…But the silence at Kolwezi and other mining areas in Katanga province will soon be broken. “The mining companies are on the diving board. They are coming back,” said Raf Costermans, an analyst with Groupe One, a Belgian advocacy group.
An international scramble for this central African treasure trove is under way, prompted by the end of the war and an imminent election. With copper prices at record highs, fuelled by demand in India and China, companies are competing to rehabilitate derelict sites. Kolwezi could again produce 500,000 tonnes a year of copper and cobalt, metal used in making steel.

Billions of dollars will be made. The question is whether the boom will benefit the citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their need is ravenous. Decades of misrule and conflict have left millions poor, malnourished and sick. More than 1,000 people die needlessly every day, according to the UN. Katanga’s bounty could help to rebuild a shattered state.

But if history is a guide the boom will benefit only the political elite and its cronies. Belgium’s King Leopold enslaved and plundered his African colony in the 19th century. Mobutu Sese Seko, the post-independence dictator, presided over three decades of kleptocracy. After he fell invaders and warlords, abetted by foreign companies, looted raw materials during the 1997-2002 war.
guardian.co.uk

“…a Belgian advocacy group…

Workers at maquiladora factories in Mexico told recent visitors from Texas that they are sometimes asked to undo their work entirely or spend long hours in isolated spaces.

“These tactics are a new level in the psychological game, to get people used to the idea that they are kind of owned and really don’t have any worth apart from the company,” says Howard Hawhee, who helped to coordinate a listening tour in late May.

“These kinds of stories are very bizarre,” says Judith Rosenberg, who has been organizing tours across the border since 1999. “These are management techniques that someone compared to Hitler.”

For example, Hawhee and Rosenberg say women in maquiladoras report that they are sometimes asked to prove they are not pregnant by showing proof of menstruation.

“They are very distasteful management techniques,” says Rosenberg. “And you have to call them that because they are used very methodically. This business with the sanitary napkins is outrageous, and people feel the attack on their dignity, the women do. And the men do too.”
counterpunch.org

When Frank Gehry gets around to designing America’s answer to the Sistine Chapel, I trust this postmodern Temple of Mammon on Las Vegas Boulevard will have a ceiling fresco depicting Warren Buffett’s consignment of $31 billion to Bill and Melinda Gates. As the older billionaire sits on his pillow of cloud, his outthrust hand with its bag of securities is grasped by Gates–the Adam of Software Commerce–while seraphs and cherubs muse delightedly over the IRS regulations governing the sheltering of Buffett’s swag in tax-exempt nonprofit foundations.

Let us not waste too much time here advising Mr. and Mrs. Gates how to spend Buffett’s money. At the moment it seems that the Gates couple’s core focus is the war on AIDS and malaria, both ravaging Africa. How to improve the Dark Continent’s overall well-being? America’s senators and representatives can be bought for bargain-basement sums. A modest disbursement by the Gates Foundation-let us say $50,000 for each senator and $20,000 for each rep-would most certainly buy enough votes to end the current government subsidy, $4.5 billion for 2004, to cotton growers. The entire crop that year, the last for which figures are available, was worth $5.9 billion and the subsidy en-ables US growers to export three-quarters of their harvest and control about 40 percent of world trade, thus destroying the farm economies of countries like Mozambique, Benin and Mali. The WTO found the United States in violation this spring, but the ten largest cotton growers here-virtuous Jeffersonian toilers such as Kelley Enterprises (Tennessee) and JG Boswell (California)-have the necessary political clout to keep the subsidies coming. From 1995 to 2004, JG Boswell Co of California received $16,808,427 in cotton subsidies from the US government, while Kelley Enterprises received $8,694,643.

…In Vidharbha, a cotton-growing area of the state of Maharashtra, journalist P. Sainath has reported in The Hindu that 540 suicides of ruined cotton farmers occurred between June 2005 and May 2006. As many as 325 farmers have killed themselves since January. May saw nearly eighty farmers taking their own lives, ten of them doing so on a single day. Some weeks, Sainath reports, there have been suicides every eight hours, usually by the ingestion of pesticide.
counterpunch.org

A few weeks ago George McGovern, former US senator for South Dakota & 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate, made use of the opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times to display his liberal orthodoxy. His message, in a piece (May 22) called “The End of More”? U.S. workers and working class communities should quit struggling against the tide of “a new competitive reality.” But whose reality is it? Telling workers that they are asking for too much without a corresponding analysis of the increasing inequity of wealth division in this country further debunks the myth that the U.S. doesn’t operate on a class system.

