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| Honduras: The Coup That Never Happened | “When the media goes quiet, the walls speak.” — graffiti in Tegucigalpa. What strikes a visitor to the Honduran capital most immediately in this moment is the degree to which the social and political conflict that has erupted since the golpe de estado (coup d’etat) on June 28th is actually written on the walls, the fences, the rockfaces, bridges, errant bits of siding, abandoned buildings, and even the concrete upon which one walks. Though the discourse in the international press is muddled and misinformed, the situation in Honduras is very obvious to those who are here – as a quick taxi ride around Tegucigalpa demonstrates. Nov. 26, 2009 - Tegucigalpa, indeed all of the country, is covered in political graffiti. It doesn't take long to recognize that the state is in a moment of intense political struggle and repression, despite the international media's insistence that 'everything is fine.' Honduras has been long dominated by a handful of some ten to fifteen wealthy families. Everyone here knows their names – Facusse, Ferrari, Micheletti – and now they are scrawled on walls everywhere, next to accusations of golpista (coup-supporter) and asesino(assassin). These oligarchs used to be satisfied by controlling the economy and buying off the politicians, but they now increasingly insist upon exercising direct political control themselves, and their names show up more and more in congress, in the supreme court and now even in the executive branch....
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| Mounting Political Tensions as the US, Russia and China Compete for the Control of the World's Oil and Gas Reserves
China’s completion of an historic natural gas pipeline with Kazakhstan bypassing Russia this week tightens the Asian behemoth’s grip on energy resources needed to fuel a burgeoning economy, a desire also forcing it on a quest for oil and gas wealth in other corners of the globe. China is not alone in this scramble for energy security. Hungry for oil and gas, world powers like Russia and the United States are also relying on different strategies to grab resource treasures but their efforts have raised questions about conflicts down the road. The U.S. Energy Information Administration describes China as the second largest energy consumer behind the United States . Taking advantage of the world’s financial crisis, the Asian powerhouse has tapped currency reserves to invest in both Russia and Central Asia , helping to construct power plants and other domestic infrastructure in return for long-term oil and gas supplies, said Ben Montalbano, a senior research analyst at the Washington-based Energy Policy Research Foundation. Lacking energy reserves, China has been “working hard to lock in” investments in Africa, Central Asia and Venezuela , Montalbano told OilPrice.com. The country has also sought natural gas to satisfy increasing consumption and built many liquefied natural gas receiving terminals over the last year, he added. “Cut off from African natural resources . . . China ’s growth stops,” warned Peter Pham, director of the Africa Project at the New York-based National Committee on American Foreign Policy and an associate professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg , Virginia . This intensive bid for energy, however, has caused friction with the world community. Under an investment strategy in Africa, China “wins over very easily governing elites but doesn’t necessarily win over the populace,” Pham charged...
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| Curacao Is U.S. Spy Base Against Venezuela
Dutch Socialist MP Harry van Bommel has claimed that US spy planes are using an airbase on the Netherlands Antilles island of Curaçao.
Mr Van Bommel has asked Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen whether he is aware that a Boeing RC-135 aircraft has been making regular reconnaissance flights from the Caribbean island's Hato airport over the past few weeks.
War on drugs
The flights were the cause of angry reactions by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who accused the Netherlands of colluding with the United States. The Hague government is contributing to rising tensions between Venezuela and Colombia, according to the Venezuelan authorities.
The opposition MP said it is up to the Netherlands to help de-escalate these tensions. He is asking for a ban on American military flights over Colombia from the Antilles. Ostensibly such flights are part of the US "war on drugs" but Mr Van Bommel claims they are also used in a "war on guerrillas". The MP wants to scrap the US-Netherlands Forwards Operations Location treaty enabling the Americans to use airfields in Curaçao and the Antilles for anti-drugs flights...
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| Torture: The Transfers of Afgan Prisoners
Letter to Canada's House of Commons - by Lawyers Against the War
Open letter to the Parliamentary Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan Dear Committee Members: Chair: Rick Casson, Vice-chair: Bryon Wilfert, Members: Jim Abbott, Ujjal Dosanjh, Francine Lalonde, Claude Bachand, Laurie Hawn, Dave MacKenzie, Paul Dewar, Greg Kerr, Deepak Obhrai: Lawyers against the War (LAW) urges the Parliamentary Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan to recommend: The immediate cessation of transfers of people taken prisoner in Afghanistan (prisoners) by Canada, to third countries, including Afghanistan; and, That Canada immediately undertake effective protective and remedial measures with respect to all prisoners already transferred by Canada to third countries; and, The creation of a judicial inquiry mandated to inquire into allegations that the transfers violate Canadian and international law and to recommend the civil and criminal remedies required by law. Concerned Canadians know that people taken captive in Afghanistan and transferred to either U.S. or Afghan custody are at risk of torture and other grave violations of their internationally protected rights. The facts establishing the illegality of the transfer of prisoners have been a matter public record since, at the latest, early 2004. Under Canadian and international law transfer to risk of such harm violates both Canadian and international law. Knowledge of the applicable law is presumed. Evidence that Canada was and is, violating Canadian and international law by transferring people taken captive in Afghanistan to either U.S. or Afghan authorities has long been part of the public record. Since November 13 20011, the world has known that the U.S. intended to illegally detain non-Americans taken prisoner in Afghanistan and to deny them access to properly constituted courts and other due process in violation of international law.2 The world has known since February 7, 20023 that such prisoners transferred into U.S. custody would be denied the protection of the Geneva Conventions and subjected to whatever treatment, including torture and/or other prohibited treatment, the President or Secretary of Defense arbitrarily determined was ‘required by the exigencies of the war on terror’. By the end of September 2004, concerned people and those in positions of responsibility knew, from the report of the Independent Expert on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan, that prisoners were routinely subjected to torture and other internationally prohibited treatment in both Afghan-run and U.S.-run prisons within Afghanistan....
