Bush, Harken Energy, and death squads in Colombia

By Sean Donahue

July 12— Financial irregularities at Harken Energy during President Bush’s tenure at the Texas oil company have dominated headlines in recent days. But the press has ignored a much bigger scandal: how Harken Energy has benefited from war and terror in Colombia.

George W. Bush went to work for Harken Energy in 1986 when the company bought out Spectrum 7, a company that had earlier purchased Bush’s failed Arbusto oil company. Harken gave Bush $2 million in stock options, a $122,000 consulting job, and a seat on its board of directors.

While Bush was working for Harken, Rodrigo Villamizar, an old friend Bush had met at a fraternity party in 1972, became director of Colombia’s Bureau of Mines and Minerals, the ministry that oversees the sale of oil concessions by the state oil company, Ecopetrol. According to a December 2001 report in Counterpunch,, Bush had helped Villamizar out in the ‘70’s by getting him first a job with the Texas state senate’s Economic Development committee, and then a seat on the state Public Utilities Commission. Toward the end of Bush’s tenure at Harken, Villamizar returned the favor by granting Harken a series of oil contracts in Colombia.

The bulk of the oil contracts were in the Magdalena Valley where military officers, drug traffickers, and cattle ranchers had come together to form right wing paramilitary groups that fought guerillas, assassinated union leaders and human rights activists, and terrorized peasants in order to force them off coveted land. Most of the oil companies doing business in the region either tacitly accepted or actively sought out the protection of these death squads. A 1996 Human Rights Watch report documents the fact that the Colombian military armed and assisted these groups and, under the guidance of the CIA, integrated them into its intelligence networks. The close cooperation between the military and the paramilitaries continues today — and tends to be most rampant in areas where there is a lot of oil production. The State Department has listed the paramilitaries as terrorist organizations, but has looked the other way as the (US-funded) Colombian army has continued to rely on them to do its dirty work in its war against dissidents. Harken is still doing business in the Magdalena Valley, thanks in part to funding from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, and paramilitaries continue to terrorize anyone who threatens corporate interests in the region.

No one is alleging that President Bush personally ordered paramilitaries to kill peasants and intimidate union leaders in order to improve Harken’s bottom line. But at the same time, given his close ties to Villamizar, and the fact that his father was president at the time, it’s highly unlikely that Bush was ignorant of the human rights issues involved in oil drilling in Colombia.

All of this has a very immediate relevance today because Villamizar, who left Colombia to escape corruption charges and is now a convicted felon and fugitive from justice, drafted the Colombia policy for the Bush campaign in 2000, and still maintains close ties to the president. Villamizar, who should be serving four years in a Colombian prison, was Bush’s first choice to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, but turned down the appointment.

Villamizar’s recommendations on expanding US military aid to Colombia have been largely accepted by the Bush administration, and a new president in Colombia with links to the death squads is poised to use expanded US aid to dramatically escalate the country’s forty-year civil war against leftist guerillas. Hundreds of US military advisors are on the ground in Colombia today. Officially they have no combat role, but that is likely to change when the guerillas begin treating the advisors as military targets. Colin Powell’s old doctrine of making sure the US has clear military goals and a viable exit strategy before getting involved in a war seems to have been completely forgotten.

The cornerstone of Bush’s new military aid package is a $98 million grant to help the Colombian government establish a new battalion of its army’s 18th Brigade to protect an oil pipeline against guerilla attacks. The 18th Brigade has a long history of ties to the paramilitaries, and its own history of attacks on civilians — earlier this year soldiers killed a teenage boy for walking too close to the pipeline. Ironically the first beneficiary of this program will be Occidental Petroleum, the company that helped the Gore family make its fortune. But US Ambassador Anne Patterson has said that in the long run the Pentagon is eyeing similar programs for other key economic assets in Colombia. These would likely include pipelines maintained by Harken’s subsidiary, Global Energy Development, a natural gas pipeline operated by Enron, and projects involving Dick Cheney’s old company, Haliburton, as well as assets owned or used by Texaco, Exxon-Mobil, and BP.

