"Dispossessing Africa's Wealth"

Haiti's Utility
The people of Haiti find themselves in a peculiar struggle. Their democratically elected government was overthrown by Haitian exiles from Miami in February of 2004 with the support of the Canadian, French, and American governments and was subsequently placed under the mandate of the United Nations five months later. Today, the country is in a chaotic state. Supporters of the overthrown government are being silenced, all too often through violence.

Let Us Honor Rosa Parks-By Shattering the Myths About Her
It is right and good that at this time we should celebrate and honor the life and legacy of Rosa Parks. Her brave, dignified act of civil disobedience on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955 precipitated a nonviolent protest movement that awakened our nation to the widespread injustice of discrimination and segregation. But as we honor Rosa Parks and bid her soul rest, may we also lay to rest the myths that began to form about her almost immediately after she was arrested 50 years ago. In the long run, I believe these myths could do more harm than good to the unfinished struggle for equality in this country.

The Race to Execute Tookie Williams
The State of California is attempting to silence the voice of death-row inmate Stanley Tookie Williams as quickly as it can.

Dispossessing Africa's Wealth
Exactly how much wealth does Africa lose every year? Third World repayments of $340 billion each year flow northwards to service a $2.2 trillion debt, more than five times the G8's development aid budget, notes Patrick Bond. In addition Africa’s citizens experience depletion of assets like forests and mineral resources, and suffer the impact of pollution as a result of mining. In this context, Bond argues that those who claim international integration can enrich Africa are wrong.

AFRICA: African heads of state to meet over UN reforms
African Union (AU) leaders are to meet on Monday in a bid to break the deadlock over the stalled enlargement and reform of the United Nations Security Council, the AU said.

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Countries must prepare for bird flu
The H5N1 strain of avian influenza, or bird flu, remains a global threat, but while Southern Africa should prepare for its emergence, the region needed to bear in mind that the disease has yet to mutate into a deadly human strain, a World Health Organisation (WHO) expert told IRIN.

A funny kind of equality
THE GOVERNMENT conspired with opposition parties to throw out proposals to include a voice for Black communities in the new single equalities body.

World's broken electronics pile up in Lagos, creating toxic dumps
Nigeria is becoming a digital dump, the recipient of vast numbers of broken gadgets from the West that can leak dangerous substances into water supplies and create cancer-causing particles when burnt, a toxic waste watchdog said on Thursday.

India submits to the Bush doctrine?

Katrina, Conservative Myth-Making and the Media

US to attack Syria

Demand for grave diggers and coffins soars in Baghdad

The White House Criminal Conspiracy

The Origins of Hostility

Seeds of Leak Scandal Sown in Italian Intelligence Agency
In the past week, the respected, left-of-center Italian daily La Repubblica published a three-part series of investigative articles claiming that documents purporting to prove that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellowcake uranium in Niger had been forged by an Italian freelance spy and then were fed by the Italian intelligence agency to eager officials in Washington and London.

The White House Criminal Conspiracy
Legally, there are no significant differences between the investor fraud perpetrated by Enron CEO Ken Lay and the prewar intelligence fraud perpetrated by George W. Bush. Both involved persons in authority who used half-truths and recklessly false statements to manipulate people who trusted them. There is, however, a practical difference: The presidential fraud is wider in scope and far graver in its consequences than the Enron fraud. Yet thus far the public seems paralyzed.