expressed disappointment with the conduct of the elections, but true to their intentions, went on to embrace the president-elect so that they could help the country to "overcome post-election difficulties".

To them, that millions were not given the chance to vote was immaterial. With oil prices on the surge following the bold move by Chavez to nationalise Venezuelan oilfields, I bet they would not have minded even if the Nigerians had voted for a donkey. What would happen to the petrodollars from the oil sales would be another issue all together.

The Nigerian embassies in Western capitals must be very busy indeed at the moment. Their various leaders are probably jostling for the limited tickets for the inauguration of the new president. They are very much interested in establishing themselves with the new leader so not as to escape the oil benefits.

They would want to witness the first civilian transfer of power in Nigeria on the day Obasanjo is going to hand over a blood-soaked baton stick to his successor.

The transition would be a "feat" achieved at the cost of 200 lives.

Who says the military were worse transgressors? Talk of double standards.

Cheney Sabotages Talks with Tehran
Posted: Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Leave it to Dick Cheney to dash hopes for any cooler heads to prevail between Washington and Tehran. Remember, it was Cheney who did everything in his power to hype the Iraq War and scuttle any possibility of a diplomatic solution prior to that conflict. Now he's doing the same with Iran. Even as the State Department and the National Security Council are at least exploring the possibility of talking with Tehran, the Vice President of the United States, in typical fashion, is sabotaging that effort.
Full Article : commondreams.org

TV evangelist Jerry Falwell dies at 73
Posted: Tuesday, May 15, 2007

The Rev. Jerry Falwell collapsed at his campus office and died Tuesday after a career in which the evangelist used the power of television to transform the religious right into a mighty force in American politics. He was 73.
Full Article : news.yahoo.com

The Sound of Silence
Posted: Tuesday, May 15, 2007

¤ It Is Not Only God That Will Be Blair's Judge...
Tony Blair's opposition to an immediate ceasefire in the Lebanon war last summer precipitated his downfall. Now that he has announced the date of his departure from Downing Street, his entire Middle East record needs to be placed under an uncompromising lens.

¤ Zimbabwe: Howard's decision disgusting

¤ Patrol boat 'rammed' escaping Haitians
Survivors of a capsizing that killed at least 61 Haitian migrants said today that crewmen aboard a Turks and Caicos patrol boat had towed them into deeper water and abandoned them after their vessel overturned.
"They just left us out there," said Dona Daniel, 23, one of a half-dozen survivors who were interviewed by The Associated Press immediately after being repatriated to Haiti from the nearby British territory. The other Haitians corroborated Daniel's account of the tragedy in the pre-dawn hours of Friday

¤ Explosion kills 24 in Peshawar
¤ Angry Wolfowitz in four-letter tirade
¤ At least 16 killed in Hamas-Fatah fighting
¤ Bush Shifts Iraq Burden Onto General
¤ America's long Iraq nightmare

¤ US blocks soldiers from websites
The US military is blocking troops from using certain websites for sharing photos, video clips and messages.
A memo from General BB Bell, US Forces Korea commander, says use of YouTube, MySpace and 11 other popular sites via US military portals will be blocked.

The US says the use is taking up too much bandwidth and slows down the military's computer system.

¤ Two States, One State and Snake Oil

¤ Kidnapping in Youssufiyah
Even by Iraqi standards Youssufiyah is a violent place. At first sight the well-watered farmland and groves of date palms look attractively green but then you notice the bullet-riddled hulks of cars. Iraqi soldiers and police appear more than usually frightened. The streets of the ramshackle and grimy town conveys a sense of menace.

¤ How the US Set Iraq on Fire
¤ Iraq Oil Workers Strike to Stop Privatization
¤ Big Pharma Commits the Crime, Doesn’t Do the Time
¤ Rosie Sounds Off On WTC Demolition

¤ Icarus Blair
The noted British parliamentarian Enoch Powell famously observed, “all political careers end in failure.” Never has Powell’s grim maxim been more poignantly demonstrated than in Tony Blair’s announcement last week that he will resign at the end of June as Britain’s prime minister.
Blair's decade in office was marked by many successes and often demonstrated capable political stewardship. But, in the end, his meteoric political career has ended in defeat and scorn. Call it Saddam's curse.

¤ Dick Cheney Dubbed Lord of the Lies
¤ Dubai, Halliburton, Cheney, Iran, and Sexual Slavery
¤ Document details 'US' plan to sink Hamas
¤ Dialoguing with Baghdad: Lessons We Learned

¤ Setting the Stage for Turmoil in Caracas
First used in Serbia in 2000, Washington has now perfected a new imperial strategy to maintain their supremacy around the globe. Whereas military invasions and installing dictatorships have traditionally been the way to control foreign populations and keep them out of the way of business, the U.S. government has now developed a new strategy that is not so messy or brutal, and much more sleek; so sleek, in fact, that it's almost invisible.
It was so invisible in Serbia that no one seemed to notice in 2000 when a regime was toppled, the country was opened to massive privatization, and huge public-sector industries, businesses, and natural resources fell into the hands of U.S. and multinational corporations. Likewise, few have noticed as countries in the former Soviet-bloc have recently been victims of the same strategy, with the exact same results.

¤ America's Child Soldier Problem
Congratulations: You have lived long enough to cringe at the bad decisions you were seduced, dared, bullied, inspired or stoned enough to make as a teenager.

Thousands of America's children, however, are not so lucky. Almost 600,000 of America's 1 million active and reserve soldiers enlisted as teens. The military lures these physiologically immature kids with a PR machine that would make Joe Camel proud.

¤ They Hate Us For Our Hypocrisy
The Bush administration says that its zero-tolerance policy against terrorism applies to all suspected evildoers, not just Muslims, and that its zero-tolerance policy against Cuba is a principled position, not just an exercise in pandering to the implacable anti-Castro exiles in Miami. On both counts, evidence suggests otherwise.

The fact is that Luis Posada Carriles, an accused terrorist who entered the United States illegally and was taken into custody by authorities, is not being kept in solitary confinement and dragged out for occasional waterboarding. As of this writing, he is a free man.

¤ Gunmen execute 'traitors' in Iraqi market
¤ Switzerland investigating BAE over money laundering
¤ The Dark History Of Medical Experimentation On Black Americans From Colonial Times To The Present
¤ The Sound of Silence
¤ How MEMRI fooled the U.S Media with its Mickey Mouse Translation

It Is Not Only God That Will Be Blair's Judge...
Posted: Tuesday, May 15, 2007

His Cravenly Pro-US Policy on The Middle East Misunderstood Bush’s Real Agenda and Resulted In Catastrophic Failure

by Avi Shlaim

Tony Blair's opposition to an immediate ceasefire in the Lebanon war last summer precipitated his downfall. Now that he has announced the date of his departure from Downing Street, his entire Middle East record needs to be placed under an uncompromising lens.

Blair came to office with no experience of, and virtually no interest in, foreign affairs, and ended by taking this country to war five times. Blair boasts that his foreign policy was guided by the doctrine of liberal interventionism. But the war in Iraq is the antithesis of liberal intervention. It is an illegal, immoral and unnecessary war, a war undertaken on a false prospectus and without sanction from the UN.

Blair's entire record in the Middle East is one of catastrophic failure. He used to portray Britain as a bridge between the two sides of the Atlantic. By siding with America against Europe on Iraq, however, he helped to destroy the bridge. Preserving the special relationship with America was the be all and end all of Blair's foreign policy. He presumably supported the Bush administration over Iraq in the hope of exercising influence on its policy. Yet there is no evidence that he exercised influence on any significant policy issue. His support for the neoconservative agenda on Iraq was uncritical and unconditional.
Full Article : commondreams.org

Zimbabwe: Howard's decision disgusting
Posted: Tuesday, May 15, 2007

The Herald

DISGUSTING is the only word we can find to describe the decision by Australian prime minister John Howard to bar his country's cricket team from touring Zimbabwe.

The reasons he gave to justify his actions – alleged human rights abuses and the deteriorating economic situation in Zimbabwe that he claims would endanger his team – do not fool anyone especially in light of Zimbabwe's successful hosting of the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair and the Harare International Festival of the Arts.

We all know how atrocious Australia's human rights record is to be fooled by Howard's pretensions that he is a stickler for these noble values.

One only has to look at what the Australian forces are doing in Iraq to know that the Howard administration is a stranger to human rights and democracy.

The real reason for Howard's strong-arm tactics is that he, along with his allies, has invested a lot in propaganda campaigns to cast Zimbabwe as a lawless country where visitors are mauled on arrival. Now those lies would have been exposed had the Australian XI toured and managed to play all their three matches without incident.

More so, being world champions, the team would have attracted a lot of international media attention with disastrous consequences for the propaganda campaign.

This is why Howard is prepared to fork out US$2million in fines to the International Cricket Council so that he can prevent the world from knowing the truth about Zimbabwe.

To him it's just another cheque to the propaganda campaign.

It is no coincidence that the US State Department also released a travel warning at almost the same time that Howard was making his scandalous allegations against Zimbabwe.

In the travel warning, the State Department warned American citizens of alleged security concerns in Zimbabwe; which travel warning it said, would be in place until the end of July this year.

What is more, the Australian foreign ministry also revealed that it was increasing its funding to opposition groups in Zimbabwe with the foreign minister, Alexander Downer, saying his government had released A$4 million over and above the A$6 million which was disbursed last month.

Another A$12 million would be made available in the 2007-2008 financial year.

Downer clearly admitted that the money would go towards sponsoring opposition activities, and we all saw what opposition groups did with the funding in February when they hired hoodlums to wreak havoc to justify allegations of anarchy in Zimbabwe.

The ban and the funding are closely related with the one used to justify the other.

This is why Howard's politicisation of cricket should be condemned by all progressive people the world over.

Apart from exposing the myth that Western sanctions are targeted at top Government officials, Howard's actions expose the desperation gripping the regime change circles, all the more reason why the Government should remain resolute.

Victory is certain.

Patrol boat 'rammed' escaping Haitians
Posted: Monday, May 14, 2007

Survivors of a capsizing that killed at least 61 Haitian migrants said today that crewmen aboard a Turks and Caicos patrol boat had towed them into deeper water and abandoned them after their vessel overturned.

"They just left us out there," said Dona Daniel, 23, one of a half-dozen survivors who were interviewed by The Associated Press immediately after being repatriated to Haiti from the nearby British territory. The other Haitians corroborated Daniel's account of the tragedy in the pre-dawn hours of Friday.

They said their sailboat, loaded with an estimated 160 people, was minutes away from shore on one of the Turks and Caicos islands when the patrol boat rammed them, towed the migrant boat away from land and then refused to take the migrants on board when their vessel capsized.

Lovderson Nacon, 19, said many of the migrants didn't know how to swim and were screaming in the darkness, "God help me!"
Full Article : theage.com.au

Haitian immigrants demand justice in boat disaster off Turks and Caicos

Boat rammed, say Haiti survivors
Survivors of a capsizing in which 61 Haitian migrants died have said that their vessel was rammed by a patrol boat from the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Haitian Survivors Say Officials Left Them For Dead
The Haitians said their sailboat, loaded with an estimated 160 people, was minutes away from the shore of Providenciales, one of the Turks and Caicos Islands, on May 4 when the patrol boat rammed them in the predawn darkness.

Haitian migrants 'angry and revolted' at alleged boat ramming off Turks and Caicos
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: Survivors of the worst sea disaster to hit Haitian migrants in years were "angry and revolted" Wednesday as they accused a Turks and Caicos vessel of ramming their crowded sailboat twice before it capsized, killing 61 in shark-filled waters, a senior Haitian official said.

Reports about the alleged involvement of the Turks and Caicos boat has taken days to come out because the 78 survivors are locked in a jail-like detention center and barred from speaking to the media.

