AXUM, Ethiopia (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s 58-year wait for the return of a plundered national treasure is set to end on Tuesday, when a massive cargo jet flies the first part of the Axum obelisk from Italy to its historic home.
Full Article: reuters
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said a senior official was assassinated in his home on Monday, adding they had misidentified the official earlier.
They named the dead man as Major-General Adnan Midhish Kharagoli, an adviser to the defense minister. He was killed along with his nephew when 10 gunmen burst into his Baghdad home.
Interior Ministry officials had earlier said the victim was Major-General Adnan Thabet, hours after he told the media that a hostage crisis was exaggerated.
“We made a mistake,” said one of the officials, who declined to be named.
Such reports of an assassination could fuel sectarian tensions during a time of widespread violence and political uncertainty gripping Iraq.
The comments added to the confusion over reports of a hostage crisis in the town of Madaen, near Baghdad, and reinforced fears of a political vacuum.
Iraq’s bickering leaders have failed to form a new government 11 weeks after Jan. 30 elections that politicians promised would deliver stability after two years of suicide bombings, kidnappings and rampant crime.
Senior officials in a leading Shi’ite party have been insisting that Sunni insurgents took up to 150 Shi’ites hostage over the weekend and threatened to kill them unless all Shi’ites left the area.
Those claims were supported by comments by caretaker Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, Minister of State for National Security Kassim Daoud and Iraqis who waited outside Madean and said they were relatives of the hostages.
But doubts have been growing over the affair since raids by Iraqi forces backed by U.S. troops failed to produce any evidence of kidnappers or hostages.
Full Article: nytimes.com
…The age-old rite is what local residents have used when members of one tribe kill members of another. After being welcomed back into the fold, the offender must sit down together with tribal leaders and make amends. After confessing to his misdeeds, the wayward tribesman is required to pay the victim’s kin compensation in the form of cows, goats and sheep.
It is a system not unlike those in use in other parts of Africa. Somalis still pay compensation to quell the inter-clan battles in that country, although the traditional rite cannot possibly keep up with all the killings. In northern Kenya, where a recent bout of clan violence resulted in several dozen deaths, tribal mediation became bogged down over complains that the loss of a man’s life was compensated for with more cows than for a woman’s life.
South Africa managed to put apartheid in its past by insisting on truthful admissions from those who brutalized the country’s blacks but then by promoting reconciliation among the races.
A traumatized Rwanda has used both international and local justice to respond to the mass killings of 1994, which left an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu dead. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania, was set up by the United Nations to prosecute the orchestrators of the violence. The many foot soldiers in the slaughter are facing traditional “gacaca” trials, where the community hears their cases and often forgives those who confess.
The Darfur region of Sudan is the subject of a separate investigation by the international court although there it is the government, which has been implicated in the violence, that is pushing for reconciliation methods to be used.
Uganda’s government, which backs the international court, has already adopted the traditional notion of forgiveness as one of its peace strategies. An amnesty program in place since 2000 has prompted thousands of rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army and other groups to lay down their arms and re-enter society. A popular radio program broadcast in the north sends the message out that returning rebels will not be executed, to counter what Mr. Kony tells his followers.
“Whoever comes out of the bush is forgiven,” explained Lt. Tabard Kiconco, an army spokesman based in Gulu.
Full Article: nytimes.com
Special for Granma International – Luis Posada Carriles, the most dangerous terrorist on the continent, who swore openly in Panama that he would continue to commit criminal acts, has taken refuge in the United States, where he has negotiated the details of his surrender, processing and residence with the US immigration authorities.
According to the Spanish news agency EFE, Posada Carriles has been negotiating his surrender to US authorities for several days. EFE claims that its information comes from “sources” linked to Cuban-American terrorist circles and local TV Station Channel 41 announced the news citing extra-judicial sources. For its part, El Nuevo Herald newspaper cites “a source familiar with the case.”
