War On You: Breaking Alternative News » Globalization

Here’s What Really Happens when one defies Israel:

WarOnYou — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 06:06:37 +0000

Here’s What Really Happens when one defies Israel:

It’s as easy as…..1……2……3……

1.

Belize recognizes Palestine Borders

“Press Release – Belize (Government) Press Office - September 9, 2011 – The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is pleased to announce that the Government of Belize has decided to formally recognize Palestine as a sovereign and independent State within its pre-1967 borders.”

El Salvador recognizes Palestine as independent state

“S

AN SALVADOR | Thu Aug 25, 2011 6:21pm EDT

(Reuters) – El Salvador on Thursday recognized Palestine as an independent state in the midst of a drive by the Arab League to upgrade it to full membership status in the United Nations.”

US adds Belize, El Salvador to ‘major’ drug producing, transit countries

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By Associated Press, Published: September 15

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has added Belize and El Salvador to the U.S. list of “major” drug producing and transit countries.

The annual list identifies countries playing a role in the drug trade that “significantly affect the United States.””

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Libya, AFRICOM, And US Scramble For Africa

WarOnYou — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 16:28:28 +0000

Libya, AFRICOM, And US Scramble For Africa

By Colin Benjamin

April 10, 2011

As Western war mongering in Libya continues, there’s another dimension to the conflict to consider: what role does the existence of the United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM) have to do with America’s participation in this invasion?

Ever since the West launched military intervention in Libya, some scholars have said the powers were engaging in imperial interference to secure resources on the African continent. Professor Horace Campbell and Professor Molefi Asante are two who’ve said this isn’t just about Libyan oil but is about African oil interests and resources throughout the continent.

Professor Asante, who teaches in the African-American Studies Department at Temple University, has called the war on Libya an attempt, by the West, at “re-inventing Cold War policies to enlarge and protect their economic interests on the continent.” He also warned, “The great danger of the attacks on Libya is
that they are being used by the U.S. to test the effectiveness of AFRICOM, the African Command, and this adventure will open the door to direct military intervention in Africa.”

Professor Horace Campbell, who teaches in the African-American Studies Department at Syracuse University, declared: “The Western bombardment of Gaddafi’s forces in Libya has become an opportunistic public relations ploy for the United States Africa Command and a new inroad for US military stronghold on the continent.”

The United States Africa Command was created in 2007, although the concept was conceived much earlier, when President George W. Bush gave authorization for it, after being sold on the idea by then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld, apparently, pushed the ball forward, probably, at the behest of big business interests and forces in the intelligence community. The primary reason advanced for AFRICOM is “fighting terrorism,” but, the business of oil was a key factor in its creation.

Reportedly, a 2002 report, from the African Oil Policy Initiative Group (AOIPG,) was an important impetus in starting AFRICOM. The report highlighted the National Intelligence Council’s analysis that America would be buying up to 25 percent of its oil from Africa by 2015. There also seems to be concern about the
improved relations between African countries and China.

China’s growing energy needs put them in direct competition with America for African resources, including oil. However, since AFRICOM’s creation no African nation, except for Liberia, has openly expressed a willingness to allow the Pentagon to set up a headquarters, for AFRICOM, on African soil. AFRICOM is currently headquartered at Kelley Barracks, in Stuttgart, Germany, from where an American general was coordinating the U.S.’s initial role in the invasion of Libya.

The exploitation of Africa, by Europeans, is nothing new. Since the “Scramble for Africa,” Europe has enriched itself, while impoverishing Africa by pillaging and plundering the continent’s natural resources. Are we about to see an American scramble for Africa’s oil and mineral wealth? Professor Asante and Professor Campbell’s assertion that the imperial intervention is a trial-run for AFRICOM, perhaps, explains why America seems to be contemplating arming the “rebels” in Benghazi. Both the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Benghazi, through Qatar, is about to export 100 million barrels of Libya’s oil, which was in storage.

In my last column, I spoke of the 2007 Sinjar Records Report, done at West Point Military Academy by Colonel Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman. The report states that Benghazi and Darnah have the highest concentration of jihad fighters and suicide bombers, many of whom traveled to Iraq to fight against American soldiers. So why would the American government think of arming these “rebels”?

Unfortunately, the insane profiteering of oil companies has left us in a situation where politicians are willing to wage war to enrich these modern-day oil barons even if it means helping terrorists in Libya. Have we forgotten the chaos caused by Bush’s oil war in Iraq? Will this greed for oil lead to other upheavals in oil-rich African countries like: Angola, Chad, Congo, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan and São Tomé?

