August 2010

America's Corruption Racket in Central Asia
Posted: Sunday, August 29, 2010

By Scott Horton
August 26, 2010

In another significant piece datelined Kabul, Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti reveal that the man in the eye of the storm of an Afghan-American corruption scandal, Mohammed Zia Salehi—the chief of administration for Afghanistan's National Security Council–is on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency:
Full Article : harpers.org

Torture. Corruption. Civil war. America has certainly left its mark
Posted: Sunday, August 22, 2010

¤ Iran unveils 'ambassador of death' bomber
¤ Iran starts nuclear reactor, says intent peaceful
¤ Israel says Iranian reactor use 'totally unacceptable'
¤ Iran fires up reactor, promises 'painful' response if attacked
¤ US: Iran's Nuclear Plant 'Safe,' But Weapon Could be a Year Away
¤ UK said had "always respected" Iran's right to civilian nuclear power

¤ Wyclef Jean Presidential Bid Squashed By Haiti Officials

¤ What a Waste: Donors Sending Expired Medicine to Gaza

¤ The last US combat forces in Iraq
US combat forces have left Iraq, but who should be held accountable for the invasion and occupation that has left hundreds of thousands dead?

¤ Robert Fisk: US troops say goodbye to Iraq
Torture. Corruption. Civil war. America has certainly left its mark

¤ A 'spine-for-a spine': Saudi criminal faces having spinal cord severed after paralysing victim with meat cleaver

¤ Amnesty urges Saudi not to paralyse man

¤ Iran prepares to start up first nuclear reactor

¤ Iran broadcasts missile launch on state television

¤ U.S. Assures Israel That Iran Threat Is Not Imminent

¤ U.S. government debt: 13,310,379,000,000.00

¤ Why the Mainstream Media Can't Stop the 'Ground Zero Mosque' Hysteria

¤ Iceland Set to Become a Press Freedom Haven

¤ Despite new mission, US troops still in the fight in Iraq

¤ U.S, Pakistan warn of militant plots over floods

¤ The United Nations, Impunity and War

¤ The U.S. spreads the misery to Yemen
Another undeclared war that won't make Americans safer is foolishly pursued

¤ Why WikiLeaks must be protected
The case of the Afghanistan war logs and the hounding of Julian Assange prove that there’s never been greater need to speak truth to power than today.

¤ Bolton was Contradicted by Bush on Iran's Bushehr Reactor

¤ France urged to repay Haiti's huge 'independence debt'
A group of intellectuals and politicians has called on France to repay 17bn euros (£14bn) "extorted" from Haiti in the 19th Century.

¤ Lee Says South Korea May Need Extra Tax to Pay for Reunification

¤ 'Twenty Million Homeless' In Pakistan Floods

¤ Thousands dead, millions homeless. Now Pakistan faces cholera and riots

¤ German mosque used by Sept. 11 attackers shut down

¤ FDA approves 'ella' for use as emergency contraception
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a controversial new form of emergency contraception that can prevent a pregnancy for as many as five days after sex.

¤ U.S. sends help as fires close in on Russian nuclear base

¤ Peru battles rabid vampire bats after 500 people bitten

¤ Chinese admiral says U.S. drill courts confrontation

¤ Pentagon: Next WikiLeaks dump could be worse

¤ Russia: Iran's nuclear plant to start next week

Chavez-Santos Summit in Colombia: UNASUR-Brokered Peace Breaks Out
Posted: Thursday, August 12, 2010

By Francisco Dominguez
Secretary Venezuela Solidarity Campaign
August 12, 2010

The already bad relations between Venezuela and Colombia took a turn for the worse after the accusations made by the outgoing Uribe government's OAS representative, Luis Hoyos, who charged the Venezuelan government with harbouring Colombian guerrillas (1,500) and allowing guerrilla camps (85) inside its territory. The "evidence" - which has been pretty discredited - for this batch of accusations -as with previous ones- also came from the eight 'magical laptops' seized by Colombian military forces in an illegal military attack in March 1, 2009.

Chavez reacted by breaking off relations with Colombia, leading to a further worsening of the relations between the two nations, but sent his foreign minister to attend Santos' inauguration anyway. Uribe's response was to announce that his government was lodging a formal accusation against Venezuela in the Inter-American Committee of Human Rights and another formal charge against President Chavez personally to the International Criminal Court, one day before Juan Manuel Santos inauguration. Furthermore, Uribe, reportedly, announced he would be prepared to testify to the ICC against Hugo Chavez.

However, after intense diplomatic activity undertaken by UNASUR, Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's Foreign Relations Minister, Nestor Kirchner, UNASUR's President, and Brazils' President, Lula, the latter two very publicly meeting with both Hugo Chavez and Juan Manuel Santos at various separate meetings, managed, in a matter of few days, to turn what looked like an inexorable slide to disaster, into one of the most extraordinary political turnarounds from the brink in recent Latin American history.

