counterpunch.org
The United States has launched a war against a large part of the Iraqi people. It is the Bush Administration’s desire for total domination, not the militancy of Shia insurgents, that has triggered this latest uprising. The US is trying to tame the Shia majority.

At the time of writing, US forces have surrounded the most holy site in Shia Islam, the Imam Ali mosque in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf, after eight days of fierce fighting with the forces of Muqtada al-Sadr, reportedly leaving hundreds dead. Elsewhere, “US air strikes and fighting on the ground in the [largely Shia] Iraqi city of Kut have left 72 people dead and about 150 injured,’ according to the interim Iraqi government. (BBC News Online, 12 Aug.) full article

New York Times
CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 13 – In an extraordinary referendum after years of political turmoil, Venezuelans will vote Sunday on whether to dismiss President Hugo Chávez, who has alienated the Bush administration with his anti-American bombast and polarized the nation with promises to use oil wealth for a social revolution.

Eight months ago, as opponents of Mr. Chávez fanned out across the country to gather the signatures needed for the vote, he looked likely to have his tenure cut short. But on Friday, amid a huge spending campaign in poor neighborhoods, the contest had narrowed to the point where several pollsters said the president might win an endorsement of his rule.

The referendum is being closely monitored abroad. Mr. Chávez, 50, a former paratrooper and failed coup leader, rose from poverty to power five and a half years ago and then won re-election in a landslide that underscored Venezuelans’ anger at the old political order. He has since so rankled Washington with his leftist agenda and authoritarian impulse that American officials blamed Mr. Chávez himself when he was briefly ousted after deadly street protests in 2002. full article

It is funny to see what is REALLY eating at these guys about Chavez. Imagine, he has the nerve to use oil profits to improve the lives of poor people. Here in the US with our elections, you would think poor people did not exist; nobody, Democratic or Republican, is making a peep about them. The problem, in their eyes, was solved by dumping the poor out of the bottom of the economy, to the land beyond statistics, during the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years. You don’t hear anybody talking about the appalling results of Clinton’s ‘welfare reform.’
So the reckless free-spender Chavez is pouring money into the ghetto. Shame shame shame. O yes, and his rough uncultured ways ’embarass’ the elite. The poor should neither be seen nor heard.

The War on the Poor by Cockburn and St. Clair counterpunch.org

Reuters
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) – Talks to end the conflict in Najaf between U.S. and Iraqi forces and radical Shi’ite militiamen have collapsed, Iraq’s national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said Saturday.

“The talks have failed. All efforts to end this have not succeeded,” he told reporters. Reuters

Reuters
GATUMBA, Burundi (Reuters) – Hutu rebels and allied attackers armed with guns and machetes killed at least 159 people in “a plan of genocide” at a camp for Tutsi Congolese refugees in western Burundi, the army said Saturday.

The Hutu Forces for National Liberation (FNL) claimed responsibility for Friday night’s attack, saying they were aiming to hit a military target near the camp. Burundi has a military camp about 500 meters from the refugee camp.

But Burundi’s army said the attack was deliberately aimed at killing the refugees at their camp and was not an attack on the military base. Six bodies of refugees who had been kidnapped and later killed were recovered near the camp, it said. full article

Independent UK
Surrounded by massing government troops and the Janjaweed, ringed by burnt villages, the rebel fighters of Darfur man their guns and wait for the attack they believe is about to come.

These are the people the Sudanese military and the Arab militia claim to be fighting when they carry out their raids, resulting in murders, mutilations and rapes of civilians, and accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
full article

New York Times
WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 – April 21 was an unusually violent day in Iraq; 68 people died in a car bombing in Basra, among them 23 children. As the news went from bad to worse, President Bush took a tough line, vowing to a group of journalists, “We’re not going to cut and run while I’m in the Oval Office.”

On the same day, deep within the turgid pages of the Federal Register, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a regulation that would forbid the public release of some data relating to unsafe motor vehicles, saying that publicizing the information would cause “substantial competitive harm” to manufacturers.

As soon as the rule was published, consumer groups yelped in complaint, while the government responded that it was trying to balance the interests of consumers with the competitive needs of business. But hardly anyone else noticed, and that was hardly an isolated case.

Allies and critics of the Bush administration agree that the Sept. 11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq have preoccupied the public, overshadowing an important element of the president’s agenda: new regulatory initiatives. Health rules, environmental regulations, energy initiatives, worker-safety standards and product-safety disclosure policies have been modified in ways that often please business and industry leaders while dismaying interest groups representing consumers, workers, drivers, medical patients, the elderly and many others. full article

Reuters
BERLIN, Aug. 11 – A German minister left for Namibia on Wednesday amid calls by Namibia’s government and human rights advocates for Germany to pay compensation for a massacre of Herero tribesmen in 1904 by its colonial troops.

Germany’s development minister, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, will attend a ceremony in Okakarara on Saturday marking the 100th anniversary of a revolt by the Herero people in southwest Africa against Kaiser Wilhelm’s troops in which 65,000 of the 80,000 Hereros died.