The Herald article says that Posada was negotiating “the details of his surrender, processing and residence in the United States” with the Department of Homeland Security’s local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.
Posada is responsible for numerous acts of terrorism, including the mid-flight explosion of a Cubana airliner over Barbados that killed 73 people in October of 1976. Venezuela has applied for his extradition based on those acts, after he escaped in 1985 from San Juan de los Morros prison, 140 km from Caracas, with the help of the Miami-based Cuban-American National Foundation.
AN INFERNAL HISTORY
An active CIA agent from 1963 as confirmed in documents declassified by the Church Commission, Luis Posada Carriles was in Dallas at the time of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and more than a few experts suspect that he was one of the snipers who killed the US president.
Full Article: axisof logic.com
Posada Carriles’ U.S. asylum application re-opens JFK unsolved assassination case
I am sure it will come as a surprise if I say that Bush has his fingerprints all over this case, but that is purely because of ignorance of the public. And the public is being kept ignorant because the mainstream press does not report on it. But there is ample documentary and testimonial evidence to tie Bush senior to the Bay of Pigs, the anti-Castro cause and the Kennedy assassination. It’s beyond the scope of this interview to list that evidence here, but you have to understand that the Kennedy assassination stems from the same forces that were trying to oust Fidel Castro, which were basically Organized Crime, Cuban exiles, CIA and Big Oil in Texas. Bush connects to all four. They all wanted Cuba back and saw the Kennedy’s standing in their way.
Their collaboration is now a matter of public record, from the Bay of Pigs, but also in the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro. Organized crime was under an unprecedented attack from Robert Kennedy, JFK wanted to abolish the oil depletion allowance and splinter the autonomy of the CIA, and the hawks in the Pentagon found him soft on communism and war. On top of that they blamed him for the failure of the Bay of Pigs, to make it worse he fired the top three men of the CIA. They openly called him a traitor. He was threatening their existence. So he had to go. It is as simple as that. They got rid of him in a coup d’ état, displaying an arrogance of power by shooting him from opposite directions in broad daylight, and then lying to the American public in a cover-up that should insult the intelligence of every American who has only remotely looked at the evidence. Even despite the fact that most of that evidence was kept away. Imagine you film the murder of a President today. You could sell it for millions of dollars and it would go over every TV screen in the world. But not in Kennedy’s case.
Kennedy wouldn’t be President in the first place if he had not made a deal with Giancana to rig his election in Illinois. Nixon lost just barely and he was put forward by Prescott Bush, few people know that. Neither do they know that Allen Dulles, the CIA director fired by Kennedy and later member of the Warren Commission, was a close friend. Even less that Nixon, Dulles and Bush had been the architects for the Bay of Pigs under Eisenhower. This can all be documented. Just like his friendship with George Demohrenschildt, who was Lee Harvey Oswald’s closest friend in Dallas. Why did Bush never disclose that? Witholding information about a crime is also a crime. Why does he not recall his whereabouts on 11/22/63? When and where did he befriend the Cuban CIA agent Felix Rodriguez, who by the way is Posada’s buddy, all the way from the Bay of Pigs to Iran Contra. All those kids with T-shirts of Che Guevara don’t know that Rodriguez was his captor and probably his killer.
…Why is it so difficult in grasping that the people who seized power from a coup d’etat, are still in charge today?…
Full Article: axisoflogic.com
by Naomi Klein
…Few ideologues can resist the allure of a blank slate–that was colonialism’s seductive promise: “discovering” wide-open new lands where utopia seemed possible. But colonialism is dead, or so we are told; there are no new places to discover, no terra nullius (there never was), no more blank pages on which, as Mao once said, “the newest and most beautiful words can be written.” There is, however, plenty of destruction–countries smashed to rubble, whether by so-called Acts of God or by Acts of Bush (on orders from God). And where there is destruction there is reconstruction, a chance to grab hold of “the terrible barrenness,” as a UN official recently described the devastation in Aceh, and fill it with the most perfect, beautiful plans.
