Rough waters where America lives, wars, occupies

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
May 9, 2010
AFGHANISTAN
Sixty-six people have died and hundreds of houses and livestock destroyed by torrential rains and flash floods hitting northern and western Afghanistan. These casualties are added more than 200 lives lost earlier this year in heavy avalanches.

AF/PAK

May 9, 2010
PAKISTAN
Ten people (est.) have died in a “suspected U.S. drone attack” in northwest Pakistan. …“The U.S. stepped up drone attacks on suspected Pakistan Taliban sites after a Jordanian suicide bomber last December killed seven CIA employees at a U.S. base across the border in the eastern Afghan province of Khost.” When speaking publicly, Pakistani officials reject the CIA’s drone attacks maintaining that these attacks violate Pakistan’s sovereignty, fuel anti-U.S. feelings and complicate its efforts against Taliban fighters.

May 8, 2010
AFGHANISTAN
As the United States pours thousands more troops into Afghanistan leading into its surge in the southern province of Kandahar and Afghan president Hamid Karzai prepares his visit to the United States, the Taliban late last week announced its imminent cross-country launch of a new offensive, “‘operation Al Fatah (the Arabic word for victory).’” Since their administration was “overthrown” by a 2001 U.S.-led invasion, the Taliban has waged a nine-year war against the Afghan president’s “Western-backed government.”

GULF IN THE AMERICAS - oil

May 9, 2010
GULF OF MEXICO
Energy Company BP using a 100-ton steel-and-concrete box attempting to contain the oil spill from a broken well deep in the Gulf of Mexico has failed. “Ice-like crystals encrusted the walls of the box on Saturday forcing crews to repeal their attempts to stop the leak.”

Since the oilrig Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, blowing open the well and triggering a major environmental crisis and killing eleven workers, an estimated 800,000 liters (211, 338 gallons) of oil have been spewing into the Gulf daily. This disaster has been documented as the biggest oil spill in the United States since the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

Height of stupidity
People from around the world ─ including French, English, Spaniards, Brazilians, Australians, Canadians and U.S. Americans ─ are reported giving their hair, their pets’ fur, and their tights “to make booms and mats to mop up the oily mess spewing out of the sunken BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil platform which is lying on the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico.” There is of course a non-profit “charity” leading this public display of ridiculousness.

May 8, 2010
Dry JORDAN
A sewage treatment plant scheduled for completion in 2011 will use water previously flowing into the Jordan River and cause the river to dry up. In earlier times, 1.3 billion metric cubes (roughly 264 billion gallons) flowed annually through the Jordan River. Filled with edible fish, the Jordan was 25 meters (82 feet) wide and edged with willow trees and poplars.

Middle East WALLS

May 7, 2010
IRAQ
The Iraqi defense ministry plans to build a ‘security fence’ made of concrete, topped by security cameras and other monitoring devices around Baghdad to prevent anti-government fighters from entering the Iraqi capital. This wall said to be “necessitated by demographic rather than security concerns …would prevent Sunni Arabs from entering Baghdad. … Construction is expected to conclude in mid-2011. … American forces in 2008 built a massive concrete wall to seal off Sadr City, the largely Shia neighborhood in Baghdad dominated by Muqtada al-Sadr.”

May 9, 2010
PALESTINE: GAZA
An international aid convoy bound for the Gaza Strip is carrying tons of relief material. Six hundred activists are accompanying the convoy ‘Freedom Flotilla,’ the biggest internationally coordinated effort to challenge directly Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Israel reportedly has threatened to attack the convoy.