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| Inside the Military Media Industrial Complex: Impacts on Movements for Peace and Social Justice
Among the most important corporate media censored news stories of the past decade, one must be that over one million people have died because of the United States military invasion and occupation of Iraq. This, of course, does not include the number of deaths from the first Gulf War nor the ensuing sanctions placed upon the country of Iraq that, combined, caused close to an additional one million Iraqi deaths. In the Iraq War, which began in March of 2003, over a million people have died violently primarily from US bombings and neighborhood patrols. These were deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government. Among US military leaders and policy elites, the issue of counting the dead was dismissed before the Iraqi invasion even began. In an interview with reporters in late March of 2002 US General Tommy Franks stated, “You know we don’t do body counts.”[i] Fortunately, for those concerned about humanitarian costs of war and empire, others do ...
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| Iran Sanctions are Precursor to War Last week te House overwhelmingly approved a measure to put a new round of sanctions on Iran. If this measure passes the Senate, the United States could no longer do business with anyone who sold refined petroleum products to Iran or helped them develop their ability to refine their own petroleum. The sad thing is that many of my colleagues voted for this measure because they felt it would deflect a military engagement with Iran. I would put the question to them, how would Congress react if another government threatened our critical trading partners in this way? Would we not view it as asking for war?
This policy is pure isolationism. It is designed to foment war by cutting off trade and diplomacy. Too many forget that the quagmire in Iraq began with an embargo. Sanctions are not diplomacy. They are a precursor to war and an embarrassment to a country that pays lip service to free trade. It is ironic that people who decry isolationism support actions like this. If a foreign government attempted to isolate the US economically, cut off our supply of gasoline, or starve us to death, would it cause Americans to admire that foreign entity? Or would we instead unite under the flag for the survival of our country? ....
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| EU/IMF Revolt: Greece, Iceland, Latvia May Lead the Way
Europe’s small, debt-strapped countries could follow the lead of Argentina and simply walk away from their debts. That would shift the burden to the creditor countries, which could solve the problem merely by a change in accounting rules.
Total financial collapse, once a problem only for developing countries, has now come to Europe. The International Monetary Fund is imposing its “austerity measures” on the outer circle of the European Union, with Greece, Iceland and Latvia the hardest hit. But these are not your ordinary third world debtor supplicants. Historically, the Vikings of Iceland successfully invaded Britain; Latvia n tribes repulsed the Vikings; and the Greeks conquered the whole Persian empire. If anyone can stand up to the IMF, these stalwart European warriors can....
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| UK Army 'Waterboarded' Northern Ireland Prisoners in 1970s
Evidence has emerged that the British army used waterboarding to interrogate Northern Ireland prisoners during troubled times back in the 1970s.
The torture technique was allegedly used in at least one interrogation of a prisoner who was accused of killing a British soldier in 1973, a Tuesday report published in the Guardian said.
The prisoner named Liam Holden was later convicted of murder, largely based on an unsigned confession.
At the time the jury ignored his claim that the confession was forced under severe duress by British soldiers who had held him down, placed a towel over his face and poured water over his nose and mouth.
After 17 years in jail, the Criminal Cases Review Commission is now reviewing Holden's case because of doubts about the "admissibility and reliability" of his confession.
Waterboarding, which simulates drowning, is considered torture by agencies worldwide.
CIA agents are known to have used it in interrogating the so-called 'war on terror' suspects.
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| Health Care Profiteers: A Billion-Dollar Lobby
A study by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), Northwestern University and the Chicago Tribune, published in the newspaper Sunday, found that health care lobbyists have spent more than $396 million this year to influence senators and congressmen engaged in passing the health care restructuring legislation, and $862 million in 2008-2009 combined. With the frenzy of lobbying in the last quarter of 2009, the two-year total will go well beyond $1 billion. The drug industry alone has spent $199 million on lobbying in the first nine months of the year, which CRP said was the largest such amount ever spent by any industry on any issue. The drug lobby negotiated a deal with the White House in the spring to limit to $80 billion over ten years the amount that the drug companies would have to accept in discounts and rebates as their “contribution” to paying for the health care overhaul. Efforts by some Senate and House Democrats to impose greater costs on the industry, as much as $200 billion, have been beaten back with the support of the Obama administration ...
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| Venezuela-Colombia Tension Increasing
The tensions between Colombia and neighbouring Venezuela have increased over the weekend.
In a newspaper interview the Colombian Minister of Defence, Gabriel Silva, said his country is preparing a strategy to ward off a military attack. Although he did not mention Venezuela by name, he said that up to now Colombia had concentrated on internal problems but that today the dangers facing his country came from outside its borders.
Colombia has already made known that it intends to build a new military base in the department of Guajira, on the north-eastern border with Venezuela.
Relations between Colombia and Venezuela have been tense for several months. Venezuela President Hugo Chávez has said he is not pleased that Colombia has sought close military ties with the United States.
Speaking in his weekly television programme on Sunday, Mr Chávez said Colombia would regret any operation directed at Venezuela. He added that his country had no plans for an attack on its neighbour.
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