A hunting boom driven by wealthy tourists is pushing black South Africans off the land to make way for game, generating anger that, a decade after apartheid, whites still own most of the countryside.

Hundreds of commercial farms have evicted their labourers and converted into game parks, turning swaths of arable land into fenced wilderness for trophy animals such as lions and antelopes.

Many farmers admit that switching to hunting is a pretext to get rid of black workers whom they blame for a surge of theft and violent crime in rural areas since white minority rule ended in 1994.

Groups representing labourers say the evictions are a continuation of colonial and apartheid-era dispossession, and that the time has come to expropriate white-owned land.

“Game parks are mushrooming too much. They bring hunger to the people. People are becoming angry,” said Mangaliso Kubheka, a national organiser for an activist group, the Landless People’s Movement. Mr Kubheka is himself facing eviction from a farm in Ingogo, in KwaZulu-Natal province, where his family has tilled maize and pumpkin over three generations for white owners.

In return, the labourers were given a plot of land of their own to cultivate rent-free, but that arrangement is threatened by the farmer’s plan to replace them with wildlife, which wealthy foreigners pay handsomely to shoot.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

The stock market barreled higher yesterday, sending the Dow Jones industrials to a new 31/2-year high as two Wall Street firms reported better-than-expected earnings and a brokerage firm upgraded Intel.

Stocks have climbed steadily since the presidential elections, with good economic data and positive profit forecasts for 2005 assuring investors of further returns. The markets also benefited from the traditional “Santa Claus” rally, as mutual funds and money managers shuffle their portfolios before the end of the year.

“The company news that we’ve seen over the past few days has been, on balance, positive, and that’s giving investors the courage to buy,” said Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer for the First Albany Corporation. “There’s definitely some window dressing going on as well, where you have portfolio managers making sure they have good performing stocks in their portfolios before year’s end. But for the most part, investors seem to be in a holiday mood.”
Full Article: nytimes.com

What withthe jolly news coming out of Iraq yesterday, who WOULDN”T be in a ‘holiday mood’?

KIEV, Ukraine, Dec. 21 – Ukraine’s “orange revolution” was either a mass outpouring of popular will or the collapse of an enfeebled authoritarian power.

Or maybe it was the political and judicial maturation of a teenage democracy. Or it was a Western plot concocted in the corridors of American power and carried out with cunning by subversive forces like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. (The latter is the theory favored in parts north and east of here, particularly in the Kremlin.)

In reality, the political upheaval and mass demonstrations that ultimately overturned Ukraine’s fraudulent presidential runoff last month probably resulted from a mixture of all those things. And by all accounts, Ukraine, alone among the former Soviet republics, had several essential ingredients for democracy that had managed to survive the turmoil of 13 years of halting transition: political competition, judicial independence and, of course, the political activism of voters in a vast swath of the world where apathy typically rules.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Ah well yes of course. It’s funny how the realm of easy answers is only unattractive when there is something to hide. Mostly, these guys are the masters of the simple explanation.

DENVER, Dec. 21 – Americans across the country expressed anguish about the devastating attack on a United States military base in Iraq on Tuesday. But it was the question of where the nation should go from here that produced the biggest sigh from Dallas Spear, an oil and gas industry worker from Denver.

“I would never have gone there from the beginning, but that’s beside the point now,” Mr. Spear said, his jaw clenched. “We upset the apple cart and now there’s pretty much no choice. We have to proceed.”

Mr. Spear’s sentiment was echoed in interviews in shopping malls, offices, sidewalks and homes on a day when the news from Iraq was bleak. With 14 American service members killed and dozens injured, it was apparently the worst one-day death toll for American forces since United States forces defeated Saddam Hussein’s regime in spring 2003.

Many people said they were dispirited or angry, but many expressed equal unhappiness about seeing a lack of options.

Whether one supported or opposed the invasion has become irrelevant, many said – there is only the road ahead now, with few signs to guide the way.

One soldier who has been to Iraq and is soon to go back said he believes the war itself has changed, and that guerrilla attacks like the one in the northern Iraq city of Mosul on Tuesday have constricted the view on the ground about how to proceed.

“When we went to war there was a clear-cut enemy,” said Specialist Richard P. Basilio, 27, of Philadelphia, who leaves for Iraq after the holidays for a 12- to 18-month deployment as an Army computer technician. It will be his third tour to the Middle East and his second to Iraq. “Now the rules have totally changed. You don’t know what’s going on,” he added. “You just have no idea who’s your friend and who’s your enemy.”

Mr. Basilio’s mother, Janet Bellows of Daytona Beach, Fla., said the bombing in Mosul, combined with the prospect of her son’s departure, have left her “absolutely devastated.”

“It’s like watching your son playing in traffic, and there’s nothing you can do,” Ms. Bellows said. “You can’t reach him.”

