WASHINGTON — The United States has praised Latin American countries that accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of meddling in their internal affairs — a sign, U.S. officials say, that his influence in the region is diminishing.
wpherald.com

dream on

U.S. tries to keep seat from Caracas
The United States is urging Latin American nations to deny Venezuela a seat on the U.N. Security Council when the region chooses a replacement for the rotating seat held by Argentina, whose term expires at the end of the year.

Reluctant to campaign openly against Venezuela, the Bush administration instead has been boosting the rival candidacy of Guatemala, a U.S. ally.

International ramifications over Islamist victories in Somalia continue, with President George Bush declaring he will not allow the country to become an “al-Qa’ida haven” even as the militias themselves vowed to make the Horn of Africa “a land under the Koran”.

Amid concerns that other states in the region may become destablised, Kenya yesterday kicked out a Somali warlord and announced it would ban others involved in the conflict from entering the country.

The developments follow the defeat of a coalition of US-backed warlords by Islamists who have taken control of the capital, Mogadishu, and have followed their enemies to the town of Jowhar, where a battle is thought to be imminent.
independent.co.uk

…The $250 million arms deal between Aeronautics Defense Systems, from Yavneh, and the Nigerian Defense Ministry was reported in Haaretz a month ago. According to the contract, the Israeli company was to deliver unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to the Nigerian armed forces, for use in their efforts against militias and bandits operating in the Niger Delta. These attacks damage the infrastructure of Nigeria’s oil industry, and consequently its production capacity.

According to the reports, Nigeria’s national security adviser and other military officers were involved in the deal.
haaretz.com

…A referendum, with opinion polls suggesting most Palestinians support the proposal, would be seen as a confidence vote on the Hamas government, whose election led the West and Israel to cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas swept to power in January elections and has been locked in a power struggle with Abbas ever since. It rejects the proposal.

The manifesto implicitly recognizes Israel by calling for a Palestinian state on all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Abbas had set a Tuesday deadline for Hamas to embrace the manifesto but delayed a looming showdown after what officials said were appeals by Arab leaders.

Hamas, which seeks to destroy Israel, has said a referendum would be illegal so soon after the parliamentary elections.

Israel rejects the manifesto. It has long insisted on keeping large Jewish settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank.
news.yahoo.com

says who?

South African union joins boycott of Israel
Workers union representing 1.2 million extols CUPE OntarioÕs boycott of Israel, which it calls Ôan apartheid nation.Õ Union President Madisha: Atrocities committed against the Palestinians pale in comparison to those committed by the erstwhile apartheid regime in South Africa.

The guidelines released on Tuesday, which the military said formalise existing rules and policies, drew criticism from a human rights group that said the military should not interfere with detainees who use hunger strikes as a protest and should bar experts in psychology from having any role during interrogations.

“It’s wrong because a doctor’s role is to provide care, to support a person’s health and, as we all know, to do no harm,” said Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights.
hindustantimes.com

BEIJING (AFP) – China said US Secretary Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s criticisms about a lack of transparency in the Chinese military were unacceptable.

“We cannot accept the constant criticism from the country which has the largest military spending in the world,” foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told journalists.
news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON, June 7 (UPI) — A U.S. district court judge has ordered the Army to release 14 documents, including six emails, dealing with the Halliburton oil contract in Iraq.

U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo M. Urbina also ordered the Army to give to the court an additional six documents for the court to review to make a further determination.

At issue is a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, an anti-corruption public interest group. Judicial Watch believes the award of a multi-billion contract to Halliburton subsidiary KBR for the restoration of Iraq’s oil fields may have been unduly influenced by Vice President Dick Cheney, who headed Halliburton for five years prior to joining President George. W. Bush’s campaign.
upi.com

The deputy secretary-general of the United Nations was last night accused of making “a very, very grave mistake” after calling the Bush administration hypocrites who were feeding a right-wing anti-UN frenzy in middle America.

Washington’s ambassador to the UN responded with undisguised fury to a speech by Mark Malloch Brown, the deputy secretary-general, in which he accused Washington of using the international body “almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool” while failing to defend it at home.

“Much of the public discourse that reaches the US heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors, such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News,” Mr Malloch Brown said in a speech in New York on Tuesday. Depending on the UN while tolerating “too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping” was “simply not sustainable”, he said. “You will lose the UN one way or another.”

John Bolton, the US envoy and an outspoken critic of the UN, called the comments “a very, very grave mistake”. He said he told the secretary-general, Kofi Annan, yesterday morning: “I’ve known you since 1989, and I’m telling you, this is the worst mistake by a senior UN official that I have seen in that entire time.” He called on the secretary-general to repudiate the speech.
guardian.co.uk

Not that he’s wrong or anything, just he shouldn’t have said it…

Zarqawi killed in Iraq air raid
“We have eliminated Zarqawi,” Mr Maliki said at a news conference in Baghdad, sparking sustained applause.

