Herald Reporters
Africa has got the resources and what is needed is for the continent to identify the stimulus to transform its economies, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who arrived in Harare yesterday for a three-day State visit, said.

Speaking at a banquet hosted for him by President Mugabe at State House last night, Mr Museveni said the continent could initiate this transformation without being continuously lectured on cliches such as development, sustainable development and Millennium Development Goals.

He said Zimbabwe and Uganda enjoy good relations despite being on opposite sides in the Democratic Republic of Congo conflict.

“In spite of this little misunderstanding, we have always worked together. I come here to show to you that we are brothers. Historically speaking, we are on the same side; we must work together,” he said.

President Museveni noted that Zimbabwe was among some of the Southern African Development Community member states that have understood and supported Uganda’s concern at Sudan’s policies in the southern part of that vast country.

He said Africa would be powerful if it negotiates as a bloc rather than as individual countries on global, economic and trade issues.

Full Article:herald.co.zw

…Most Americans, in other words, have no idea what the hell a Halliburton is. Or a Karl Rove. Or a Donny “Shriveled Soul” Rumsfeld. Or a Lockheed Martin. Or a Carlysle Group. Or have any idea that Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Or that WMDs were never found. Or that President Bush has taken more vacation time than any president in U.S. history. Or that Jesus thinks Dubya is “sort of a dink.” Or where Iraq is on a map.

Fact is, in the past decade, TV-news ratings — cable and network, combined — has shrunk to a fraction of its former numbers. Newspaper subscriptions have been either flat or dropping for just about as long. Newsmagazines, radio, historical nonfiction: flat or dropping fast. Even the Internet, that vast teeming customizable firestorm of news and info streaming in from all over the planet, even the awesome Net draws far more people to its porn and gossip and shopping departments than any e-news joint could ever wet dream.

Is this unfair? Does it sound elitist and biased? It’s not. There have been studies. And reports. And alarming indicators of all kinds telling us time and again that, for example, fully 50 percent of eligible Americans don’t even bother to vote (a 15 percent drop since 1964), and many have no idea who’s on the Supreme Court or what Congress does, and many can’t even point to France on a globe.

Voter turnout, comparatively, in Italy, Spain, the U.K., or Germany? Anywhere from 75 to 92 percent, every time. The sad fact is, the United States ranks 139th out of 172 countries in voter turnout. Wave that flag proudly, baby.

You’ve seen the headlines. Alarming numbers of American high school students can’t even identify the current vice president, much less name a half dozen presidents from history. Far too many citizens can’t name the capital of their own home state or recognize their own senators, much less discern how Bush’s environmental policy is poisoning their water or how Ashcroft wants to scan their email and tap their phones and suck the pith from their souls.

A recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development states that upward of 60 percent of Americans ages 16-25 are ‘functionally illiterate’, meaning they can’t, for example, fill out a detailed form or read a numerical table (like a time schedule). A recent Florida study shows at least 70 percent of recent high school graduates need remedial courses — that is, basic reading and math — when they enter community college. These are kids who, you can be assured, think Colin Powell is that nasty British dude on “American Idol.”

Full Article: sfgate.com

It is crucial to understand who isn’t voting, who isn’t performing in school, who can’t read. It is those who are most immediately and seriously impacted by the disastrous policies of the government, and this makes a mockery of any pretension to ‘democracy’ that exists in this country. Are the poor and non-white being deliberately mis-educated and un-educated? Because the educational system reflects the values and prerogatives of privilege: which is above all about the upholding of the status quo, there need not be malicious intent on the part of workers in the system. The system will reliably and regularly fail marginalized people just the same. It is a moral failure on the part of those who see what the system does to kids to continue to do nothing.

Certainly, character development is exactly what is needed. The US has been so morally degraded by an unacknowledged history (which remains untaught to the children) that few people will understand or embrace this, including those who are very ‘well-educated’ indeed. Because to really see what’s happening is to realize that for our salvation nothing less is required than getting up off the privilege.

by Michael Tarazi
srael’s untenable policy in the Middle East was more obvious than usual last week, as the Israeli Army made repeated incursions into Gaza, killing dozens of Palestinians in the deadliest attacks in more than two years, even as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reiterated his plans to withdraw from the territory. Israel’s overall strategy toward the Palestinians is ultimately self-defeating: it wants Palestinian land but not the Palestinians who live on that land.