Source: CounterPunch

Corrupt corporations still at work in developing world,
say critics

By Emad Mekay

Washington, DC, July 11 (IPS)— The multinational firms recently fingered for corrupt practices in the United States may be practicing similar operations on a larger scale in developing countries, say long-time corporate watchdogs.

Investors, shareholders, the US administration, and economists worldwide are still reeling from the string of corporate frauds that includes US energy giant Enron and WorldCom, the international telecommunications company. Allegations of misconduct have surfaced against several company executives, including US President George W. Bush from his days as a director of an oil company.

While the United States and its northern neighbors have focused on the impact of such scandals on investor trust in wealthy nations, the anti-globalization movement cautions that the corruption scourge could be several times more harmful to the economies of developing countries.

They argue that many global companies operate freely in poor nations, protected by conditions dictated by international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and the political might of Northern governments.

“Enron and WorldCom are just symptoms of the way companies are able to do business without too much accountability,” said Nadia Martinez, research associate at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.

“It is even worse in the developing world,” she added. “It happens here and everyone goes up in arms. But in reality this has been happening in the developing world for decades with the support of northern governments in many instances and with the support of our taxpayers’ money by way of international institutions like the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.”

Multinational watchdog Corpwatch says that these firms violate international law on many counts, including social and environmental violations and with flagrant corruption.

“Corruption is one of the many levels in which these companies very arrogantly come into a country and act like they own it and they do whatever they want,” said Julie Light, managing editor of Corpwatch.org. “They can buy off the politicians and they can hire private security forces or pay the local police.”

Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported on corruption in the $550 million Bujagali power project on the Nile River in Uganda. One of the contractors, the US power producer AES, bribed a Ugandan official to hasten the dam’s approval, said the report.

Martinez says that the shamed Enron, a now bankrupt firm with dubious off-balance sheet transactions, continues to operate internationally and is still seeking public funding for its non-scrutinized global projects.

Enron holds 25 percent of Transredes, a company seeking a $125 million loan from the International Development Bank (IDB) to expand a Bolivian gas pipeline. The Bank is expected to decide on the loan in September.

In research for the Institute for Policy Studies, Martinez says Enron’s assets in Latin America alone include concerns in a pipeline in Colombia, gas and electricity companies in Venezuela and Brazil, and other operations in Panama, Guatemala, and Puerto Rico.

Public institutions, including the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, have provided Enron with financing of about seven billion dollars, she adds.

WorldCom, a firm accused of cooking its books so it could overstate profits by $3.8 billion, also has a presence in many developing countries. The company often boasted that its business interests span from everyday phone calls to advanced Internet-based networks in Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Africa.

Although activists like Martinez and Light have been calling attention to the practices of corporations in the South for years, they now say developing countries are more vulnerable than ever, because of diminishing monitoring. The IMF has been urging deregulation in the South for the past two decades.

“What the IMF, the WTO (World Trade Organization) and the World Bank have been saying to the third world is ‘trust the market, deregulate, get the government out of the way, take the teeth out of the regulatory agencies, let corporate officials run government agencies, let them privatize’,” said Danaher. “It’s been a whole-package.”

Poor nations stand defenseless before the mammoth-like corporations, some whose budgets are bigger than the spending of many poor nations combined, they add.

“If these corporations can wreck the United States, destroy our economy, take over the government, and bankrupt it in their interest, what are they going to do in Bolivia, Chad or Niger where there are not so many constitutional rights?” asked Danaher.

The activists say the cozy relationship between politics and business is partly to blame. Several officials of the Bush administration are former company executives, including the president himself and Vice President Dick Cheney.

“We need to close the revolving door of corporate leaders going into government, building up their Rolodex, finding out where the money is and then going back into the corporate world sucking public money out of government,” said Danaher.

“It’s time civil society groups started policing the corporations and holding them accountable on high-standards of international law, human rights law and local law,” added Light.