At his inauguration, Juan Manuel Santos stunned the world by announcing that his administration would be seeking to repair and normalise Colombia's relations with Venezuela and Ecuador as a matter of priority. And in stark contrast to the prevailing attitude under Uribe, Santos declared "The word war is not in my dictionary when I think about Colombia's relations with its neighbours" (a far cry from Uribe's warmongering). Furthermore, Santos had previously indicated his willingness, under certain conditions, to even talk to the Colombian guerrillas. More surprises were to follow: Santos ordered the handing over of Raul Reyes' 'magical laptops' to the government of Ecuador.

Some in the British media such as The Guardian, The Economist, the BBC and, of course, the ubiquitous Human Rights Watch, enthusiastically accepted the evidence publicised by the Colombian authorities at the time. The attitude of the US corporate media was significantly worse. As is well known, but not widely publicised by the corporate media, Ronald Coy, Head of Colombia's technical police, admitted to an official investigation both that the data in the laptops had been manipulated before it was subjected to judicial review and that no emails had been found in them (this did not prevent The Guardian's Latin American correspondent, Rory Carroll, from reading several emails from the magical laptops, as he reported at the time).

We shall very soon see how much of Mr Hoyos' "evidence" to the OAS is left standing after Ecuador's expert analysis of the 'magical laptops' takes place. The Venezuelan government has consistently denied any such charges and to this day, apart from regular media repetition of Uribista "false positives", no serious evidence of any kind has been produced to substantiate the allegations that Venezuela harbours guerrillas and guerrilla camps in its territory or that it gives them resources and weapons.

Venezuela and Colombia share a 1,375-mile of very porous border. Colombia's internal conflict has the unfortunate dynamic of spilling over into other countries in the form of guerrillas, paramilitaries, drug traffickers, refugees, and immigrants escaping from the conflict (about 5 million Colombians reside permanently in Venezuela). It is estimated that overall, Colombia's military have over 300,000 soldiers -proportionately one of the largest in the region, and seven times larger than the armed forces of Venezuela - and have benefited from US$7 bn in military aid -the second largest in the world- which are nevertheless incapable to controlling their own domestic terrain in which there are about 8,000 armed guerrilla fighters, many thousands of active illegal paramilitary forces and a great deal of drug trafficking. Most of the cocaine in the world is produced in Colombia, and most of cocaine production takes place in Colombia- according to UNODOC about 50%. Furthermore, Venezuela finds itself geographically sandwiched between the largest producer and the largest consumer of cocaine in the world, Colombia and the United States respectively.

After Santos' inauguration, events have developed at neck-breaking speed. Assisted by Nestor Kirchner, the Foreign Ministers of Colombia and Venezuela met last Sunday in Bogota, and they announced that Presidents Santos and Chavez would be meeting at a special summit on Tuesday 10 August in Colombia. Chavez immediately seized the opportunity offered by his Colombian counterpart and called upon the guerrillas to seek a political solution: "The Colombian guerrillas do not have a future by way of arms... moreover, they have become an excuse for the [US] empire to intervene in Colombia and threaten Venezuela from there" he said on Sunday. He also called upon them to show their commitment to a peace accord through "decisive demonstrations, for example, that they liberate all those they have kidnapped."

It is clear that Santos wanted to repair relations with Venezuela and Ecuador and that he was willing to accept UNASUR's good offices to facilitate his meeting with President Chavez. However, the most significant aspects of this development is that Santos was determined to seek the improvement of Colombia's relations with Venezuela and Ecuador, partly because it wanted to end Colombia's regional isolation, but also because the almost complete cessation of trade with Venezuela was making Colombia's economy scream (their mutual trade had declined by 73.7%). It is also clear that Uribe knew this and all his last-minute rabid attacks on Venezuela seemed to have been aimed more at Santos than Chavez. Uribe desperately tried to torpedo the Colombo-Venezuelan rapprochement because he knew it was in the offing.

Uribe's desperate efforts mirror the actions of powerful forces in Washington which have been vigorously lobbying to declare Venezuela a "state that sponsors terrorism", "a narco-state" (view which is specially strong in SOUTHCOM and the US Congress - and which, therefore, seem to favour a 'military' solution to the US 'Venezuelan problem'. SOUTHCOM has been busily installing US military bases everywhere in the region and has even resuscitated the IV Fleet (which was decommissioned in 1950). The US has deployed 20,000 soldiers in Haiti after the earthquake and has also stationed massive military forces in Costa Rica (7,000 soldiers, 200 helicopters and 46 warships until the end of December 2010). Thus, labeling Venezuela a 'sponsor of terrorism' is not just right-wing rhetoric, it may have very serious military consequences. Regional leaders are very alarmed about these developments and have expressed serious concern.

