Opponents of efforts to allow foreign firms to invest and profit from Mexico's oil riches display a banner saying "Pemex is not for sale" in Mexico City's main square last week. Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil company, says that it needs outside technological help to bring up oil from deep-water fields.

Leftist party decries Calderon's proposal

to enlist foreign firms in deep-water drilling.

Pemex, short for Petroleos Mexicanos, says that it needs outside technological help to bring up oil from deep-water fields. But such a proposal raises the hot-button question of whether foreign companies should be allowed to invest and profit from any of Mexico's oil riches.

The issue is deeply emotional as well as politically charged. Mexico nationalized its oil fields in 1938, expropriating American and European companies. Ever since, most Mexicans have considered public ownership of the country's most lucrative natural resource to be a cornerstone of their sovereignty.

On Tuesday, leaders of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, announced that they would form "resistance brigades" composed of 10,000 women and 18,000 men to fight Calderon's proposals with marches and barricades.

And Wednesday, leaders of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, expressed opposition to key elements of the reforms, though they earlier had suggested that they might support it. Calderon needs PRI votes to pass any legislation.

"We are in complete disagreement with the [Calderon] government," Manlio Fabio Beltrones, a PRI senator, said in a radio interview.

Analysts say Mexico's oil reserves could be depleted in a decade if new fields aren't discovered and tapped.

The county's main oil field, Cantarell, is in a major decline. In February, the output of Cantarell, in shallow Gulf of Mexico waters off Campeche state, averaged 1.145 million barrels per day, according to government figures. That's off 24% compared with to the same month last year. And it's down 46% since production peaked at just over 2.1 million barrels per day in 2004.

Calderon has said that Pemex needs foreign help to explore new fields.

In an interview with The Times in February, Calderon suggested that Mexicans should not look upon foreign investment in the oil industry with fear. He pointed to China and Brazil, two countries with government-controlled oil companies that allow foreign investment.

"We have a treasure that could finance the development of the country," Calderon said. "The problem is that it's in the ocean, and at a depth that we Mexicans cannot yet reach by ourselves."

The "treasure" metaphor has been repeated in Pemex television commercials this week in support of deep-water drilling. Those ads say Pemex can reach deep-water oil with "the experience and technology of others," but does not specifically refer to foreign companies.

The PRD has countered with its own spots, which call any private profit from Pemex a national betrayal.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the firebrand leader of the PRD, told the thousands at a rally here Tuesday that they should resist "the group of potentates, both foreign and domestic, who cynically . . . plan to transform our oil into a juicy private business."

Last year, Pemex generated $104.5 billion in revenue. Half of that money went to the government: The company is the nation's largest taxpayer, and Mexico relies on it to fund schools, roads and social programs.

After paying salaries and other costs, Pemex was left with a loss of $1.5 billion -- in a year when major oil companies around the globe posted blockbuster earnings.

Officials of the ruling National Action Party, or PAN, have not yet submitted their proposed legislation. But they have given the broad outlines of measures to allow private companies to sign contracts with Pemex for exploratory drilling.

PRI officials, who initially appeared warm to the idea, said this week that they could not support changes that guarantee investors a share of any oil they find.

Such arrangements are standard in the oil industry, accepted even by communist Cuba. But they are impossible under Mexican law, which says the country's oil deposits belong exclusively to Mexico's citizens. The nation's constitution allows private companies to participate solely as contractors and forbids so-called "risk contracts" that would reward them with a share of production.

Analysts say private investment is unlikely unless Mexico agrees to share profits from drilling and exploration, known in the industry as "upstream" operations.

"Any upstream component of an energy reform has been difficult from the beginning," said Enrique Bravo, Latin America analyst with the Eurasia Group, a New York-based political risk analysis consulting firm. "Now it looks even more so. . . . The PRI is toughening its position."

Indeed, Beltrones, the PRI's leader in the Senate, accused the government of "alarmism" Wednesday. In an interview with the newspaper Reforma, he said Calderon administration officials were painting the worst possible picture of Pemex to ram through its energy measures.

The PRI legislator said he was skeptical of data released this month on the company's plunging petroleum reserves. Proven reserves have fallen 41% since 2000, to about 14.7 billion barrels, according to Pemex figures. That translates into less than a decade's worth of production unless Mexico can quickly tap new sources of oil.

Independent oil analysts say the country's proven petroleum bounty is even less and for years have predicted the decline of the Cantarell field. The real surprise, they say, is how little Mexico has done to prepare for Cantarell's inevitable demise.

Geologists believe there may be vast reserves of oil below the seabed in the deepest waters of the Gulf.

The trouble is that Mexico has no way of tapping these potential riches.

Deep-water drilling requires specialized know-how, advanced technology and loads of money, none of which Pemex has, analysts say.

hector.tobar@latimes.com

by Ben Skinner, Huffington Post

Recently, a friend told me that Barack Obama was giving a major speech addressing slavery. But unlike most of the two million others that watched it on YouTube, what drew me was not the promise of a mature discussion of race or even the spectacle of a man throwing his friend under the bus. I watched with the hope that the senator might call on the nation to get past its "original sin," as he rightly called slavery, by working against its modern incarnation. What I heard was a soaring and intelligent plea for racial reconciliation. As usual, however, the discussion of slavery was stalled in the past.

"Words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage," Obama said. He was speaking of his wife's nineteenth-century forbearers.

But he might have been speaking about a young, mentally-handicapped woman that was offered to me in trade for a used car in a brothel in Bucharest. In an attempt to make her sellable, her pimp had put makeup on her face, but when he presented her to me, the terrified woman was crying so hard that it had smeared. Her right arm bore angry, red slashes where apparently she had tried to escape the daily rape the only way she knew how.