We’ve seen how violent some are when protecting big oil. In Nigeria, American oil companies Exxon-Mobil and Chevron have underwritten the brutality of the Nigerian government against the people of the Niger-Delta. In November 1995, author, artist and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged by then Nigerian President General Sani Abacha.

Saro-Wiwa, who was from the Ogoni region in the Niger-Delta, was targeted because he led a campaign against the exploitation and environmental degradation caused by these oil behemoths. Because of the oil riches of the Niger-Delta, the area has been militarized to disastrous consequences.

The Nigerian people’s fierce resistance to the oil companies portends what may happen in other African countries with untapped oil. Is this, perhaps, part of the calculation here by those in the American business community, who pushed for AFRICOM’s creation? Will AFRICOM be the instrument to crush all opposition against the oil giants?

The reasons the Obama White House has given for their involvement in Libya makes no sense. The American government doesn’t invade countries to “liberate” people out of the goodness of their hearts. Anytime America “helps” people there’s always a quid pro quo involved.

It seems as if Washington’s involvement here is to gain a foothold for AFRICOM in Africa, so, they can pursue the agenda of big oil. Africans must resist this scramble for African oil by foreign interlopers, for it will only lead to more exploitation and misery for Africans.

Link: blackstarnews.com/news/135/ARTICLE/7258/2011-04-08.html

Bernie Sanders Letter To Bernanke: Why Did The Fed Bailout The Central Bank Of Libya?

WarOnYou — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 06:52:44 +0000

Bernie Sanders Letter To Bernanke: Why Did The Fed Bailout The Central Bank Of Libya?

73 discount window loans to Libya totaling $35 Billion at .25%…

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Read the Letter

WASHINGTON, March 31 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today questioned why the Federal Reserve provided more than $26 billion in credit to an Arab intermediary for the Central Bank of Libya.

The total includes at least $3.2 billion in loans that the Fed was forced to make public today in addition to earlier revelations under a Sanders provision in the Wall Street reform law.

Sanders also asked why the Libyan-owned bank and two of its branches in New York, N.Y., were exempted from sanctions that the United States this month slapped on other Libyan businesses to pressure Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s government.

“It is incomprehensible to me that while creditworthy small businesses in Vermont and throughout the country could not receive affordable loans, the Federal Reserve was providing tens of billions of dollars in credit to a bank that is substantially owned by the Central Bank of Libya,” Sanders said.

In a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and others, Sanders asked why the central bank made at least 46 emergency, low-interest loans to the Arab Banking Corp., in which the Central Bank of Libya owns a 59 percent stake.

In the same letter, Sanders asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner why the Treasury Department on March 4 let the Libya-controlled bank skirt the economic sanctions against Libya.

The senator also questioned why the Bahrain-based Arab Banking Corp. is even allowed to operate branches inside United States. “Why would the U.S. government allow a bank that is predominantly owned by the Central Bank of Libya – an institution on which the U.S. has imposed strict economic sanctions –to operate two banking branches within our own borders?” Sanders asked.

The Fed transactions were made public earlier this year as a result of a Sanders provision in the Wall Street reform law that forced the U.S. central bank to reveal which financial institutions it bailed out during the financial crisis from 2007 to 2010.

In another dubious twist, the Fed loans, at interest rates as low as 0.25 percent, relied on U.S. Treasury securities as collateral. In other words, at the same time that the Arab Banking Corp. was borrowing money at almost zero interest from one arm of the government, the Fed, it was lending money at a higher interest rate to another arm of the U.S. government, the Treasury Department.

350 British special forces already deep inside Libya… and more are ready to be deployed

WarOnYou — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 18:33:23 +0000

350 British special forces already deep inside Libya… and more are ready to be deployed

March 25, 2011

|Source: UK Daily Mail

- Squadron of SAS and SBS troops have been in country for a month
- British Tornado aircraft launch fresh wave of attacks on Gaddafi’s forces
- Bombing raids target military bases on outskirts of Tripoli
- MOD has already spent nearly £30m on air operations and missile strikes

Hundreds of British troops have been deployed deep inside Libya targeting Colonel Gaddafi’s forces – and more are on standby.

While Chancellor George Osborne repeated that UK ground troops would not be involved, the Daily Mail can reveal there are an estimated 350 already mounting covert operations.

In total it is understood that just under 250 UK special forces soldiers and their support have been in Libya since before the launch of air strikes to enforce the no-fly zone against Gaddafi’s forces.