US continues to plan for war
with Iraq

Compiled by Shawn Gaynor

July 16 (AGR)— The United States has taken full operational control of Qatar’s Al Udeid air base this week in another move towards a massive air and ground attack on Iraq in the coming months. The move comes as Iraqi dissidents meet in London, and the US and Britain continue their 10-year undeclared war by conducting small-scale air raids in the southern Iraq “no fly zone,” which injured 7 civilians this past week.

The Al Udied air base is considered key to Washington’s plans, as the support of Saudi Arabia has called into question the use of the Prince Sultan air base used in Operation Desert Storm. Gulf defense sources said that currently scores of US warplanes and 3,000 military personnel are deployed at the facility, but that number is expected to climb in the coming weeks.

The Al Udeid air base is regarded as part of an effort by Qatar to form a strategic alliance with the United States. The sources said Qatar wants to woo the United States to agree to a permanent military presence in the emirate by constructing both air and ground forces facilities.

The US Army uses two other facilities in Qatar. Camp As-Sayliyah, on the outskirts of Doha, contains a complex of warehouses where tanks and other armored vehicles, ammunition, and tons of other equipment are stored to equip a brigade. Currently, the sources said, the United States uses Al Udeid for air force missions in Afghanistan.

President Bush last spoke about military action against Baghdad at a July 8 White House press conference, declaring: “It is the stated policy of this government to have a regime change (in Iraq)...and we’ll use all the tools at our disposal to do so.” The “tools,” such as precision-guided munitions, or “smart” bombs that allow the US forces to destroy the enemy’s civilian installations as well as military assets from many miles away, are being readied.

The First Marine Expeditionary Force, widely regarded to be the main assault force in any Iraqi invasion scenario, has begun intense training operations in California. Pentagon sources leaked to the New York Times last week that the Bush administration plans on deploying a ground force of 250,000 US troops in the area.

Meanwhile in London, Iraqi exiles expected to participate in a future government of their country warned yesterday that an invasion by US and British troops would bring widespread destruction without removing Saddam Hussein.

Opposition leaders stressed that a large-scale offensive by Washington and its allies would not be supported by opponents of the Baghdad regime, either inside or outside Iraq.

A former major-general, Najib al-Salhi, said: “The United States will not find support inside or outside Iraq for an offensive that would harm civilians, destroy infrastructure, and target troops not defending the regime.

“Any campaign must be limited to toppling Saddam. The army will not defend him and neither will the Republican Guard [elite troops thought to be loyal to the Iraqi leader].”

Many at the gathering also pointed out that it was the US President’s father, George Bush Sr., who abandoned the rebels, and that some members of his administration were back in power in Washington.

In Kuwait, a former Iraqi intelligence chief also warned Washington that a land war could leave a desperate Iraqi regime with no option but to use weapons of mass destruction. Wafiq al-Samarrai said: “The US should know that Saddam will not hesitate to use weapons of mass destruction on American military groupings. Diplomacy is the only choice for the United States.”

Source: AP, IPS, lndependent (UK), World Tribune.com

Troubles mounting for Dominica government

By Peter Richards

Port of Spain, Trinidad, July 15 (IPS)— The administration of Dominica Prime Minister Pierre Charles appears under siege after austerity measures introduced to halt a declining economy instead unleashed protests of a magnitude not seen in more than 20 years. At least two government ministers have offered to resign.

“The struggle has just begun. We are not going to give up until the government acts fairly with us,” said Thomas Letang, general secretary of the Public Service Union (PSU).

Dominica, with a population of about 71,000, is one of the Windward Islands, in the E. West Indies.

Last week, the union staged a massive demonstration in the capital reminiscent of the 1979 protest by trade unions and businesses that crippled the country and forced the Patrick John administration out of office. The PSU has warned that other demonstrations are being planned for this month if government does not rescind the measures.

At issue are measures Charles introduced in the 2002-2003 budget that have enraged even some ardent government supporters.

Along with a four percent stabilization levy on salaries that became effective July 1, the government introduced a five percent sales tax on telephone and television services and on all petroleum products except kerosene.

“We want to tell the government to stop being hypocrites. Stop saying that they are listening to people and at the same time saying that they are not prepared to review that budget. The budget has to be reviewed and I want to tell (them) that if it is not reviewed, the next protest will be bigger and longer,” Letang said.