Or he could have been referring to a third-generation quarry slave that I got to know in northern India. A serial-killing contractor regularly beat the man, and forced his entire family to work in a quarry for no pay beyond upkeep.

Or he might have been referring to our failed collective promise to a nine-year-old Haitian girl, whom a trafficker offered to me for $50 on the street in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Or he might have been speaking about another Haitian girl, whom I met as a twenty-year-old survivor. She had been held as a domestic slave and sex slave for three years starting at age nine. The place of her bondage was a $351,000 household in suburban Miami, amidst what Senator Obama called "a land of big dreamers and big hopes."

For them, the Constitution that meant so little to Michelle Obama's forebearers means even less. For them, the three hundred international treaties banning slavery and the slave trade mean nothing at all.

There are more slaves today than at any point in human history. United Nations estimates begin at 12 million and range up to 27 million real slaves, worldwide. Yet leaders like Obama rarely mention their plight, because it doesn't register on the average American's radar, because slavery is everywhere illegal, because it is hidden behind the fraud of traffickers, masters and corrupt government officials. Real slaves -- those forced to work under threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence -- are everywhere and nowhere.

In 2003, I set out to find slaves and their captors for my book, A Crime So Monstrous. Whenever I visited a new country, my first challenge was to find a single slave. After ingratiating myself to the right people, often shady characters, I went through the looking glass. Then the slaves were everywhere. In the end, I infiltrated trafficking networks and slave sales on five continents.

I found that slavery today is no less monstrous than it was 150 years ago. A pimp in Istanbul bargained with me for the lives of three young Eastern European women as if he were selling second-hand iPods.

In Moldova, I found villages essentially drained of young women by traffickers. A few made it back, only to face ostracism. Most never returned. One who did survive tearfully recounted how she had been tricked into prostitution in Turkey, violently raped, sold several times, only to be "rescued" by Turkish police, thrown into prison, repatriated, and trafficked again.

A mother living on the Indian border with Nepal broke down in tears as she described the pain of giving her son to a trafficker in order to save him from starvation, only to have him disappear into bondage, along with thousands of other children in India's carpet belt. I found the slave trader that had sold her son to a loom owner and I brought him to her. In a belated act of contrition, he too wept and pled for the mother's forgiveness.

When that is the reality of our world today, we may out of instinct turn away, preferring only to think of slavery at a distance, as a sepia-toned, historic relic, invoked to buttress the political argument of Senator Obama.

But slavery is no relic. And future generations will judge us harshly if we act as if it is. This Wednesday, Florida became the sixth state to formally apologize for its history of slavery, joining North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey. It was an important act of reconciliation. But for those, like the girl enslaved in that suburban Miami house, apologizing for the past does nothing to alleviate the bondage of the present.

To date, none of the presidential candidates has truly "owned" the issue of modern-day abolition. Senator Clinton comes closest. She met survivors of sex slavery in Southeast Asia during her husband's presidency, and spoke out numerous times against the crime while in the Senate. Senator McCain has been thoughtful on modern-day slavery and some of his closest advisors have strong antislavery track records.

Ironically, the candidate with the weakest demonstrated record on modern-day slavery is Senator Obama. Though last year he co-sponsored a resolution supporting the National Day of Human Trafficking Awareness, such an effort hardly constitutes ownership of the issue.

Senator Obama has inspired millions of Americans with his message of hope. My hope, and the hope of other abolitionists, is that as president he will finally fulfill our collective pledge to bury slavery once and for all.

E. Benjamin Skinner is the author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery (Free Press, 2008)

Corporate globalization depends on governmental readiness to murder. Peoples and organizations in countries that defend their right to self determination can expect no mercy. The Bush regime and its allies may squabble occasionally over ways and means, but their behaviour towards peoples like those of Haiti and Palestine leaves no room for doubt - the US and allied governments operate a system of murderous global gangsterism to get what they want. The UN Security Council now functions pretty much as a diplomatic version of Murder Inc.

Haiti's prolonged destruction by foreign powers is just one more example of rich country elites' determination to seize what they want by denying fundamental rights to peoples around the world. Four years on, the coup against President Aristide organized by the United States, Canada and France fits imperialism's familiar historical pattern. All the fake, elegant-suited blather about bringing democracy and prosperity to Haiti has boiled down to murderous military occupation by the United Nations defending a corrupt North American and European backed elite, while starving people survive by eating cakes made of dirt.

Immediately after the coup, George W. Bush said, "This government believes it essential that Haiti have a hopeful future. This is the beginning of a new chapter in the country's history." Then US ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte said, "Haiti has turned a new page in its history." (5) What, now, does this brave new world for Haiti, as prepared by George Bush, John Negroponte and their corporate gangster cronies look like?

The statistics of misery

Associated Press writer Jonathan Katz reported on January 29th this year "...in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal..."When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds 3 ounces he weighed at birth."

The World Bank reckons Haiti's population is just under 9 million. Gross national income per capita in 2006 was about US$480. After two and a half years of foreign intervention, in September 2006, the IMF reckoned (6) that over 70% of people still lived on less than US$2 a day with 55% of people living on a per capita income of just US$0.44 per day. Four years after the coup, Katz's report shows nothing has improved. So if we say Haiti's population is now around 8.8 million- that means that just an hour's flying time from Miami, nearly 5 million people are effectively starving.

That 2006 IMF report - an Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper - noted real per capita gross domestic product then equalled just 70% of Haiti's GDP in 1980. Also, "Access to basic public services (health, education, running water, sanitation) is very unreliable and social indicators are alarming. Infant mortality is estimated at 76/1,000 or two times the regional average, and life expectancy is about 18 years short of the regional average. Moreover, less than half of the population has access to drinking water in both rural and urban areas, compared to regional averages of 71 percent and 93 percent, respectively. Access to improved sanitary facilities is available to a very small portion of Haiti’s population: 16 percent in rural areas and 50 percent in urban areas, whereas in Central America and the Caribbean, these percentages average 49 percent and 86 percent, respectively."