Zarqawi was considered the figurehead of the Sunni insurgency. He was leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, blamed for killing thousands of Shias and US forces.

The US said he was killed in an air strike “approximately 8km (five miles) north of Baquba”.

The head of US-led forces in Iraq, General George Casey, said the strike against an “isolated safe house” took place at 1815 (1415 GMT) on Wednesday.

It says he was id’d by ‘fingerprints, facial features, and known scars.’ All those missing body parts of his would have made it easy.

Zarqawi Scheduled for Martyrdom
une 7, 2006: The relationship between terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi and and the mainline al Qaeda leadership continues to deteriorate. Zarqawi’s recent audio messages have not only attacked the U.S. and the Shia-dominated government in Iraq, but also Iran. He’s even claiming that the U.S., Iran, and Shia in general, are in cahoots to destroy Islam. He has also called for continued attacks against Shia.

Except for his verbal attacks on the U.S. and the Iraqi government, he is almost totally distanced himself from the central leadership. Other al Qaeda leaders have been trying to down play anti-Iranian and anti-Shia rhetoric, and have been strongly discouraging attacks on civilians.

Given that Zarqawi has become a loose cannon and that his actions are handicapping Al Qaeda’s efforts, it seems reasonable to expect that an accident may befall him at some point in the near future. If handled right it can be made to look like he went out in a blaze of glory fighting American troops or that he was foully murdered. Either way, al Qaeda gets rid of a problem and gains another “martyr.”

This comes from a US pro-war website, strategypage.com. So the US ‘airstrike’ nicely dovetails with the desires of ‘Al Qaeda’.

I’m feeling a little misty. I’m going to miss the guy who came to be a symbol for all the wicked shenanigans…his miraculous regeneration of limbs, the way he died and returned to life as purposes served… There are 822,000 Google hits for ‘does zarqawi exist.’ As a memorial, here are a couple of good ones…

October 2004 Arab News: Zarqawi the Terror Monster: But Does He Really Exist?
…The US has justified its daily attacks against Fallujah, west of Baghdad, with the claim that it is targeting Zarqawi and his gang. On Saturday, however, Zarqawi was supposed to be near Kirkush, some 200 kilometers east of Fallujah, killing Iraqi army recruits.

The people of Fallujah, however, insist that they have never seen the man or heard about him except through the media.

July 2004 truthseeker (UK):Zarqawi Does Not Exist
…The horrible things being done in Iraq under the name of Zarqawi are no laughing matter. The Iraq Intelligence Service is after him, the followers of al Sadr are after him, the residents of Fallujah are after him, the ShiÍite majority in Iraq are after him, ten million Iraqis who could use the big US reward money are after him, and two Iraqi resistance groups have pronounced a death sentence on him. But nobody can find him. Why not? There are three possibilities:

1) The one-legged Jordanian thug who is semi-literate, threatens ShiÍites, and is a squat fellow with tattoos on his arms, is the most elusive super-villain ever — an inspiration to the next generation of thugs.

2) The real Zarqawi is long dead, but a composite Zarqawi who is literate, urbane, has been created by Iraqi resistance groups who seek to terrorize the United States and the puppet government they have set up in Iraq — an inspiration to the next generation of Iraq avengers.

3) The real Zarqawi is long dead, but a literate, tall fellow with two legs and no tattoos on his arms has been created by US military intelligence as a straw man to justify everything about the Iraq war. However, a rogue group has hijacked the US Zarqawi identity and is responsible for the beheadings — an inspiration to copycats and future groups to do the same.

With an ethnically and religiously combustible population of 130 million, Nigeria is lurching toward disaster, and the stakes are highÑfor both Nigeria and the United States. An OPEC member since 1971, Nigeria has 35.9 billion barrels of proven petroleum reservesÑthe largest of any African country and the eighth largest on earth. It exports some 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, and the government plans to nearly double that amount by 2010. Nigeria is the fifth-largest supplier of oil to the United States; U.S. energy officials predict that within ten years it and the Gulf of Guinea region will provide a quarter of America’s crude.

It is hardly surprising, then, that since 9/11 the Bush administration has courted Nigeria as an alternative to volatile petro-states in the Middle East and Latin America. In 2002, the White House declared the oil of Africa (five other countries on the continent are also key producers) a “strategic national interest”Ñmeaning that the United States would use military force, if necessary, to protect it. In short, Nigeria’s troubles could become America’s and, like those of the Persian Gulf, cost us dearly in blood and money.
theatlantic.com

Iran? Venezuela? Nigeria? Where will the hammer of democracy fall next?