Iraq's children between despair and death
Posted: Sunday, May 13, 2007

¤ In Gulf, Cheney warns Iran of U.S. resolve
¤ Zimbabwe will overcome: Ambassador
¤ Three US Newspapers Reverse Stand on Death Penalty
¤ Egyptians (Africa), Not Greeks, Were True Fathers Of Medicine
¤ Karachi death toll rises to 40

¤ The Kissinger Connection
You may have noticed that George Tenet prefers to talk about the aftermath of "Operation Iraqi Freedom", to wit, the U.S. occupation and the Iraqi insurgency. He admits that the CIA did get some things wrong—such as certifying the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when, in fact, those weapons and stockpiles had been destroyed years before, under UN supervision. In the next breath, Tenet takes pride that the CIA began warning the Administration early on about the insurgency. He deeply regrets that the White House, the National Security Council, and the Pentagon were not interested, and ignored the warnings.

¤ Goodbye, Baghdad
¤ The Madness of the War Profiteering in Iraq
¤ Our need for beauty in the midst of war

¤ Samarra Boiling Over US Curfews
Locked at homes for days by the frequent US-slapped daylight curfews with no water and only sporadic electricity; residents of Samarra are growing angry at the US occupation forces, saying they have turned their lives into a living nightmare.
"Two days. And we can't leave the house to buy anything," an old Iraqi man shouted at a group of approaching US soldiers, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP) Saturday, May 12

¤ Residents vow to destroy U.S.-constructed sectarian walls
The residents of Adhamiya have vowed to destroy the walls U.S. troops are constructing to separate Baghdad neighborhoods on sectarian grounds.
"We shall destroy the walls the notorious occupation is constructing and keep our city an integral part of Iraq," a statement by a newly formed resistance group said.
The statement emailed to the newspaper, said the wall separating Adhamiya from the rest of Baghdad "must be brought down" and this will be "achieved through the power and muscles of all the residents of Baghdad."

¤ "The Color of Blood, the Color of Resistance, the Color of Iraq."
¤ Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, Q.C., : 'Good Riddance ...'

¤ Iraq's children between despair and death
The plight of Iraq's children began well before the March 2003 invasion. If you raise your head a tad and look at the intro to this blog, you will see Albright's famous statements that killing half a million Iraqi children is insignificant when compared to the zealous pursuit of foreign policy. (US Secretary of State Madeline Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it.")
That was more than 10 years ago and today the statement still holds true.
Iraq's children not only suffer from malnutrition but have also exhibited severe trauma-based disorders because of the daily violence that has gripped the country since the great war of liberation and democracy.

¤ Billions in Oil Missing in Iraq, U.S. Study Says
Between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq’s declared oil production over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling, according to a draft American government report.

Using an average of $50 a barrel, the report said the discrepancy was valued at $5 million to $15 million daily.

¤ Brace for a China-led chill
¤ Ten Ways Bush Resembles History's Tyrants
¤ Censored! ...News in America Today

¤ Bush and the Media: Playing Us for Fools
The idiot American media are giving Bush another free pass, running stories now that the U.S. is "willing" to talk with Iran, but only about how to calm down the Iraq conflict.
What a pathetic joke!
How can anybody take this claim from the White House that it is trying to negotiate with Iran about Iraq seriously, when the U.S. is simultaneously threatening Iran with a catastrophic attack?

¤ Iran to talk with US over Iraq

¤ Russia clinches deal on new Caspian gas pipeline
The leaders of Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan agreed on Saturday to build a new natural gas pipeline around the Caspian Sea, a move that bolsters Russia's dominance over the region's gas exports.

The new pipeline and an accompanying deal to upgrade existing Soviet-era infrastructure deliver a blow to U.S., European and Chinese hopes of prising the flow of Central Asian gas out of Russian hands.

¤ Auctioning Journalistic Integrity
¤ Outsourcing the War
¤ Bombs Over Cambodia: New Light on US Air War
¤ Blair’s Fatal Attraction
¤ We’re Not Number One (Not Even Close)
¤ Bloodshed Rises in Iraq as US Demands ‘Victory’
¤ Inside Colombia's Flower Industry
¤ War vs. Democracy
¤ Bush's Pacification Plan Has Failed; It Will be a Long War
¤ Who are the Merchants of Fear?
¤ To understand political violence, we must first recognise its potency
¤ 27 killed, dozens wounded as Pakistan's crisis erupts
¤ Iraq's children between despair and death

Egyptians, not Greeks were true fathers of medicine
Posted: Sunday, May 13, 2007

by Staff Writers
Manchester, UK (SPX) May 11, 2007
Source: University of Manchester

Scientists examining documents dating back 3,500 years say they have found proof that the origins of modern medicine lie in ancient Egypt and not with Hippocrates and the Greeks.

The research team from the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at The University of Manchester discovered the evidence in medical papyri written in 1,500BC – 1,000 years before Hippocrates was born.

"Classical scholars have always considered the ancient Greeks, particularly Hippocrates, as being the fathers of medicine but our findings suggest that the ancient Egyptians were practising a credible form of pharmacy and medicine much earlier," said Dr Jackie Campbell.

"When we compared the ancient remedies against modern pharmaceutical protocols and standards, we found the prescriptions in the ancient documents not only compared with pharmaceutical preparations of today but that many of the remedies had therapeutic merit."

The medical documents, which were first discovered in the mid-19th century, showed that ancient Egyptian physicians treated wounds with honey, resins and metals known to be antimicrobial.

The team also discovered prescriptions for laxatives of castor oil and colocynth and bulk laxatives of figs and bran. Other references show that colic was treated with hyoscyamus, which is still used today, and that cumin and coriander were used as intestinal carminatives.

Further evidence showed that musculo-skeletal disorders were treated with rubefacients to stimulate blood flow and poultices to warm and soothe. They used celery and saffron for rheumatism, which are currently topics of pharmaceutical research, and pomegranate was used to eradicate tapeworms, a remedy that remained in clinical use until 50 years ago.

"Many of the ancient remedies we discovered survived into the 20th century and, indeed, some remain in use today, albeit that the active component is now produced synthetically," said Dr Campbell.

"Other ingredients endure and acacia is still used in cough remedies while aloes forms a basis to soothe and heal skin conditions."

Fellow researcher Dr Ryan Metcalfe is now developing genetic techniques to investigate the medicinal plants of ancient Egypt. He has designed his research to determine which modern species the ancient botanical samples are most related to.

"This may allow us to determine a likely point of origin for the plant while providing additional evidence for the trade routes, purposeful cultivation, trade centres or places of treatment," said Dr Metcalfe.

"The work is inextricably linked to state-of-the-art chemical analyses used by my colleague Judith Seath, who specialises in the essential oils and resins used by the ancient Egyptians."

Professor Rosalie David, Director of the KNH Centre, said: "These results are very significant and show that the ancient Egyptians were practising a credible form of pharmacy long before the Greeks.

"Our research is continuing on a genetic, chemical and comparative basis to compare the medicinal plants of ancient Egypt with modern species and to investigate similarities between the traditional remedies of North Africa with the remedies used by their ancestors of 1,500 BC."

Reprinted from:
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-05/uom-eng050907.php

In Gulf, Cheney warns Iran of U.S. resolve
Posted: Saturday, May 12, 2007

BRUSSELS: Vice President Dick Cheney used the deck of an American aircraft carrier just 240 kilometers off Iran's coast as the backdrop Friday to warn the country that the United States was prepared to use its naval power to keep Tehran from disrupting oil routes or "gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region."

Little of what Cheney said in the cavernous hangar bay of the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis, one of two carriers whose strike groups are now in the Gulf, was new. Each individual line had, in some form, been said before, at various points in the four-year-long nuclear standoff with Iran, and during the increasingly tense arguments over whether Iran is aiding the insurgents in Iraq.
Full Article : iht.com

Three US Newspapers Reverse Stand on Death Penalty
Posted: Saturday, May 12, 2007

WASHINGTON – Three established U.S. newspapers, two of them among the 10 largest in the country, in three different states have in the past weeks abandoned their century-old support of the death penalty and become passionate advocates of a ban on state-sponsored killing.

The newspapers – the Chicago Tribune in Illinois, the smaller Sentinel in Pennsylvania and the Dallas Morning News in Texas – announced their change of heart in strongly-argued editorials following a series of investigative articles highlighting the flaws in the death penalty system in their states and country.

"I think in a word it's the issue of innocence that has brought about these editorials," Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told IPS. "The weight of evidence in death penalty cases as seen and confirmed in DNA testing has made the death penalty too risky."
Full Article : commondreams.org

Zimbabwe will overcome: Ambassador
Posted: Saturday, May 12, 2007

The Herald

TANZANIA has been at the centre of efforts to mediate the dispute between Harare and London with President Mugabe choosing former Tanzanian president Mr Benjamin Mkapa as mediator. At the end of March Sadc heads of state and government met in Tanzania to discuss the peace and security situation in the region, and at the end of the extra-ordinary summit they came up with a historic resolution on Zimbabwe. In their communiqué, Sadc leaders reaffirmed their solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe and the legitimacy of President Mugabe, condemned the illegal Western sanctions and urged Britain to honour its colonial obligations, among other things. The Herald caught up with Tanzanian Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mr Adadi Rajabu – whose country chairs the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security – to discuss this and other things.

QUESTION: Ambassador your country recently celebrated its 43rd Union Anniversary, 43 years since the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar on April 26 1964, some of our readers may not know, can you briefly tell them what necessitated the union and what the situation was like before Tanzania came into being?

ANSWER: Tanganyika got its independence from Britain on December 9 1961 under the leadership of Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere while in Zanzibar, the people's revolution against sultanate took place on January 12 1964 under the leadership of Mzee Abeid Amani Karume. After the formation of the new Afro-Shirazi party government of the People's Republic of Zanzibar, the Tanganyika and Zanzibar leaders met to discuss Union between the two countries with a view to restore, both officially and constitutionally, the fraternity and unity which had existed between the peoples of the two counties before the colonial era. The countries then united on April 26, 1964.

Q: How different was Tanganyika from Zanzibar?

A: In fact there was no difference between Tanganyika and Zanzibar before the Union due to the fact that the two countries were under colonial rule before their respective independence dates and they share issues of common interest.

Q: We have seen so many African countries torn apart by divisions and conflicts, what is the secret behind Tanzania's success in this regard?

A: The union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar was a union of the people, created by the people, under the leadership of Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere and Mzee Abeid A. Karume, for the people. We share a common culture, language, customs and political conviction. The Union Government came into begin after the two Presidents had signed the Union Treaty.

Q: Your country recently hosted an Extra-Ordinary Summit on the Peace and Security situation in the region, and came up with historic resolutions, how did you receive the resolution on Zimbabwe?

A: The resolutions by the Extra-ordinary Sadc summit on Peace and Security Situation in the region were a positive move by the region to handle its matters, issues of concern by the region should be addressed by the region itself.

Q: How much movement has there been since the Summit to address the problems in the three countries that were reported on, DRC, Lesotho and Zimbabwe?

A: As you are aware that for the case of Zimbabwe we have seen the visit of Sadc Executive Secretary who was tasked to deal with economic challenges. On political matters we know that President Thabo Mbeki will also be on the ground soon. I have not received any developments on the DRC and Lesotho.

Q: Harare and London are barely on talking terms, and the latter even ignored the initiative proposed by President Mugabe to have your former president Mr Benjamin Mkapa mediate in the dispute, will that be resuscitated in the context of Dar Es Salaam?

A: At the moment let's give time, and support the Sadc initiatives, however, this does not mean to put aside the proposal by President Mugabe to have our former President Benjamin Mkapa mediate in the dispute between Harare and London.

Q: Zimbabwe says there is a bilateral dispute, while the British government says the dispute lies between Zimbabwe and the world, how do you think Sadc should get around the problem?