“We used to have vulgar colonialism,” says Shalmali Guttal, a Bangalore-based researcher with Focus on the Global South. “Now we have sophisticated colonialism, and they call it ‘reconstruction.'”
It certainly seems that ever-larger portions of the globe are under active reconstruction: being rebuilt by a parallel government made up of a familiar cast of for-profit consulting firms, engineering companies, mega-NGOs, government and UN aid agencies and international financial institutions. And from the people living in these reconstruction sites–Iraq to Aceh, Afghanistan to Haiti–a similar chorus of complaints can be heard. The work is far too slow, if it is happening at all. Foreign consultants live high on cost-plus expense accounts and thousand- dollar-a-day salaries, while locals are shut out of much-needed jobs, training and decision-making. Expert “democracy builders” lecture governments on the importance of transparency and “good governance,” yet most contractors and NGOs refuse to open their books to those same governments, let alone give them control over how their aid money is spent.
Three months after the tsunami hit Aceh, the New York Times ran a distressing story reporting that “almost nothing seems to have been done to begin repairs and rebuilding.” The dispatch could easily have come from Iraq, where, as the Los Angeles Times just reported, all of Bechtel’s allegedly rebuilt water plants have started to break down, one more in an endless litany of reconstruction screw-ups. It could also have come from Afghanistan, where President Hamid Karzai recently blasted “corrupt, wasteful and unaccountable” foreign contractors for “squandering the precious resources that Afghanistan received in aid.” Or from Sri Lanka, where 600,000 people who lost their homes in the tsunami are still languishing in temporary camps. One hundred days after the giant waves hit, Herman Kumara, head of the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement in Negombo, Sri Lanka, sent out a desperate e-mail to colleagues around the world. “The funds received for the benefit of the victims are directed to the benefit of the privileged few, not to the real victims,” he wrote. “Our voices are not heard and not allowed to be voiced.”…
Full Article:commondreams.org
Rethinking Reconstruction: Grand U.S. Plan Fractures Again
For the third time in nine months, the Bush administration has redrafted its project to rebuild Iraq, forcing planners to cancel more of the water, sewage and power plants that were part of the grand American design to transform the shattered country.
Many of the halted projects are now described by American officials as “noncritical” and “long term” because they are scheduled to start two years from now.
The need for the reallocation of money grew not only from unanticipated security costs but also from what many experts said were flawed assumptions by Pentagon planners and Congress when they set out to pepper Iraq with large infrastructure projects built by American companies. The latest changes mean less money being spent on building new facilities and more on training and maintenance, with less reliance on expensive Western firms and more on smaller local firms.
Full Article: nytimes.com
I heard a self-professed ‘nation builder’ on the BBC who, when asked what the difference is between 19th century British colonialism and the work he carries out in Kosovo and Iraq, replied, ‘the difference is that now we have international concensus.’ Well needless to say she pushed him on this and he spoke about the UN, stopping the violence, restoring order and so forth. Aside from the fact that there was never a UN resolution on Iraq or Kosovo, it is clear that the attempt is to use the existence of the UN as a way of claiming this illusory ‘international concensus’ when in reality the same old colonial players are still playing away. And as Naomi Klein points out, this vast global enterprise of ‘rebuilding’ is just colonialism in another guise.
Jewish groups are alarmed by news that the union representing Britain’s university tutors will discuss a boycott of Israeli universities at its annual meeting this week.
If passed, the motion would compel members of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) not to visit Bar-Ilan, Hebrew and Haifa universities, until they ‘call a halt to all attempts to confiscate land from Palestinian families’ and sever links with a ‘college located in an illegal settlement in the Occupied Territories’.
Jewish groups say that the motion exposes anti-Israeli bias within the AUT and warn that the action threatens to further inflame tensions at a time when fears of anti-semitism on Britain’s campuses are on the increase.
‘When you start having this sort of thing you create a culture among academia that makes it acceptable to pick on one side or another,’ Danny Stone, campaigns director for the Union of Jewish Students, said. ‘It’s not what academia should be about.’