Another report, this one by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, also appeared in September 2006. "Haiti’s Dirty Little Secret: the Problem of Child Slavery", reported on the "restavec" system of forced child labour, "According to the Haitian government, there are about 90,000 to 120,000 children in bondage, but UNICEF estimates significantly larger numbers, ranging from 250,000 to 300,000." This, remember, from a population of just under 9 million.

Right now, the sustainability of Haiti's economy is doubtful. Haiti has suffered the same imperialist policy pressures as all the other countries in Central America and the Caribbean that have led to a decline of their rural economies along with concomitant environmental destruction. Those neoliberal policies were deliberately designed by rich country "development" planners to create a large pool of vulnerable easily exploited migrant labour all too ready to seek work either as illegal immigrants to the US or in local super-exploitative maquila industries serving luxury brands in North America and Europe.

The resulting agricultural collapse has been disastrous for Haiti's rural economy and for the poor majority's ability to get enough to eat. "Student activists in Haiti are calling for an overhaul of the nation's agriculture policies, which they say have resulted in Haiti importing more than half of its food while local farmers are mired in poverty." (7)The misery and suffering endured by Haiti's people four years after the coup against President Aristide prevails despite what passes for support from the "international community".

Return to colonialism

Looking at Iraq or Palestine or Afghanistan, one can see quite clearly that anywhere the US government and its allies have intervened people are at least as badly off and usually worse off than they were before that intervention. Haiti's case follows the pattern. The US government and its Murder Inc. allies on the UN Security Council decide it is time for "regime-change". They impose economic sanctions. They deliberately attempt to provoke internal crisis and conflict. Their propaganda media mount a relentless campaign to prepare public opinion among the Murder Inc. countries' domestic audience. Finally they resort to military force to install the regime they want. Invariably, it is a puppet government facing fierce, resentful opposition from the people on whom it has been imposed, able to survive only via enforcement by foreign troops.

This is readily apparent if one reviews quotes from the time of the coup. Colin Powell , then US Secretary of State, said in the coup aftermath "...we felt by the end of last week that the only real answer was if President Aristide would take a hard look at the situation and decide to step down, which is what he did. And we said that under those circumstances we would come in, and we came in immediately." Or, "...it became very clear to all of us and to the Canadians and the French that he [Aristide] had pretty much used up whatever political authority and credibility he had." (see note 5)

"We felt". "It became pretty clear to all of us." But who are these "we", these "all of us" except the most reactionary elements among the elites of the former colonial powers? Effectively nothing has changed since the days of the US military occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934. The only superficial difference is that the occupying forces are now UN mercenaries, most shamefully from Latin American countries like Brazil, Bolivia and Chile. The supreme, revolting irony is that United Nations member countries are themselves effectively trashing the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Charter. One wonders if Evo Morales does not see that something similar to President Aristide's fate could just as plausibly befall him once John Negroponte and hit-men like US ambassador Philip Goldberg have created the right conditions in Bolivia.

Human rights in post-coup Haiti

Corporate media coverage of hunger and poverty in Haiti fits snugly into the long standing racist stereotype Haiti shares with impoverished African countries. They are viewed as "basket cases" whom their former colonial owners, unfortunately and regrettably, can do hardly anything to help. To indifferent rich country public opinion, such cliches are sufficient to explain away the "international community's" abject failure to help promote sustainable economic progress in Haiti.

But it is much harder for the UN occupation forces and the "international community" to justify the persistence of gross human rights abuses which is what the 2004 coup was supposedly intended to stop. To cover up the shocking reality, Murder Inc. governments enlist media obfuscation and oblivion to tread softly around gross abuses. These include the thousands of people killed during and after the coup, the political prisoners held without due process for years, the hundreds of people unjustly convicted, mass victimization of members of Fanmi Lavalas, impunity for US-trained murderers, UN massacres and blatant attempts to rig electoral processes.

Constant advocacy for human rights in Haiti by respected, authoritative organizations like the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (http://www.ijdh.org) have been backed up by various studies since the 2004 coup describing and documenting abuse and violation of human rights in the country. The Center for the Study of Human Rights of Miami University's Law School published a report of an investigation by Thomas Griffin in November 2004. Griffin and his team documented the truly sickening security breakdown in Port-au-Prince with the police dominated by former Haitian army soldiers and gang warfare fomented by sinister US-supported figures like coup-instigator Andy Apaid.

Griffin gives important context in his report by explaining the role of US government not-so-non-governmental organizations like the International Foundation for Electoral Systems - funded directly by USAID on a no-competing-bid basis - in the coup against Aristide. The report's account of an interview with Pierre Vixamar, a stooge of the US and Canadian governments, is a classic portrait of the mentality of a colonialist catspaw. After documenting the nightmarish conditions in the Haitian capital's hospitals and morgue, Griffin concluded "Life for the impoverished majority is becoming more violent and more inhuman as the months pass since the elected government’s removal on February 29, 2004."

A July 19th 2004 report by IJDH, also covering the post coup period, documented hundreds of violent deaths. Anthony Fenton (8) makes two important observations about that report. Firstly, he notes that like all the other reports on the post-coup human rights situation it was only able to cover the Port au Prince/Central Plateau area - implying rightly that the full extent of abuses and violent death throughout Haiti following the coup is certainly many times higher. Secondly, he focuses on the report's assertion that “With the exception of four victims and for those whom it has not been possible to obtain their identity, interviewees have reported that the victims were supporters of Aristide or Haiti’s former constitutional government.”