As Christians and Muslims, the millions of Palestinians under occupation are not welcome in the Jewish state. Many Palestinians are now convinced that Israeli support for a Palestinian state is motivated not by a hope for reconciliation, but by a desire to segregate non-Jews while taking as much of their land and resources as possible. They are increasingly questioning the most commonly accepted solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – “two states living side by side in peace and security,” in the words of President Bush – and are being forced to consider a one-state solution.

To Palestinians, the strategy behind Israel’s two-state solution is clear. More than 400,000 Israelis live illegally in more than 150 colonies, many of which are atop Palestinian water sources. Mr. Sharon is prepared to evacuate settlers from Gaza – but only in exchange for expanding settlements in the West Bank. And Israel is building a barrier wall not on its land but rather inside occupied Palestinian territory. The wall’s route maximizes the amount of Palestinian farmland and water on one side and the number of Palestinians on the other.

Yet while Israelis try to allay a demographic threat, they are creating a democratic threat. After years of negotiations, coupled with incessant building of settlements and now the construction of the wall, Palestinians finally understand that Israel is offering “independence” on a reservation stripped of water and arable soil, economically dependent on Israel and even lacking the right to self-defense.

As a result, many Palestinians are contemplating whether the quest for equal statehood should now be superseded by a struggle for equal citizenship. In other words, a one-state solution in which citizens of all faiths and ethnicities live together as equals. Recent polls indicate that a quarter of Palestinians favor the secular one-state solution – a surprisingly high number given that it is not officially advocated by any senior Palestinian leader.

Support for one state is hardly a radical idea; it is simply the recognition of the uncomfortable reality that Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories already function as a single state. They share the same aquifers, the same highway network, the same electricity grid and the same international borders. There are no road signs reading “Welcome to Occupied Territory” when one drives into East Jerusalem. Some government maps of Israel do not delineate Israel’s 1967 pre-occupation border. Settlers in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem) are interspersed among Palestinian towns and now constitute nearly a fifth of the population. In the words of one Palestinian farmer, you can’t unscramble an egg.

But in this de facto state, 3.5 million Palestinian Christians and Muslims are denied the same political and civil rights as Jews. These Palestinians must drive on separate roads, in cars bearing distinctive license plates, and only to and from designated Palestinian areas. It is illegal for a Palestinian to drive a car with an Israeli license plate. These Palestinians, as non-Jews, neither qualify for Israeli citizenship nor have the right to vote in Israeli elections.

In South Africa, such an allocation of rights and privileges based on ethnic or religious affiliation was called apartheid. In Israel, it is called the Middle East’s only democracy.

Most Israelis recoil at the thought of giving Palestinians equal rights, understandably fearing that a possible Palestinian majority will treat Jews the way Jews have treated Palestinians. They fear the destruction of the never-defined “Jewish state.” The one-state solution, however, neither destroys the Jewish character of the Holy Land nor negates the Jewish historical and religious attachment (although it would destroy the superior status of Jews in that state). Rather, it affirms that the Holy Land has an equal Christian and Muslim character.

For those who believe in equality, this is a good thing. In theory, Zionism is the movement of Jewish national liberation. In practice, it has been a movement of Jewish supremacy. It is this domination of one ethnic or religious group over another that must be defeated before we can meaningfully speak of a new era of peace; neither Jews nor Muslims nor Christians have a unique claim on this sacred land.

The struggle for Palestinian equality will not be easy. Power is never voluntarily shared by those who wield it. Palestinians will have to capture the world’s imagination, organize the international community and refuse to be seduced into negotiating for their rights.

But the struggle against South African apartheid proves the battle can be won. The only question is how long it will take, and how much all sides will have to suffer, before Israeli Jews can view Palestinian Christians and Muslims not as demographic threats but as fellow citizens.

Michael Tarazi is a legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

NY Times

by William Safire
As the Democratic Whoopee Brigade hailed Senator Kerry’s edge in debating technique, nobody noticed his foreign policy sea change. On both military tactics and grand strategy, the newest neoconservative announced doctrines more hawkish than President Bush.

First, on war-fighting in Iraq: Hard-liners criticized the Bush decision this spring not to send U.S. troops in to crush Sunni resistance in the Baathist stronghold in Falluja. Our forces wanted to fight to win but soft-liners in Washington worried about the effect of heavier civilian casualties on the hearts and minds of Iraqis, and of U.S. troop losses on Americans.