Casualty sites reporting
May 9, 2010 (accurate totals unknown, usual reporting not updated)

• Anti-war dot com casualties in Iraq starting March 19, 2003: Since January 20, 2009 inauguration: 169 dead; 31,790-100,000 wounded; 320,000 U.S. veterans with brain injuries; 18 suicides a day [May 8 update], http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
• Iraq Body Count: documented civilian deaths from violence 96,098 – 104,826, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,397 U.S, 4,715 Coalition; AFGHANISTAN: 1,061 U.S., 1,752 Coalition http://icasualties.org/oif/

Sources
“Flash floods killed 66 I Afghanistan,” May 9, 2010, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100508/twl-afghanistan-floods-575b600.html
“Deaths in Pakistan ‘missile attack,’” May 9, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/05/20105951012381927.html
“Taliban threatens Afghan offensive.” May 8, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/05/201058134216275432.html
“BP attempt to stem oil spill frails,” May 9, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/05/20105933123168789.html
“Hair, fur, nylons join fight to hold back U.S. oil spill,” May 10, 2010, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100509/tts-us-blast-oil-energy-pollution-animal-972e412.html
“Jordan River ‘to run dry next year,’” May 9, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/20105510484475825.html
“Iraq mulls Baghdad ‘security fence,’” May 7, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/05/20105713839458573.html
“Israel threatens Gaza-bound aid convoy,” May 9, 20109, http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=125926§ionid=351020202

Big oil, government long secreted license to kill

Edited excerpt by Carolyn Bennett
Apropos this latest human and environmental catastrophe caused by a long train of deliberate failures in U.S. constitutional governance ─ failure to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure liberty for this and future generations ─ Charlotte Dennett’s reporting on the context of oil seems ripe for thought. Dennett wrote “The war on terror and the great game for oil: how the media missed the context” chapter in Kristina Borjesson’s edited collection Into the Buzzsaw: Leading journalists expose the myth of a free press.

“One of the U.S.’s primary objectives during the [World War II],” Dennett writes, “was ‘to control the oil at all costs.’ This control was not just for industry but also to fuel the modern military machine – a point often forgotten by environmentalists and pacifists as they argue for alternative energy sources as a remedy to dependence on oil.”

Quoting the president of the American Petroleum Institute testifying before the U.S. Congress in 1943, Dennett continues outlining the context of oil: “‘Oil is ammunition. It is a secret behind the secret weapons in this war … We are not floating to victory in this war – we are fighting literally every inch of the way with oil – on land, on and under seven seas, and in the skies. The panorama of millions slaughtered, peoples made destitute, and kingdoms crushed into the earth by mechanized means makes startlingly clear the fact that in this combat, oil ─ more than any other weapons ─ decides the life or death of civilization.’” In such flawed reasoning, acts of barbarism are the means toward preserving “civilization.”

During her investigative journalism career, Dennett spent years covering oil from in Beirut, chronicling Nelson Rockefeller’s oil empire in Latin America, and pipelines in the Middle East. Based on considerable experience, she writes, “Few issues are as subject to censorship as oil, especially coverage of who controls it and why it has had such an extraordinary impact on American foreign policy since World War I.”

Control of oil is a national security issue – whether or not we are at war, she writes. However, there is another overarching reason for Americans’ ignorance of the context of oil. “The press overall does a woeful job of covering powerful individuals and institutions – be they corporate or government.… These powerful entities actively avoid scrutiny and can react fiercely when exposed.”

This entrenched, coalesced power kills and maintains impunity, a license to kill in perpetuity.

Dennett continues, “There is also an even higher level of power that receives virtually no press coverage. The world’s ruling class, comprised of members of family dynasties built over generations, controls vast international resources and wields great influence upon the affairs of nations and the lives of thousands – sometimes millions -- of people. These architects of global empires wield enough influence to create circumstances that send nations to war.…

“Oil context, geographical context, ruling-class context, historical context ─ all are hidden from the average American. … One of the major shortcomings of mainstream media reporting is the failure to put facts into context. Our schools and universities suffer from this, too. … [This] explains why Americans appear to be hopelessly naïve, even dumb. They are neither. They just need context.…”