A normally omitted dimension of Colombo-Venezuelan relations is the attitude of Venezuela's right wing. In every Venezuela-Colombia spat under Uribe's two presidential mandates, they have sided enthusiastically with Uribe. They did so again this time but were unwittingly wrong-footed by Santos' announcement. When it comes to opposing President Chavez Venezuela's right wing seem to have no sense of proportion, thus, for instance, the governor of the state of Táchira, Cesar Perez Vivas, a member of COPEI, went as far as to appeal to Chavez not to make the US military bases in that country a precondition for the normalisation of relations with Colombia. Venezuelan TV broadcaster, Alberto Nolla, suggested that during the crisis unleashed by the Uribe's actions, the Venezuelan right wing media was more strident in their support for Uribe than the Colombian media had been during the same period. Any cursory look at the main right wing newspapers such as El Universal and El Nacional and TV channels such as Globovision confirm this conclusively.

What is totally unprecedented is the fact that the US administration was de facto reduced to the role of spectator (specialists confirm this). The U.S. were supportive of the accusations against Chavez at the OAS (…"our concerns about the links between Venezuela and the FARC that we have not certified Venezuela in recent years as fully cooperating with the United States and others in terms of these antiterrorism efforts," stated U.S. ambassador to OAS) but were clearly sidelined by UNASUR's brinkmanship which managed to bring the rapprochement between Colombia and Venezuela. It is Santos, Chavez and UNASUR (especially Brazil) who have been doing the running ("Brazil’s government has made it clear that it would like the matter to be taken up within UNASUR, without the influence of the United States. It proclaimed South America a "region of peace" and affirmed that problems between countries should be first dealt with bilaterally.) This reality shows first the growing assertiveness and independence of the region from U.S. influence, but secondly, it shows that underlying this political reality there is the growing independence of the region from traditional economic centres and a steady distancing from the U.S. The Tectonic plates have dramatically shifted and most Latin American leaders feel they have averted an almost certain Uribe-US driven war.

It remains to be seen how far this summit takes the two countries. They have decided to fully restore their relations in every field and the two presidents have established five commissions within the framework of a statement of principles signed by them. They include a commission for debt; another for the economic collaboration between the two countries; one for the development of a plan of investment in their common border; another for the joint undertaking of infrastructural works; and a security commission. Both heads of state undertook a commitment to collaborate in the struggle against drug trafficking, paramilitary and illegal armed activity. Colombia has sent the President of Colombia's Congress, Armando Benedetti, to assist the process of full restoration of relations between the two countries. The OAS reacted by applauding the diplomacy of Santos and Chavez. There has been popular rejoice in both countries. Not all the issues pending between the two nations were, however, addressed, such as the U.S. military bases in Colombia, the urgent need for a peace process in Colombia, and the charges levelled by Uribe against Venezuela to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and against President Chavez personally to the International Criminal Court.

The dogs of war have been kept at bay, at least temporarily. Peace has broken out. The full restoration of relations between Venezuela and Colombia is indeed very positive. However, the array of forces set against the implementation of such a broad peaceful agenda is also pretty formidable. For start it is led by the U.S. and it also involves powerful economic groups in most countries in the region, such as the separatists in the Eastern of Bolivia, that nearly overthrew Morales' government in 2009; the Venezuelan right which managed to actually oust Chavez in 2002 -but who the people returned to power-; the Colombian oligarchy itself; the extremely wealthy and powerful Chilean Pinochetista bourgeoisie; the right in Argentina; the very wealthy Guayaquil entrepreneurs; and so forth. All of whom in one way or another favour the US militarisation of the region as a solution of last resort in the face of radical social movements and progressive governments in the continent. In the meantime the U.S. militarisation of the region continues apace.

It is in the interest of Latin America, very well represented on this historic occasion by UNASUR, to help the Colombian oligarchy to loosen the too uncomfortable US embrace in which Uribe got them into. On the other hand there are the U.S. hegemonic interests in the region and its growing oil dependency from fiercely nationalist governments which are asserting their independence collectively. Washington's political and military strategists must be stunned by the extraordinary rapprochement between Santos and Chavez.

Uribe's insane efforts to bring about a war with Venezuela, underscores the ‘predicament’ the U.S. finds itself in: faced with the rebellion of its Southern neighbours, unable to win politically, and incapable of offering anything such as development, progress, investment or even the American Way of life (which is crushingly coming to an end in the United States itself), has decided to resort to war to maintain its backyard under subjection. Latin America has opted for democracy, social progress, national sovereignty and peace. On this occasion even the staunchest pro U.S. Colombian oligarchy have sided with the South, not the North. We shall see who beats the other in the historic arm-wrestling underway.