…Liberals have long since abandoned their claimed “core principle” of justice and equality as they continue to ignore rising economic injustice and inequality. Guided by what Wall Street wants, not the real needs of a majority of working Americans, they are left to shill for the companies and the system by appealing to workers to be “more realistic”.
axisoflogic.com

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours — huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction — what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

That self-deception started early.
progressive.org

BAGHDAD, Iraq Fifteen-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza was afraid, her mother confided in a neighbor.

As pretty as she was young, the girl had attracted the unwelcome attention of U.S. soldiers manning a checkpoint that the girl had to pass through almost daily in their village in the south-central city of Mahmoudiya, her mother told the neighbor.

Abeer told her mother often in her last days that the soldiers had made advances toward her, a neighbor, Omar Janabi, said this weekend, recounting a conversation he said he had with the girl’s mother, Fakhriyah, on March 10.

Fakhriyah feared the Americans might come for her daughter at night, at their home. She asked her neighbor if Abeer might sleep at his house, with the women there.

Janabi said he agreed. Then, “I tried to reassure her, remove some of her fear,” Janabi said. “I told her, the Americans would not do such a thing.”

Abeer did not live to take up the offer of shelter at Janabi’s home.

Instead, attackers came to the girl’s house the next day, apparently separating Abeer from her mother, father and 7-year-old sister.

Janabi and others knowledgeable about the incident said they believed the attackers raped Abeer in another room. Medical officials who handled the bodies said the girl had been raped, but they did not elaborate.

Before leaving, the attackers fatally shot the four family members „ two of Abeer’s brothers had been away at school „ and attempted to set Abeer’s body on fire, according to Janabi, another neighbor who spoke on condition of anonymity, the mayor of Mahmoudiya and a hospital administrator with knowledge of the death certificates and of the case overall.

…Janabi was one of the first people to arrive at the house after the attack, he said Saturday, speaking at the home of local tribal leaders. He said he found Abeer sprawled dead in a corner, her hair and a pillow next to her consumed by fire, and her dress pushed up to her neck.

…The military official pointed to one discrepancy in the accounts. Preliminary information in the military investigation put the age of the alleged rape victim at 20, rather than 15, as reported by her neighbors, officials and hospital records and officials in Mahmoudiya.
seattletimes.nwsource.com

GEORGE Bush’s operatives have plans to jigger with the upcoming elections. I’m not talking about the November ’06 vote in the USA (though they have plans for that, too). I’m talking about the election this Sunday in Mexico for their Presidency.

It begins with an FBI document marked, ‘Counterterrorism’ and ‘Foreign Intelligence Collection’ and ‘Secret.’ Date: ‘9/17/2001,’ six days after the attack on the World Trade towers. It’s nice to know the feds got right on the ball, if a little late.

What does this have to do with jiggering Mexico’s election? Hold that thought.

This document is what’s called a ‘guidance’ memo for using a private contractor to provide databases on dangerous foreigners. Good idea. We know the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf Emirates. So you’d think the ‘Intelligence Collection’ would be aimed at getting info on the guys in the Gulf.

No so. When we received the document, we obtained as well its classified appendix. The target nations for ‘foreign counterterrorism investigation’ were nowhere near the Persian Gulf. Every one was in Latin America: Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico and a handful of others.

Latin America?! Was there a terror cell about to cross into San Diego with exploding enchiladas?
informationclearinghouse.info

Stealing It In Front Of Your Eyes
As in Florida in 2000, as in Ohio in 2004, the exit polls show the voters voted for the progressive candidate, but the race is ‘officially’ too close to call.

But they will call it: after they steal it. Reuters News agency reports that, as of 8pm Eastern time, as voting concluded in Mexico, exit polls show Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the ‘left-wing’ Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) leading in exit polls over Felipe Calderon of the ruling conservative National Action Party (PAN).

We’ve said again and again: Exit polls tell us how voters say they voted, but the voters can’t tell pollsters if their vote will be counted. In Mexico, counting the vote is an art, not a science, and Calderon’s ruling crew is very artful indeed. The PAN-controlled official electoral commission, not surprisingly, has announced that the presidential tally is too close to call.

Calderon’s election is openly supported by the Bush Administration.

On the ground in Mexico City, our news team reports accusations from inside the Obrador campaign that operatives of the PAN had access to voter files which are supposed to be the sole property of the nation’s electoral commission.