Sources and notes
Chapter “The war on terror and the great game for oil: how the media missed the context,” by Charlotte Dennett, pp. 68, 74-75; Into the Buzzsaw: Leading journalists expose the myth of a free press, edited by Kristina Borjesson, Prometheus Books, revised and expanded 2004
Charlotte Dennett is an investigative journalist and lawyer with long personal and professional experience in the Middle East. Dennett was born in Beirut, Lebanon, daughter of Daniel C. Dennett, who served in the Middle East with the U.S. State Department, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) until his death in a plane crash in 1947. Beginning in 1973, Charlotte Dennett worked in Lebanon as a reporter for the English Language Middle East Sketch and the Beirut Daily Star until the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1975. She has devoted the greater part of her investigative journalism career -- almost thirty years -- to reporting on the oil industry and the powerful individuals who built and control it.

Motivating madness ─ Dawkins on religion

Excerpts of excerpts respectfully quoted by Carolyn Bennett

“… Only religious faith is a strong enough force to motivate … utter madness in otherwise sane and decent people.…” [Dawkins]

 “Our Western politicians avoid mentioning the R word (religion), and instead characterize their battle as a war against ‘terror,’ as though terror were a kind of spirit or force, with a will and a mind of its own. Or they characterize terrorists as motivated by pure ‘evil.’ But they are not motivated by evil. However misguided we may think them, they are motivated, like the Christian murderers of abortion doctors, by what they perceive to be righteousness, faithfully pursuing what their religion tells them. They are not psychotic; they are religious idealists who, by their own lights, are rational. They perceive their acts to be good, not because of some warped personal idiosyncrasy, and not because they have been possessed by Satan, but because they have been brought up, from the cradle, to have total and unquestioning faith.”

… Only religious faith is a strong enough force to motivate … utter madness in otherwise sane and decent people.

Newsnight, Friday September 22, 2006, The God Delusion, Dawkins interview: LEAD: “In The God Delusion, the scientist Richard Dawkins sets out to attack God ‘in all his forms’ He argues that the rise of religious fundamentalism is dividing people around the world, while the dispute between ‘intelligent design" and Darwinism ‘is seriously undermining and restricting the teaching of science.” Excerpt from chapter eight: What’s wrong with religion? Why be so hostile? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5372458.stm; Bantam Press published the God Delusion in 2006

Mark Twain
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), American author and humorist (b. November. 30, 1835; d. April 21, 1910)

 During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.

Mark Twain

“The War Prayer: ‘O Lord our God, help us to tear their bodies to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded.’”

James Madison
Fourth president of the United States (b. 1751 – d. 1836; term of office March 4, 1809-March 3, 1817), Father of the U. S. Constitution

“What have been [Christianity’s] fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”

 Richard Dawkins
Author and lecturer

“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”



Selected quotes [Twain, Madison, Dawkins] at The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason, http://richarddawkins.net/quotes
“The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and human suffering.”
Author and lecturer Richard Dawkins is the former (1995-2008) Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Among his books are The Ancestor’s Tale, The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, A Devil’s Chaplain and The God Delusion [http://richarddawkins.net/pages/staff].

Continual war threatens freedom ─ Pres Madison

Edited excerpt by Carolyn Bennett

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded. It comprises and develops the germ of every other.

War is the parent of armies. From these proceed debts and taxes. Armies and debts and taxes are known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.

In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied. All the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people.

The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes and the opportunities of fraud growing out of a state of war and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

The fourth president of the United States, James Madison (b. 1751 – d. 1836; term of office March 4, 1809-March 3, 1817), Father of the U. S. Constitution, quoted
Excerpt from “Political Observations” (1795); and in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison (1865), Vol. IV, p. 491 [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Madison]

Britannica notes:
REPUBLIC (1604): 1 a (1): a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usu. a president
(2): a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government b (1): a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law
REPUBLICAN adj (1690): 1 a: of, relating to, or having the characteristics of a republic b : favoring, supporting, or advocating a republic
REPUBLICANISM n (1689): 1 : adherence to or sympathy for a republican form of government 2 : the principles or theory of republican government

Kent State to Iraq, AfPak ─ Anti-war “spirit lives on”

From Al Jazeera’s May 4-6 Focus program, edited with comment  by Carolyn Bennett
Forty years ago today on the campus of Ohio’s Kent State University militarists turned guns on unarmed protesters against a U.S. war in Southeast Asia that left, in Vietnam, 57,000 U.S. soldiers dead; 700,000 to 2 million (various estimates) Vietnamese civilians dead.