Colombia and Venezuela Rattle Their Sabres: Uribe's Parting Shot
Posted: Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Outgoing Colombian President Álvaro Uribe dropped a figurative bomb in the Andes on Thursday, July 22, just weeks before the scheduled inauguration of President-elect Juan Manuel Santos, Uribe's former Defence Minister. At the behest of Bogotá, an extraordinary session of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) was convened to hear Colombia's accusations that there are "1,500 guerrillas and dozens of encampments of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) in Venezuela," both groups deemed to be "terrorist" organizations by Colombia and the United States.
Full Article : venezuelanalysis.com

Bombing Iran
Posted: Saturday, August 7, 2010

¤ The Lies Of Hiroshima Are The Lies Of Today

¤ Bombing Iran
If and when the United States and Israel bomb Iran (marking the sixth country so blessed by Barack Obama) and this sad old world has a new daily horror show to look at on their TV sets, and we then discover that Iran was not actually building nuclear weapons after all, the American mainstream media and the benighted American mind will ask: "Why didn't they tell us that? Did they want us to bomb them?"

¤ More Double Standards on Cuba
¤ Poor Countries Suffer a Hangover for a Party They Didn't Attend

¤ What Collapsing Empire Looks Like

¤ Afghanistan Footage Exposes One of the Worst Civilian Casualty Incidents of the War
¤ Palestinians Denied Access to Water
¤ Katrina Pain Index 2010

¤ Democracy's Not For Dummies
Under the guise of fighting terrorism a paranoid and secretive U.S. government has several hundred thousand employees working with Top Secret clearance. How can anyone but an idiot expect to keep secrets when hundreds of thousands of people have access to them? And with so many top secretly watching one another watch one another, how did billions of dollars suddenly vanish from an Iraqi slush fund?

¤ Dismembering Afghanistan
Wars are rarely lost in a single encounter; Defeat is almost always more complex than that. The United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies have lost the war in Afghanistan, but not just because they failed in the battle for Marjah or decided that discretion was the better part of valor in Kandahar. They lost the war because they should never have invaded in the first place; because they never had a goal that was achievable; because their blood and capital are finite

¤ Truth of a scandalous war
And we all thought we had read and said all that needed to be read or said on Afghanistan! We have heard so much on the shenanigans of the "coalition of the willing" over the past few years that nothing seems to shock us anymore. Yet the shock and awe of the Wikileaks disclosures takes your breath away.

¤ Google-Verizon Deal: The End of The Internet as We Know It

¤ Tariq Aziz: 'Britain and the US killed Iraq. I wish I was martyred'
¤ Killing Civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq
¤ Targeted Assassinations: Challenging US Policy

¤ The US isn't leaving Iraq, it's rebranding the occupation
For most people in Britain and the US, Iraq is already history. Afghanistan has long since taken the lion's share of media attention, as the death toll of Nato troops rises inexorably. Controversy about Iraq is now almost entirely focused on the original decision to invade: what's happening there in 2010 barely registers.

¤ Blair must be arrested

¤ New Dawn, Old Story
More than seven years later, Operation Iraqi Freedom has yielded exactly none of the menaces we were warned about and terrified with, though sales of plastic sheeting and duct tape did go through the roof. Almost 5,000 U.S. troops have been killed, some 50,000 more have been brutally wounded, and more than a million Iraqi civilians have been slaughtered and maimed. Millions more have been displaced, their homes destroyed and their lives ruined.

¤ Right-Wing Bloggers Claim Racism No Longer Exists.

¤ Should Videotaping the Police Really Be a Crime?
¤ Putin bans Russia grain exports due to drought
¤ 'More than four million' hit by flooding in Pakistan

¤ Judge overturns Calif. gay marriage ban
¤ China to hold large-scale air force drill
The increased activity comes as China and the United States have argued over joint U.S.-South Korean drills in the seas off South Korea, and coincides with Beijing's anger at U.S. comments about a sensitive territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

¤ Feds admit storing checkpoint body scan images
¤ Iran's Ahmadinejad survives blast near motorcade

¤ Ahmadinejad unhurt after motorcade explosion
"Stupid Zionists have hired mercenaries to assassinate me," Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech to expatriate Iranians on Monday.

¤ Pakistan no obedient ally
WikiLeaks data shows how volatile nation is forced to act against own self interests

¤ World oil prices approach $82

¤ Solar Tsunami to Strike Earth
Earth is bracing for a cosmic tsunami Tuesday night as tons of plasma from a massive solar flare head directly toward the planet.

¤ China Becomes Second Biggest World Economy

¤ BP Gulf spill: where has all the oil gone?

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