A: It is a fact that there is a sour relationship between Harare and London that started during the Land Reform Programme, disputes are always resolved by bring the conflicting parties to the negotiating table.

Q: Sadc also pledged a rescue package to mitigate the effects of the sanctions, what do you think such a package should entail?

A: The Sadc Executive Secretary after visiting and having extensive consultations with relevant authorities in Zimbabwe will come up with advice on how Sadc can come in with assistance. However, the regional leaders appealed for the lifting of all forms of sanctions against Zimbabwe.

Q: How do you evaluate the socio-economic situation in the country, the prospects for improvement?

A: The current economic situation in Zimbabwe is very challenging. It is a matter of time; Zimbabweans will overcome these difficulties. Zimbabweans should regard it as a challenge to all of them.

Q: Integral to the problems in the three countries discussed in Dar Es Salaam is the problem of irresponsible opposition parties, how do you think that can be solved?

A: All opposition parties and Zimbabweans in general should follow the laws and regulations of the country, failure to that, the law will take its course.

Q: You chair the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security; how far has the proposed Mutual Defence Pact moved?

A: Most of Member States have not ratified the mutual Defence Pact.

Q: At the Summit in Lesotho, Sadc Heads of State and Government expressed concern over the region's reliance on external funding for developmental projects, in light of peace and security challenges what is your comment on that and what can be done to curb it?

A: Reliance on external funding for development projects will definitely compromise peace and security in the region. Member States should pull up their socks by increasing their contributions to the regional block which will enable it to fund its projects.

Q: The extent of bilateral relations?

A: Zimbabwe/Tanzania bilateral relations should put more emphasis on Trade and Economic Co-operation through holding permanent joint commission meetings, we have to improve our peoples' standards of living by promoting trade. We have had warm and cordial political relations for years, this must now reflect on business links between the two countries.

Feedback: caesar.zvayi@zimpapers.co.zw

Wrecking Iraq
Posted: Friday, May 11, 2007

¤ The Assassination of Journalists - Protected by States Secrets
¤ New Frost in US-Russia Ties
¤ The Criminal Career of Rudy Giuliani
¤ Bush Administration Goes After SiCKO

¤ The Strange Campaign to Strangle Sudan
In Massachusetts as in many other states, there is a "movement" to divest pension funds of their holdings in companies doing business in Sudan, principally in Chinese oil companies there. The ostensible objective is to relieve the sufferings of the people of Darfur, whereas the real purpose seems to lie elsewhere. The campaign in Massachusetts has been spearheaded by State Senator Ed Augustus and by U.S. Congressmen James McGovern and Michael Capuano of Massachusetts.

If you are a state worker, State Senator Ed Augustus, backed by Congressmen McGovern and Capuano, wants to meddle with your pension fund investments for a dubious purpose.

¤ The View from Baghdad
¤ The Iraq War Is Over
¤ Defiant Hamas TV airs resistance Mickey again
¤ Permanent bases in Iraq

¤ Israel’s holocaust-in-the-making against the Palestinians
Not a single day passes without a crime being perpetrated by the Israeli occupation army and/or paramilitary Jewish terrorists, otherwise known as settlers, against innocent and helpless Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. And in case a murder is not committed, a home is demolished, a school child is crippled by a Jewish sniper’s indifferent bullets, a farm is bulldozed, a grain field is torched, or a new colony is started on stolen Arab land seized at gunpoint from its lawful proprietors, all in the name of Jewish nationalism.

¤ More US GI love for Iraqi civilians

¤ Wrecking Iraq: One Million Dead, 2 Million Wounded, 3 Million Displaced
Two elements are necessary to commit the crime of genocide:
1) the mental element, meaning intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, and
2) the physical element, which includes any of the following: killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births; or forcibly transferring children to another group.
Considering that such clear language comes from a UN treaty which is legally binding on our country, things could start getting a little worrisome -- especially when you realize that since our government declared economic and military warfare on Iraq we've killed well over one million people, fast approaching two.

¤ 'The cultivation of life'
¤ Former Powell aide says Bush, Cheney guilty of 'high crimes'

¤ The Other Side Of Suez
Documentary on the Suez Crisis of 1956. Shows how history often repeats itself: 'Sexed-up' intelligence, assassination attempts, manufactured war - all to protect Western 'interests'
Fear of dwindling oil supplies, a strategy of regime change, by-passing the U.N, and war based on suspect intelligence. Iraq 2003? No, Egypt 1956. Britain invades an Arab nation to overthrow a dangerous dictator. The Prime Minister predicts that a grateful population will welcome British troops with open arms. But he is wrong.
The Arabs fight their invaders. The Prime Minister is condemned at home and abroad. His true motives for war are revealed, his intelligence information is dodgy, he may even have lied to Parliament. He resigns, his achievements forgotten, his reputation forever associated with just one word: Suez.

¤ Giuliani Would Make a Worst President than Bush
¤ The Good American
¤ Tony Blair and his wife Cherie to make 80 million dollars
¤ US admits Afghan civilian deaths
¤ Darfur: a by-word for tragedy and hypocrisy
¤ Capitalism and Democracy, The Frog and the Scorpion
¤ Car bombings kill 23 at Baghdad bridges

Defiant Hamas TV airs resistance Mickey again
Posted: Friday, May 11, 2007

A Hamas-run television station defied Israel and the Palestinian government on Friday by continuing to air a controversial children's puppet show with a Mickey Mouse lookalike preaching resistance.

Israel and Jewish groups have slammed the Al-Aqsa programme over calls made by the copycat mouse named Farfur and by a little girl for resistance against Israel and the United States, and for its overtly Islamist message.

Complete with Islamic songs and calls for cities in Israel to return to Palestine, Friday's episode apparently sought to prepare children for their end-of-year examinations -- with Farfur being told that cheating is forbidden.
Full Article : breitbart.com

Bush's Zombie Shuffles Off
Posted: Thursday, May 10, 2007

¤ Lift sanctions, create right context for dialogue, EU told

¤ Cheney caught saying 'kick the press out' at Iraq briefing

¤ US-led raid kills 40 civilians in Afghanistan-witnesses

¤ Eye on Iraq: Why Cheney failed
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday he was encouraged by the greater sense of urgency he found in his talks with the prime minister of Iraq. What else could he say?
But the bottom line was that Cheney left Baghdad without being able to force any tangible progress towards the revenue and power-sharing deals with Sunnis and Kurds that the U.S. government regards as essential to creating an effective government over the whole of Iraq and cutting support for the remorseless Sunni guerrilla insurgents in the country.
"I was impressed with the commitment on the part of the Iraqis to succeed on these steps and to work together to solve these issues," Cheney told reporters after his meetings with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders.

¤ The Legacy: Tony Blair, Prime Minister, 1997-2007

¤ Gunman Shoots 5 Aboard Chicago City Bus

¤ Opium clouds before an Afghan storm

¤ Libertarian My Ass: By Any Other Name It Is Called Hypocrisy

¤ Qaeda's Reverse-Reverse Psychology

¤ Redefining Forward Motion in Iraq
Are you confused by the ever-shifting terminology employed by the Masters of War and their frequent banquet buddies, the Media Mavens, when conveying the overarching geostrategic sociopolitical complexities of the Dear Leader's liberation of Iraq? Well, fear not, befuddled reader; your humble correspondent is here to help, with this handy-dandy update of The Newspeak Lexicon.
Today's phrase is: "Political Progress." This sinuous and supple little passage has greased many a clumsy reality over the transom of public discourse, allowing both purveyors and consumers of conventional wisdom to ignore the incontinent, pustulous, blood-smeared elephant of aggressive war standing there stinking up the well-appointed drawing rooms of the American Establishment.

¤ Bush's Zombie Shuffles Off

¤ War: State Hate Crime

¤ We're all responsible for Iraq
It’s not enough to merely criticize the president or say you voted for another candidate. Every American citizen has a political and moral duty to do what’s right for our troops, and for our country.
By James Reston Jr.
Between those who manage the war in Washington and those who fight it in Iraq, the American people enjoy a safe middle ground. The country is both at war and not at war. The war machine in Washington hums along as it did in other great international conflicts. U.S. troops fight as vicious a war abroad as they have ever fought. But at home, there is no sacrifice, no serious deprivations, no mobilization of youth. Life goes on pretty much as normal.
In what sense then can the average American be held accountable for the chaos of Iraq? If the citizen did not participate in any decision that led to unprovoked warfare, did not mislead anyone about weapons of mass destruction, did not engage in torture or kill any innocent civilians, does that American bear any responsibility for the mayhem that Iraq has become?

Zimbabwe: EU Told to Lift Sanctions
Posted: Thursday, May 10, 2007

Lift sanctions, create right context for dialogue, EU told

The Herald, News Editor
May 10, 2007

The European Union says it is still willing to have dialogue with Zimbabwe but the Government wants EU sanctions lifted before any talks.

Head of the European Commission in Zimbabwe Mr Xavier Marchal — in a speech to mark Europe Day in Harare yesterday — said the grouping remains willing to carry out dialogue with Zimbabwe "aimed at making progress towards a situation where the resumption of full co-operation becomes possible."

But in response, Secretary for Foreign Affairs Ambassador Joey Bimha said the EU should lift the sanctions and create the right context for dialogue.

"Zimbabwe has never refused to engage in dialogue.

"However, I should point out that dialogue takes place within a specific context where neither party sets benchmarks for the other, a context where neither party imposes punitive measures against the other and a context where objective criteria are applied as opposed to double standards and the shifting of goal posts.

"In that regard, the EU should help create the right context for dialogue by removing its sanctions against Zimbabwe," Mr Bimha said.

He said both Zimbabwe and the EU had much to gain from a normalisation of relations and Harare welcomed the bloc’s decision to embrace the stance taken by Sadc regarding the Zimbabwean issue.

Sadc leaders recently called for the lifting of the sanctions and urged Britain to pay compensation to farmers whose farms were acquired for resettlement.

They also undertook to assist Zimbabwe overcome the crippling economic sanctions.

"As you are aware, the (Sadc) communique offered a full package for helping Zimbabwe meet its current challenges.

"We therefore hope that by embracing this regional initiative, the EU has embraced the whole package as outlined in the Sadc communique."

Mr Marchal said he was supportive of internal dialogue in Zimbabwe.

"I feel very strongly that internal dialogue between all Zimbabweans can succeed, and further challenges addressed, only in a violence free environment, in which everyone is treated humanely, and which clearly does not exist today. I strongly encourage the urgent way forward towards such an environment," he said.

Ambassador Bimha said Government abhors violence and believed that in a democratic society people should pursue their political objectives by non-violent means.

"Violence should therefore be condemned by all whenever it rears its ugly head irrespective of who perpetrates it.

"However, serious questions are being raised when certain sections of the community remain sacrosanct from criticism when there is overwhelming evidence of violence on their part," he said.

Ambassador Bimha said the same yardstick should be used to ensure consistency and objectivity when judging.

"The absence of the objectivity is the missing link in the Zimbabwean equation."

MDC faction leaders Mr Morgan Tsvangirai and Professor Arthur Mutambara, National Constitutional Assembly chairperson Dr Lovemore Madhuku and several senior opposition leaders and MPs from both camps were in attendance.