In the United States’ persistent precedent in imperialism and bloodshed millions have died, suffered wounds, and lost their homes and livelihoods in (and because of) U.S. wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan (across Persia and the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, moving west for oil and other resources).

The U.S. military invasion of the university at Kent 40 years ago left four students dead, nine wounded. Reports say the U.S. National Guard opened fire sending a barrage of 67 shots in roughly 13 seconds on hundreds of unarmed students.

Reflecting on the Kent State killings, protesters of U.S. wars, and global contexts, Elaine Holstein, mother of a son killed in the Kent State shootings, is reported by Al Jazeera:

“… The scene I remember is Tiananmen Square, and seeing those students and thinking ‘how wonderful it is that they will dare to do that.’”

Survivor of the Kent State shootings, activist Alan Canfora:

“Back then, they were doing it for Vietnam. Today we are doing it for Iraq and Afghanistan. … The spirit lives on.”

On Al Jazeera Tuesday-Thursday, May 4-6; and Saturday May 8. “Focus: Four Dead in Ohio: the day the war came home,” by Nick Spicer, http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/2010/04/2010430134254342410.html

See also: “On 40th Anniversary of Kent State Shootings, Truth Tribunal Seeks Answers,” Democracy Now, May 4, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/4/on_40th_anniversary_of_kent_state

Capitalists, oligarchs move the mindful ─ Almendares

Not to hate but to resist ─ an apt calling from Central America

In every little piece of land, close to spring and river

─ My grandmother would say ─

You have to plant a tree, a little nutritious or medicinal plant.

Clean earth and water maintain health of

Body and mind, the animal and human community

Excerpted with minor editing by Carolyn Bennett from Dr. Juan Almendares’
“Letter to Mother Earth and Humanity of the Planet”

I grew up watching my mother pedal day and night on a sewing machine to make shirts for a factory that exploited her without minimal labor rights. We were ‘those from below’ the railway where poverty, brothels, alcoholism and violence proliferated.…

I was eight years old one of seven brothers and sisters. At 3 o’clock one morning, I went with my mother to see the almost decapitated body of my father who had been killed by an assassin hired to take away a piece of land. We learned from that not to have hate or vengeance, not to commit violence or consume drugs and alcohol.…

We suffered hunger, humiliations and poverty to be able to study medicine. I worked with one main idea: to serve the poor, the peasants, workers, original peoples, Garífunas and students. I carried out post-grad studies in medicine in the United States. The peace movement of the U.S. youth against the war in Vietnam, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Gandhi were inspiration for my position against militarism, torture and structural violence.

… The essence of capitalism, I came to understand, is anti-human and racist, that in its bosom is engendered the process of qualitative transformation of humanity itself and that we can’t be indifferent or neutral but have to take a position against injustice, war and the violation of human rights.…

Though I have the firm conviction of not being racist, classist, sexist, homophobic, neither participant in patriarchy nor authoritarianism, I cannot keep silent before the crimes and lies of the military geopolitics of international financial capitalism, articulated with the oligarchic power and the ideology of neo-liberalism.… I am anti-imperialist.

If we ask ourselves who are those who have been dispossessed of their lands and of the waters by the mining, banana, shrimp and wood companies and the plantations of African Palm for agro fuel, it is the original peoples, the Garífunas, the Misquitos [Miskitos], and the peasants. They are the ones who make the land produce, who live in pauper conditions, and those who have the worst conditions of health, education, potable water and housing.