Corporate media silence on the post coup massacres in Haiti is in stark contrast to mainstream media coverage of government repression of the 2007 uprising in Burma or of the post-election inter-communal violence in Kenya. One is entitled to assume that since most of the victims of Haiti's violence seem to have been impoverished supporters of President Aristide, their suffering was and is unimportant as far as the Western Bloc propaganda media are concerned. At the time of the coup only a handful of journalists like Kevin Pina and Jean Ristil were faithfully reporting matters at grass roots - their reports were ignored by the major corporate media.

One can draw a similar conclusion with regard to the The Lancet article "Human rights abuse and other criminal violations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti: a random survey of households". (9) One of the report's authors, Athena Kolbe, wrote more graphically in at least one other article (as Lyn Duff) about the horrific use of rape and sexual abuse to destroy pro-Aristide families. (10) The Lancet article reported, "Our findings suggested that 8000 individuals were murdered in the greater Port-au-Prince area during the 22-month period assessed. Almost half of the identified perpetrators were government forces or outside political actors. Sexual assault of women and girls was common, with findings suggesting that 35,000 women were victimised in the area; more than half of all female victims were younger than 18 years."

The article's authors interpreted these findings as follows, "crime and systematic abuse of human rights were common in Port-au-Prince. Although criminals were the most identified perpetrators of violations, political actors and UN soldiers were also frequently identified. These findings suggest the need for a systematic response from the newly elected Haitian government, the UN, and social service organisations to address the legal, medical, psychological, and economic consequences of widespread human rights abuses and crime."

Given the Haitian government's meagre resources and the intimidating political context in which they are working, the promotion and defence of human rights in Haiti are likely to remain in the balance. The case of human rights activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, still missing after seven months is emblematic of the the government's failure to impose whatever limited authority it may have. Amnesty International has issued repeated alerts lately documenting death threats to human rights activists, among them Wilson Mesilien, Franztco Joseph and Yveson Piton. (11)

Historical continuities : regional projections

Most of these these reports of systematic human rights abuses have been either ignored or when they are impossible to ignore, like the Lancet article, they have been rubbished, the integrity of their authors challenged, their methodology questioned. That pattern follows the same pattern of perception management deployed by the US government and its allies against any steadfast opposition in Latin America, from Sandino's pequeño ejercito loco in 1930s Nicaragua to guerilla groups in Colombia for over forty years, from Guatemala's Arbenz to Allende's Chile, from the Cuban revolution to the Sandinista revolution to the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela and the indigenous resurgence under Evo Morales in Bolivia.

During the Nicaraguan war the historic 1986 judgement by the International Court of Human Rights against the United States government for instigating the Contra terrorist campaign against Nicaragua's elected government was buried by the media. Numerous reports detailing systematic and widespread contra atrocities were discounted while Nicaraguan government measures to combat US government directed terrorism were demonized. Against current adversaries, the US government - run by many of the same people who connived in trafficking arms and drugs to fund the Nicaraguan Contra - continues implementing with its allies what in the 1980s, against Nicaragua, Mozambique and Angola, they called "total war at grass roots level".

Just as in those former conflicts, they openly fund non-governmental organizations opposed to target governments under the guise of "strengthening democracy and human rights". At the same time they covertly organize paramilitary organizations and murder campaigns. Having deliberately provoked conflict and instability, they then accuse the target government of being incapable of meeting its people's needs. Then it is time for "regime change" via whatever puppet quisling opportunists they can muster, imposed by some cynically engineered "coalition of the willing" with or without a UN Murder Inc. permit.

The United States and allies like Canada or member countries of the European Union maintain the same colonialist mentality they have always had. Their priority is the maintenance of their own power and influence via local proxies and enfeebled governments. To achieve that outcome they will relentlessly and deliberately arrange wholesale murder so as to repress democratic popular movements. They represent an ancien regime whose overwhelming advantage - derived from slavery and genocide in countries they colonised - is slipping away. The horrific deliberate destruction of Haiti and the wholesale murder and imprisonment of supporters of former President Aristide has a double aspect.

On the one hand it is a reprise of imperialist policy as applied throughout the 20th century against peoples that insist on their right to self-determination. On the other it is the latest precursor in Latin America of renewed US and allied readiness to destroy progressive movements in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. The recent Colombian government massacre of FARC members and visiting Mexican research students in Ecuador was a trial run for what is likely to be a series of such provocations through 2008. After their success in Haiti, the US government and its Murder Inc. allies are moving on to bigger, oil-and-gas-rich prey.

Written by Toni Solo
Wednesday, 26 March 2008

Reveals Iraqi Prisoners as Starving

By Jason Leopold

A classified memo written by the top U.S. military officer in western Iraq reveals that a prison in downtown Fallujah is so overcrowded and dirty that it does not even meet basic "minimal levels of hygiene for human beings."

"The conditions in these jails are so bad that I think we need to do the right thing in terms of caring for the prisoners even with our own dollars, or release them," says the memo, written in late February by Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commander of U.S forces in western Iraq.

The classified document, leaked to the Web site Wikileaks where whistleblowers can "reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations," was authenticated by the organization and has not been challenged by the U.S. military when asked about it.

The memo contains other shocking revelations about conditions at the jail, including a massive shortage of food and water. The prison is said to be run by Iraqi officials. U.S. Marines oversee operation of the facility.

"I found the conditions there to be exactly (unbelivable [sic] over crowding, total lack of anything approaching even minimal levels of hygiene for human beings, no food, little water, no ventilation) to those described in the recent (18 February) FOX news artickle [sic] by Michael Totten entitled the 'Dungeon of Fallujah,’" says Kelly’s memo.

"We need to go to general quarters on this issue right now... To state that the current system is broken would erroneously imply that there is a system in place to be broken."

Totten, an independent journalist, said the prison can house a maximum of 110 prisoners but he discovered that there were more then 900 crammed into the facility. U.S. contractors built the prison in 2005 which is located next to the U.S. Joint Communications Center.