Uncle Sam Probes Michael Moore
Posted: Thursday, May 10, 2007

Director Michael Moore is being investigated by the Treasury Department for traveling to Cuba in violation of a U.S. trade embargo. In a May 2 letter, the Office of Foreign Assets Control informed Moore that he was the subject of a civil investigation stemming from the filmmaker's March trip to Cuba. Moore reportedly traveled there with 9/11 rescue workers who were seeking medical care. The trip was filmed as part of Moore's documentary "Sicko," which examines the U.S. health care industry (and premieres at the Cannes film festival on May 19).
Full Article : thesmokinggun.com

Britain's Blair says he is resigning
Posted: Thursday, May 10, 2007

Tony Blair said Thursday he would step down as prime minister on June 27, closing a decade of power in which he fostered peace in Northern Ireland and followed the United States to a war in Iraq that cost him much of his popularity.
Full Article : yahoo.com

Man misdiagnosed with terminal cancer spends life savings...
Posted: Thursday, May 10, 2007

Man misdiagnosed with terminal cancer spends life savings, wants compensation

LONDON -- A man who said he spent his life savings after being told he had months to live is seeking compensation after doctors conceded they had got the diagnosis wrong.

John Brandrick, 62, was told two years ago that he had terminal pancreatic cancer, Britain's Press Association news agency reported. He decided to spend his remaining time in style, quitting his job and spending his savings on hotels, restaurants and holidays.

A year later, doctors at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in southwest England revised their diagnosis: Brandrick was suffering from pancreatitis, a nonfatal ailment.

"My life has been turned upside down by this," Brandrick said. "I was told I had limited time to live. I got rid of everything -- my car, my clothes, everything."

Brandrick said he did not want to take the hospital to court, "but if they have made the wrong decision they should pay me something back."
Full Article : whdh.com

Florida: Inmates Forced To Lick Toilets Clean
Posted: Wednesday, May 9, 2007

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Prosecutors issued arrest warrants on Tuesday for eight former prison employees accused of abusing inmates, including forcing some to clean toilets with their tongues.

The eight were among 13 prison employees who had already been fired from the 605-inmate medium and minimum security at the Hendry Correctional Institution in the Everglades. The previous warden and an assistant warden resigned, and three others were reassigned after an inmates was beaten and choked by guards in March.

State prisons chief Jim McDonough said the warrants include charges of battery and failing to report inmate abuse against former guards William Thiessen, Phillip Barger, Randy Hazen, Gabriel Cotilla, Kevin Filipowicz, Ruben Ibarra and Stephen Whitney. Fired guard James Brown was charged with grand theft.
Full Article : local6.com

How to sanctify mass murder
Posted: Wednesday, May 9, 2007

¤ Cheney to call for greater political efforts in Iraq

¤ US accused over release of convicted terrorist

¤ For African-Americans, Folly of This War Hits Home

¤ What the Bush Administration Has Wrought in Iraq
At 3 am on January 11, 2007 a fleet of American helicopters made a sudden swoop on the long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in northern Iraq. Their mission was to capture two senior Iranian security officials, Mohammed Jafari, the deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the head of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. What made the American raid so extraordinary is that both men were in Iraq at the official invitation of the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who held talks with them at his lakeside headquarters at Dokan in eastern Kurdistan. The Iranians had then asked to see Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, in the Kurdish capital Arbil. There was nothing covert about the meeting which was featured on Kurdish television.

¤ A Shining Light Goes Out in Africa

¤ Atlantic's first named storm forms early

¤ Deadly Tornado Brings Iraq War Home

¤ Airstrike reportedly kills 21 Afghan civilians

¤ Force 'cannot solve Afghanistan'

¤ Research confirms theory that all modern humans descended from the same small group of people

¤ No Black Plan for America's Cities
"Katrina is a metaphor for abandoned urban America," said Rev. Jesse Jackson as he prepared to lead a "Reclaiming Our Land" march in New Orleans, late last month. "There is no urban policy, and there must be."
But Rev. Jackson is wrong. An urban policy does exist, hatched in corporate boardrooms and proceeding at various stages of implementation in cities across the nation. Urban America is not being "abandoned"--rather, the corporate plan calls for existing populations to be removed and replaced, incrementally, a process that is well underway. And the land is being "reclaimed"--by Big Capital, with the enthusiastic support of urban politicians of all races from coast to coast.

¤ Pelosi's Toothless Threat to Sue Bush

¤ War is Slavery - An Awakening

¤ GRAVEYARD RIVER

¤ AP Correspondent Dies In Cameroon Crash

¤ BYE NOON

¤ The Likely Historical Significance of the War in Iraq
Names like Haditha, Fallujah, Samarra, and Abu Ghraib are likely destined to become, at least in the Muslim world, iconic symbols for America's bloody adventure in Iraq. This will not so much represent the deliberate selecting of horrors to remember and feature, for America's entire crusade has been a horror, but the impulse to have tough summary images of complex events.

America invaded Iraq for two main reasons. First, it wished to sweep what it regarded as a chronic problem, Hussein's Iraq, off its foreign-affairs plate. Second, it wanted to remove Israel's most implacable opponent.

¤ Q & A - With John Pilger

¤ How to sanctify mass murder
Now, look at this. When you've bombed hospitals, destroyed cities, attacked the civilian infrastructure, shot people up in their houses and cars, shot at ambulances, fried people alive with white phosphorus, killed hundreds of thousands of people, tortured and raped prisoners to death, and pounded housing estates with bullets and shells, you're probably running out of possibilities for barbarity and savagery. Time for a school run. Seven kids killed, three wounded, and the contemptible excuse offered that they were only trying to kill the bad guys, who are so wicked and evil that they hide themselves among the civilian population, even tricking good American boys into believing that they may be secreted in the clothing of small children in a school. They forced the yanqui liberators to fire on those poor kids, and so it's their fault.

¤ Violent Clashes between citizens and Government Guard

Aborigines descended from Africans - research
Posted: Wednesday, May 9, 2007

AUSTRALIA and the rest of the world was first settled by a single group of people who migrated from Africa more than 55,000 years ago, DNA research suggests.

A study of DNA samples from Aboriginal Australians and Melanesians from New Guinea, led by Peter Forster at Britain's University of Cambridge, appears to verify the theory that all humans came from the same small group of Africans.

The Australian and New Guinean populations were found to share genetic features linking them those who left Africa up to 60,000 years ago.

"Although it has been speculated that the populations of Australia and New Guinea came from the same ancestors, the fossil record differs so significantly it has been difficult to prove," Dr Forster told Britain's The Times newspaper.

"For the first time, this evidence gives us a genetic link showing that the Australian Aboriginal and New Guinean populations are descended directly from the same specific group of people who emerged from the African migration."
Full Article : news.com.au

Pelosi threat to sue Bush over Iraq bill
Posted: Wednesday, May 9, 2007

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is threatening to take President Bush to court if he issues a signing statement as a way of sidestepping a carefully crafted compromise Iraq war spending bill.

Pelosi recently told a group of liberal bloggers, "We can take the president to court" if he issues a signing statement, according to Kid Oakland, a blogger who covered Pelosi's remarks for the liberal website dailykos.com.

"The president has made excessive use of signing statements and Congress is considering ways to respond to this executive-branch overreaching," a spokesman for Pelosi, Nadeam Elshami, said. "Whether through the oversight or appropriations process or by enacting new legislation, the Democratic Congress will challenge the president's non-enforcement of the laws."
Full Article : thehill.com

The Great Oil Robbery
Posted: Tuesday, May 8, 2007

¤ Torture -The Guantanamo Guidebook

¤ A Few Reminders
A few reminders: Iraq is not our country. Our invasion and occupation are illegal, being in violation of both international law and our own traditions. We were lied into war. We are still being lied to. Both the Bush administration and the Democrats intend to maintain American troops in Iraq indefinitely.

The catchy little phrase "If you break it, you own it" might apply to unpurchased merchandise, but it definitely does not apply to nation-states. You don't gain title to your neighbor's house just because you blow it up. We definitely broke Iraq, but that only gives us the burden of sin. It does not entitle us to the country.

It's easy to forget that when you listen to American politicians in both parties talk about what Iraq has to do or ought to do or should do. The Iraqi government does not have to do anything we tell it, and so far it hasn't, despite promises to the contrary.

¤ George Tenet Cashes In On Iraq
If you go by the book jacket of his new memoir, "At the Center of the Storm," George Tenet is enjoying the life of a retired government servant teaching at Georgetown University, where he was appointed to the faculty in 2004. The former CIA director played up the academic image when he kicked off the recent media blitz for his new book by doing an interview for CBS's "60 Minutes" from his spacious, book-lined office at the university. His academic salary, and the reported $4 million advance he received from publisher HarperCollins, should provide the former CIA director with more than enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his days and leave a substantial fortune to his children.

But those monies are hardly Tenet's entire income. While the swirl of publicity around his book has focused on his long debated role in allowing flawed intelligence to launch the war in Iraq, nobody is talking about his lucrative connection to that conflict ever since he resigned from the CIA in June 2004. In fact, Tenet has been earning substantial income by working for corporations that provide the U.S. government with technology, equipment and personnel used for the war in Iraq as well as the broader war on terror.

¤ Chevron seen settling case on Iraq oil

¤ Condi Snoozed While Chevron Paid Off Saddam
Because she's a Russia scholar, Secretary Rice will be quite familiar with Lenin's term, "useful idiot." Near the end of her decade on Chevron's board (she joined it in 1991 while a professor at Stanford University), the corporation cooked up the very responsible-sounding "The Chevron Way to a Strong Board." As chairman of the "Public Policy Committee," she should have been tuned in to the open secret of kickbacks being paid to Saddam starting in June 2000 (everyone in the industry knew, according to investigators quoted in this morning's International Herald Tribune).

¤ Civilian deaths 'deeply shame' US
¤ Critics turn on Sarkozy over yacht holiday
¤ Bush Sat on Evidence of Cuban Terror

¤ The Great Oil Robbery
In case you're wondering why crude oil prices are down from last year, hanging around at about $60 a barrel, while gasoline prices have soared past $3.10/gallon nationwide, just check out the latest profit reports from the oil companies. They are at record levels.
The answer for this seeming contradiction is simple: Americans are being robbed blind by the oil industry.
Sure, the oil companies, and their PR and lobbying agency, the American Petroleum Institute, will give you all kinds of reasons for higher gasoline prices at a time of falling crude prices: problems at two refineries in Texas and Oklahoma, rising demand or whatever. But the real answer is that there is simply no competitive market in this industry.

¤ Car bombing kills 16 in Shiite city
¤ Turmoil in France after Sarkozy elected
¤ The Price of Fire in Latin America
¤ Verizon says phone record disclosure is protected free speech
¤ President muddles his dates in welcoming Queen
¤ Building a second wall in Ahdamiya

¤ Infant mortality in Iraq soars as young pay the price for war
Two wars and a decade of sanctions have led to a huge rise in the mortality rate among young children in Iraq, leaving statistics that were once the envy of the Arab world now comparable with those of sub-Saharan Africa.
A new report shows that in the years since 1990, Iraq has seen its child mortality rate soar by 125 per cent, the highest increase of any country in the world. Its rate of deaths of children under five now matches that of Mauritania.
Jeff MacAskey, head of health for the Save the Children charity, which published the report, said: "Iraq, Botswana and Zimbabwe all have different reasons for making the least amount of progress on child mortality. Whether it's the impact of war, HIV/Aids or poverty the consequences are equally devastating. Yet other countries such as Malawi and Nepal have shown that despite conflict and poverty child mortality rates can be reversed."

6 Charged In Alleged N.J. Terror Plot
Posted: Tuesday, May 8, 2007

NEW YORK -- Six men from New Jersey have been charged in an alleged terror plot against soldiers at Fort Dix, according to law enforcement sources.

Investigators said the men planned to use automatic rifles to enter Fort Dix and kill as many soldiers as they could at the New Jersey military base. Fort Dix was just one of several military and security locations allegedly scouted by this group, authorities said.
Full Article : wnbc.com

Bush muddles his dates in welcoming Queen
Posted: Monday, May 7, 2007

On a morning that should by rights have been frozen in time as a moment of pure pageantry, with military marching bands, pipers trucked out in tricorn hats and powdered wigs, and visiting royalty, one can count on George Bush.

