Guardian UK
…”We’ve published a report cataloguing 234 protests in 34 countries in the south. What you see going on in the north is only the tip of the iceberg. Most of the world is opposed to the corporate invasions of their country.

“What is encouraging is that we are living through the birth of the biggest, most unprecedented mass movement in history, the global justice movement.

“A hundred thousand people from around the globe are attending the world social forums and realising that what links our, admittedly smaller, problems in Europe – work insecurity, climate change, privatisation of public services – is the same model of corporate control. They pay a higher price, but we are all victims.”
full article

Courier
CHILDREN could be injected with an “anti-junkie” vaccination being developed by drug companies under a radical plan to combat rising addiction.

Under the plan, being considered by British MPs, doctors would immunise at birth babies considered to be at risk of becoming nicotine or drug addicts. The injection would be similar to an inoculation for measles or mumps.

Doctors believe the childhood jab would block the euphoric effects of drugs later in life, rendering useless narcotics such as heroin and cocaine.

The vaccinations are expected to be on the market within two years. full article

by Lansana Gberie zmag
There is a poignant moment in Howard French’s excellent book, A Continent for the Taking: the Tragedy and Hope of Africa (2004) that, in its intensity and suspense, has the quality to stay forever in one’s mind. French, a former New York Times West African Bureau chief, encounters the murderous Liberian warlord Charles Taylor in Monrovia. Amidst the general distress, Taylor, “impeccably coiffed, manicured and groomed,” is “dressed in a finely tailored two-piece African-style suit,” and exuded of “haughty self-contentment.” He is seated “in a high-backed rattan chair reminiscent of the one of the famous pictures of Black Panther leader Huey Newton,” and he is holding, for good measure, “an elaborately carved wooden scepter.” It is a triumphant Taylor-this is after the 1996 Abuja Accord which would finally pave his way to becoming President of Liberia—and, for all intents and purposes, the warlord must look presidential.

Taylor is holding a press conference, and French takes his chance. “Isn’t it outrageous,” he asks Taylor, who had just described his predatory insurgency as ‘God’s war.’ “Isn’t it outrageous for someone who has drugged small boys, given them arms and trained them to kill to call this God’s war? How dare you call the destruction of your country in this manner and the killing of two hundred thousand people God’s war?” Ever wily and articulate, Taylor did not miss a beat. “I just believe in the destiny of man being controlled by God, and wars, whether man-made or what, are directed by a force,” he said. “And so when I say it is God’s war, God has his own way of restoring the land, and he will restore it after the war.” full article

Awhile back we posted an article from ‘concerned’ European analysts bemoaning the sorry lack of ‘intra-African trade’ (linked below).This demonstrates the hypocrisy

Africa Speaks
by George Alleyne
Trinidad and Tobago
http://www.newsday.co.tt

This year’s annual charade of pretending to identify with Africa in the week immediately preceding Emancipation Day and on Emancipation Day itself has ended. Sadly, most of the persons who wore African garb for that brief period, displaying them as they would Carnival costumes, would have severe reservations about walking down Frederick or High Street in them today and the weeks and months ahead. The once-a-year “Africans” care less about seeing beyond the tragedy of Rwanda, of the Congo, of Liberia, Zimbabwe and the Sudan to the factors which created the tragedy, Europe’s colonising of those countries, its ruthless exploitation of the raw materials of those countries, its dehumanising of the people, the crippling of their industries and the flooding of their markets today with cheap products in a bid to head off any attempts at industrial growth. How many of the once-a-year Africans have concerned themselves with Walter Rodney’s anguished cries in his monumental work How Europe Underdeveloped Africa in which he deals with restrictions placed by the French, for example, on exports of groundnut oil from Senegal, and the British of the same product from Nigeria.

BBC News: Intra-Africa Trade is ‘too low’
(more…)

Independent UK
Nashville, Tennesee: The Republican congressional candidate James L Hart has acknowledged that he is an unapologetic supporter of eugenics, the fake science that resulted in thousands of people being sterilised in an attempt to purify the white race.

He believes the country will look “like one big Detroit” – which has a large African-American population – if it doesn’t eliminate welfare payments and immigration. He believes that if blacks were integrated centuries ago, the automobile would never have been invented. full article

Independent UK
he Bush administration was forced into the embarrassing admission yesterday that “new” intelligence about al-Qa’ida’s plans to attack US financial institutions – information that led to an official alert and a slew of fresh security measures – was up to four years old and predated the 11 September attacks.