About 10,000 members of the Nama tribe were also killed in the massacre, which some historians call the first genocide of the 20th century.

Ms. Wieczorek-Zeul will also discuss regional development with the Namibian government and meet Herero representatives.

“In making this trip I want to mark Germany’s particular political and moral responsibility for the past and its colonial guilt,” Ms. Wieczorek-Zeul said in a statement. “I would also like to emphasize Germany’s special responsibility for Namibia.”

Germany, which is Namibia’s main source of development aid, has expressed “deep regret” for the killings, which almost eradicated the Herero tribe, but has ruled out paying compensation, and has not made a formal apology out of fear this could make it vulnerable to claims.

Though the Herero people are using the anniversary to press their demand for reparations, the killings happened too long ago for them to file a civil suit in Germany. A $4 billion lawsuit that has been filed in the United States is thought to have limited chance of success.

The Society for Threatened Peoples, a Berlin-based human rights group, said Ms. Wieczorek-Zeul’s visit was a step in the right direction, but Ulrich Delius, the group’s Africa representative, called on Ms. Wieczorek-Zeul to acknowledge Germany’s guilt and not “duck out of the issue,” as he said Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer had done during his visit to Namibia in October 2003.

Germany, which has paid billions in compensation for victims of the Nazis, has argued that the Herero people have no case for compensation because international laws on the protection of civilians did not exist at the time of the conflict.

A former attorney general in Namibia, Veuii Rukoro, has dismissed this argument as “not only an insult to the collective intelligence of mankind, but also a blatantly racist statement” given Germany’s payments to Jewish victims of the Nazi era.

This paternalistic business is so hypocritical and so sickening. Germany’s ‘special responsibility for Namibia’?? For what about Namibia? For history? For well-being? For what? What does it mean to ‘feel responsible’ and yet to refuse to act? Namibia is not asking for German concern or care or nebulous ‘responsibility.’ Namibia wants $4billion. Period.

New York Times
ROME, Aug. 12 – The Vatican shut down a seminary in Austria on Thursday that had been accused of harboring widespread sexual misconduct, including the distribution of child pornography.

“The seminary of St. Pölten is declared closed,” said Bishop Klaus Küng, who was sent to Austria by Pope John Paul II three weeks ago to investigate the seminary, which is near Vienna. “A fresh start is necessary.”

Since news of the scandal broke late last year, Austrian investigators have found some 40,000 pornographic photographs and many videos on computers at the seminary. Among the photographs were pornographic representations of minors, depictions of bestiality and violent sexual scenarios, prosecutors have said.
full article

Yeah well we all know it’s those uppity women’s fault…

New York Times
WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 – A confidential report conducted by the United Nations in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security has found that airport inspectors with the power to summarily deport illegal immigrants have sometimes intimidated and handcuffed travelers fleeing persecution, discouraged some from seeking political asylum and often lacked an understanding of asylum law.

Homeland Security officials say they have responded to the problems identified in the report, which was completed late last year and obtained this week by The New York Times. But the study highlights the challenges facing the department as it grants Border Patrol agents sweeping new powers to deport illegal immigrants from the borders with Mexico and Canada without providing them the opportunity to make their case before an immigration judge.

Until now, Border Patrol agents typically delivered illegal immigrants to the custody of the immigration courts, where judges determined whether they should be deported or remain in the United States. Homeland Security officials, who announced the policy shift this week, said border agents would be trained before deporting illegal immigrants to ensure that asylum seekers and legitimate travelers were not mistakenly sent home.
full article

New York Times
MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich., Aug. 6 – Crime doesn’t pay, but criminals just might.

That is what more and more local governments are hoping, as they grapple with soaring prison populations and budget pressures.

To help cover the costs of incarceration, corrections officers and politicians are more frequently billing inmates for their room and board, an idea popular with voters.

Here in suburban Macomb County, 25 miles north of Detroit, Sheriff Mark Hackel has one of the most successful of these programs in the nation. Last year, the sheriff’s department collected nearly $1.5 million in what are being called “pay to stay” fees from many of the 22,000 people who spent time in the county jail.

Inmates are billed for room and board on a sliding scale of $8 to $56 a day, depending on ability to pay. When they are released, the sheriff’s office will go to court to collect the unpaid bills, seizing cars or putting some inmates back in jail. The wife of one inmate, a Chrysler truck factory worker who is serving half a year for drunk driving, dropped off a check for $7,212 this week to cover part of his bill, the largest single amount ever collected by the sheriff.

Though the idea is not new – and in fact federal prisons adopted a similar policy years ago that has fallen into disuse – the squeeze on local budgets in recent years has propelled more local officials to assess incarceration fees. In all, more than half of states collect some sort of fees in their prisons, according to the American Correctional Association.

But the fees raise thorny ethical and constitutional issues, say advocates of prisoner rights and some other corrections experts. The costs place an unfair burden on a population that is almost by definition impoverished, making it harder for inmates to get back on their feet after release, some groups argue. Others contend that the fees deprive inmates of due process or constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In a few cases, courts have sided with the inmates on specific issues.
full article