The president yesterday once again demonstrated his gift for the gaffe, injecting an unintended sense of levity into the White House welcome for the Queen.

In his speech on the south lawn of the White House, he noted that the Queen had made repeated visits to the US during her reign, including celebrations to mark the country's 200th anniversary. "The American people are proud to welcome Your Majesty back to the United States, a nation you've come to know very well," Bush said. "After all, you've dined with 10 US presidents. You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 - in 1976."
Full Article : guardian.co.uk

Oops, he did it again . . . President raises a royal smile by rewriting American history

President Bush welcomed the Queen to Washington yesterday with full White House ceremonial, a speech of warm praise, his first five-course, white-tie state dinner – and, being Mr Bush, an unfortunate slip of the tongue.

Standing with the Queen on a podium, he recalled her previous state visits, but had a little problem with the dates.

"You helped us celebrate our bicentennial in 1796," he said confidently, and in a split second realised his error. "Er, 1976", he corrected himself, to a gale of laughter from around the lawn. The Queen, smiling broadly, gave him a knowing sideways glance.

To another outburst of hilarity from the crowd he told her: "You gave me a look only a mother could give a child."

At least he didn’t greet her with: "Yo, Majesty, how ya doin’?"
Full Article : timesonline.co.uk

WMD document 'must be released'
Posted: Monday, May 7, 2007

¤ US could be in Iraq for years, says general
American troops could be in Iraq for years and can expect heavy casualties in the next few months as they struggle to wrest the initiative from insurgent groups, a senior US officer said yesterday.

The warning came on a day when 25 people were killed near Ramadi in two suicide bombings police blamed on al Qaeda. They were the latest in a string of big car bombings across Iraq in recent weeks that have killed hundreds despite a US-backed security crackdown in Baghdad and outlying areas.

Major-General Rick Lynch, who commands US forces south of Baghdad, said the lesson of recent history was that it took an average of nine years to overcome internal uprisings and that there was "no instantaneous solution" to Iraq.

¤ Hackers Take Aim at Voices of Dissent
As many of you have surely noticed, Empire Burlesque has been under sustained attack by hackers for the past several weeks, with occasional slowdowns or cut-offs in service, and viral infections. What we are seeing is a very serious, very concentrated effort to cripple the site, make it toxic and bring it down -- to shut us up, in other words. The same kind of attacks are being directed at our associated site, Atlantic Free Press, as well. These are not just hacker pranks; the attacks are almost certainly politically motivated: a deliberate attempt to destroy two platforms which offer news and opinions that some powerful entities -- or their bootlicking wannabes -- don't like.

¤ A Conference in the Name of Iraq
US Secretary of State, Ms Condoleezza Rice, asks: "How are you foreign minister?" and Iran Foreign Minister, Mr Manouchehr Mottaki, replies: "Fine, thank you". That was all to come out form the Iraq international conference which ended recently in Egypt’s Red Sea tourist resort of Sharam-El-Shaikh.

Four years of occupation has resulted in 665,000 Iraqis innocent deaths, other reports put the figure to over a million; over 3,000,000 injured; and more than 4,000,000 refugees now living in make-shift shelters and tents as they seek refuge in unwelcoming neighbouring countries from the life of hell and terror under occupation and the sectarian civil war raging in Iraq. Yet, this conference failed to address the Iraqis fundamental problem: the occupation!

¤ National ID card a disaster in the making

¤ The Hourglass of Blood

¤ World Bank Panel Finds Wolfowitz at Fault; Aide Resigns

¤ WMD document 'must be released'

¤ 68 killed or found dead in Iraq
¤ Coexistence plans blown away by pollen drift

¤ Landmine kills 4 civilians in Afghanistan

¤ Mass Murder by Troubled Youths

¤ Arab Broadcasters Raise the Bar

¤ 68 killed or found dead in Iraq

¤ Astronomers spot exploding faraway star

¤ Bush Fatigue

¤ A Bloody Lie of George Tenet
How many lies is George Tenet allowed to tell on TV before he immolates the last shred of credibility? Judging by his latest sad performance on Meet the Press I would say his time is up. Tenet insisted to Tim Russert today that he was crystal clear in debunking the assumption that Al Qaeda and Iraq were in cahoots

¤ Torture In Israel Exposed For All To See....

¤ Row over Iraq oil law

¤ Bush Hits All-Time Low

¤ Even the Puppet Army They Created has Turned Against Them

¤ Weak Dollar?

¤ 28 killed in attack on wedding party in W Baghdad
Up to 28 people were killed when gunmen attacked a wedding party for a policeman near a town east of Iraqi restive city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, local police said on Monday.

"Dozens of gunmen riding 20 vehicles on Sunday night stormed a wedding party for a policeman near the town of Karma and kidnapped some 40 people, including the bridegroom," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

France: Police battle anti-Sarkozy protesters
Posted: Monday, May 7, 2007

CLASHES between police and protestors have been reported in central Paris and the southeastern city of Lyon after conservative leader Nicolas Sarkozy was elected French President overnight.
Full Article : news.com.au

Somalia: The Other (Hidden) War for Oil
Posted: Sunday, May 6, 2007

¤ Sarkozy takes French presidency
Nicolas Sarkozy was last night handed a decisive mandate to change France, winning the presidential election by 6% after a big turnout in one of the most divisive campaigns in recent history.
As thousands of his flag-waving supporters prepared to gather at Paris's Place de La Concorde, where heads rolled in the first French revolution, Sarkozyites were promising a new turning point in French history from a man who has promised an "economic revolution".

¤ India's untouchable millionaire
¤ The Last Argument of Fools
¤ American Massacres and the Media
¤ Panic at the Wall Street Journal
¤ American Dream Sours as Housing Market Collapses
¤ LAPD Again Didn’t Heed Protocols, Critics Say

¤ The Great Wall of Baghdad May Be Going Up, but....
The first thing Said, a small contractor, did on visiting a military prison in west Baghdad was to pay a $2,000 bribe. The money went to an officer in return for a promise not to torture Said’s brother and business partner, Ali. The main payment comes later. For Ali’s release, Said will pay a further $100,000.

The brothers are Sunni, and the police commandos who arrested Ali are Shia. What happened to him explains why the US military “surge”, the dispatch of 20,000 extra troops to Iraq announced by President Bush in January, is failing to end the Sunni-Shia sectarian civil war in the capital

¤ War Machine Grinds Others Besides Pvt. Lynch
It was painful watching Jessica Lynch testify last week.
Lynch sat with other betrayed Americans who had been thrust into the war machine and ground into legends not of their own making. The family of the late Pat Tillman, along with Lynch, sat in front of cameras and prodding lawmakers who allowed them to publicly vent their confusion and frustration at being characters in this tragic opera of conspiracy and carnage.
Mysteriously missing from the table of testimony was a voice I remember hearing only briefly in the past, but which popped up recently in a news item generally overlooked by my peers.

¤ 114 missing after Kenyan plane crashes
¤ On the Media Horizon: 'We Invest, You Decide'

¤ Anti-U.S. Uproar Sweeps Italy
The U.S. government has proposed to make Vicenza, Italy, the largest US military site in Europe, but the people of Vicenza, and all of Italy, have sworn it will never happen.
As with the story of the Downing Street Minutes two years ago this week, a major news story and huge controversy in Europe right now is unknown to Americans, despite the fact that it is all about the policies of the American government. In February of this year, 200,000 people descended on the Northeastern Italian town of Vicenza (population 100,000) to march in protest. Largely as a result, the Prime Minister of Italy was (temporarily) driven out of power. Meanwhile, just outside Vicenza, large tents now hold newly minted citizen activists keeping a 24-hour-per-day vigil and training hundreds of senior citizens, children, and families every day in how to nonviolently stop bulldozers. The bulldozers they are waiting for are American.

¤ Sunday With The Lamestream Media
¤ Send in the Clowns

¤ Wolfowitz and Riza: How Sweet It Is!
At the start of the scandal triggered by the revelation that World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz had helped arrange generous pay boosts for his girlfriend Shaha Riza, Wolfowitz declared, "I made a mistake, for which I am sorry."
Two and a half weeks later, Wolfowitz had readjusted his rhetoric. "The ethics charges are unwarranted" and "bogus," he said.

¤ U.S. turns further away from human rights
¤ New Orleans: Dark End of the Street

¤ Chump Change
The cost of the Iraq war has risen to over $8 billion a month, according to a number released by the Pentagon on Thursday, January 18. That's a pre-surge figure. As big as that number is, it's likely to turn out that the $8.4 billion per month projected by Pentagon spokesmen is but a conservative estimate of the true costs being run up to carry on this occupation. In fact, given the Pentagon's tendency to low-ball their numbers, $8.4 billion a month may turn out to be chump change when the actual numbers are revealed.

¤ Roadside bombs kill 8 Americans in Iraq
¤ Thousands bid farewell to singer Don Ho
¤ US And EU Agree 'Single Market'

¤ When will American people be told the truth about Iraq?
Now that President Bush and the Democrats have taken turns grandstanding over his veto of their troop withdrawal bill, it's time for a bipartisan burst of honesty.

Instead of haggling for political advantage, Bush and members of Congress should both confess that they have not been straight about the future in Iraq.

The president's promise to "complete the mission" is a triumph of a tired slogan over reality, just as the Dems' pledge to "end the war" is riddled with loopholes. It's time to cut the bull and be realistic about where we're going.

Start with Bush. While he blasted Dems again last Tuesday for demanding the start of troop withdrawal by Oct. 1 as a recipe for chaos, he has quietly accepted a de-facto deadline set by his own commander that is not much different.

¤ US And EU Agree 'Single Market'

¤ The US$564 billion war for profit
This year’s proposed US spending on the Iraq war is larger than the military budgets of China and Russia combined. The combined spending requests would push the total for Iraq to US$564 billion, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS).
The Pentagon budget for the current fiscal year (2007) is about $456 billion. President George Bush’s proposed increase of 10% for next year will raise this figure to over half a trillion dollars, that is, $501.6 billion for fiscal year (FY) 2008.

¤ Somalia: The Other (Hidden) War for Oil
The U.S. bombing of Somalia took place while the World Social Forum was underway in Kenya and three days before a large anti-war action in Washington, January 27. Nunu Kidane, network coordinator for Priority Africa Network (PAN) was present in Nairobi, and after returning home asked out loud how 'to explain the silence of the US peace movement on Somalia?' Writing in the San Francisco community newspaper Bay View, she suggested one reason I think valid: 'Perhaps US-based organizations don't have the proper analytical framework from which to understand the significance of the Horn of Africa region. Perhaps it is because Somalia is largely seen as a country with no government and in perpetual chaos, with 'fundamental Islamic' forces not deserving of defense against the military attacks by US in search of 'terrorists'.'

To that I would add: the major U.S. media's role in the lead up to the invasion and the suffering now taking place in the Horn of Africa. 'The carnage and suffering in Somalia may be the worst in more than a decade -- but you'd hardly know it from your nightly news,' wrote Andrew Cawthorne from Nairobi for Reuters last week. Amy Goodman's Democracy Now recently examined ABC's, NBC's and CBS's coverage of Somalia in the evening newscasts since the invasion. ABC and NBC had not mentioned the war at all. CBS mentioned the war once, dedicating a whole three sentences to it. This, despite the fact that there have been more casualties in this war than in the recent fighting in Lebanon.

¤ Somalia's Crisis

¤ Propaganda Fear Cited in Account of Iraqi Killings

Weapons of Mass Deception
Posted: Friday, May 4, 2007

¤ Iran blames US for Iraq chaos
¤ Anger in Baghdad as Americans finish wall
¤ Hours after 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld allegedly said, 'My interest is to hit Saddam'
¤ How the Surge is Failing

¤ IMF and World Bank Face Declining Authority
Venezuela's decision this week to pull out of the IMF and the World Bank will be seen in the United States as just another example of the ongoing feud between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the Bush Administration. But it is likely to be viewed differently in the rest of the world, and could have an impact on both institutions, whose power and legitimacy in developing countries has been waning steadily in recent years.