Polls show that many Americans were deeply concerned about the course of the war even before Tuesday’s attack. Out of 1,002 Americans surveyed last Friday and Saturday by the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, 47 percent said, when asked how the United States had handled Iraq during the past year, that things had gotten worse. Twenty percent said the situation had improved and 32 percent said it was about the same.

Some people said that polls themselves were part of the problem.

Charlie Eubanks, a cotton farmer and lawyer from the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, said he supported President Bush but had been lukewarm about going to war. Now, he said there was no choice but to fight on, and that reports on opinion polls were only “aiding and abetting” the enemy by making opponents think the American will is weak.

“We’ve got to hang in there and get it done,” Mr. Eubanks said.

Some people said that part of what they struggle with is how to square the ongoing violence with their beliefs about human nature and decency.

Full Article: nytimes.com

Gee. How about NOT ‘hanging in there” and NOT “getting it done”?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A somber President Bush said on Tuesday U.S. troops killed in a deadly attack in northern Iraq were on a mission of peace as the heavy death toll presented him with a fresh challenge amid dwindling U.S. support for the war.

Bush paid a Christmas-time visit to families of troops wounded in battle at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on the same day an attack on a tented dining hall at a U.S. military base killed 24 people — most of them Americans — and wounded about 60 in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

“We pray for them. We send our heartfelt condolences to the loved ones who suffered today. We just want them to know that the mission is a vital mission for peace,” Bush said.
Full Article: nytimes.com

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 – In one of the first signs of the effects of the ever tightening federal budget, in the past two months the Bush administration has reduced its contributions to global food aid programs aimed at helping millions of people climb out of poverty.

With the budget deficit growing and President Bush promising to reduce spending, the administration has told representatives of several charities that it was unable to honor some earlier promises and would have money to pay for food only in emergency crises like that in Darfur, in western Sudan. The cutbacks, estimated by some charities at up to $100 million, come at a time when the number of hungry in the world is rising for the first time in years and all food programs are being stretched.

As a result, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services and other charities have suspended or eliminated programs that were intended to help the poor feed themselves through improvements in farming, education and health.

“We have between five and seven million people who have been affected by these cuts,” said Lisa
Kuennen, a food aid expert at Catholic Relief Services. “We had approval for all of these programs, often a year in advance. We hired staff, signed agreements with governments and with local partners, and now we have had to delay everything.”

Ms. Kuennen said Catholic Relief Services had to cut back programs in Indonesia, Malawi and Madagascar, among other countries.

Officials of several charities, some Republican members of Congress and some administration officials say the food aid budget for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 was at least $600 million less than what charities and aid agencies would need to carry out current programs.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Well Merry Christmas y’all. Happy New Year too.

WASHINGTON — For the first time, a major U.S. contractor has dropped out of the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild Iraq, raising new worries about the country’s growing violence and its effect on reconstruction.

Contrack International Inc., the leader of a partnership that won one of 12 major reconstruction contracts awarded this year, cited skyrocketing security costs in reaching a decision with the U.S. government last month to terminate work in Iraq.

“We reached a point where our costs were getting to be prohibitive,” said Karim Camel-Toueg, president of Arlington, Va.-based Contrack, which had won a $325-million award to rebuild Iraq’s shattered transportation system. “We felt we were not serving the government, and that the dollars were not being spent smartly.”

Although a few companies and nonprofit groups have pulled out of contracts in Iraq because of security concerns, Contrack’s is the largest to be canceled to date, U.S. officials said. The move has led to fears that Iraq’s mounting violence could prompt other firms to consider pulling out, or discourage them from seeking work in Iraq, further crippling reconstruction.
Full Article: latimes.com

by Scott Ritter
An interesting phenomenon is taking place today in the Iraqi city of Falluja.

For months now, the Bush administration had been building up the image of a massive network of foreign terrorists using Falluja as a base for their terror attacks against targets associated with the interim government of Iyad Allawi and the US military which backs him.

One name appeared in western media accounts, over and over again: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a wanted Jordanian turned alleged “terror” mastermind. Almost overnight, Zarqawi’s terrorist group, al-Qaida Holy War for Iraq, expanded its operations across the width and breadth of Iraq.

Al-Zarqawi was everywhere, his bombers striking in Mosul, Baghdad, Samarra, Najaf, Baquba, Ramadi and Falluja. Islamist websites published accounts of al-Zarqawi’s actions, and the western media, together with western intelligence services, ran with these stories, giving them credibility. The al-Zarqawi legend, if one can call it that, was born.

The problem is, there is simply no substance to this legend, as US marines are now finding out. Rather than extremist foreign fighters battling to the death, the marines are mostly finding local men from Falluja who are fighting to defend their city from what they view as an illegitimate occupier. The motivations of these fighters may well be anti-American, but they are Iraqi, not foreign, in origin.