We are not surprised.

Mexican left’s anger simmers after contested vote
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s left, still smarting from a 1988 presidential vote it says was stolen from it, simmered with anger on Monday as its dreams of power were frustrated by another contested election.

Conservative candidate Felipe Calderon claimed victory in Sunday’s hard-fought presidential election and official returns appeared to show anti-poverty campaigner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would be unable to catch him.

Harvard-educated Calderon held a one-point lead over former Indian welfare officer Lopez Obrador on Monday with returns in from almost 98 percent of polling stations. A top electoral official said a recount this week was unlikely to change that.

Leaders of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, were to meet Lopez Obrador to try to rescue his attempt to become president and join the ranks of leftist leaders in Latin America.

A tiny group of defiant Lopez Obrador supporters gathered outside his campaign headquarters. Many said their candidate, the former mayor of Mexico City, had been cheated of victory by fraud. “He won more points that Calderon,” said retired factory worker Arturo Jimenez, 74.

“He lost, but unfairly. There was sleight of hand involved,” said office cleaner Carmen Sanchez.

No candidate has claimed to have evidence of vote-rigging in the election, which the Federal Electoral Institute said was too close to call yet.

Bets on Calderon win ignite Mexican stocks

CARACAS, Venezuela – More than seven years into the government of the leftist president Hugo Chavez, people here barely raise an eyebrow to having former Marxist guerrillas in positions of power. One is foreign minister, another is the chief executive of the government’s aluminum producer and yet another was one of Mr. Chàvez’s first representatives to OPEC.

Now, one of the country’s most eminent ex-guerrillas, Teodoro Petkoff Malec, is seeking to oust Mr. Chavez in this year’s presidential election. Mr. Petkoff is basing his bid on what he calls impeccable leftist credentials and a promise to end the polarization of Venezuelan society between Mr. Chavez’s supporters and opponents.

With Mr. Chavez far ahead in the polls, Mr. Petkoff’s campaign as an independent appears quixotic. But it is no more surprising than a political career that has spanned half a century and included not only armed struggle against the government and spectacular prison escapes but also a rebirth as a congressman and, later, as a planning minister who created an austerity program that won backing from the International Monetary Fund.
nytimes.com

The people of Venezuela will not be fooled by this US-shill.

…Why have Olmert and Amir Peretz, his hapless defence minister, gone down this road to nowhere? Some observers have suggested that they may want to show that they are as good at killing Arabs as their predecessors because, unlike previous Israeli leaders, they lack any significant military experience. But this can be only part of the story.

It would seem that there are two broad reasons for Israel’s destructive rampage in Gaza. Neither reason has much to do with the young Franco-Israeli corporal, Gilad Shalit, captured during a cross-border operation by Palestinian guerrillas against an Israeli military post.

One reason for Israel’s assault is military. Israel has been desperate to put an end to the homemade rockets launched from northern Gaza at the Israeli town of Sderot, which lies a kilometre from the Gaza strip in the north-west Negev desert. Sderot is Peretz’s home town.

These rockets have so far not killed anyone but they are a very considerable irritant. The city’s municipality is up in arms at the state’s inability to offer adequate protection. In response to the rockets, Israeli shelling and air strikes have in recent months killed some 50 Palestinians, including several children, and wounded more than 200.

But beyond the rockets themselves is the wider issue of Israel’s deterrent capability. Nothing inflames Israel more than any dent in this capability. This past week the US has, as usual, repeated its mantra that “Israel has the right to defend itself”. The implicit corollary is that no one else has such a right.

Israel’s second reason for striking at Gaza is political. It is seeking to destroy the Hamas government by all possible means – including physical liquidation – because it knows that Hamas’s terms for a settlement would be stiffer than it could possibly accept.

It abhors the recent Hamas-Fatah accord, which implicitly recognises Israel, because it threatens to produce a Palestinian partner ready to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Israel has no intention of ever returning to those borders. It is no accident that its assault followed immediately on the Palestinian accord.

Israel will do everything to avoid a negotiation. Hence, it deliberately inflicts inhumane hardships on the Palestinians in order to radicalise them and drive the moderates from the scene. Moderates, who are prepared to talk, are Israel’s real enemies.