Other countries may follow. President Rafael Correa of Ecuador announced last week that it was kicking the World Bank's representative out of the country. It was an unprecedented action, which President Correa punctuated by stating that "we will not stand for extortion by this international bureaucracy." In 2005, the World Bank withheld a previously approved $100 million loan to Ecuador to try to force the government to use windfall oil revenues for debt repayment, rather than the government's choice of social spending.

¤ Don't Cry for Boris Yeltsin
¤ Dubya Disease
¤ Iran: A careful look before a US leap
¤ Wall Street Journal Claims Chavez Oil Policy "Aims to Weaken US"
¤ Iraqi lawmakers demand U.S. withdrawal
¤ One in Ten US Occupation Troops Admit Mistreating Civilians
¤ Weapons of Mass Deception

¤ Oil company accused of dumping waste in Amazon
A US oil company has been accused of contaminating an area of the Peruvian Amazon where it and its successor company have drilled for oil for the past 32 years, creating misery for the local Achuar people and widespread lead and cadmium poisoning.

A report issued by a coalition of protest groups including Amazon Watch and EarthRights International yesterday accused the company, Occidental Petroleum, of violating Peruvian and international law by dumping an estimated 9 billion barrels of toxic waste in the area since it started prospecting in the early 1970s.

¤ Surging Into Slaughter
¤ LITERALLY BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

¤ Iranian Diplomat Walks Out Of Dinner With Secretary Of State Condoleezza Rice
In what was supposed to be a landmark meeting between Iranian and U.S. officials to discuss Iraq's economic and security issues, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived at a diplomatic dinner at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik in Egypt on Thursday night.

However, as Secretary Rice arrived at the gala, Iranian Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, who was seated across from the U.S. Secretary, abruptly left the gathering, reportedly offended by the attire of one of the female attendees.

¤ Some 1,600 displaced after US air raids

¤ Zimbabwe: US, Britain violate Press freedom
Yesterday was World Press Freedom Day. Every year, May 3 is dedicated to World Press Freedom. It is a day designated by the United Nations to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the Press.
In the right hands, the Press plays a crucial role in disseminating news, opinions and ideas that educate members of the public on social, political and economic issues.
It assists in the shaping of attitudes and values. It serves to promote, safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of a country.

¤ Boat Carrying Haitians Capsizes; 20 Dead
¤ Imus won't go quietly

Boat Carrying Haitians Capsizes; 20 Dead
Posted: Friday, May 4, 2007

A boat loaded with Haitians capsized early Friday, and about 20 bodies have been found, some partially eaten by sharks. A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter was searching for 58 other passengers.
Full Article : time.com

Zimbabwe: US, Britain violate Press freedom
Posted: Friday, May 4, 2007

By Godwills Masimirembwa
The Herald

Yesterday was World Press Freedom Day. Every year, May 3 is dedicated to World Press Freedom. It is a day designated by the United Nations to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the Press.

In the right hands, the Press plays a crucial role in disseminating news, opinions and ideas that educate members of the public on social, political and economic issues.

It assists in the shaping of attitudes and values. It serves to promote, safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of a country.

In the wrong hands, the Press can be used as a purveyor of malicious falsehoods, distortions and misinformation.

It can incite lawlessness, anarchy, chaos and civil strife.

The importance of freedom of the Press is that one of its purposes is to discover or seek the truth and report it.

Seeking the truth is noble and any journalist or media house that seeks and reports the truth and nothing else but the truth serves humanity well.

We live in a world where the United States of America and Britain seek to dominate the social, political and economic aspects of every country.

They seek, by military force, illegal sanctions and other evil machinations to subvert democratically-elected governments whose policies they disagree with.

They seek to have unhindered access to the natural resources of other countries.

Neo-imperialism is the agenda.

The world is getting more and more violent and dangerous as America and Britain seek to assert their tyranny on other countries.

These two countries are the biggest threats to Press freedom. Their ranking on the index of the world’s worst violators of Press freedom demonstrates failure by journalists to report the truth regarding other countries they claim are among the worst violators.

Reporters without Borders must report the truth as it is.

The invasion of Iraq by the US and Britain remains illegal, the death and suffering of the people of Iraq is being caused by the US and Britain.

The death of journalists and media assistants in that country is a direct result of the illegal invasion.

The general mayhem in that country is as a result of American and British hegemonic tendencies.

With their continued occupation of Iraq, the US and Britain must remain firmly anchored at the bottom of world Press freedom rankings.

Apart from Iraq, the US and Britain are the trouble causers in Afghanistan.

In Africa their dirty hands are everywhere, fomenting and inciting revolt.

In Latin America they are against popular governments that resist neo-colonial domination.

Americans, in particular, are fingered in virtually every conflict situation in the world, they are always on the wrong side of the peaceful co-existence of nations, always seeking to dominate, always masquerading as champions of democracy, yet in truth they will be seeking self interest and exploitation of other nations’ riches and resources.

The bullish and warmongerish behaviour of America and Britain is the real threat to world press freedom.

As we commemorate World Press Freedom Day, let us remember Sandura JA’s words in the case of Biti and Another v Minister of Home Affairs and Another 2002 (1) Z’LR197 (S) at page 200F that freedom of expression assists in the discovery of truth.

Let the media and journalists seek the truth about current global and domestic conflicts identifying those who incite and encourage them and their agenda.

Let us remember the millions facing starvation and who are ravaged by disease while the warmongers invest in high-tech military hardware and stockpile arms of war all over the world, ready and more than willing to incite conflict so that they dominate the world and its resources and support military industries in their countries.

They now have an army for Africa and are searching for a base from a willing puppet nation.

Hitler lives in the hearts and minds of some of these Western leaders. They pose the greatest danger to world press freedom.

Let us now turn to Sandura JA’s statement and explore its meaning in greater detail.

Seeking the truth and nothing else but the truth is the cornerstone of the integrity of media practitioners and media houses.

The constitution of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists states, as one of its objectives, the desire to "3(a) . . .uphold professional ethics in actively supporting the right to freedom of the press and realisation of fundamental human rights." Upholding professional ethics means, among other things, that journalists should seek the truth.

The Code of Conduct for Zimbabwean Media Practitioners says, " . . . media practitioners and media institutions must never publish information that they know to be false or maliciously make unfounded allegations about others that are intended to harm their reputations."

The hallmark of the various codes of conduct for media practitioners the world over share and are anchored on the same principles of truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and accountability in news gathering and reporting.

The search for truth is not an end in itself. It is for the purpose of serving the public interest. The preamble to the code of practice of the Society of Professional Journalists USA, aptly summarises the role and duty of journalists. It partly states ". . . public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialities strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honest, professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility."

But it does not mean that the media and media practitioners have a right to report on everything so long as it is true. Every democratic country in the world has certain truths which are not for public consumption, for their reportage will be harmful to national security, law enforcement, formulation and implementation of government policy, personal and public safety and personal privacy.

Canada has a Security of Information Act that makes it a crime to be in unauthorised possession or to communicate secret government documents.

In the so-called bastions of Press freedom (United States of America and Europe), anti-terror laws have eroded the "truths" that the media and journalists are permitted to report on. Journalists and media houses are under surveillance. Harassment and monitoring of journalists is on the increase. Courts in America are forcing journalists to reveal their confidential sources of information or risk imprisonment for contempt of court.

First Amendment guarantees of freedom of expression are increasingly becoming a sham in the face of the relentless pressure from the Bush administration as it intensifies its war against self created terrorists.

Bush contravened the law by facilitating payments to columnists to enable them to write favourable stories on the US invasion of, and continued occupation of Iraq. It’s really messy for journalists out there. The prescriptions are said to be in furtherance of national security interests. Obviously, the bribes are in furtherance of Bush’s illegal agenda in Iraq.

In Zimbabwe journalists’ right to seek and discover the truth is protected by law, subject to limitations on grounds of national security, public and private interests.

Section 78 of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act grants journalists the right, among other things, "to enquire, gather, receive and disseminate information."

It gives journalists the right to discover the truth and disseminate that truth.

It empowers journalists to visit public bodies, access documents and materials, make recordings and disseminate news pertaining to their findings.

It empowers the journalist to refuse to be party to reports or editorial preparations that distort his/her findings. This provision is consistent with journalistic standards.

By accepting that the discovery of truth and its dissemination is the core function and integrity barometer of the media, journalists and media houses must surely accept that falsifying or fabricating information and publishing falsehoods is anathema to their noble profession, with the offenders deserving censure and punishment.

Only the guilty are afraid of the provisions of section 64 and 80 of the AIPPA. These sections provide for the prosecution and punishment of mass media houses and journalists that, among other things, abuse freedom of expression, abuse journalistic privilege by committing criminal offences, contravening provisions of the Official Secrets Act, falsifying or fabricating information or publishing falsehoods.

There is no freedom without obligation.

There is no obligation without censure and punishment against transgression.

For the media, the freedom is to discover the truth.

The obligation is to report the truth. The censure for transgression is a claim for civil damages and/or criminal prosecution.

Imus won't go quietly
Posted: Thursday, May 3, 2007

The talk show host has hired a top First Amendment lawyer, and an unusual clause in his contract could give him a $40 million payday, writes Fortune's Tim Arango.
Full Article : money.cnn.com

How Much Iraqi Crude Oil is Being Stolen?
Posted: Thursday, May 3, 2007

¤ UK and US must admit defeat and leave Iraq
A retired British army general says Iraq's insurgents are justified in opposing the occupation, arguing that the US and its allies should "admit defeat" and leave Iraq before more soldiers are killed.
General Sir Michael Rose told the BBC's Newsnight programme: "It is the soldiers who have been telling me from the frontline that the war they have been fighting is a hopeless war, that they cannot possibly win it and the sooner we start talking politics and not military solutions, the sooner they will come home and their lives will be preserved."

¤ It's All About Al-Qaeda Again
¤ Bush says al-Qaida is top enemy in Iraq

¤ U.S. reporter does not recognize al Qaeda "kidnapper"
American journalist Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped in Iraq last year, said on Thursday she did not recognize the photograph of a man killed by the U.S. military as one of her captors, her employer, the Christian Science Monitor reported.
The U.S. military said that it had killed Muharib Abdul Latif al-Jubouri, who it said was a top al Qaeda operative in Iraq involved in the kidnap of Carroll last year.

¤ Northern exposure

¤ Afghans Say US Bombing Killed 42 Civilians
Aerial bombing of a valley in western Afghanistan several days ago by the American military killed at least 42 civilians, including women and children, and wounded 50 more, an Afghan government investigation found Wednesday. A provincial council member who visited the site independently put the figure at 50 civilians killed.

President Hamid Karzai said at a news conference in Kabul that the Afghan people could no longer tolerate such casualties. "Five years on, it is very difficult for us

¤ Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death
¤ Would Somebody Finally Tell Me Why Cuba Is My Enemy? Ditto on Chavez!
¤ Chavez threatens to nationalize banks

¤ Getting Ethiopia out of Somalia
The UN's humanitarian affairs office in Somalia reports that the recent clashes between Ethiopian troops and Somali resistance groups have killed more than 1,000 civilians and displaced more than 350,000 Mogadishu residents. The European Union, which is investigating whether war crimes were committed, argues that civilian areas were intentionally targeted.
The United States, however, is on a different page. When the Union of Islamic Courts defeated the U.S.-backed warlords, the Bush administration - using the war on terrorism as justification - supported the Ethiopian occupation, arguing that the Islamists were an emerging threat to U.S. interests. But approaching the complex conflict in this simplistic way and linking it to the war on terror was a mistake. The United States has inadvertently stepped into a local, tribal and regional quagmire.