It is unknown who received the memo from Kelly. A Pentagon spokesman did not return calls for comment late Wednesday.

Kelly wrote that when he inspected the prison "iraqis [sic] and marines present throughout my inspection as to why these conditions existed, three conditions were universaly [sic] cited as problems in Fallujah as well as the rest of Anbar," the commander’s memo says.

"First, there is zero support from the government for any of the jails in Anbar. No funds, food or medical support has been provided from any ministry," Kelly said.

"Second, the police that run Anbar's jails are the same personnel responsable [sic] for investigating crimes. These jailer/investigators are undermanned and more often than not spend most of their time out begging and scavenging for food than investigating crimes. (It is unlikely the prisoners will eat today)...

"I believe the Iraqi police are doing the best they can, and they literally begged me on humanitarian, moral and religious grounds to help them help the prisoners by somehow moving the government to action."

In a report published earlier Wednesday, Lt. Col. Michael Callanan told United Press International that following an inspection of the prison by Kelly, U.S. forces decided to "advise and assist" Iraqis managing the jail and are providing food to the prisoners.

"They are being fed now," Callanan told UPI.

In addition to the substandard conditions at the prison, Kelly’s memo describes how the U.S. military, five years since invading the country, still cannot seem to find success training Iraq security forces.

"The Iraqi police will ultimately be the ones whose shoulders the burden of winning or losing the fight will be carried," the classified memo says. "To date, little attention has been paid to the Iraqi corrections system in Anbar and its current discrepancies will prevent the [Iraqi police] from becoming a professional law enforcement force unless immediate and significant support is provided."

By Michael Green

Oppose The Right To Water

By Maude Barlow
The Star

"The Canadian government is at it again."

That was the opening line in an urgent email we received this week from an international NGO working to promote the right to water at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The Centre on Housing Rights and Eviction (COHRE) had just participated in a session where the Canadian government had undermined a key resolution tabled by Germany and Spain at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva on March 10 that calls for water and sanitation to be recognized as a human right.

The resolution, which will be voted on within the week, is currently being debated at the UNHRC session in Geneva that ends on March 28. Canada has presented numerous objections that have been echoed by the United States.

As it stands, Canada and the United States are the only two countries to go on record at the United Nations to oppose the right to water.

Canada is a member of the UNHRC until 2009; the United States is not an elected member but is allowed to engage under the rules of the Council.

The joint resolution promoted by Germany and Spain aims to establish a "special rapporteur" with the mandate to provide guidance on the right to water and sanitation, identify best practices, investigate country situations and promote the right internationally.

This follows a report by Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, stating that "specific, dedicated and sustained attention to safe drinking water and sanitation is currently lacking at the international level" and recommending that access to safe drinking water and sanitation be recognized as a human right.

Canada is working to weaken the resolution by demanding that references to the right to water and sanitation be removed and that the scope be reduced. Canada wants the proposed position of "special rapporteur" to be downgraded to "independent expert" serving for only one year instead of the proposed three years. Canada is also opposing visits by this expert to individual countries and the granting of a mandate enabling them to clarify the content of the right to water and sanitation.

This is the third time in six years that member nations of the UN have pushed for recognition of the human right to water. On each occasion, Canada has rejected the efforts to have water recognized as a right.

At a 2002 meeting, Canada stood alone among 53 countries by voting against the appointment of a special rapporteur on water. More recently, Canada reacted negatively to an October 2006 resolution of the UN Human Rights Council to conduct a study on the right to water.

The debate occurs as communities around the world observe today's 15th UN World Water Day.

The Liberal party defended the Harper government's position in the media earlier this week, claiming that a right to water would make Canada vulnerable to bulk water exports. This is utterly untrue.

All transboundary water issues were explicitly excluded from the scope of the resolution. A human rights convention is between a government and its citizens. Recognition of the right to water in no way affects a country's sovereign right to manage its own resources.

The reality is the resolution would be at odds with the North American Free Trade Agreement, which defines water as a good and an investment. The real issue is that the Liberals, like the Conservatives, refuse to reopen NAFTA to remove water. They would rather deny Canada and the world the right to water.

Recognizing water as a human right is vital to ensuring that governments address the reality of more than a billion people who are currently without access to clean water.

The fact that water is not acknowledged as a right has allowed decision-making over water policy to slip away from the UN and governments toward institutions promoting water privatization, which has harmed the environment and cut poor communities off from their water supplies around the world.

This motion by Germany and Spain presents new hope for groups who want to see an international solution to the global water crisis. Negotiations on the issue are expected to conclude this week and the Council of Canadians has responded to the call of our international allies by mobilizing thousands across the country to demand that our government reverse its position.

We will be marking World Water Day by working to promote the right to water in nearly 40 communities across the country. Sadly, our government seems determined to mark the day by denying that same right.

By Zuheir Kseibati
Al-Hayat

Five years ago to the day, it was the dawn of the American invasion that carried Iraq to the endless darkness of the occupation. The fall of Baghdad, the Arab capital which they almost dubbed Saddam Hussein's capital, was nothing but the onset of a massive volcanic eruption in the region; its fires still consume the Arabs' stability and security and rewrite maps from the Ocean to the Gulf.

The captain of the invasion, George Bush, celebrates the "first large-scale Arab uprising against Usama bin Laden." He reassures Americans that the costs of the invasion and war against and in Iraq are petty when bearing the "gains" in mind…notably ending "Saddam's tyranny" and lighting the candles of hope towards "democracy."

As he celebrates the fifth anniversary of the invasion, Bush forgets the big misleading lie about the threat of weapons of mass destruction. The battle has turned into a front against al-Qaeda and terrorism, and its strategic goal is to prevent shifting the battlefield to the US. Let it then be the 100-year war fought with Iraqi blood!