When I examine the original and peasant peoples, I observe the infamous process of social injustice that forces beings into autophagy (eating oneself). The boys and girls have sad, anemic, dry eyes, with their bellies bulging and full of parasites, bare-foot, emaciated and swollen because of pain. …

Violence screams in every sweaty pore of the peasant and the system buys the consciousnesses to hide the truth. To defend at all costs the life of humans and of the planet should be our mission. In this small country, with an oligarchic system and an army of international capitalism the multimillionaire plans for proliferation of military bases, media campaigns and growing multimillionaire religious and media fundamentalism against Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and the suffering people of Colombia are reflected.

They are rehearsing and experimenting with a war in Honduras that begins against the peasantry and the original and Garífuna peoples. It is the power of the arms business and the buying of consciousnesses against the process of liberation and historic dignity of the peoples of Latin America…

This horrendous reality does not just move me and make me cry, but my consciousness acquires a greater commitment with the people in resistance.…

My firm conviction is that without local, regional and global solidarity, and vice versa, substantial transformations in the bosom of humanity will never be made.…

Based on these historical antecedents, we appeal to unity, organization and mobilization of the local national and world conscious with the objective of stopping the machinery of geopolitical, ideological and anti-human war against the peoples of Latin America.…

We celebrate the strength of the spiritual and cultural unity of

The resistance of the peoples of the world
against pain and suffering

Our ethical and libratory commitment should be
to such a degree that with

The slightest showing of injustice,
the subtle flight of the hummingbird

Moves us and invites us to defend dignity and life.

Sources and notes
Dr. Juan Almendares: “Letter to Mother Earth and Humanity of the Planet,”
Sunday, April 11, 2010, Voices of the Resistance in Honduras [Tegucigalpa], http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/2010/04/dr-juan-almendares-letter-to-mother.html

Dr. Juan Almendares has helped to organize protest movements against transnational companies that impinge upon and exploit rather than assist the lives of Hondurans [http://www.enableinternational.com/cohapaz.html].


Dr. Juan Almendares Bonilla is an internationally known Honduran medical doctor, human rights activist, environmental leader and alternative medicine practitioner. He also holds a medical degree from the University of Honduras and the M.S. in physiology from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. He is recognized for his work in combating alcoholism, tobacco and drug abuse, malnutrition, ecological damage, and pesticide poisoning in Honduras. Dr. Almendares has received international recognition for his humanitarian efforts in Honduras and Central America. He received the 2001 Barbara Chester Award for his groundbreaking efforts with prisoners, victims of torture, poor people, and indigenous populations. In 2007 Dr. Almendares was the sole recipient of the Humanitarian Award from InterAction in Washington DC.

He has publicly addressed the impact and effects of mining on the Central American environment and people, and has devoted considerable effort to reducing the prevalence of violence against women. A torture survivor himself, Dr. Almendares has been targeted by death squads on several occasions in the past [http://www.enableinternational.com/pdf/Almendares.bio2008A.pdf].

ENABLE INTERNATIONAL (EI) is a not-for-profit 501(c) (3) organization incorporated in the U.S. State of Illinois. Its mission is “to enable impoverished and vulnerable people worldwide meet their basic human needs and improve their quality of life.”

Britannica notes
Ga•ri•fu•na \"gä-rē-'fü-nə\ n, pl Garifunaor Ga•ri•fu•nas [Garifuna garífuna, a self-designation; akin to Taino caribe, caribi Carib, Island Carib (Arawakan language of the Lesser Antilles) Callípona: a self-designation, Guianan Carib kari'na Carib, person] (1977) : a member of a people of African and American Indian descent that live mainly along the Caribbean coast of northern Central America called also Black Carib ; also: the Arawakan language containing many Cariban elements spoken by the Garifunas

Tegucigalpa is the capital city of the Republic of Honduras.