¤ Here's What Our Mission Accomplished
These are just some of the stories on the four-year anniversary of Mission Accomplished:Washington Post: "The deaths of more than 100 troops in April made it the deadliest month so far this year for US forces in Iraq."
Los Angeles Times: "April was even more devastating for Iraqi civilians. More than 1,500 were killed in bombings, assassinations and sectarian violence."
New York Times: "In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successful, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting, and expensive equipment that lay idle."

¤ The Higher Education Scam
Can you be fired for doing a great job, year after year, and in fact becoming nationally known for your insight and performance? Yes, as in the case of Marilee Jones, who was the dean of admissions at MIT until her dismissal last week, when it was discovered that she had lied about her academic credentials twenty-eight years ago. She had claimed three degrees, although she had none. If she had done a miserable job as dean, MIT might have been more forgiving, but her very success has to be threatening to an institution of higher learning: What good are educational credentials anyway?Jones is hardly the only academic fraud. The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas estimates that 10-30 percent of resumes include distortions if not outright lies. In the last couple of weeks, for example, "Dr. Denis Waitley Ph.D." –as he is redundantly listed in the bestselling self-help book The Secret, where he appears as a spiritual teacher–has confessed to not having his claimed master's degree, and the multi-level vitamin marketing firm he worked for admits that it can't confirm the PhD either.

All right, lying is a grievous sin, as everyone outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue knows. And we wouldn't want a lot of fake MIT engineering graduates designing our bridges. But there are ways in which the higher education industry is becoming a racket: Buy our product or be condemned to life of penury, and our product can easily cost well over $100,000.

¤ Worst U.S. Massacre?
The mass media coverage of how 32 students and faculty members were fatally shot and at least 15 injured on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., is punctuated by phrases such as, "the worst massacre in U.S. history," or, as the New York Times put it, the "Worst U.S. Gun Rampage." CNN called it the "Deadliest Shooting Rampage in U.S. history." This was followed by San Francisco Bay Area's FOX affiliate KTVU Channel 2's claim that it was "the worst massacre ever in the United States."

TV commentary did not qualify these claims, and at least one Virginia Tech student, an Asian American himself, echoed the phrase when interviewed on national television, pondering his presence at the "worst massacre in U.S. history." In reality, an accurate investigation of mass killings of this magnitude would quickly reveal that the Virginia Tech massacre, as horrendous as it was, was not the worst massacre to occur on U.S. soil. There were much bloodier massacres before Blacksburg

¤ After Thousands Have Died, Tenet Comes Clean
The three short sentences at the beginning of Chapter 17 of former CIA Director George Tenet's memoir, "At the Center of the Storm," tell it all: "The United States did not go to war in Iraq solely because of WMD. I doubt it was even the principal cause. Yet it was the public face that was put on it."
Consider the deep cynicism of that statement, playing as it does on the gravest threat to humanity's survival—an apocalyptic nuclear conflagration—to exploit the fears of a nation raw from the 9/11 attacks. The "mushroom cloud" over Manhattan that now-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney warned against was nothing more than a cheap rhetorical trick to justify an agenda of imperial intervention in the Middle East that long preceded the 9/11 attacks. The goal was to bamboozle Americans into supporting the restructuring of the politics of the Mideast to accord with the fantasies of a small band of neoconservative rogues who had insinuated themselves into the highest levels of the U.S. government.

¤ Madame Julia's Big Black Book of Cheesy Republican Sex Acts

¤ A High Price to Pay for Ignorance
The Pentagon and White House continue to argue that they are not planning a war against Iran in spite of the continuing buildup of naval forces in the Persian Gulf, which will peak with the arrival of a third carrier group at the end of May. The naval aviation and missile resources available, which are not being used to support combat operations in neighboring Iraq, far exceed any reasonable level required to send Iran a warning or to reassure Gulf Arab allies. The carrier concentration has even weakened U.S. ability to respond militarily elsewhere, most particularly in the Western Pacific, where an unpredictable North Korea continues to pose a genuine threat. Multiple carrier groups in the Persian Gulf can only mean that another preemptive war, this time against Iran, is either about to take place or is being viewed as a serious option.

¤ How Much Iraqi Crude Oil is Being Stolen?
Nobody really knows how much crude oil is being stolen by corrupt corrupt Iraqi and U.S. officials because, four years after the invasion, the oil meters haven't been fixed.

¤ Here's another mind-bender for you, Mr. Clarke
¤ Fear Factor: Press Plays 9/11 Card to Justify Somalia Slaughter
¤ A Veto Inked in Blood
¤ A Bed of Roses, A Bed of Thorns

¤ CHAVEZ IS ON A ROLL
In the span of a few days, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has implemented policies that would take many countries months, or years, to fulfill.
Last week, he announced that Venezuela was going to modernize and enlarge its military. In his plans are a missile-defense program that will safeguard the entire country. Also, Chavez declared that his country would purchase modern jet fighters from Russia as well as helicopters. In addition, Venezuela will build factories to manufacture rifles for the military. Chavez made it clear that the buildup is entirely defensive. He said, "Venezuela will not attack anybody."
A few days later, at the Bolivarian Alternative for the People of the Americas, Chavez struck a chord for Latin American unity and freedom from the capitalist hierarchy that was implemented throughout the area for decades.

¤ Islamic Jihad leader isolated and tortured for more than four months

¤ Yet Another Massacre
Once again the US military has massacred a large number of civilians in the occupied territories. 51 Afghan villagers were killed. Many of them women and children. Of course the Pentagon denies any knowledge of any wrong doing - as they always do, until a whistle blower comes forward.
Those denials work on American TV, because the Pentagton statements are repeated verbatim by the US media, thus ensuring that American audiences never know what is true and what is not. The media doesn't bother to check whether those Pentagon denials are actually true or not, they just repeat them word for word and call that journalism. And republican sheep are trained that one must always believe their own government. They would never lie to us, would they?

¤ Israel's pornographic lies
¤ Remember the Adhamiya wall?
¤ Worthy and Unworthy Victims
¤ Syria's Missile City, A five years old propaganda
¤ The U.S.' War on Democracy
¤ Venezuela nationalisation goes on

Zimbabwe: Human Rights Report - US shoots own feet
Posted: Wednesday, May 2, 2007

By Caesar Zvayi
The Herald

THERE are a few stubborn facts the pretentious Bush administration has to know are common knowledge.

Firstly, the United States is not an independent country, but the largest settler colony that has systematically decimated the original inhabitants, the Amerindians, the same way Australia has deposed Aborigines and New Zealand, the Maoris. As such, Americans have no moral ground on which to claim to be spearheading the liberation of any other people when they have not granted independence to the rightful owners of the land they claim is theirs.

Zimbabweans know that at the height of the Second Chimurenga, when the progressive world closed ranks against Rhodesia and the UN, for the first time in its history, imposed mandatory legal economic sanctions on the rogue Smith on December 16 1966; which it broadened to a total embargo on May 29 1968; the US had no qualms engaging in illicit trade with the Rhodesian regime. Washington actually passed the so–called Byrd Amendment of 1971 that it used to circumvent UN sanctions in order to get chrome from Rhodesia to use on its monstrous automobiles.

So to Uncle Sam, chrome–plated car bumpers were more important than downtrodden black Zimbabweans.

Secondly, it is common knowledge that the US is the largest abuser of human rights dating back to the days of the Trans–Atlantic Slave abductions when millions of black people were yoked like animals to work in plantations and help build the so–called Free World.

To this day, the descendants of African slaves live like captives in the country their forebears broke their backs to build.

Thirdly, the US is the largest sponsor of terrorism across the world, a fact proved by the likes of Osama Bin Laden whom it created and used against the Russians in Afghanistan, but who it disowns today, simply because he has chosen to give Uncle Sam a taste of his own medicine.

Fourth, though it has a federal structure, the US is just another country, one of the 192 members of the United Nations whose charter espouses "equality between states, big and small," as such it was never ordained by anyone to masquerade as a global policemen.

Fifth, the US is guilty of more crimes against humanity, probably more than all other states combined. One needs only look at the use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, banned weapons like cluster bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses, and the continued detention of people of primarily Arab descent at Guantanamo Bay simply because they look like Osama Bin Laden.

It is against this background that the US State Department report: "Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The US record — 2006," should be dismissed with the contempt it deserves.

The first contradiction is in the title of the report itself, as the US did a lot to undermine human rights and democracy across the world in 2006 such that to have Washington make pretensions at safeguarding these values is akin to having the devil preach Godliness.

One needs only look at US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the senseless war on Lebanon where innocent civilians were annihilated with the aid of banned weapons of mass destruction to understand the depth of Uncle Sam's depravity last year.

As such, the report is a clumsy attempt to disguise American destabilisation by deodorising it as a quest for democratisation.

As Russia pointed out, the report, covering all countries, portrays the human rights situation in countries that kow–tow to US foreign policy favourably while those that refuse to indulge Washington are portrayed as human rights abusers.

The most revealing aspect is that Israel, a state that committed so many atrocities against the Lebanese and Palestinians, has been omitted, probably because Uncle Sam could not find anything to disguise Israel's crimes.

Though the report has sections dealing with all other countries in the world, Zimbabwe was given extensive treatment as it has the largest section. More so, the entire report opens with a quotation from the self–exiled publisher of The Independent and The Standard, Trevor Ncube, who is reported to have said:

"If they think they can stop me from speaking against injustice, corruption and misgovernment . . . then they are mistaken. It will not stop me."

The use of this uninspiring quotation from Ncube, who is identified as "a Zimbabwean journalist harassed by the Government," was clearly meant to ensure that any reader would not miss the section on Zimbabwe, and by extension gave the impression that the entire report was on Zimbabwe.

What is even more scandalous is that though the report claims to be covering the period January to December 2006, it surprisingly opens with scatological remarks about the 2002 presidential elections and the March 2005 general election that it dismissed as having been unfair.

Yet these elections, when compared to the charade that brought George W. Bush to power in 2000 and again in 2004, were models not only for Africa but the entire world, one needs only look at what happened in Nigeria last week for emphasis.

The report then delves into alleged arbitrary arrests and torture of political opponents, though nothing of that sought happened at all. Through it all, the MDC factions which were battering each other all over the place before US ambassador, Christopher Dell struck an armistice, are presented as the great victims of State repression.

Nowhere in the report was Tsvangirai censured for his violent forays into the Mutambara camp though people like Trudy Stevenson, David Coltart, Gibson Sibanda and Welshman Ncube gave harrowing accounts of their torture at the hands of Tsvangirai's goons.

Operation Murambatsvina, which occurred in mid–2005, was also roped in and Anna Tibaijuka's lies that 700 000 people were displaced were given pride of place yet the disgraced UN–Habitat official admitted that her numbers were based on mathematical formulae and not actual findings. More so, official statistics released by the Zimbabwe Republic Police showed that by June 28 2005, the time the operation wound up, only 50 193 illegal structures had been demolished in all ten provinces, and 40 000 people were affected, which is realistic, for the reasons cited above.

Perhaps the most laughable attempt was the US' claim that the Government had restricted freedom of speech:

"The Government regularly used repressive laws to restrict freedom of assembly, speech, and press. In an attack on the independent media, the Government jammed broadcasts of the popular Voice of America Studio 7 programme, one of the few sources of uncensored news throughout the country, and seized radios belonging to listening groups in rural areas."

Is there no end to Uncle Sam's contempt for all people outside the US?

Who does not know that Studio 7 is not an independent station, but a special broadcast by the US propaganda station Voice of America that is funded by the same State Department that released the scandalous report?

So how independent is Studio 7, and independent from whom? At least we now know that everything labelled "independent" by Washington will be intrinsically linked to the US' policy of subversion.

Zimbabwe, if indeed it did, had every right to jam the pirate broadcast the same way the US itself blocked broadcasts from Radio Moscow at the height of the Cold War by removing the Short Wave band from all radio receivers produced in the US.

The same goes for the alleged confiscation of the receivers distributed by US running dogs in the rural areas. Zimbabweans do eat US propaganda, what they need is the immediate revoking of that illegal sanctions law, the so–called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act.

That racist law, more than anything else is the reason the economy continued to decline, with skyrocketing prices, widespread shortages, and rapidly deteriorating social services," not the alleged "Government's command and control economic policies," which the US gloated about.

Another blatant lie was the claim that the US had managed to "expand international support of sanctions against Government and ruling party officials responsible for human rights violations."

US sanctions are not against the Government and ruling party officials as Uncle Sam and his henchman Christopher Dell would have people believe. The US sanctions law clearly says in Section 4 (c):

" . . . The Secretary of the Treasury shall instruct the United States executive director to each international financial institution to oppose and vote against; (1) any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or (2) any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution."

Thus, only a fool would read "Government of Zimbabwe" as referring to Zanu–PF, because the Government borrows on behalf of the country, as such what the MDC and other myopic people celebrate as "targeted" sanctions, are sanctions against the people of Zimbabwe.

And as many saw last year, US executive directors compelled the IMF to deny Zimbabwe voting rights and access to lines of credit in terms of this illegal Act.

Contrary to US claims that support for the sanctions expanded, it was actually the converse as we saw at the African Union Summit held in Banjul, The Gambia, where the then outgoing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan pledged to use his offices to have the sanctions scrapped. His efforts were, however, a little too late as Mr Ban Ki–moon of the Republic of Korea was already standing at the door.

Washington needs only look at the outcome of the extra–ordinary summit of Sadc heads of state and government held in Tanzania at the end of March to see the hollowness of that lie.

The only good thing about the US report is that it explains Dell's strange behaviour as it explicitly exposed US involvement in Zimbabwe's internal politics, Washington clearly acknowledged that it is bankrolling the opposition's attempts to unseat the Government.

"The US strategy for fostering democracy and human rights in the country is three–fold: to maintain pressure on the Mugabe regime; to strengthen democratic (read opposition) forces; and to provide humanitarian aid for those left vulnerable by poor governance . . . To encourage greater public debate on restoring good governance in the country, the United States–sponsored public events that presented economic and social analyses discrediting the Government's excuses for its failed policies."

What followed was a shocking detailed expose of the extent of US funding for opposition activities in Zimbabwe, and the so–called civil society comprising non–governmental organisations and "non–governmental individuals," so–called advocacy groups, newspapers, newsletters, some Church leaders and journalists.

In short, the report confirms that Uncle Sam has the entire opposition camp in his pocket, and the noises the so–called activists make are merely sponsored psalms for their supper.

Particularly interesting was the State Department's revelation that that it sponsors, and has editorial influence in certain weeklies that peddle anti–Government sentiment. Uncle Sam waxed lyrical about how his commentary is given acres of space, and alleged human rights abuses prominence in the newspapers.

The newspapers are identifiable by the way they almost go pornographic with lurid displays of inflamed buttocks of opposition activists they allege would have been tortured by the Government.

Far from serving its intended objective of mobilising opinion against Zimbabwe, the US report actually confirmed that the US, and its lackeys, is not on a democratising mission but a mission of subversion to serve American interests.

The report is, thus, a greater call for action on the part of Government to tighten the registration of NGOs and to re–table the NGO Bill as a matter of urgency.

Zimbabwe can not afford to continue suffering the excesses of sponsored groups, whose only agenda — apart from the selfish profit motive — is the realisation of the Anglo–Saxon neo–colonial agenda.

There it is then, with such a background, can anyone in his/her right mind expect an objective report from the Bush administration that openly confesses — in the same document it hopes trashes an opponent — that it is "seeking to discredit the Government" by "supporting people who criticise the Government?"

DC Madam exposing identifying clients
Posted: Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Deborah Jeane Palfrey ran her high–end sexual fantasy business in a way she carefully designed to keep the feds at bay. (She didn't take a year of law school for nothing.)

In quintessential Washington style, the woman dubbed "the D.C. Madam" solicited male clients who paid up to $300 an hour and hired some 130 subcontractors — women as young as 23 and as old as 55 — under detailed employment agreements that required them to perform only lawful acts.

That worked for 13 years, then she was indicted on charges of running a high–class prostitution ring.
Full Article : latimes.com

Brown to be PM in weeks, says Blair
Posted: Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Tony Blair has indicated that Gordon Brown is likely to replace him as Prime Minister within a matter of weeks.

"Within the next few weeks I won't be Prime Minister of this country. In all probability, a Scot will become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom," Mr Blair told party supporters at a Labour rally in Edinburgh.

His comments come on the day Mr Blair celebrates his 10th anniversary in office.

Earlier, Mr Blair marked the occasion by promising a "definitive" statement to the British people next week on when he plans to leave Number 10.
Full Article : telegraph.co.uk

Venezuela quits IMF and World Bank
Posted: Tuesday, May 1, 2007

The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, today severed ties with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

In doing so he distanced Caracas further from what he described as Washington-dominated institutions.

The populist leader, who took office pledging to pursue radical political reform and an economic "third way", said yesterday that Venezuela no longer needed institutions "dominated by US imperialism".
Full Article : guardian.co.uk

Misssion Accomplished?
Posted: Tuesday, May 1, 2007

¤ The Rich World's Policy on Greenhouse Gas Now Seems Clear: Millions Will Die

¤ Al-masri killed ...Again

¤ And ...Again

¤ Al-Qaeda denies death of Iraq chief

¤ And The Lies Go On
On the fourth anniversary of George W, Bush “Mission Accomplished" declaration of victory in Iraq, 02 May 2003, there's a perfect storm barreling down on the Bush White House.
It's driven, among other things, by the rash of bloody suicide bombings in Iraq and continued American casualties, by the revelations of former CIA director George Tenet, and especially by the determination of a Democratic controlled Congress to finally investigate the lies and cover-ups that proceeded — and followed — the 2003 invasion.

¤ Venezuela Pulling Out of IMF, World Bank
President Hugo Chavez announced Monday he would pull Venezuela out of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, a largely symbolic move because the nation has already paid off its debts to the lending institutions."We will no longer have to go to Washington nor to the IMF nor to the World Bank, not to anyone," said the leftist leader, who has long railed against the Washington-based lending institutions.
Venezuela, one of the world's top oil exporters, recently repaid its debts to the World Bank five years ahead of schedule, saving $8 million. It paid off all its debts to the IMF shortly after Chavez first took office in 1999. The IMF closed its offices in Venezuela late last year.

¤ Blair's Bloody Legacy: Iraq
On the 10th anniversary of Tony Blair's election as Prime Minister, an exclusive poll reveals 69 per cent of Britons believe that, when he leaves office, his enduring legacy will be the bloody conflict in IraqSeven out of 10 people believe that Iraq will prove to be Tony Blair's most enduring legacy, according to an opinion poll for The Independent to mark the 10th anniversary today of the election victory that brought him to power.
As the Prime Minister prepares to announce his resignation next week, the survey by CommunicateResearch reveals that 69 per cent of the British public believe he will be remembered most for the Iraq war. Remarkably, his next highest “legacy rating" - just 9 per cent - is for his relationship with the American President, George Bush.

¤ Balancing Budget Now Won't Solve U.S. Debt Woes

¤ Is the CIA trying to kill Chavez?

¤ Giuliani assails Venezuela's Chavez
Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, whose law firm represents an American subsidiary of a Hugo Chavez-controlled oil company, said Tuesday that the socialist Venezuelan president is dangerous to U.S. interests.
In a speech to Hispanic small business leaders, the Republican brought up Chavez while discussing ways the United States could become free from its reliance on foreign oil.
"Isn't it annoying, upsetting and even in some cases a matter of national security that we have to send money to our enemies?" Giuliani asked. "We need a president who knows how to get things done so we don't have to be sending money to Chavez."

¤ Venezuela seizes last private oil fields
Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez declared that the Orinoco River fields reverted to state control just after midnight. State television showed cheering oil workers in hard hats raising the flags of Venezuela and the national oil company over a refinery and four drilling fields in the Orinoco River basin.
"Our oil workers are taking control," Ramirez said at the Jose heavy crude refinery near the eastern city of Barcelona. "The president has ordered us to assume full control of our oil sovereignty, and we are doing it."

¤ Bush's Farewell Tantrum
¤ To Live and Die in LA, and Iraq

¤ The Man Who Sold the War
¤ Bomb blast rocks Bangladesh
¤ Bloody Indian troops massacre 57 Kashmiris
¤ Harbouring terrorism in School of Americas
The School of the Americas (SOA), in 2001 renamed the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation," is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Initially established in Panama in 1946, it was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Former Panamanian President, Jorge Illueca, stated that the School of the Americas was the "biggest base for destabilization in Latin America." The SOA, frequently dubbed the "School of Assassins," has left a trail of blood and suffering in every country where its graduates have returned.

¤ Bush's Lies Reaching Tipping Point

¤ How Rumsfeld Micromanaged Torture
When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld boasted, as he did frequently, of his unrelenting focus on the war on terror, his audience would have been startled, maybe even shocked, to discover the activities that Rumsfeld found it necessary to supervise in minute detail. Close command and control of far away events from the Pentagon were not limited to the targeting of bombs and missiles. Thanks to breakthroughs in communications, the interrogation and torture of prisoners could be monitored on a real time basis also.

¤ Enter the Empire
The wealthiest nation-state the world has ever seen has for the last sixty years been standing atop the upper crust of humankind, basking in the splendor of unfathomable richness, enjoying unprecedented standards of living, accumulating power and control at tremendous speed and becoming, at the expense of the planet and its inhabitants, the latest incarnation of Rome. America, that city on a hill, from where modern man's guiding light emanates, that nation anointed by man's imaginary deity, has, since the end of World War II, become the most powerful nation humankind has ever produced.
Today, 300 million people live inside its borders, enjoying levels of comfort and luxury never before seen. America has for the last two centuries become the nation whose attractiveness has become a magnet to millions upon millions of immigrants from all corners of the globe. No other nation on Earth has the wealth of the United States, and only a few countries come close to matching its immense power. It is this enormous wealth and comfort, leaps beyond that of most nations, along with myriad number of freedoms and rights for decades granted its people, that compel humans everywhere to try to migrate inside its borders.

¤ Don't Steal, Don't Lie and Don't Be Lazy

¤ A Saudi Prince Tied to Bush Is Sounding Off-Key
No foreign diplomat has been closer or had more access to President Bush, his family and his administration than the magnetic and fabulously wealthy Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia.
Prince Bandar has mentored Mr. Bush and his father through three wars and the broader campaign against terrorism, reliably delivering — sometimes in the Oval Office — his nation's support for crucial Middle East initiatives dependent on the regional legitimacy the Saudis could bring, as well as timely warnings of Saudi regional priorities that might put it into apparent conflict with the United States. Even after his 22-year term as Saudi ambassador ended in 2005, he still seemed the insider's insider. But now, current and former Bush administration officials are wondering if the longtime reliance on him has begun to outlive its usefulness.
Bush administration officials have been scratching their heads over steps taken by Prince Bandar's uncle, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, that have surprised them by going against the American playbook, after receiving assurances to the contrary from Prince Bandar during secret trips he made to Washington.

¤ ' Misssion Accomplished.'
¤ Who's Counting the Dead?

Previous Page | Trinicenter Home

Homepage | U.S. Crusade | News Sources | Zimbabwe Special | Venezuela
Back to Top