Last week in debate, John Kerry – until recently, the antiwar candidate too eager to galvanize dovish Democrats – suddenly reversed field, and came down on the side of the military hard-liners.

“What I want to do is change the dynamics on the ground,” Kerry volunteered. “And you have to do that by beginning to not back off of Falluja and other places and send the wrong message to terrorists. … You’ve got to show you’re serious.” Right on, John! Although he added his standard softener of “sharing the stakes” with “the rest of the world,” he issued his radically revised military policy: wipe out resistance in terrorist strongholds like Falluja, which requires us to inflict and accept higher casualties.

…Next, to grand strategy: Kerry was asked by Jim Lehrer, “What is your position on the whole concept of pre-emptive war?” In the past, Kerry has given a safe never-say-never response, but last week he gave a Strangelovian answer: “The president always has the right and always has had the right for pre-emptive strike.” He pledged never to cede “the right to pre-empt in any way necessary” to protect the U.S.

But in embracing his right to pre-empt – always derided in horror by the two-minutes-to-midnight crowd as impermissible “preventive war” – Kerry felt the need to interject: “That was a great doctrine throughout the cold war. And it was one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.”

Hold on; nuclear pre-emption was never America’s “great doctrine” during confrontation with the Soviets. Our strategic doctrine, which some of us remember, was at first “massive retaliation,” later “mutual assured destruction.” Maybe arms control negotiators listed pre-emption or preventive war as a dangerous notion of extremists, but only kooks portrayed by the likes of Peter Sellers called for a nuclear final solution to the Communist problem…

Full Article: NY Times

Diebold, the much-criticized electronic voting machine company, got another black eye last week. A federal court in California ruled that it had violated federal law when it falsely charged two students with violating its copyrights by posting critical information about its voting machines on the Internet. The case raises more questions about Diebold’s honesty and its commitment to transparency.

The story began early last year when someone – it is unclear who – posted internal Diebold e-mail messages on the Internet that discussed flaws in the company’s electronic voting machines. Two students from Swarthmore College then posted those messages on various Web sites. Diebold sent out a flurry of cease-and-desist letters claiming that the postings violated its copyrights. The students sued, charging that Diebold knowingly misrepresented its rights under copyright law.

The United States District Court for the Northern District of California agreed. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it is illegal to send a cease-and-desist letter while knowing that the claim of copyright infringement is false. The court held that Diebold knew that its e-mail messages “discussing possible technical problems” with its voting machines were not copyrighted, but went ahead anyway.

NY Times

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Denmark aims to claim the North Pole and hunt for oil in high Arctic regions that may become more accessible because of global warming, the Science Ministry said on Monday.

It said Denmark would send an expedition to try to prove the seabed beneath the Pole was a natural continuation of Greenland, the world’s biggest island and a Danish territory whose northern tip is just 450 miles from the Pole.

Science Minister Helge Sander said last week success would give Denmark access to “new resources such as oil and natural gas.”

The potential return would outweigh the 150 million crowns ($25 million) that Denmark has allocated to the investigation.

The Danish bid rests on a U.N. convention allowing coastal nations to claim rights to offshore seabed resources. Countries that ratify it have 10 years to prove they have a fair claim to the offshore territory and its resources.

“First we have to make the scientific claim. After that there will be a political process with the other countries,” said Science Ministry official Thorkild Meedom.

Other claimants to the area, with the Pole itself, include Russia, Canada and Norway. The United States may also make a claim.

“We’re seeing a growing focus on and fight for the resources in the Arctic, especially as the global warming makes the region more accessible,” said Samantha Smith, director of the WWF environmental group’s Arctic Program.

Full Article: Reuters

Ok. How insane is this?

by Peter Beaumont
American warnings that Darfur is heading for an apocalyptic humanitarian catastrophe have been widely exaggerated by administration officials, it is alleged by international aid workers in Sudan. Washington’s desire for a regime change in Khartoum has biased their reports, it is claimed.

The government’s aid agency, USAID, says that between 350,000 and a million people could die in Darfur by the end of the year. Other officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, have accused the Sudanese government of presiding over a ‘genocide’ that could rival those in Bosnia and Rwanda.

But the account has been comprehensively challenged by eyewitness reports from aid workers and by a new food survey of the region. The nutritional survey of Sudan’s Darfur region, by the UN World Food Programme, says that although there are still high levels of malnutrition among under-fives in some areas, the crisis is being brought under control.

‘It’s not disastrous,’ said one of those involved in the WFP survey, ‘although it certainly was a disaster earlier this year, and if humanitarian assistance declines, this will have very serious negative consequences.’

The UN report appears to confirm food surveys conducted by other agencies in Darfur which also stand in stark contrast to the dire US descriptions of the food crisis.

The most dramatic came from Andrew Natsios, head of USAID, who told UN officials: ‘We estimate right now, if we get relief in we’ll lose a third of a million people and, if we don’t, the death rates could be dramatically higher, approaching a million people.’

A month later, a second senior official, Roger Winter, USAID’s assistant administrator, briefed foreign journalists in Washington that an estimated 30,000 people had been killed during the on-going crisis in Darfur, with another 50,000 deaths from malnutrition and disease, largely among the huge populations fleeing the violence. He described the emergency as ‘humanitarian disaster of the first magnitude’.

By 9 September Powell was in front of the Congressional Foreign Relations Committee accusing Sudan of ‘genocide’, a charge rejected by officials of both the European and African Unions and also privately by British officials.

‘I’ve been to a number of camps during my time here,’ said one aid worker, ‘and if you want to find death, you have to go looking for it. It’s easy to find very sick and under-nourished children at the therapeutic feeding centres, but that’s the same wherever you go in Africa.’

Another aid worker told The Observer : ‘It suited various governments to talk it all up, but they don’t seem to have thought about the consequences. I have no idea what Colin Powell’s game is, but to call it genocide and then effectively say, “Oh, shucks, but we are not going to do anything about that genocide” undermines the very word “genocide”.’

While none of the aid workers and officials interviewed by The Observer denied there was a crisis in Darfur – or that killings, rape and a large-scale displacement of population had taken place – many were puzzled that it had become the focus of such hyperbolic warnings when there were crises of similar magnitude in both northern Uganda and eastern Congo.

Full Article: Guardian UK

by Adrian Blomfield
American intelligence obtained through bribery may have seriously overstated the insurgency role of the most wanted fugitive in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

US agents in Baghdad and Fallujah have revealed a series of botched and often tawdry dealings with unreliable sources who, in the words of one, “told us what we wanted to hear”.

“We were basically paying up to $US10,000 ($A13,700) a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq,” one agent said.

“Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one.”

Officials in Washington have linked Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, casting the Jordanian extremist as leader of the insurgency, mastermind of suicide bombings and the man behind the abduction of foreign hostages.

But some critics of the war say the Bush Administration has deliberately skewed the level of Zarqawi’s involvement in an attempt to portray the insurgency as a war waged by foreign Islamic terrorists.

Full Article: fairuse.1accesshost.com

NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) – Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the house of Mauritania’s national security chief early Sunday, police in the coup-prone West African country said.

“They got out of a Mercedes and shot at the house. They machine-gunned three vehicles in front of the building,” a police officer on the scene said.

Deddahi Ould Abdallahi, director of national security and a close confidant of the president, told Reuters he was not at home at when the shooting happened at around 0200 GMT. He said his wife and children were in the house but were not injured.

“Apparently it was a car which did not have number plates with four people on board who shot at my house,” Ould Abdallahi said in front of the single storey villa, surrounded by around a dozen uniformed and other plain clothes police officers.

The Islamic republic, a poor, mostly desert country that hopes to get rich from offshore oil, said in August it had foiled an attempted putsch.

Full Article: Reuters

‘Coup prone’ huh? Like hurricane-prone, disease prone…inexplicable, a baffling force of nature…this is how we are encouraged to see Africa.

by Dexter Filkins
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 2 – The Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has begun laying the groundwork to enter Iraq’s nascent democratic process, telling Iraqi leaders that he is planning to disband his militia and possibly field candidates for office.

After weeks of watching his militia wither before American military attacks, Mr. Sadr has sent emissaries to some of Iraq’s major political parties and religious groups to discuss the possibility of involving himself in the campaign for nationwide elections, according to a senior aide to Mr. Sadr and several Iraqi leaders who have met with him.

According to those Iraqis, Mr. Sadr says he intends to disband his militia, the Mahdi Army, and endorse the holding of elections. While Mr. Sadr has made promises to end his armed resistance before, some Iraqi officials believe that he may be serious this time, especially given the toll of attacks on his forces.

Mr. Sadr’s aides say his political intentions have been endorsed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most powerful Shiite religious leader.

NY Times