Those were five years of tears and blood. They are good enough a price for the Baghdad government to prevent a quick American withdrawal, which would sweep away the "achievements" realized so far, including the reduction of death tolls and rates. The suicide bombers, however, continue to come in waves, while hundreds of thousands have been left dead since the invasion and occupation began. Millions are now refugees all over Mesopotamia and neighboring countries, announcing the worst humanitarian "crisis" in a country that holds the world's third largest oil reserves. Perhaps it is certainly much worse than a crisis.

Despite all this, Bush is still celebrating the liberation of Iraqis from tyranny, and also from their blood, wealth, sovereignty, security, stability, and unity. By all moral standards, neither he nor his Vice President Dick Cheney feel embarrassed when they present on their list of victories the face of a new Iraq in which al-Qaeda is weakened and the resources of terrorism are dried up. They conveniently overlook al-Qaeda's students and women, the swamps of corruption drowning ministers and officials, the impoverishment of the homeless and the insanity of those who have been plagued by massacres and bombings that have turned Iraq into the home of the forgotten genocide.

The president, the captain of occupation, and his vice president who has bestowed upon his wife an adventurous and challenging trip to the secret base, are not ashamed of revealing the "logical" conclusion of the extremely costly war: that no other generation of Americans will have to be sent here to deter a potential confrontation on American soil. And if the cost is the blood, wealth, and unity of Iraqis, that would be their problem.

When Mesopotamia becomes the nation of unified plagues falling upon the necks of a nation, the American president finds no reason to apologize for his lies about weapons of mass destruction. Only a handful of the original war architects remain with him but mostly in hiding, while Cheney promises the Iraqis that he would not tire. The battle still has chapters to come, and if the Americans were to be bored by any slackness on al-Qaeda's side, there would still be the Iranian "influence." It is as if the vice president is taking the risk to address the victim of murder and warn him against the murderer!

Five years of tears and blood. The deafening bombs are still louder than the wailing of the mothers who lost their children and the weeping of men every time they lost children and fathers. But does any of this happen in Iraq? Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is commending the "healing of the nation," for Iraqis are no longer killed on the basis of their sectarian identity! Genocide has become "fair," as it no longer discriminates between Sunni and Shiite. To become indiscriminate, the genocide has had to last as long as the occupation itself. Everything that has been since the dawn of March 20th, 2003 is a "success" according to Cheney's testimony.

According to al-Maliki's account, life goes on in Iraq. The only obstacle that hinders "reconciliation" between the ruling forces and the disgruntled parties is a final resolution over the oil law to divide the inheritance of the murdered victim.

The "Iraqis were liberated" five years ago. All they need to do is to believe the American when he offers them a medal for defeating tyranny so they can prepare themselves for another decade or two of war on terror, while he promises them "strategic" military bases to guard oil facilities …and the dead.

Cheney wonders about the Arabs and why they are so shy in front of Iran and al-Qaeda. In the century-long war, everyone has a role to play.
In the long night and the epic of forgotten genocide, only Bush hallucinates about victory….All the politicians of Iraq hallucinate about democracy-deception. It is the long night of genocide.

For This Day Of Infamy

By Seumas Milne
The Guardian

The problem in Iraq, we're now told, was a lack of preparation, or the wrong kind of planning, or mistakes in implementation. If only, say the neocons, we had put our man Ahmad Chalabi in charge from the start, the Iraqis wouldn't have felt so humiliated. If only we hadn't dissolved the army, the pragmatists insist, the insurgency would never have taken off. If only the Brits had been running the show, mutter the old Whitehall hands, all would have been different. The problem, it turns out, was not the invasion and occupation of a sovereign Arab oil state on a tide of official deceit, but the way it was carried out.

Meanwhile, we're being subjected to a renewed barrage of spin about the success of the US surge in turning the country round, quelling the violence and opening the way to a sunlit future. In an echo of his notorious "mission accomplished" speech of May 2003, George Bush yesterday proclaimed the Iraq war a "major strategic victory" in the "war on terror".

All this is self-delusion on a heroic scale. The unprovoked aggression launched by the US and Britain against Iraq five years ago today has already gone down across the world as, to borrow the words of President Roosevelt, "a day which will live in infamy". Iraqis were promised freedom, democracy and prosperity. Instead, as Jon Snow's compelling TV documentary Hidden Iraq underlined this week, they have seen the physical and social destruction of their country, mass killing, tens of thousands thrown into jail without trial, rampant torture, an epidemic of sectarian terror attacks, pauperisation, and the complete breakdown of basic services and supplies.

On the eve of war, Tony Blair told parliament that, while there would be civilian casualties, Saddam Hussein would be "responsible for many more deaths even in one year than we will be in any conflict". Amnesty International estimated annual deaths linked to political repression in Iraq at that time to be in the low hundreds - many more were dying from the impact of western-sponsored sanctions. In the five years since, civilian deaths are estimated at anywhere between 150,000 (the figure accepted by the Iraqi government) and a million-plus, with the Lancet's estimate of 600,000 violent deaths in the first three years alone having held up as the most rigorous. After five years of occupation, Iraq is ranked as the most violent and dangerous place in the world by an Economist Intelligence Unit index. Two million refugees have fled the country as a result, while a further 2 million have been driven from their homes inside Iraq. This has become the greatest humanitarian crisis on the planet.

In the western world, far from the scene of the unfolding catastrophe, such suffering has been somehow normalised as a kind of background noise. But the impact on the aggressor states, both at home and abroad, has only begun to be felt: not only in the predicted terrorist blowback finally acknowledged by Tony Blair last year, but in a profound domestic political alienation, as well as a loss of standing and credibility across the globe. How can anyone take seriously, for example, US or British leaders lecturing China about Tibet, Russia about Chechnya, or Sudan about Darfur, when they have triggered and presided over such an orgy of killing, collective punishment, prisoner abuse and ethnic cleansing?