Chairman of Consumers Against High Utility Rates (CAHUR) Frederick Langford warned that Dominicans could not afford to pay the new tax.

“The utility bills have been taxed and now this four percent will definitely kill us. The government has to realize that the four percent that they are asking may just be someone’s take home pay.” The private sector also has blasted the government on the new austerity measures.

Describing the measures as “the art of political deception” President of the Dominica Association of Industry and Commerce (DAIC) Anthony Burnett-Biscombe said the budget was “a great disappointment.”

“It is going to cause a further contraction, because it has continued to increase taxation based on productive effort of the workers and commerce, rather than directed towards taxation on consumption,” he said.

Earlier this month, the Charles administration tabled in Parliament a $112 million budget that Finance Minister Osborne Riviere said underscored the state of the economy.

“Time and events have caught up with us and the time has come for strong, decisive action,” Riviere said, adding that the austerity measures would allow the government to elicit financial aid from international donor agencies. He said the contentious four percent levy, which replaces a recommended ten-percent cut in the civil service and civil servants’ salaries, was an “unavoidable emergency measure” that will hopefully be removed by next year’s budget.

Dominica faces severe economic problems. The Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) said that last year the macroeconomic performance of the island had continued to deteriorate. Real gross domestic product (GDP) fell by more than four percent, with nearly all sectors, including agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, and distribution and financial services, recording declines.

The decline in output has severely affected government’s revenues and has helped to widen the fiscal deficit, Riviere said.

Earlier this month, leaders of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), to which Dominica belongs, said they were considering a rescue package for the island.

Riviere has also indicated that from Aug. 1 the government would reduce its cabinet and that five positions of advisors and assistants would be revoked.

Dominican economist Bernard Yankee, a former CDB official who has been highly critical of the austerity measures, said nonetheless he welcomed the government’s intention to reduce the size of the cabinet.

“The reduction of cabinet size and elimination of advisors is welcomed, since these brought very unnecessary administrative overheads to government operations. I do hope that we stick to that and continue the reduction process,” he wrote in a newspaper column.

Charles, meanwhile, has refused to accept the resignation of two of his ministers — Education, Youth and Sports Minister Roosevelt Skerritt, and Agriculture Minister Vince Henderson.

Skerritt told reporters that the resignations were to provide the Prime Minister with a “free hand in reducing the size of the cabinet.”

“Downsizing is no easy task. I had a responsibility to assist the Prime Minister in the process,” he added.

The main opposition, United Workers Party (UWP), has accused the government of deception.

“The indications are that government, having given an indication to the donor countries that they will reduce expenditures, have not done so in the budget proposals, (and) it would appear that they have been approached and told that they did not satisfy the agreements that they had with these donor countries,” said UWP leader Edison James.

“So they have imposed a four percent levy on everyone as a means of closing the fiscal gap,” he added.

The administration also faces the wrath of utility consumers, many of whom have demanded the resignation of Reginald Austrie, Minister of Communications and Works, over a state telecom agreement with main service provider Cable and Wireless (C&W) and delays in implementing interconnection between C&W and Marpin Telecoms and Broadcasting, a smaller local entity.

In a letter to Austrie, the CAHUR said it had, “no confidence in you as a representative of the people of Dominica, since you did not act in the best interest of Dominica’s citizens in the signing of the recent agreement with Cable and Wireless regarding new telephone rates.”

Marpin Telecoms and Broadcasting’s legal advisor, Duncan Stowe, said he believed Dominicans were “now facing double jeopardy with the rate rebalancing allowed to Cable and Wireless by the government, plus the five percent tax.”

Anti-government protests
grip Paraguay

Compiled by Eamon Martin

July 16 (AGR)— Paraguay’s president has declared a state of emergency amid anti-government protests in which two people have died and dozens have been injured by police.

The decree, issued by President Luis Gonzalez Macchi, suspends a series of civil rights -- allowing the government to search homes and ban demonstrations and the military to suppress them by force. It must be ratified by congress within the next 48 hours.

