Force down rogue state jets, say US, Australia
Australian and United States officials meeting in Brisbane this week will discuss an aggressive military operation to force down aircraft and board ships suspected of carrying prohibited weapons from North Korea, Iran, Syria and Libya.
Australia will host the meeting on Wednesday and Thursday of 11 countries, including Britain, Japan, France, Germany and Spain. But the proposals being pushed by Australia and the US could provoke a military confrontation with countries like North Korea which has reportedly said it will consider the interception of its ships an act of war.
The proposals are part of president George Bush’s so-called Proliferation Security Initiative, which is aimed at stopping shipments of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons material.
(Sydney Morning Herald)

Lawyers furious as US builds death chambers
British Lawyers expressed outrage July 4 at US plans to put al-Qaeda suspects, including two Britons and an Australian, on military trial in Guantanamo Bay.
They would effectively be tried by a “kangaroo court,” stripped of all basic rights of due process that would be afforded in criminal courts in Britain or America, they said.
Matthias Kelly, QC, chairman of the Bar of England and Wales, said that the proposed trials were “totally illegitimate and a violation of every rule in international law.”
He said: “The construction of execution chambers makes virtually every lawyer in the Western world extremely angry. The idea that there is an artificial creation or enclave which, according to the Americans, is beyond the purview of all recognized systems of law is repugnant.”
Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defense Secretary, has delegated to his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, the final decision on whether the prosecutions will proceed.
“There are a lot of checks and balances in this system,” one Pentagon spokesman told The Times. Asked what those checks and balances were, the official cited the review of the President’s decision by Wolfowitz.
Asked if there were any other checks and balances other than that, the official replied: “No, sir.”
(Times (UK))

Thousands of Iraqi children in peril
Disease and unexploded ammunition could kill thousands of Iraqi children unless immediate priority is given to their protection, said Carel de Rooy, the UNICEF chief representative in Baghdad. Children below 15 years of age are nearly 12 million (44 percent) of the 27 million Iraqi population.
Unexploded munitions, which litter the country, are an immediate danger. According to de Rooy there are at least 1700 sites in Baghdad alone that contain unexploded munitions--which are attractive to children because of their bright colors.
Between May 17 and June 4 the World health Organization (WHO) reported 1,549 cases of acute water diarrhea in Basra city. A large number of them are children.
None of the approximately 210,000 children born in Iraq in the past three months has been vaccinated against any of the diseases they are vulnerable to, de Rooy said.
About 4.2 million children below the age of five are now considered vulnerable to preventable diseases such as polio, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, measles and tuberculosis.
Iraq lost all its vaccine stocks when the Vaccine and Serum Institute of Baghdad was hit by missiles during the US assault on the city, and electricity to the store room was cut.
The conditions of children have been worsening steadily under the weight of economic sanctions imposed after the Gulf War of 1991, several studies show. The US State Department human rights report for 2001 stated that through the 1990s, Iraqi children below five were dying at more than twice the rate they were in the previous decade.
(IPS)

Anti-capitalists protest developement bank
As many as 10,000 anti-capitalist demonstrators occupied the three main entrance gates to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) during the ADB’s 36th Annual Governor’s Meeting on June 30 in Manila, Philippines.
The protest comprised a variety of progressive, grassroots, and direct action groups all protesting ADB policies and practices.
“The restructuring of the power sector serves the ADB’s bottom line of creating the biggest space for foreign private capital, but is a dismal failure in terms of serving the public interest. The way the privatization of the Philippine energy sector has evolved has meant higher electricity prices for consumers, greater probability of private market power in the sector, lesser environmental protection, lesser consumer protection, and legitimating wrong policies and corruption,” said the Freedom from Debt Coalition, one of the participating groups.
The occupation began around 9am, clashes with police and street fighting lasted until about 1pm.
(imc-philippines)