Modern Central American Miskito [Misquitos] are agricultural, their culture influenced by European contacts and intermarriage with Africans brought to the area as slaves. Many Miskito Indians fled to neighboring Honduras in the 1980s after conflicts developed between them and the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, and some Miskitos joined rebel groups seeking to overthrow the Sandinistas.

Mayday: human rights disasters ─ “not our problem”

Occupied, ignored though not without resistance
Compiled, edited with comment by Carolyn Bennett

The Electronic Intifada reports
April 29, 2010
OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
Walled
ActiveStills photographer Anne Paq witnessed Volvo equipment being used to destroy a home in the nearby village of al-Khader. She had taken pictures two days before of Volvo and Caterpillar equipment working between the road and the fence of Har Gilo settlement, a few meters away from Palestinian houses in al-Walaja. There was an Israeli police car parked next to the works. When Paq asked what they were building, they refused to answer.

The Electronic Intifada first reported in 2008 the use of Volvo equipment in Israel’s violations of international law in the occupied West Bank. So far, the company has taken no action to investigate the use of its equipment in Israeli violations of Palestinian rights.

Volvo Group’s vice president of media relations and corporate news, Marten Wikforss, responded to The Electronic Intifada’s report, “‘We do not have any control over the use of our products, other than to affirm in our business activities a Code of Conduct that decries unethical behavior.’”

While the villagers of al-Walaja steadfastly continue to protest construction of the wall, the confiscation of their land and the destruction of their property, Israeli forces increase the oppression. Some houses have been rebuilt three or four times. Nidal Abu Zuluf, director of the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the East Jerusalem YMCA and YWCA, said, “‘Israel’s current repressive policies aim to prevent acts of popular resistance. They don’t want the media and internationals to be around.’

“Perhaps neither does Volvo, as its equipment continues to be photographed destroying Palestinian homes and violating Palestinian rights.”

April 29, 2010
Murder in occupied Territories
A 19-year-old Palestinian died from gunshots to the abdomen when Israeli soldiers opened fire “during a protest against a buffer zone being built between the eastern Gaza Strip and Israel.”

An Israeli army representative called the buffer area “a ‘war zone’ used by armed groups to carry out attacks against Israel.” Palestinians said their “peaceful protests” aim “to prevent the establishment of the zone which … is resulting in large areas of farmland being confiscated and farmers being prevented from reaching their fields.”

Since the 2008-2009 war on Gaza that left at least 1,400 Palestinians dead, “both Israel and Hamas have largely observed an unwritten truce, but in recent weeks fatal incidents in the area have increased, sparking some fears among observers that they may build up to a new cycle of violence.”

Al Jazeera reports
U.S.-Occupied Afghanistan – Kandahar
Killing
U.S. forces are massing on the outskirts of Kandahar. Top military officers are announcing that Afghan residents in the coming months can expect “an upsurge in violence.” The U.S. build-up around Kandahar is part U.S. President Barack Obama’s 30,000 increase in deployment in an invasion and occupation that is in its ninth year. By August an estimated 100,000 U.S. troops will have been deployed in Afghanistan, “more than three times” the number there when the Obama administration took office; however, since the middle of last year, thousands of additional U.S. troops had already entered rural districts of Kandahar. Nevertheless, several areas remain under Taliban control.

May 1, 2010
U.S. - Occupied PAKISTAN
Killing
An estimated two civilians died and ten suffered wounds when a suicide bomb exploded in a busy market in Pakistan’s Swat valley. In recent weeks, there has been a rise in killings of tribal elders, “raising fears that Taliban fighters are reasserting their control over the region less than a year after the army claimed victory in an offensive to push them out of the area.”

Agence France Presse/Yahoo Singapore reports
April 30-May 1, 2010
U.S.-threatened IRAN, UN autonomy
U.S. lawmakers on Friday denounced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s plans to attend a UN nuclear conference in New York City. The U.S. secretary of state and 14 Republican members of the U.S. Senate are reported calling Ahmadinejad’s planned visit “preposterous” and that allowing the visit would “make a mockery of the effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue states and terrorist groups.” These officials went on to state that there was “no compelling reason” for Iran’s president “to be allowed to enter the United States;” and that the government of the United States “has the legal authority to deny [Iran’s president’s] request and bar his entry.”