Given that the invasion of Iraq was regarded as illegal by the majority of the UN security council, its secretary general, and the overwhelming weight of international legal opinion, it must by the same token be seen as a war crime: what the Nuremberg tribunal deemed the "supreme international crime" of aggression. If it weren't for the fact that there is not the remotest prospect of any mechanism to apply international law to powerful states, Bush and Blair would be in the dock at the Hague. As it is, the only Briton to be found guilty of a war crime in Iraq has been corporal Donald Payne, convicted of inhumane treatment of detainees in Basra - while the man who sent him there is preposterously touted as a future president of the European Union.

Those who insist that the immolation of Iraq was the consequence of errors in the execution of an otherwise defensible policy are simply evading their own responsibility and culpability. The likelihood of a bloody quagmire was widely foreseen before the attack. The failure to do so by those who launched the aggression reflects a blindly arrogant refusal to accept that people are bound to resist foreign occupation, however much they detest their own government - particularly in a region that has already been subject to decades of destructive western intervention and exploitation.

Now the same voices can be heard arguing against an end to the occupation on the grounds that withdrawal might trigger even worse violence. Of course no stabilisation of Iraq is going to be bloodless, but such arguments fail to recognise that the occupation itself has fostered sectarian conflict in classic colonial divide-and-rule style - the current US sponsorship of Sunni militias is a case in point. As the US military's own surveys show, Iraqis of all religious and ethnic groups believe the presence of foreign troops is the main cause of violence and 70% want them out now. Tellingly, violence in Basra dropped by 90% after British troops withdrew from the city to their airport base last summer. Naturally, the green zone government is against a US pullout, because it wouldn't survive on its own. But only when the occupation forces make an unequivocal commitment to leave will Iraq's main political and military players be compelled to come to an accommodation.

For the future, so long as the disaster of Iraq is put down to mistakes or lack of planning, the real lessons will not be learned, but repeated - as appears to be happening now in Afghanistan. Gordon Brown has at last promised a full Iraq inquiry when British troops are no longer in the firing line. But any more delay to a proper accounting of what has taken place - including, as the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said at the weekend, the nature of the US-British relationship - will only further corrode the political system. The disaster of Iraq has at least had the effect of demonstrating the limits of imperial power and restraining further US attacks. The danger is, however, that next time they'll just try and do it differently - without the mistakes.

s.milne@guardian.co.uk

Of The Worlds

By Anwaar Hussain

On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, George Bush said, "Because we acted, the world is better and the United States of America is safer." With a million dead Iraqis, more than 30,000 dead and wounded American soldiers, the world now teeming with a new breed of America haters and more than 3 trillion dollars blown to achieve all that, the US president sits atop an economically crumbling America and happily crows his mantra. George W. Bush indeed seems far removed from reality.

The essay below was written in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of Iraqi city of Fallujah. At the time, the article ricocheted across the cyber space and refused to die down. Every word of what was written has now been proven true. Here it is once again lest we forget.

Known as the "city of mosques" for its more than 200 mosques, Fallujah is also known for refusing to add Saddam’s name to the call for prayers from its ancient minarets. It is located on the banks of river Euphrates, the largest river in Southwest Asia. The 1700 miles long Euphrates is linked with some of the most important events in olden history.The city of Ur, found at its mouth, was the birthplace of Abraham. On its banks stood the city of Babylon. In the past, the army of Necho was defeated on its banks by Nebuchadnezzar. Cyrus the Younger and Crassus perished after crossing it. Alexander traversed it and continued his journey eastward. Presently, George Bush’s forces are crossing and re-crossing it making its waters redder each time with the blood of Fallujah’s citizens.

Fallujah has been laid waste. It has been bombed, re-bombed, its citizens gunned down, its structures devastated by powerful weapons. It is a hell on earth of crushed bodies, shattered buildings and the reek of death. In addition to the artillery and the warplanes dropping 500, 1000, and 2000-pound bombs, 70-ton Abrams Tanks and the murderous AC-130 Spectre gunship that can demolish a whole city block in less than a minute, the Marines had snipers crisscrossing the entire town firing at will at whatever moved outside the buildings. For those inside, the US troops were equipped with thermal sights capable of detecting body heat. Any such detection was eagerly assumed to indicate the presence of "insurgents" inviting a deadly salvo.

No body has an accurate idea of how many Iraqis, combatants and noncombatants, have been killed by the thousands of tons of explosives and bullets let loose upon the city. Mortuary teams collecting the dead rotting in the city streets are fighting the wandering dogs that are busy devouring their former masters. The hundreds buried beneath the rubble and debris will be dug out later. A US marine spokesman, Colonel Mike Regner, estimated 1,000 and 2,000 Iraqis dead. The world is awaiting the toll from more reliable sources with a wincing anticipation.

Eyewitnesses report human corpses littering the city’s streets, nibbled at by starving canines. Parents have been forced to watch their wounded children die and then bury their bodies in their gardens. An Iraqi journalist, reporting in the city for the BBC and Reuters, said: "I have seen some strange things recently, such as stray dogs snatching bites out of bodies lying on the streets. Meanwhile, people forage in their gardens looking for something to eat. Those that have survived this far are looking gaunt. The opposite is happening to the dead, left where they fell, they are now bloated and rotting…"

Some images that did manage to filter through the layers of American censorship include scenes of the devastated landscape of the city; the bloodied and fly-covered corpses of young Iraqi men lying in the streets or heaped in rows amidst the debris; a headless body; women and children escaping with the few possessions they have left; mortuary teams collecting the dead; and Fallujah infants being treated for horrific injuries in Baghdad hospitals. US general John Sattler declared: "We have liberated the city of Fallujah."