Intelligence officials were forced into retreat just a day after they had said fresh and “alarmingly” specific information indicated terrorists were planning attacks on institutions in Washington, New York and New Jersey and had been carrying out surveillance of the targets. One investigator had even said that al-Qa’ida operatives had recently carried out a “test-run” for an attack against a bank.

…Despite Mr Ridge’s assertion, a transcript of a background briefing provided to the US media on Sunday night by intelligence agencies reveals the extent to which officials were determined to imply the information was current. It was that briefing on which the majority of reports were based.

During the briefing one official, described only as a “senior intelligence official”, said: “The new information is chilling in its scope, in its detail, in its breadth. It also gives a sense, the same feeling one would have if one found that somebody broke into your house and over the past several months was taking a lot of details about your place of residence and looking for ways to attack.” full article

Independent UK
The bar at the Hotel des Milles Collines in Rwanda’s capital of Kigali is buzzing on a Tuesday night. Air-kisses flurry about, a singer pelts out pop ballads, and waitresses serve grilled fish and chilled wines.

The customers – expatriates and fashionable Rwandans – are cheerful and talkative, competing for an audience in the balmy air. This is the new Kigali – a vibrant town trying to rebuild itself, to cope with the horrors of 1994, when 800,000 people were killed in a genocide that engulfed the entire country.

But in this buzzing city, Charles Kabonero, editor of Rwanda’s only independent newspaper, Umuseso, has just been released after yet another arbitary arrest – his fifth stint in jail since he took control of the newspaper six months ago. He is the fourth editor the newspaper has had since its creation in 2000. All three of his predecessors fled the country after being arrested several times and receiving death threats.

“After all the editors fled, I found myself the most senior person at the newspaper so I became editor,” said 23-year-old Kabonero, who is still a journalism student at the National University in Rwanda. “Each time an edition comes out, we get three or four summons to report to the police station, the newspaper is seized, or I get arrested. I am getting used to it.” full article

Independent UK
Despite the US’s huge intelligence-gathering network and diplomatic clout – and even a $25m reward on his head – there’s not been a single sighting of Osama bin Laden since 2001. Justin Huggler reports from Peshawar on the search for the world’s most wanted man.
Somewhere, a man huddles in the shadows, speaking into a tape recorder, bringing his latest message to the outside world. His face is instantly recognisable. There is a $25m price tag on his head, and just a snippet of information on his whereabouts could make a man rich for life. He is the most wanted man in the world, but for more than three years, nobody has been able to find a trace of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts.

With Washington and New York this week on orange alert, and the US releasing what it claims is the most detailed evidence yet of an al-Qa’ida plot to strike inside its borders, the focus is suddenly back on the hunt for Bin Laden. Al-Qa’ida allies are being blamed for the loathsome beheadings of foreigners that have become almost a grisly routine in Iraq. And with a US national election looming and President George Bush doing badly in the polls, the White House is said to be desperate to capture their man in time for November.

…Rumours abound that he has already been captured by the US, or maybe Pakistan, and that his captors are waiting for the perfect moment to announce his capture: just in time for President Bush’s re-election bid, for example, or in order for Pakistan’s President Musharraf to wring the most glittering rewards from the US. full article

Guardian UK
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Army has rehired CACI International Inc. on a short-term contract to assist in interrogations and other intelligence-gathering activities in Iraq.

Its previous contract, with the Interior Department, has been declared improper by that department’s inspector general. It was determined that although the original contract was for information technology services, Arlington, Va.-based CACI instead was conducting intelligence operations.

The finding prompted the Army to hire CACI under a new $15 million agreement announced this week. The new contract is good until the end of November; the Army will put those services out to bid in December, officials said.

One of CACI’s interrogators, Steven Stefanowicz, was singled out in the investigation by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba as contributing to the prison abuse at Abu Ghraib by allowing or instructing military police “to facilitate interrogations by ‘setting conditions’ which were not authorized.”

Other Army officials have said they were satisfied with CACI’s performance.

Chicago Sun Times
Barack Obama might get a race, after all.

Former GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes told Illinois Republicans Monday that he is ”open to the idea” of taking on the Democrat in the U.S. Senate race — a move that would pit two eloquent, nationally known African Americans against one another.

”It would be a classic race of conservative vs. liberal,” said state Sen. Dave Syverson, a member of the panel looking for a candidate to go up against Obama. ”It would put this race on the map in this country — just for excitement.” full article

The tone of this article is incredibly dsigusting. Well not only that, but the idea of pitting Obama and Keyes against each other like…what? And for the white man’s sport?? This reminds me of the horrific boxing scene at the beginning of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.