Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, has been accused of assisting Colombian guerrillas and funding opposition political parties in Bolivia.

James Hill, the recently retired head of the US army’s southern command, which oversees military operations in Latin America, said the Venezuelan leader was allowing Farc, a leftwing Colombian guerrilla group, to establish training camps in his country.

He also said the Bolivian opposition leader, Evo Morales, is receiving funds from Mr Chávez as Bolivia faces a series of strikes and blockades that threaten its stability.

The accusation comes days after Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state designate, called Mr Chávez “deeply troubling” at her Senate confirmation hearing.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Twenty-three terror suspects tried to hang or strangle themselves at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay during a mass protest in 2003, the military confirmed Monday.

The incidents came during the same year the camp suffered a rash of suicide attempts after Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller took command of the prison with a mandate to get more information from prisoners accused of links to al-Qaida or the ousted Afghan Taliban regime that sheltered it.

Between Aug. 18 and Aug. 26, the 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves with pieces of clothing and other items in their cells, demonstrating “self-injurious behavior,” the U.S. Southern Command in Miami said in a statement. Ten detainees made a mass attempt on Aug. 22 alone.

U.S. Southern Command described it as “a coordinated effort to disrupt camp operations…”
Full Article: yahoo.com/news

WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (Reuters) – The Bush administration was committed to cutting huge U.S. budget and trade deficits, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Monday, and there should be no delay in overhauling Social Security.

However, Snow, appearing on CNBC television, declined to say whether Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is pressing the Bush administration for swifter action to ratchet down deficits.

“I won’t get into our discussions with Chairman Greenspan, that wouldn’t be appropriate,” Snow said. “But I will say that this administration is deeply committed to fiscal responsibility, to controlling spending and to bringing the deficit down.”
Full Article: netscape.cnn.com

Bush to Seek About $80 Bln for Military Operations
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Bush administration plans to announce as early as Tuesday that it will seek about $80 billion in new funding for military operations this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration and congressional sources said on Monday.

The new supplemental budget request would come on top of the $25 billion in emergency spending already approved for the current fiscal year, and will push total 2005 funding for military operations and equipment close to a record $105 billion, the sources said on Monday.

Up to $650 million is expected to be included in the package to fund humanitarian aid, reconstruction efforts and military operations in Asian countries devastated by last month’s tsunami, congressional aides said.
reuters.com

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) – Haiti’s interim prime minister said on Saturday his government would not talk directly with former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, but he welcomed foreign efforts to persuade the ousted leader to help end violence in the country.

Gerard Latortue said the government would not send any envoy to meet directly with the exiled leader, contrary to what he had been interpreted as saying on Friday.

Aristide is living in South Africa after being forced out of power last February by an armed revolt and U.S. and French pressure to quit. The interim Haitian government wants him to try to calm his angry supporters in the Caribbean country.
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

‘pressure’ huh? Read ‘firepower.’

by Andrew Limburg
Now I don’t claim to be an expert on seismic activity, but there has been a series of events which led up to the 9.0 earthquake of the coast of Indonesia which can not be ignored. This all could be an enormous coincidence, but one must look at the information and choose for themselves whether there is anything to it.

On November 28th, one month ago, Reuters reported that during a 3 day span 169 whales and dolphins beached themselves in Tasmania, an island of the southern coast of mainland Australia and in New Zealand. The cause for these beachings is not known, but Bob Brown, a senator in the Australian parliament, said “sound bombing” or seismic tests of ocean floors to test for oil and gas had been carried out near the sites of the Tasmanian beachings recently.

According to Jim Cummings of the Acoustic Ecology Institute, Seismic surveys utilizing airguns have been taking place in mineral-rich areas of the world’s oceans since 1968. Among the areas that have experienced the most intense survey activity are the North Sea, the Beaufort Sea (off Alaska’s North Slope), and the Gulf of Mexico; areas around Australia and South America are also current hot-spots of activity.

The impulses created by the release of air from arrays of up to 24 airguns create low frequency sound waves powerful enough to penetrate up to 40km below the seafloor. The “source level” of these sound waves is generally over 200dB (and often 230dB or more), roughly comparable to a sound of at least 140-170dB in air.

According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, these 200dB – 230dB shots from the airguns are fired every 10 seconds or so, from 10 meters below the surface, 24 hours a day, for 2 week periods of time, weather permitting.

These types of tests are known to affect whales and dolphins, whose acute hearing and use of sonar is very sensitive.

On December 24th there was a magnitude 8.1 earthquake more than 500 miles southeast of Tasmania near New Zealand, with a subsequent aftershock 6.1 a little later in the morning that same day.

On December 26th, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck at the intersection of the Australian tectonic plate and the Indian tectonic plate. This is the devastating tsunami tragedy that we have all heard about in the Indian Ocean. The death toll of this horrific event has reached 120,000 souls and continues to rise.

On December 27th, 20 whales beached themselves 110 miles west of Hobart on the southern island state of Tasmania.

What is interesting about this is that the same place where the whale beachings have been taking place over the last 30 days is the same general area where the 8.1 Australian earthquake took place, and this is the same area where they are doing these seismic tests. Then 2 days after the Australian tectonic plate shifted, the 9.0 earthquake shook the coast of Indonesia.
Full Article:independent-media.tv

Private memos are circulating in Washington, Baghdad and London setting out detailed scenarios for withdrawal of US and British forces from Iraq as early as possible, a Foreign Office source said yesterday.

The policy papers have added urgency because a new Iraq government, to be elected next week if the election goes ahead on January 30 as planned, could set a target date for withdrawal.