At least 50 people have been injured and 100 arrested since Macchi suspended a number of these constitutional guarantees.

The two fatalities died from gunshot wounds after being admitted to a hospital in Ciudad del Este, following clashes late Monday between police and some 500 demonstrators at a bridge on the border between Paraguay and Brazil.

And 205 miles away in the capital of Asuncion, troops moved in on a group of 400 protesters in front of the Congress building, as they yelled anti-government slogans, calling for President Macchi to step down and slamming Senate President Juan Carlos Galaverna.

Police have used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons to break up protests in Asuncion, as well as in the cities of Encarnacion and Ciudad del Este, where the two people died and others — including an 11-year-old — were being treated for bullet wounds.

The riots have been the most heated in a series of protests against free market policies in the poverty-stricken South American country, which has been hit by the economic crisis in neighboring Argentina, as well as Brazil’s slumping economy.

The protesters want the resignation of Macchi, who came to power in 1999 after the then-President, Raul Cubas, resigned following days of street rioting over the assassination of the Vice President.

The country has suffered from chronic political instability ever since a 35-year military dictatorship ended in 1989.

Correspondents say the wave of unrest is the most severe test to date for Gonzalez Macchi. A series of corruption scandals have added to his woes.

Protesters are particularly upset that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), pressing for privatizations, has been negotiating new loans with the government.

Paraguay’s main opposition party, the Liberal Party, which fields the country’s vice president, said it supported the protesters, and encouraged its followers to take part in the demonstrations.

The people were fed up with “the corruption of the government and the misery to which the nation is subjected,” said Vice President Julio Cesar Franco.

The Paraguay backlash against free market policies follows a trend in several South American nations, which have been under pressure from the IMF to slash or eliminate domestic programs and protections in exchange for loans.

Protesters have been calling for Franco to be appointed to the top job, holding demonstrations at 10 strategic communication points around the nation.

In Encarnacion, some 4,000 people blocked a bridge on the border with Argentina, while in Ciudad del Este, in the east, police used rubber bullets to break up a similar protest on the Amistad bridge linking the city with the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguacu.

The protests “will continue until Gonzalez Macchi falls,” said Carlos Galeano Perrone, a spokesman with the opposition group the National Union of Ethical Citizens (Unace).

Barely hours before the state of emergency was declared, the government insisted that such a measure would be taken only if the situation got out of control.

Earlier, police clashed with about 1,000 protesters who blocked key avenues leading into a city center, where several hundred campesinos staged a rally.

President Macchi’s government blamed the protests on followers of Lino Oviedo, a former general living in asylum in Brazil suspected of masterminding three failed coup attempts since 1996. Oviedo denied he was involved.

Sources: Agence France Presse, BBC News, Reuters

Squatting Thai farmers
under attack

Reports indicate that as much as 70 percent of all productive land in Thailand is either unused or underutilized.
Photo courtesy of CIA World Factbook

By Teena Amrit Gill

Lamphun, Thailand, July 10 (IPS)-- On one early morning toward the end of May, Sai Thong was rudely awakened to the sound of more than 30 policemen knocking loudly on her door here in this northern Thai province.

Her mother and father were dragged out and taken straight to the lockup in Phae Tai village, Wiang Nong Long sub-district, as their fearful eight-year-old grandson looked on. No documents were shown, no reasons given.

This was just one more in a recent spate of arrests and assassinations, which have continued right through June in the northern provinces of Lamphun and Chiang Mai. Over 20 farmers have already been arrested, and during these two months alone there have been threats by the police to take in another 200.

The reason is clear. An increasingly strong and bold farmers’ land reform movement in the north of Thailand — which has systematically taken over tracts of unused, idle land — has threatened for the first time in decades the stranglehold of the rural and urban landholding elite, and vested political interests.

Stretching across the provinces of Lamphun, Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai in the upper north, the movement has included land occupations in 23 farm areas by thousands of local villagers. In mid-June, one farmer activist involved in the land movement in Chiang Mai province survived an assassination attempt — but has since disappeared. Another was brutally killed. Four other assassination attempts have been made against other farmer leaders in recent weeks.