Earlier in April at an international nuclear disarmament conference hosted by Tehran, Ahmadinejad had lashed out at the current Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) structure, calling on “‘independent countries’ to review the NPT. He charged that “the presence of those possessing weapons, especially the U.S., prevents the drawing up of a fair treaty.’”

Responding Saturday to Washington’s alleged attempt to bar Iran’s president from attending the conference at New York, Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters, “The issuing of visas to the delegation and officials of any country coming to participate at the UN in the United States is obligatory on the part of American officials. The U.S. government has no right to use the issuance of visas as a tool against other countries. The U.S. government... should not take the UN and the UNSC [UN Security Council] hostage.”

U.S.-occupied HORN OF AFRICA
An estimated 25 people died today. Scores suffered injuries when a bomb exploded in the crowded Bakara market area, an Islamist stronghold, near a mosque in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. People had just finished midday prayers. This incident is reported to be “the deadliest blast in five months, the worst since a suicide bombing in a hotel in December killed 57 people among them government ministers.” These latest explosions, occurring in an Islamist stronghold, the reports said, “are unlikely to be the result of explosive devices planted by insurgents.”

May 1, 2010
U.S.-neglected Americas
Avoidable Gulf of Mexico/U.S. States’ emergency ─ disastrous as coalmining and landmines, nuclear power and levees ─ U.S. government officials saw coming, feigned shock at yet another manmade “natural” catastrophe.

An estimated 200,000 and more gallons of oil are spilling daily from the site of the sunken Deepwater Horizon oilrig.

Birds are coated in oil. Wildlife groups expect to receive rising numbers of fowl and animal casualties. Fears are rising that the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe will parallel the 1989 ecological disaster left by the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Louisiana officials lacking prior U.S. regulation and protections have declared states of emergency. Having failed to regulate industry and protect the welfare of people, land and waters, and the environment generally, U.S. officials now wring their hands, blame and lament British Petroleum’s “ability to deal with the leak and the environmental damage it will [surely] cause.”

British Petroleum’s officials say they do not know how the “accident” happened. This assertion is as believable as snake oil or a homeless man offering to sell the Golden Gate Bridge.

Casualty sites reporting
May 1, 2010 (accurate totals unknown, usual reporting not updated)

• Anti-war dot com casualties in Iraq starting March 19, 2003: Since January 20, 2009 inauguration: 166 dead; 31,790-100,000 wounded; 320,000 U.S. veterans with brain injuries; 18 suicides a day [April 28 update], http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
• Iraq Body Count: documented civilian deaths from violence 96,005 – 104,722, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,394 U.S, 4,712 Coalition; AFGHANISTAN: 1,053 U.S., 1,740 Coalition http://icasualties.org/oif/

Sources
“Volvo equipment: Israel's weapons to destroy al-Walaja homes” (Adri Nieuwhof, The Electronic Intifada), April 29, 2010, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11236.shtml
Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate based in Switzerland.
“Israeli troops kill Gaza protester,” April 29, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/2010428184658638631.html
“Kandahar violence ‘to get worse,’” May 1, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/05/2010511515216888.html
“Suicide blast rocks Palestine market,” May 1, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/05/20105112137357587.html
“Iran warns U.S. against taking UN ‘hostage,’” AFP/Yahoo Singapore,, May 1, 2010, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100501/twl-un-nuclear-npt-us-diplomacy-iran-7e07afd.html
“25 killed in blasts in Mogadishu mosque: officials,” AFP/Yahoo Singapore May 1, 2010,
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100501/twl-somalia-unrest-shebab-4bdc673.html
“Pressure rises on BP over oil spill,” May 1, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/05/201051124754529712.html