"The United Vegetative States of America"

The relevance of the upcoming Asia-Africa Summit
"The despised, the insulted, the hurt, the dispossessed -- in short, the underdogs of the human race were meeting. Here were class and racial and religious consciousness on a global scale. Who would have thought of organizing such a meeting? And what had these nations in common? Nothing, it seemed to me, but what their past relationship to the Western world had made them feel. This meeting of the rejected was in itself a kind of judgment upon the Western world!"

Wright says that the Asia-Africa Conference was the first world summit that gathered former colonized Asian and African nations without interference from any Western force. At the conference, Indonesia’s first President Soekarno proclaimed:

"For long years we Asian and African people have tolerated decisions made in our stead by those countries which placed their own interests above all else. We lived in poverty and humiliation. But tremendous changes have taken place in the past years. Many peoples and countries have awakened from centuries of slumber. Tranquility has given way to struggle and action. This irresistible force is sweeping the two continents."

Brad, Bono team up for Africa
Brad Pitt is among the leading celebrities featured in new public service announcements for a campaign led by U2 singer Bono to fight poverty and Aids.

S.Africa's Imperial sells stake to black group

S.Africa says to tighten black empowerment laws

New Domain Poisoning Attacks Microsoft Servers
The DNS cache poisoning that first struck more than a month ago and led to users being redirected from popular Web sites to malicious sites that infected their machines with spyware, is continuing, said the Internet Storm Center (ISC) Wednesday. The attacks are taking advantage of vulnerabilities and design flaws in Microsoft server software.

Mbeki to discuss poll concerns with Zimbabwe
The South African government will discuss certain concerns with its Zimbabwean neighbour in days to come following last week's elections, the department of foreign affairs said at parliament on Wednesday.

Zimbabwe's Mugabe in Rome for Pope's funeral

D.C. May Lose Out in Vote for OAS Chief

Yushchenko's Gambit
Revisiting the "Orange Revolution"

The war against us all
The war against us all. This war in Iraq isn’t the end; it's the beginning of wars to come all around the world at the whim of the neo-cons in the White House.

Iraq War Coverage Reminds Me of Vietnam
So you've heard all the analogies between Iraq and Vietnam. I know I thought I had -- that is until the other night, when I watched Apocalypse Now Redux, the enhanced version of Francis Ford Coppola's classic Vietnam horror film.

Dubya's secret tax hike
By President Bush's definition, allowing a tax cut to lapse is effectively a tax increase. Thus, by the president's definition, his administration, through inaction, is hitting the taxpayers with a large and fast-expanding tax increase.

Ecuadorians Rising Up Against Pardons Granted to Fugitive Ex-Presidents
Two ex Presidents of Ecuador, Adbala Bucaram and Gustavo Noboa returned to the country after having corruption charges dropped against them by the Supreme Court. Bucaram was exiled in Panama since 1997 and Noboa in the Dominican Republic since 2003. This is the straw that could break the proverbial camel's back in Ecuador.

30,000 U.S. military troops not citizens
More than 20,000 military personnel have become U.S. citizens since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to the Pentagon. Another 5,000 have applications pending for citizenship, with that process being expedited for military members, shortening the wait from about nine months to 60 days.

The United Vegetative States of America
Americans never fail to astound the world with their penchant for sensationalism. Just when it appears that they’ve scaled new peaks, they manage to notch themselves up yet higher into the dizzying summits of luridness. While the carnival of mayhem is progressing ahead in full tide in Iraq, the Americans love and sympathy for the plight of Terri Schiavo is the very embodiment of duplicity. Hypocrisy in its truest form, it speaks volumes of their OJ Simpson syndrome.

304 U.S. soldiers ordered killed by Pentagon in Iraq
About 304 recalcitrant U.S. soldiers have been killed by the Pentagon’s special team, intelligence sources in Iraq have revealed. The sources quoted high-ranking U.S. officers as saying that since the U.S. occupation of Iraq in March 2003 more than 304 U.S. military forces have been executed in spurious clashes at the behest of army commanders and with the knowledge of the Pentagon.

Mexico City Mayor Stripped of Immunity

Canada, Racism, Genocide, and the Bomb
Few Canadians know of Canada's link to Little Boy, the so-christened uranium bomb that exploded over Hiroshima, and Fat Man, the plutonium bomb that devastated Nagasaki.
The uranium mine was developed by the Canadian government to satisfy US needs for the World War II effort to construct an atomic bomb. From 1942 to 1960, the Sahtugot'ine worked at the mine in Port Radium, unknowingly polluting their massive freshwater resource and irradiating themselves. In the early 1960s, the danger became apparent. The Sahtugot'ine workers started to die from lung, colon, and kidney cancers -- diseases previously unknown to them.

Jewish settlers poison Palestinian fields in Hebron
Palestinian farmers say that Jewish settlers dropped wheat pellets laced with a deadly chemical on grazing land near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, killing 20 of their sheep.

The Next Wave Of Offshoring

Colombia 'will not try US troops'
A group of US soldiers arrested for alleged cocaine smuggling cannot be allowed to stand trial in Colombia, Washington's envoy to Bogota has said.
Colombian senators have been calling for the men, who were based in the country, to be extradited from the US. But US ambassador William Wood said the soldiers are immune from prosecution. More than 200 Colombian citizens have been extradited to the US to face trial for drug trafficking, under a bilateral deal between the two countries. Colombian politicians have asked the government to push for the US to hand over the men, arguing that the extradition agreement works both ways.

COINTELPRO's long shadow
The importance of the John Graham case
In February, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Bennett decided in favour of the United States government's extradition request against John Graham. Far from accepting the dictates of the American government, Graham's Defense Committee continues to ask for solidarity as they prepare appeals in this case.