“For decades now land has been concentrated in the hands of the rich, but for what use?” asked Serbsakun Kidnukorn of the Northern Farmers Assembly, a farmers’ body under the Northern Peasants Federation (NPF) that has been organizing landless and poor farmers in the northern region.

“Not only has public land, which rightfully belongs to the people, been sold to rich, well-connected individuals, but even land which should be distributed to the poor by the Land Reform Department has been acquired by the better-off through corrupt practices,” Serbsakun added.

Thailand has one of the most un-egalitarian landholding structures in the entire region. A 2000 study by economist Preecha Watanya, formerly with the Land Reform Department, says that while as much as 90 percent of the population own plots of land of less than one rai (0.16 hectares), the richest 10 percent own an average of 100 rai (16 hectares) per head. And much of this land, claim northern Thai activists, is encroached upon or illegally purchased by powerful and influential figures.

“In the Lamphun area where there is a lot of conflict regarding land issues, the provincial office set up a committee to look into this matter and found that 80 to 90 percent of the land had in fact been issued illegally,” explains Professor Anan Ganjanapan, an expert on resource management issues from the Regional Centre for Social Science and Sustainable Development at Chiang Mai University.

“No action has been taken, however,” said Anan, “because the provincial governor wants to protect his own officials, who have been involved in these illegal land transactions.”

It is this lack of action by provincial authorities and the government’s land reform scheme that drove the poor and landless farmers to take matters into their own hands, explain academics and activists.

There are more than one million landless farmers in Thailand today, and close to another million agricultural families who do not have enough land to subsist on.

Started in 1997 soon after the recession, the farmers’ land reform movement decided to systematically occupy unused and illegal holdings of land with dubious land title documents. These included public lands, lands in state forest reserves, and watershed areas, as well as those in the state’s agricultural land reform areas, which were purchased for distribution to landless farmers.

However, even as far back as 1975 there were cases of farmers occupying illegally transferred land in the upper north of Thailand that had been abandoned or left unused. According to land laws, land rights can be revoked by the state if land is abandoned and unused for up to five or 10 consecutive years, depending on the title in question.

While initially dozens of families were involved in the land grab movement, sometimes 100 to 200 families would move together and occupy large areas of unused land, in a move reminiscent of a very successful landless workers movement in Brazil.

Some of this land taken over by farmers had been bought by rich businesspeople for speculative purposes during the 80s boom period, and used as collateral to obtain loans from banks. Today, this unused land is controlled by these institutions because many clients have defaulted on their loans.

Thus far, some 3,798 families are part of the farmers’ land reform movement and have put around 2,150 hectares of land to productive use, activists say.

According to some experts, as much as 70 percent of all productive land in Thailand is either unused or underutilized.

It was under such circumstances, and with growing poverty due to the lack of jobs, that landless farmers like those in Lamphun, Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai provinces decided to do for themselves what a failed land reform program was meant to do for them.

In early July, the Agricultural Land Reform Office (ALRO) secretary-general Pisarn Kuwalairat admitted that wealthy farmers had disrupted the land reform program.

“Land reform officials failed to seize land from landowners that illegally occupy the lands or leave them unused. The agency needs more time and power to negotiate with these landlords,” he said.

Of the some 60 million rai (9.6 million hectares) of land under ALRO’s agricultural land reform scheme, only 20.11 million rai (3.22 million hectares) has been allocated — although the program has been around for close to three decades.

“There is no justice for villagers like us,” complains Sukaew Manodharm from Phae Tai village in Lamphun. “The landowners and the capitalists have ganged up together versus poor villagers like us, and we are not sure if we can find a way out of this situation.”

Villagers like Sukaew and Sai Thong, from the same area in Lamphun, cultivate .192 hectares per family of the 27.2 hectares of land they have occupied. Ninety-eight families have been involved in this occupation movement in this area.

“Thailand has a land reform policy,” says Sen. Prateep Ungsongtham Hata, who recently visited some of the conflict areas in Lamphun province. “But it is not faithful to this. Instead of giving land to the poor, it gives it to the rich. In such as situation, I feel the farmers have the right to occupy this land.”