John Negroponte, US ambassador to Baghdad, confirmed that a United Nations resolution declared that US and other forces would have to leave if requested by the Iraqi government. “If that’s the wish of the government of Iraq, we will comply with those wishes. But no, we haven’t been approached on this issue – although obviously we stand prepared to engage the future government on any issue concerning our presence here.”

The Foreign Office source said: “Of course, we think about leaving Iraq. There is no point in staying there. There are continually plans in Whitehall, Washington and Baghdad to withdraw when we can.

“But there is no document saying we will leave in July 2005 or any other date. That would be a mug’s game. There are documents all over the place with different scenarios.” Until recently, the British government was working to a rough target date of June next year but that appears to have been abandoned as over-optimistic.

Senior British military figures want to reduce the number of troops in Iraq as quickly as possible. But they also recognise that substantial numbers are likely to be there well into next year, and probably longer.

A defence source said yes terday that British troops would pull out when the new Iraqi government wanted them to go. “We are not there yet by a long chalk,” he said.

Even if a decision was taken today, he said, it would take until the end of the year to extract troops and their equipment. There are about 9,000 British troops in southern Iraq, a small fraction of the number of US troops in the country.

The Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence were dis mayed by the assessment of specialists sent out to review the progress of the Iraqi army. Only 5,000 of the 120,000-strong army was classified as being well enough trained to be dependable.

According to recent estimates, of some 135,000 recruited Iraqi police officers, only two-thirds report for duty. Lord Boyce, chief of Britain’s defence staff at the time of the invasion, said “only a small percentage is up to scratch”. A member of the Commons defence committee said on return from a visit to southern Iraq – the quietest area – late last year: “It will take 10 to 15 years at least before troops can be withdrawn. The Iraqis just cannot cope with the security situation and won’t be able to for years. It’s another Cyprus.”

The Foreign Office has welcomed public debate being conducted mainly in Washington over the last few weeks on the pros and cons of withdrawal.

A Guardian survey of foreign policy thinkers in the US, Britain, Iraq, France and Israel over the last 48 hours illustrated the divisions between those who favour early withdrawal, arguing that the US and British presence is counterproductive, and those who fear departure would lead to civil war and the break-up of Iraq.
guardian.co.uk

REYKJAVIK (Reuters) – A group of nationals from tiny Iceland slammed their government’s support of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, apologizing to Iraqis in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times on Friday.

The advertisement, paid for with donations from more than 4,000 citizens which constitutes about 1.4 percent of the population, demanded “that Iceland be immediately removed from the list of invaders in the ‘coalition of the willing.”’

“We apologies to the Iraqi people for the Icelandic ministers’ support for the invasion of Iraq,” the ad said.

Four out of five Icelanders want their country off the list, according to a Gallup opinion poll published earlier this month.
Full Article: nytimes.com

LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) – Protesters in Bolivia’s wealthy Santa Cruz province stepped up their pressure on President Carlos Mesa on Friday by announcing plans to set up their own separatist government and break ties with the capital, La Paz.

About 30,000 protesters, waving the green and white provincial flag, marched to the main square of Santa Cruz, the regional capital, chanting “autonomy, autonomy!” and “Mesa out!”

…The leader, backed by Washington for his backing in the anti-drug campaign in the Andean countries, scrambled to rally support in Congress to prevent the fragile democracy from crumbling.

Lawmakers agreed on Friday to mediate between Mesa and the opposition, sending a committee to Santa Cruz to start talks.

But analysts fear more upheaval is inevitable in South America’s poorest nation, where a small minority own the riches of natural gas, mining and farming and where most in the indigenous majority scrape by on less than $2 a day.

Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

MORAKETIYA, Sri Lanka, Jan. 19 -A dozen Americans walked into a relief camp here, showering bereft parents and traumatized children with gifts, attention and affection. They also quietly offered camp residents something else: Jesus.

The Americans, who all come from one church in Texas, have staged plays detailing the life of Jesus and had children draw pictures of him, camp residents said. They have told parents who lost children that they should still believe in God, and held group prayers where they tried to heal a partly paralyzed man and a deaf 12year-old girl.

The attempts at proselytizing are angering local Christian leaders, who worry that they could provoke a violent backlash against Christians in Sri Lanka, a predominantly Buddhist country that is already a religious tinderbox.
Full Article: nytimes.com

by Joshua Frank
…Recently, the Democratic Party’s rising “progressive” star Barack Obama said he would favor “surgical” missile strikes against Iran.

As Obama told the Chicago Tribune on September 26, 2004, “[T]he big question is going to be, if Iran is resistant to these pressures [to stop its nuclear program], including economic sanctions, which I hope will be imposed if they do not cooperate, at what point … if any, are we going to take military action?”

He added, “[L]aunching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in” given the ongoing war in Iraq. “On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse.” Obama went on to argue that military strikes on Pakistan should not be ruled out if “violent Islamic extremists” were to “take over.”

Senator John Kerry echoed this sentiment on May 29, 2004, when he told the Washington Post that the Bush Administration has not “been tough on the [Iran] issue which is the issue of nuclear weaponry, and again just like I said with North Korea, you have to keep your eye on the target.”

Even DNC chair hopeful Howard Dean, allegedly the liberal arm of the Democratic Party, concurs Bush has not been tough enough on Iran. The Forward quotes Dean as saying, “The United States has to … take a much harder line on Iran and Saudi Arabia because they’re funding terrorism.”

In fact, while campaigning for president, Dean contended that President Bush had been far too soft on Iran. In a March appearance on CBS’ Face The Nation, Dean even went so far as to say that “[President Bush] is beholden to the Saudis and the Iranians.”
Full Article: counterpunch.org