Full Article: guardian.co.uk
Yeah, Lord forbid academia would take a principled stand.
Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva has apologised for his country’s role in African slavery while on a visit to Senegal.
He asked for “forgiveness” in a speech at Slave House on Goree Island, from where Africans were shipped between the 16th and 19th centuries.
Brazil imported the most African slaves of any country during that time and only abolished slavery in 1888.
Almost half of Brazil’s 180 million population are of African descent.
“I want to tell you… that I had no responsibility for what happened in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries but I ask your forgiveness for what we did to black people,” said the president, commonly known as Lula.
Accompanied by Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade, he stopped to look through the “door of no return”, from where chained Africans would take the dangerous journey across the ocean to the New World.
Some of his delegation shed discreet tears, Reuters news agency reported.
‘Historical debt’
Senegal is the last stop on Lula’s five-nation tour of Africa.
Along with a large, mostly trade-orientated delegation, he has visited Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana and Guinea Bissau.
The trip is an indication of the importance the Brazilians are placing on expanding trade ties with other developing countries, say correspondents.
But Lula said he also wanted to build on Brazil’s historic ties with Africa.
“It’s not just about reaching business deals but it’s the strategy of a politician who is conscious of the historical debt towards Africa,” he said.
bbc.co.uk
Inflation meanwhile fell to its lowest rate in 25 years.
The IMF said about 20 countries in the region had achieved growth of more than 5%, with inflation of less than 10%.
It warned though that African economies are still not growing fast enough to reach poverty reduction targets and that many are not business friendly.
The report says that oil producing countries such as Angola and Gabon benefited from high oil prices.
Oil importers, on the other hand, have had the pain of the rising price eased by the decline of the dollar – the currency in which oil is priced.
Cotton producers have been badly hit by declining prices.
Poverty targets
The report also says that many countries have followed policies agreed with the IMF – policies that have often proved controversial.
IMF Africa director Abdoulaye Bio-Tchane said the growth figures were an achievement worth mentioning.
“We have almost 20 countries today that are witnessing more than 5% of GDP growth and for the first time in 25 years you have inflation falling to less than 10%,” he told the BBC.
However, the improvements recorded in economic performance are not enough to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals for reducing poverty.
Mr Bio-Tchane also said that 16 out of the world’s worst 20 countries for business conditions are in sub-Saharan Africa.
The IMF regards a better climate for investment by business as essential for promoting stronger growth and poverty reduction.
bbc.co.uk
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, April 16 – Hours after declaring a state of emergency to quell anti-government protests, President Lucio Gutiérrez of Ecuador revoked the measure on Saturday. The embattled president had faced thousands of furious protesters who had taken to the streets of Quito, defying the decree, which was limited to the capital, and demanding that he resign.
The president, though, said he would stick with his decision to dissolve the Supreme Court. Late Friday in a televised announcement, President Gutiérrez, with stern-looking military officers standing behind him, told Ecuadoreans that he was instituting a state of emergency and removing the Supreme Court.
The announcement did little to thwart protesters, who took to the streets, banging pots and pans and honking car horns. Though the state of emergency permitted the government to curb civil liberties, like the right to public assembly, the military and police did not take action against the protesters, raising questions about the loyalty of commanders to Mr. Gutiérrez.
Full Article: nytimes.com
There is a strange new sightseeing attraction in this normally sleepy corner of the Chinese countryside: smashed police cars, rows of trashed buses and dented riot helmets.
They are the trophies of a battle in which peasants scored a rare and bloody victory against the communist authorities, who face one of the most serious popular challenges to their rule in recent years.
In driving off more than 1,000 riot police at the start of the week, Huankantou village in Zhejiang province is at the crest of a wave of anarchy that has seen millions of impoverished farmers block roads and launch protests against official corruption, environmental destruction and the growing gap between urban wealth and rural poverty.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk