From The Washington Post
By E.J. Dionne Jr.

When you put the Olympics in the hands of a dictatorship, the results are predictable. Yet the Chinese government still found a way to surprise even its critics — not so much by behaving oppressively but by doing so in a foolish and entirely unnecessary way.

By revoking the visa of 2006 Olympian Joey Cheek at the very last moment because he had the nerve to speak out about Darfur and the Chinese government’s support for Sudan’s barbarous regime, Chinese authorities guaranteed that the opening of these Games would focus as much on politics as on sports. The burden now is not on China’s critics but on its government.

Supporters of China’s Olympic bid hoped that this month’s events would showcase how much the country has changed. Let’s stipulate many of the things they regularly assert: China is more prosperous and, in important senses, more free than it has been for generations. It is in the world’s interest, and in America’s interest, to deal peacefully with China and to acknowledge its growing power. We have business to do with China, in the most basic sense of that word, on global warming and also on many diplomatic questions. And, yes, China’s economic growth has been staggering.

But a dictatorship is still a dictatorship, a fact that so many who highlight China’s achievements try to discuss only in the most guarded tones because there is such fear of antagonizing the Chinese government. Yet the Chinese government seems to have no compunction about antagonizing those for whom liberty and human rights take priority over sports and making money.

Read more Darfur

From CounterPunch
By Patrick Cockburn

Barack Obama has paid his first visit to Iraq, just as the Iraqi government explicitly matched the Democratic presidential candidate’s 16-month timetable for the removal of American combat troops.

Senator Obama met Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, in Baghdad yesterday during his visit, which had become overshadowed by a row over the proposed pullout. Mr Obama did not raise his plan for withdrawal of US forces, the government said. But Mr Maliki’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said his government was “hoping that in 2010 combat troops will withdraw from Iraq”. This time frame is similar to Mr Obama’s.

The White House was clearly dismayed and embarrassed by an interview given by Mr Maliki to the German news magazine Der Spiegel in which he appeared to express agreement with Mr Obama’s withdrawal plans. Mr Dabbagh later said in a statement distributed by the American military that Mr Maliki’s words had been “misunderstood and mistranslated”.
Der Spiegel stood by its version of what Mr Maliki said and said the translator for the interview was provided by Mr Maliki’s own office and not by the magazine. In reality, Mr Maliki did say Mr Obama’s 16-month plan “could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq”.

Differences over American strategy in Iraq and the number of troops to be kept there is at the centre of the American presidential campaign. The Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, has argued that US forces should stay in Iraq until it has won a victory, although it is not clear what this victory would entail. He successfully relaunched his campaign to become the Republican nominee last year by claiming that the US was succeeding militarily.

Read more Iraq Withdrawal

From The LA Times
By Sara Darehshori

‘When will Bashir be tried?” Darfurian refugees on the Chad border asked me time and again last summer. “We are here because of Bashir,” they said.

Last July, I went to Chad to look into how the International Criminal Court, which has a field office in Abeche and works with refugees in the camps, is performing on the ground. As part of my assessment, I interviewed dozens of refugees.

Considering the hardships the refugees faced daily, I was not sure how they would feel talking about a topic as abstract as accountability in an international forum.

Thus I was surprised when their reactions to my questions were positive, with even a hint of impatience because the ICC prosecutor had not yet gone after the president of Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir. A Sudanese official and a rebel leader had been indicted by The Hague-based court but, to the refugees, that didn’t go far enough. The chain of command was clear.

On Monday, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC chief prosecutor, sought a warrant from the court for the arrest of Bashir on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. It may take months for the court to rule, but Moreno-Ocampo’s actions will, no doubt, be greeted with joy in the camps.

Yet some commentators outside Darfur have argued that this “moment of jubilation” can only be a symbolic victory for the long-suffering people of that region. They contend that should the prosecution of top officials — however terrible their crimes — go forward, it will interfere with prospects for peace and security.

Read more Darfur

From AlterNet
By Scott Thill

Whether or not we have fully arrived at peak oil can be left to the nitpickers and bean counters to decide. What we know for sure is that the cost of black gold has exponentially risen in just a few short years, and the global economy it is built upon is currently straddling a razor waiting for the inevitable slice. That final cut may come from Nigeria, where all the major oil companies have done business, dirty and otherwise, for the last five decades, degrading the environment and depressing the general population along the way.

That disturbing feedback loop is the subject of the new book Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta, which juxtaposes the arresting graphics of award-winning photojournalist Ed Kashi with the geopolitical insights of UC Berkeley professor Michael Watts to present Africa’s most populous nation as a possible epicenter for the full-blown resource wars to come. You can watch a short slideshow video of Kashi’s photographs on the right-hand side of this page.

They are wars that are already well under way. In mid-June, a Shell facility was attacked by local militants, disrupting production and sending the already sky-high price of oil to further heights before coming back online a week later. Attacks like those have increased in frequency, as Nigerian factions have fought for control of the nation’s lucrative petroleum resources, which are the largest in Africa.

The problem, especially as indigenous populations caught between Nigeria’s prosperous rich and their oil industry’s environmental devastation see it, is that viable land and resources have been wasted on a handful while the majority of the country falls into further disrepair and depression. From natural gas flares and oil spills to the destruction of native plants, animal species and other salable commodities, Nigeria’s oil industry has wreaked havoc across the land and its people.

Read more Cheap Oil

From Information Clearing House
By Mike Whitney

While George Bush was busy railing at Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Mugabe at the G-8 summit in Toyako, Japan; his Ethiopian proxy-army in Somalia was grinding out more carnage on the streets of Mogadishu. More than 40 civilians have been killed in the last 48 hours. On Sunday, Osman Ali Ahmed, the head of the UN Development Program in Somalia, was shot gangland style as he left a mosque Mogadishu. He died before he reached the hospital with wounds to the head and chest. Ali Ahmed is just the latest of the peace-keepers who have been killed in the ongoing battle between Bush’s Ethiopian occupiers and Somali guerrillas.

“I care deeply about the people of Zimbabwe,” Bush announced. “And I am extremely disappointed in the election which I labeled a sham election.”

Right. Bush’s newly-discovered empathy for black people was nowhere in sight during Hurricane Katrina when thousands of African Americans were rounded up at gunpoint and forced into the Superdome without food, water or medical supplies. Nor is it visible in Somalia today where millions of Somalis have been forced to flee their homes and relocate to tent cities in the south because of Bush’s support for the Ethiopian army’s invasion. The latest surge in violence has been the worst in a decade and the security situation continues to deteriorate despite the arrival of 2,600 troops from the African Union and a tentative truce that was signed in June between some of the warring factions. It should be no great surprize that the western media has stubbornly refused to report on the rising death-toll in Somalia, choosing instead to focus all of their attention on America’s “villain du jour”, Robert Mugabe. Mugabe is next on the neocon’s list for regime change. Neocon Godfather Paul Wolfowitz even composed a postmortem for Zimbabwe’s president in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial “How to Put the Heat on Mugabe”.

In 2006, the United States supported an alliance of Somali warlords known as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) who established a base of operations in the western city of Baidoa. With the help of the US-backed Ethiopian army, western mercenaries, US Navy warships, and AC-130 gunships; the TFG was able capture Mogadishu and force the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and their allies to retreat to the south. But, much like Iraq and Afghanistan, the resistance has coalesced into a tenacious guerrilla army which has returned to the capital and resumed the fight making it impossible for their Ethiopian rivals to govern. As the struggle continues, the humanitarian situation gets worse and worse. At least 2.6 million Somalis are now facing famine due to acute food shortages spurred by a prolonged drought, violence and high inflation. UN monitors have warned that the figure could hit exceed 3.5 million by the end of 2008.

Read more Slaughtering

From The Baltimore Sun
By Noam Schimmel

Today I will be celebrating the Fourth of July in a different context than ever before.

In Rwanda, July 4 is a holiday that commemorates the liberation of the country from the genocidal regime that murdered 1 million Tutsis and tens of thousands of Hutu political moderates who were committed to freedom and democracy, from April to July of 1994.

It is a celebratory day, for it marks the end of the genocide and the establishment of a nonracist state that upholds the principles of liberty, equality and the peaceful coexistence of all Rwandans. But embedded within the joy that marks the end of the genocide is the profound sadness that for 100 days, genocide ruled Rwanda as government policy. The slaughter was supported at the highest levels by church authorities, civil society and hundreds of thousands of individual citizens, aided and abetted by an indifferent and complicit international community.

In the United States, July 4 is a day for unrestrained celebration, for barbecues and fireworks, for community gatherings and family get-togethers. It’s a time when the differences that enliven American society and culture coalesce around what unites us as a people. Sometimes, in the thick of the excitement, we forget that celebrating America’s birthday is not only a time for parties and fun but also a time to take stock of the meaning of America - its values, promise and ideals.

The radically visionary statement of our Declaration of Independence has always resonated for me with great power and personal relevance. I will never forget flying home from Poland, where I had visited Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps, and being greeted at Kennedy Airport by these words painted along the walls of the terminal: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” At that moment, my sense of gratitude for being American, my love for my country, felt infinite in depth and expansiveness.

Read more Taking Stock

From Salon
By Glenn Greenwald

This article from Agence France-Presse, regarding UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s call for all countries to eliminate travel restrictions on individuals with HIV, contains this passage:

According to UNAIDS, the global standard-bearer in the fight against HIV, 74 countries are subjecting HIV carriers to restrictive measures, including a mention of the disease on their passports.

Twelve among them — Armenia, Colombia, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Sudan, the United States and Yemen — barred entry to HIV carriers, often citing public health concerns and the high cost of treatment.

Even China recently removed itself from this lovely list by rescinding its ban. A few weeks ago, Andrew Sullivan had an Op-Ed in The Washington Post regarding the extraordinary fact that the U.S. is only one of 12 countries in the world to ban HIV-positive individuals from entering the country, and he described the heavy toll that ban exacts on people such as himself who are living with the virus (This week, the new ACLU blog is hosting a symposium on lesbian and gay issues that includes a discussion of these and related matters).

The HIV ban was the work of the Jesse Helms-led right-wing in 1993. Although Iran hasn’t followed that policy, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did. It’s really baffling why the American Right is so obsessed with waging war against radical Islam and flamboyantly condemning other oppressive systems when they replicate and embrace so many of their most defining attributes.

Read more Company

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Cynthia Tucker

During the late 20th century, human rights campaigns led by Western progressives helped to liberate two nations on the tip of the African continent from brutal whites-only rule. In 1980, the apartheid regime of Rhodesia gave way to a black-led Zimbabwe. And in 1994, the first multiracial elections in South Africa delivered the presidency to a black man, the longtime anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela.

In the years since, the two nations have traveled very different paths. South Africa has enjoyed stability, a free press, international investment, an independent judiciary and democratic elections — helped by the graceful exit of Mandela, who retired after one term. While the nation still struggles with poverty, underdevelopment and an AIDS epidemic, it has become a model for multiracial democracy on the African continent.

Zimbabwe, by contrast, has spiraled downward into disaster. Thirty years ago, the nation was stable and productive, a net exporter of food blessed with a small class of educated black professionals ready to form its governmental bureaucracy. Now Zimbabwe is beset by a thuggish regime that has ushered in starvation, hyperinflation, rampant unemployment, political oppression and corruption.

Yet the tyranny of Zimbabwe’s black president, Robert Mugabe, has met with little reaction from America’s black elite. Black politicians, Hollywood celebrities and ordinary Americans loudly protested apartheid — staging demonstrations outside the South African embassy in Washington — but Mugabe’s despotism has produced only muted criticism. What gives?

Though Mugabe has labored mightily to blame his nation’s troubles on others — including the dwindling population of white Zimbabweans and Western human rights activists — Zimbabwe’s voters have finally determined he needs to go. His opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, led the opening round of voting in elections in March.

Read more Zimbabwe

From Thomas Paine’s Corner
By William Blum

“There are a number of expressions and slogans associated with the Nazi regime in Germany which have become commonly known in English.
“Sieg Heil!” — Victory Hail!
“Arbeit macht frei” — Work will make you free.
“Denn heute gehört uns Deutschland und morgen die ganze Welt” — Today Germany, tomorrow the world

But none perhaps is better known than “Deutschland über alles” — Germany above all.Thus I was taken aback when I happened to come across the website of the United States Air Force — www.airforce.com/ — and saw on its first page a heading “Above all”. Lest you think that this refers simply and innocently to planes high up in the air, this page links to another — www.airforce.com/achangingworld/ — where “Above all” is repeated even more prominently, with links to sites for “Air Dominance”, “Space Dominance”, and “Cyber Dominance”, each of which in turn repeats “Above all”. These guys don’t kid around. They’re not your father’s imperialist warmongers. If they’re planning on a new “thousand-year Reich”, let’s hope that their fate is no better than the original, which lasted 12 years.

The events of recent years indicate that the world is wising up to and becoming less intimidated by Washington’s overarching ambition for world dominance. Latin America is increasingly attempting to escape the empire’s clutches. Leaders keenly aware of how US imperialism works and determined to keep it out of their own country are in power in Venezuela, Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and perhaps the latest addition, Paraguay.

Read more Africa Says NO

From Global Research
By Michel Chossudovsky

The sugar coated bullets of the “free market” are killing our children. The act to kill is unpremeditated. It is instrumented in a detached fashion through computer program trading on the New York and Chicago mercantile exchanges, where the global prices of rice, wheat and corn are decided upon.

We are at the crossroads of the most serious economic and social crisis in modern history. The process of global impoverishment unleashed at the outset of the 1980s debt crisis, has reached a major turning point, leading to the simultaneous outbreak of famines in all major regions of the developing World.

There are many complex features underlying the global economic crisis pertaining to financial markets, the decline in production, the collapse of State institutions and the rapid development of a profit-driven war economy. What is rarely mentioned in this analysis, is how this global economic restructuring forcibly impinges on three fundamental necessities of life: food, water and fuel.

The provision of food, water and fuel is a precondition of civilized society: they are necessary factors for the survival of the human species. In recent years, the prices of these three variables has increased dramatically at the global level, with devastating economic and social consequences.

These three essential goods or commodities, which in a real sense determine the reproduction of economic and social life on planet earth, are under the control of a small number of global corporations and financial institutions.

Read more Global Crisis