There is, indeed, evidence of a foreign presence. But they were not the ones running the show in Falluja, or elsewhere for that matter. As a result, the US-led assault on Falluja may go down in history as the tipping point for the defeat of the US occupation of Iraq. The January 2005 elections are now very much in doubt, and anti-coalition violence has erupted throughout Iraq (including from sources claiming to be aligned with - no surprise  – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi).

Reflecting back, one cannot help but wonder if al-Zarqawi was used as a lure to trap the Americans into taking this action. On the surface, the al-Zarqawi organisation seems too good to be true
Full Article: aljazeera.net

by Chad Nagle
During the Cold War, the global ‘spy-versus-spy’ atmosphere of rival east-west blocs generated endless assassination plots and political murder stories. One of the most infamous such killings involved a Bulgarian BBC employee, Georgi Markov, allegedly murdered by the Bulgarian Communist secret police on a London street in 1978. Legend has it Markov’s murderer stuck him with an umbrella, the tip of which contained a tiny pellet of the deadly organic poison known as ricin.

A quarter century later, in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko has alleged that the government tried to poison him during the pre-election period. Poison, he and his supporters say, explains his sudden illness and disfigured appearance in the first week of September, after spending an evening with two Ukrainian intelligence service chiefs. One of Yushchenko’s top lieutenants even accused the government of using ricin. This accusation was soon withdrawn, however, presumably because ricin would almost certainly have killed its victim. The accusers’ poison of choice then became “dioxins,” toxins so common they are found in the air we breathe.

Many outside observers believe the assassination plot story precisely because of its geographical context: the former Soviet Union. Few in America could imagine a candidate risking attempted murder of his opponent in the run-up to a U.S. election, but after all, this is a former Soviet country. The Ukrainian government–with the whole world watching–was willing to risk assassinating a high-profile political figure weeks before polling day, or so it seems. Common sense should be the first indicator that the Yushchenko campaign has concocted a tall tale. Yet, even supposing a diabolical government plot to murder Yushchenko were plausible, other factors call the poisoning version of events into question. Most important is the fact that Yushchenko has a long, documented history of serious illnesses, and his latest ailment could well be just the latest installment.

Yushchenko’s medical records show that from 1994 to 2004 he had the following diseases: chronic gastritis, chronic cholecystitis, chronic colitis, chronic gastroduodenitis, infection of the bowels, and Type II diabetes. According to medical experts, this plethora of intestinal problems would have required the patient to adhere to a strict diet, but Yushchenko had a habit of falling off his dietary wagon with unfortunate effects. In September 1996, after a birthday party at which he ate and drank heavily, Yushchenko complained of pains in his right side and a burning mouth. The diagnosis: chronic cholecystitis (inflammation of the gallbladder). Yushchenko’s most recent complaints–nausea, vomiting, headaches, stomach and intestinal pains–indicated he had probably violated his prescribed meal plan yet again.

Few seem to remember that, back in September this year, the clinic that treated Yushchenko (Rudolfinerhaus Clinic in Vienna, Austria, which now publicly supports the dioxin story) labeled the poison rumors “fallacious,” diagnosing Yushchenko with severe pancreatitis, severe intestinal ulcers, gastritis, proctitis, peripheral paresis and a viral skin condition. The core diagnosis, pancreatitis (decomposition of the pancreatic gland tissue), is caused by alcohol–particularly in “binge drinking”–65-75% of the time, and the items Yushchenko consumed before his September illness included crabs, watermelon, sushi–and cognac. In a country where hospitality involves endless toasts, Yushchenko’s hosts may have “poisoned” him with nothing more than a liter of Ukrainian spirits. To make matters worse, Yushchenko’s medical records confirmed he had voluntarily refused his doctor-ordered diet even after falling seriously ill. On September 9th he consumed salo (a variety of pork fat popular in Ukraine) with garlic, mare’s milk and mineral water, and the next day he was in a Rudolfinerhaus clinic bed, and soon accusing the “regime” of poisoning him.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

Was the landscape around the small town of Dover in Pennsylvania created in just six days? Were the gently curving hills perfected, the streams formed and finished, the wide, empty skies fixed in place beneath the firmament and the narrow wooded valleys completed? Was it all really done in less than a week?

It was, at least according to the creationist beliefs of much of the town’s population of 1,800, who have little time for Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. And their fundamental beliefs are set to gain further currency.

As of next month, in a hugely controversial move, the town’s high school will become the first in the US for several generations to teach a form of creationism as part of its curriculum.

But the controversy that has split the town of Dover, an hour’s drive north of Baltimore, is not simply some local squabble. Rather it is a debate that is taking place in communities across the US.
Full Article: independent.co.uk