Letter from Palestine – Morning Came
Morning came and we found that 90 of the nation’s best men were captured by Israel from their homes in the night. Our mayor, who was released from four years in prison just a month ago. Someone for whom I have the utmost respect and admiration, as do his people here, political allies and opponents alike. And our vice mayor, too. The last time I talked with him, earlier this week, he was struggling a lot with chronic back pain. I wonder where they are now. If they have been fed today, or tortured. If they will sleep on beds tonight, or not at all. If they will be home tomorrow. If we will never see some of them again alive.

It’s the first time Palestinians have captured an Israeli soldier in a long time; families of prisoners have begged the resistance not to release him until there is a prisoner exchange no matter what the consequences to the community — being well acquainted with the suffering that implies. Everyone went about their business today, wedding processions in the streets, families eating ice cream and watermelon in the sticky heat. Some with the heavy numb shock of loved ones vanished suddenly, shock without surprise; they expected that the price that has been paid, and paid, and paid, for keeping one’s spirit from being broken, must be paid again.

Myself, I couldn’t keep from crying from time to time, although for me it is just a very small taste of the shock, seeing two good men that I know a little, powerful in their community with the power the community has entrusted them with, suddenly made helpless, pieces of meat for Israeli intelligence officers somewhere to enjoy, and knowing that if I knew them more, if I knew others, the sense of anger and sorrow and disbelief would be multiplied. I know that for the people around me these tears fell years and years ago. The anger and sorrow and loss and disbelief have happened too many times to count, but it does not diminish, to the world it is one more added to a large number, for each mother and sister and wife it is an unconsolable agony, an irreplaceable loss, an unimaginable theft, a violation of a family, a marriage, that might never be able to recover from the traumas and abuses that are being suffered, will be suffered in the days ahead.

Israel has over 10,000 Palestinian hostages, hundreds of them children, and slaughters Palestinians of any age on a daily basis. When Palestinians take 2 Israeli hostages and kill two soldiers, Israeli bombs Gaza. Bombs out the power stations, the water reticulation; no electricity, no water, bridges blasted severing cities from each other. Gaza Strip, the most densely populated area on earth on account of Israel using it as a specially designed human garbage can where refugees are disposed off and hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world.. Brilliant, but unsuccessful. If you treat humans as garbage and they know that they are humans and not garbage, they will not quietly disappear. You will never sleep safe at night. You will never have the right to sleep safe at night. May you never sleep safe at night.

A young woman in my neighborhood asked, can you believe Israel kidnapped most of our government last night? Imagine waking up to hear that Palestinian forces had kidnapped 90 Israeli government leaders. It’s hard to imagine that Israel would leave one house standing, one person uninjured.

Imagine if Palestinians had the military capacity to punish Israel on a comparable scale for every 2 hostages it takes and 2 it kills. Imagine if Americans, and Europeans, valued the blood of Palestinians and Iraqis as much as their own blood. Imagine if the nations of the world used their armies to protect the lives of the innocent and bring to justice thieving, raping, murdering states. A couple days ago I sat with someone I know, who was taken hostage last night. He explained part of Hamas’ interpretation of the Qur’an as follows: there are three kinds of people that Muslims have to deal with. 1) Those who treat you with respect. In this case, it is a crime against God to treat them with anything but respect, kindness, and hospitality. In other words, if a Jew wanted to immigrate to Palestine with full respect for the people here, wishing to become a member of Palestinian society, he should be welcomed. 2) Then there are those who do not respect you, and oppose you. You have no obligation to extend hospitality to them. 3) Then there are those who have no respect for your humanity, your property or your religion, they take power over your land and your lives, destroy your land and kill your people. In this case you have an obligation to fight against them to protect your land and your people. If they kill your people, you can kill their people.

…Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President’s plans, according to active-duty and retired officers and officials. The generals and admirals have told the Administration that the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran’s nuclear program. They have also warned that an attack could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States.

A crucial issue in the military’s dissent, the officers said, is the fact that American and European intelligence agencies have not found specific evidence of clandestine activities or hidden facilities; the war planners are not sure what to hit. ‘The target array in Iran is huge, but it’s amorphous,’ a high-ranking general told me. ‘The question we face is, When does innocent infrastructure evolve into something nefarious?’ The high-ranking general added that the military’s experience in Iraq, where intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was deeply flawed, has affected its approach to Iran. ‘We built this big monster with Iraq, and there was nothing there. This is son of Iraq,’ he said.

‘There is a war about the war going on inside the building,’ a Pentagon consultant said. ‘If we go, we have to find something.’
newyorker.com