The assault on Fallujah is a pure and simple Nazi-style collective punishment, not liberation. The city has been razed to the ground because its political, spiritual and tribal leaders, motivated by Iraqi patriotism and opposition to the presence of foreign troops in their country, organized a guerilla resistance to the US invasion.The aim of the US assault is to make Fallujah a model to the rest of Iraq of what will happen to those thinking on similar lines. It is the leading thrust of an orgy of killing intended to crush and drive underground every voice of dissent and ensure that elections this coming January will throw up a weak-willed, pro-US toady regime. The American military is rumored to be planning similar attacks on scores of other Iraqi cities and towns.

Not a single major voice has been raised in the American media against the ongoing destruction of Fallujah. While much of the world recognizes something dreadful has occurred, the US press does not even bat an eyelash over the organized leveling of a city of 300,000 people. In none of the US media commentaries is there a single phrase of unease about the moral, or legal, questions involved in the attack on Fallujah. None have dared say it in as many words that the American military operation in the city is an unlawful act of aggression in an equally illegal, criminal, aggressive war.

The opposite is true in fact. Ralph Peters, the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace." a rabid Neocon mouthpiece, revered by the ruling Neocons, in his prominently placed November 4 New York Post article wrote: "We need to demonstrate that the US military cannot be deterred or defeated. If that means widespread destruction, we must accept the price. Most of Fallujah’s residents, those who wish to live in peace, have already fled. Those who remain have made their choice. We need to pursue the terrorists remorselessly…

That means killing. While we strive to obey the internationally recognized laws of war (though our enemies do not), our goal should be to target the terrorists and insurgents so forcefully that few survive to raise their hands in surrender. We don’t need more complaints about our treatment of prisoners from the global forces of appeasement. We need terrorists dead in the dust. And the world needs to see their corpses…

Even if Fallujah has to go the way of Carthage, reduced to shards, the price will be worth it. We need to demonstrate our strength of will to the world, to show that there is only one possible result when madmen take on America."

Though the carnage carried out by Hitler’s regime was on a different scale than that now being committed by the Bush administration, there are striking parallels. For the first time since the Wehrmacht swept through Europe, the world is witnessing a major imperialist power launching an unjustifiable war, placing an entire people under military occupation and carrying out acts of collective and visible punishment against civilian populace. The US media’s wretched connivance in this deception is incredible, as incredible as the fact that this war, based on undeniable lies as it was, was sold to the American people as the gospel truth ordained by God.

To be honest, George Bush is not the first US president ordering the states machinery to pulverize nations and peoples abroad. Even a hurried analysis of the American government’s conduct in the last century makes for a most damning indictment. Out of the US’s past foreign policy woodwork, crawl out numerous invasions, bombings, overthrowing governments, suppressing movements for social change, assassinating political leaders, perverting elections, manipulating labor unions, manufacturing "news", selling blatant lies, death squads, torture, biological warfare, depleted uranium, drug trafficking, mercenaries … you name it.

This terrorizing of nations and individuals by various US governments has been going on full bore since at least the late 1890s, when Americans obliterated a million Filipinos to keep them safe from the Spanish. Likewise, millions of Native Americans, the children of a lesser God, were exterminated by the orders of earlier administrations throughout the 19th century. The difference with past is that George Bush does it in the name of his God, a God far superior to any other and sanctioned fully by his coterie. Ironically, both George Bush and his nemesis, Osama Bin Laden, refer to God almost equal number of times in their public pronouncements.

The United States went into Afghanistan to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden. They killed 10,000 innocent Afghans but could not find their man. They went into Iraq to discover and eliminate Saddam’s WMDs. They killed tens of thousands of Iraqis but found no WMD. They laid siege to the city of Fallujah to kill or capture Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. The city and its inhabitants have been blown to smithereens but there is no Zarqawi. Is it not only too convenient? Next when they want to attack Pakistan, or Iran, they simply have to say that Bin Laden is taking refuge there. Just like the next Iraqi city awaiting the fate of Fallujah will be the latest refuge of Zarqawi; the WMDs too could next fly to Syria or may be even Saudi Arabia. Is one imagining things here? Or is it that the US imperialism is indeed now riding full time on the back of gargantuan lies?

After granting George Bush a carte blanche to do what he likes the American citizens, of course, continue their daily lives oblivious to what is being done in their name. Between their work places and the nearest fast food joints, they just do not have enough time to check back on the activities of the man who is playing 'The Terminator’ in the name of God and in their name.

Those who do get to know a little are in a constant state of denial. One thing is sure though. Just like in post-war Germany where some even denied the holocaust, "We didn’t know what was happening" is bound to become a cliché that will one day be used to ridicule Americans who claim ignorance of the atrocities committed by their administration in their name. Ironically, Khomeini died trying to get people to see America as "the great Satan". It took George W. Bush and his cohorts only four years to do exactly that, and not just in the eyes of the Muslim world.

As America sinks deeper into the heart of darkness, its thinking citizens need to jolt each other out of their apathy. With each passing day their beloved America is scaling ever greater heights of hideous glories. The man in charge, George W. Bush, is actually living the throes of his apocalyptic dream of "I am become death-the destroyer of the worlds". He codenamed his destruction of Fallujah as "Operation Phantom Fury". But as the falsehood dies and gives way to truth, as all lies must one day, it will be the Iraqi dead that will form a legion of phantoms and would throng around Americans in a macabre dance to haunt them for decades. The fury of those phantoms will be hair raising.

Fallujah will enter history as the place where US imperialism carried out an offense of heinous proportions this November, a monstrous crime far beyond any possible forgiveness. The crimson waters of the Euphrates are now emptying into the Persian Gulf the hopes and aspirations of innocent people whose lives were snuffed out on the orders of a man rewarded for his monumental crimes by his great nation.

The Euphrates flows on.