WORLD BRIEFS

Algerians riot over water shortages
Algerians protesting against water shortages have rioted in the eastern coastal town of El Arrouch on July 14, setting fire to buildings and vehicles.

Several hundred people, complaining of the nine-month water shortage, were involved in the rampage. Algeria has a chronic water shortage problem, caused by years of drought and an inefficient supply system.

Angry civilians attacked and set fire to the town hall, the police station and a number of vehicles, and smashed the windows of the water company. They also blocked the main highway to Constantine, the country’s biggest city in the east.

Riot police dispersed the crowds with tear gas, but the atmosphere remains tense.

Algeria has too few reservoirs to serve its population and many of those are virtually empty, producing only muddy, yellow water. Most of the reservoirs serving the capital have completely dried up. Residents of the capital have water one day out of three, at best.

Water shortage is only one of several critical social problems Algerians face at the moment, along with electricity cuts and a lack of social housing. (BBC News)

Bolivia’s left-wing upstart alarms US
The United States government is actively intervening in Bolivia’s choice of new president next month, warning that US aid will be withdrawn if the socialist Evo Morales is appointed.

It is the latest in a series of recent interventions by the US in Latin American elections in an attempt to keep left-wing politicians from power.

Congress will elect the president from the two leading candidates in the elections of two weeks ago: Morales and the right-wing ex-president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

Otto Reich, the Cuban-American appointed by President George Bush as his assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, warned that American aid to the country would be in danger if Morales was chosen on Aug. 3.

Morales is leader of the country’s coca-growers and is opposed to the coca eradication program sponsored by the US as part of the “war on drugs” on the continent.

The US ambassador to Bolivia, Manuel Rocha, had already issued a similar warning, suggesting that if Morales was elected US aid would be cut off.

The comments appeared to infuriate Bolivians, and enhanced the popularity of Morales who called the ambassador his “best campaign chief.” (Guardian, UK)

Canadian judges ordered to
recognize same-sex marriages
Rights activists celebrated July 12 as a panel of senior judges ordered the government of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, to register gay and lesbian marriages. It was the first decision of its kind in Canada and is expected to set a precedent throughout the country.

In a unanimous ruling, the panel of three judges of the Ontario Superior Court, which has jurisdiction over 10 million people, said prohibiting gay couples from marrying violates the Canadian constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

While the court does not have jurisdiction beyond Ontario, the ruling, and the fact that it was unanimous, likely will be taken into account in similar actions across the country. Canada already recognizes some rights to same-sex benefits, but has stopped short of recognizing gay and lesbian marriages. Many same-sex couples in Eastern Canada have traveled to Vermont for their wedding rites, as this is the closest jurisdiction recognizing them. (IPS)

South Koreans protest US military
Protesters burned a giant American flag on July 13, demanding that the US military hand over two American soldiers whose armored vehicle allegedly hit and killed two South Korean teenage girls last month.

Nearly 1,000 activists and students rallied near the US Army’s 2nd Infantry Division base in Uijongbu, on the northern outskirts of Seoul. The demonstrators briefly scuffled with South Korean riot police who stopped them from entering the base to deliver a letter of protest. No arrests or injuries were reported.

The protesters burned an American flag and then marched more than a mile toward a nearby train station, shouting anti-US slogans and calling for the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea and for President Bush to apologize for the deaths.

Sgt. Mark Walker and Sgt. Fernando Nino, both from the 2nd Infantry Division, were on a training mission near the border with North Korea on June 13 when their armored bridge carrier allegedly struck and killed two 14-year-old girls on a public road.

Following days of anti-American demonstrations, the US military said on July 5 it had filed negligent homicide charges against the two soldiers. That move reversed an earlier decision not to court-martial the soldiers.

The US military is planning to hold a trial at a US military court in South Korea. If convicted, the soldiers could face up to six years in prison. (AP)

Zapatistas protest road construction
About 200 masked supporters of the leftist Zapatista rebels protested road construction in the southern Mexico state of Chiapas by blocking a half-built road near San Cristobal de las Casas.