Washington lends muscle to besieged Colombian pipeline
The Bush administration is planning to significantly expand US commitments in Colombia, with a 2004 budget request for up to $147 million to protect a private oil pipeline.
The administration’s plan would provide munitions, training and assistance to two elite Colombian army battalions.
Up to 800 soldiers will be deployed to guard the first 75 miles of the 480-mile Cano Limon-Covenas oil pipeline, running through Colombia’s northeastern province of Arauca. Cano Limon is jointly operated by the Colombian state oil company Ecopetrol and the US oil company Occidental Petroleum.
According to Occidental, the pipeline has been attacked by rebel groups more than 700 times since its construction in 1986, with the ruptures resulting in an overall spillage of 2.2 million barrels of oil into the surrounding ecosystem.
Colombian crude represents more than two percent of total US imports and, depending on the year, ranks between number five and 10 as a foreign oil supplier.
According to the Washington Office on Latin America the US “is willfully becoming a protagonist in Colombia’s [civil] war, and the costs for both countries will be human as well as financial.”
(IPS)

World Bank poverty drive a failure, says report
World Bank projects costing hundreds of millions of dollars and aimed at cutting malnutrition among children in developing countries have completely failed to make any difference, according to a report published July 3.
The Save the Children UK report “Thin on the ground” claims that the bank has not only continued with costly but failing projects in Bangladesh and Uganda but it is planning to expand, with a scheme billed for Ethiopia.
The World Bank both designs the programs and lends beneficiaries the money to carry them out, which increases their debt.
One project in Bangladesh which ran from 1995-2002 had a $67 million budget. It has been replaced by a second scheme with a budget of $124 million. It could continue for 10 years, spending up to $1 billion. The Uganda project--from 1998 to this year--is worth $40 million.
Save the Children UK says that malnutrition has been improved overall in Bangladesh by the slightly better economic position of the country as a whole. In six years, the World Bank programs made no contribution, the charity’s analysis of the data shows.
The charity says that the money would be better spent on improving healthcare systems so that children get basic immunization, or on getting more children into school or improving sanitation and clean water supplies.
(Guardian (UK))

Peru’s Shining Path stage a comeback
The recent brief occupation of the village of Huran Marca in northern Peru by Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas, who after routing the police brought the local residents together to listen to a political harangue, showed the insurgent group is making a comeback.
Analysts say the occupation of the village and the earlier kidnapping of 71 employees of the Argentine oil company Techint – in which the group also made off with half a ton of explosives — point to a resurgence of the rebels.
In February, the group began to step up its armed activity in the highland jungles of the northern regions of Ayacucho and Apurimac and in tropical valleys in Peru’s central jungle region.
The guerrilla war launched by Shining Path in 1980, inspired by the Maoist concept of “encircling the cities from the countryside,” and the consequent crackdown by security forces, had left a death toll of 50,000--including both dead and “disappeared. “
Analysts said the date chosen by the rebels for the high-profile kidnapping was significant, as it was the very day that the Truth Commission released a video in which one of the imprisoned guerrilla leaders reiterated the call for the rest of the insurgents to lay down their arms.
(IPS)

Mass protest in Hong Kong against new security law
Up to 500,000 people marched in Hong Kong on July 2 on the anniversary of its handover to China in protest at a new anti-subversion law that many fear will curb freedoms of speech, press and assembly.
“This will push Hong Kong toward an era of tyranny,” W C Mak, a 74-year-old retired nurse, said.
Activists outside government headquarters scuffled with police and burnt the flag of the Chinese Communist Party, demanding an end to its monopoly on power.
The national security law, expected to be passed this week, will ban subversion, treason, sedition and other crimes against the state, giving police more powers and imposing life sentences for some offences. One of the protesters, Joanne Chow, said: “It’s a tragedy if we have to live in a society where we dare not speak our minds and fear persecution.”
(Independent (UK))

Bush plans bases to gird Africa
As George Bush prepares to leave for a whistle-stop tour of Africa, it has been revealed that he has ordered the US military to plan for a massive expansion of its presence on the continent.
The Pentagon aims to secure aircraft refueling agreements in Uganda and Senegal, two of the five nations Bush will visit. As officials consider whether to send US troops into Liberia to oversee a tentative ceasefire.
Arab countries of the Maghreb and in sub-Saharan Africa will be the main focus of new basing agreements.
Malick Ndiaye, of the Committee of Initiative of Senegalese Intellectuals, has organized protests against Bush’s trip.
“Our problem is that this country has had a very close relationship with Europe since the seventeenth century,” Ndiaye said. “Bush seems to be coming here like a new conqueror.”
(Observer (UK))