The rebel supporters said they had not been consulted about the construction project, which would link two small Indian communities, Olga Isabel and Nichtel.

In recent months, rebel supporters have protested a variety of projects, including the installation of telephone lines, because they threaten their traditional, indigenous way of life. (AP, AGR staff)

US booed at international
AIDS meeting

By Alicia Fraerman

Barcelona, Spain, July 9 (IPS)— An adviser to the United Nations secretary-general said US Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson should not have been surprised when his speech to the 14th International AIDS Conference was drowned out by booing activists Tuesday.

Jeffrey Sachs, an economist from Columbia University in New York and an adviser on development to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said “Secretary Thompson was probably surprised at his reception today,” after around 40 AIDS activists chanting “Shame! Shame!” made it impossible for the audience to hear his address.

But Sachs said the reaction by the representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), who were protesting what they consider Washington’s weak support for a UN-based global fund against AIDS, was “a reflection of the utter confusion within the United States government of what they are actually doing.

“They believe they are doing the right thing, but I know they are utterly confused about the situation because they have not tried to put together or adopt a plan of action,” he added.

After the incident, which took place at the Monday through Friday conference in the port city of Barcelona in northeastern Spain, Thompson told reporters that “the United States under President [George W.] Bush has doubled the amount of resources it provides for the fight against AIDS.

“I understand that people want to yell and scream,” he added, pointing out, however, that the US contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria represents 25 percent of all funds donated so far.

Sachs, meanwhile, noted that there was now a “global strategy” for fighting the disease, including “realistic numbers” regarding the “financial requirements for this battle.” But he underscored that the funds for carrying out the necessary efforts are desperately needed.

In June, the Bush administration announced a five-year, $500 million program for helping curb mother-to-child transmission of the disease in Africa and the Caribbean.

The world’s governments pledged to set up the $10 billion global fund at the previous AIDS conference, held in the South African port city of Durban in 2000. But so far, only $2.8 billion has been collected.

Peter Piot, the executive director of the joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Richard Feachem, the director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary-general’s special envoy on HIV and AIDS in Africa, joined the urgent call for funding.

But NGOs taking part in the conference also argued that while the global fund is essential, it will not be a quick-fix, and national governments must also increase their budgets for curbing the spread of HIV.

Even if the pledge is met, and the $10 billion is collected for the global fund, governments must bolster national spending against AIDS, said South African activist Shaun Mellors. Since the first case of AIDS was detected in 1981, more than 20 million people have died of the disease.

But of the 40 million people living with HIV around the world, just 730,000 (less than two percent) receive medical treatment, 500,000 of whom live in the industrialized countries, UNAIDS reported.

Sandra Thurman, a member of the International AIDS Forum and US AIDS policy director under the government of Bill Clinton, also underlined that the governments must live up to their international commitments, while boosting national spending to check the epidemic.

In addition, Thurman noted that unlike previous AIDS conferences — which are held every two years — civil society is an active participant in Barcelona, making the gathering truly multidisciplinary.

Results of scientific research presented at the conference showed that circumcised males were much less likely to be infected by the AIDS virus, because the foreskin is especially vulnerable to attack.

Lawrence Corey, with the US Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, one of the leading researchers on HIV/AIDS, said not enough research is being carried out on an AIDS vaccine, because the economic returns for the pharmaceutical industry are poor. In a parallel gathering Tuesday, “Women Moving Forward,” participants pointed out that 18.9 million of the 40 million people living with AIDS worldwide are women, and that the proportion is rising. The male-to-female risk of transmission is two to four times greater than the female-to-male risk.

Gender questions related to AIDS are even more serious in Africa, said Lungi Mazibuko with South Africa’s National Association of People with AIDS, who pointed out that women are usually blamed for transmitting the virus to their child, and if they fall ill, they are accused of being a prostitute, or of sleeping around. Argentine researcher Mabel Blanco, meanwhile, complained that the therapies are designed with men in mind, and are based on “very strong and aggressive dosages.” She called for the development of treatments specifically tailored to women.