The revelation came as the Ministry of Defence confirmed this morning that British Tornado aircraft undertook missile strikes last night against Gadaffi’s forces.

Full article here

The Waters Investigation and the Bombing of Iran Cancelled, Connect the Dots

WarOnYou — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:56:00 +0000

The Waters Investigation and the Bombing of Iran Cancelled, Connect the Dots

By Katherine Smith, PhD

“The House Ethics Committee, that on August 2 formally brought a case against Congresswoman Maxine Waters, one of America’s most enduring liberal and fierce Anti War politicians, has as of November 19, abruptly cancelled her public trial. The committee announced that it has delayed indefinitely Waters trial because the panel had discovered new evidence in the case. Waters accuses ethics panel of having weak case after calling off her trial by Susan Crabtree

The following will help the reader understand why the Water’s trial and the Bombing of Iran has been indefinitely delayed: [Appendix B]

August 9, 2010 - The Maxine Waters Investigation: What is Iran Doing in this Picture?

[Excerpt] An investigation of any kind (especially one that is over events that took place in 2008) of the most outspoken voice of reason in the U.S. House of Representatives on the issue of U.S. aggression in the Middle East should put all Americans on Red alert. And if you want more proof of a concerted effort to paint Iran, a country with a non-existent nuclear weapons capability and an air force that belongs in museums read on. [End of Excerpt]

What is Iran Doing in this Picture? is promoted to the Main Page at Rob Kall’s OpEdNews and was the 5th most popular by page views on the site. September 18, 2010, forty days after the initial release, the article was still the 2nd Most Read article at The Peoples Voice with the majority of the traffic coming from Washington DC. [1]

August 16 - The Power of Community

August 26 - Want to find real community in the United States (Both articles also published at OpEdNews, see Appendix A)

[Excerpt] In September 2006, the world experienced a paradigm shift when a strong lobbying effort by grassroots organizations effectively derailed an initiative: A move that was tantamount to a declaration of war on Iran.

U.S.: Iran Resolution Shelved in Rare Defeat for Israel Lobby

A nuclear confrontation with Iran was avoided in 2006 because a small number of people with the power of community were enough to convince our Government not to take the world to the point of no return.

Our un-elected officials got the message, that the perils of a nuclear confrontation with Iran could mean the end of life for everyone here on earth. Congress refused to go along with the Bush Administration’s plans for military action against Iran. Just two years later, the power of community stopped congress from attacking Iran.

The community of grassroots Iranian-American, Jewish-American, peace, and church groups have proven over and over, when we cooperate with each other we can make a difference.

The Powers That Be (TPTB) knew the day would come when the people would realize the power they have when they work together for their own survival. That day is here! [End of Excerpt]

August 29 - Waxman, Waters and Iran, Connect the Dots (Also published at OpEdNews, see Appendix A)

[Excerpt] An investigation of any kind (especially one that dates back to events that took place in 2008) during a congressional debate over a preemptive strike on Iran will marginalize the most outspoken voice of reason on the issue of U.S. aggression in the Middle East.

At the same time Waxman, considered an expert on Middle East policy, with his irrelevant vote against the 2010 emergency funding for the Afghanistan war (it passed 308-114), will be the new voice of reason in the debate.

The idea that a nuclear strike on Iran to guarantee Israel’s security and survival will somehow guarantee world peace, should put everyone on Red Alert. [End of Excerpt]

Sep 3, 2010 Preparing for World War III in 1925

[Excerpt] The “Extraordinary claim” that Barack Hussein Obama, Ahmadinajad and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (the group behind the Mosque at Ground Zero) are setting the world up for World War III can be supported with facts, and therefore is not a conspiracy theory.

Google Trends confirms the U.S. is openly considering a raid on Iran’s (non-existent) nuclear weapons facilities.

We could be living in the most dangerous times the world has seen since the 1962 Cuba Missile crisis. Normally, I don’t recommend those “take action”- campaigns: the ones that tell us, “It’s not too late, click-here” to importune our “elected”- representatives with emails and faxes.

However, the perils of a nuclear confrontation with Iran are in line with Pike’s call for a Third World War; therefore, we need to harness the energy of the grassroots activists in the U.S. and around the world into The Power of Community, to prevent a war that could end all life on earth. We prevented a war in 2006 and 2008 and we can do it again in 2010. [End of Excerpt]

We dodged the nuclear bullet for a third time. [Appendix B]

Katherine Smith, PhD mandrell2010@gmail.com

“In a nuclear war all men would have been cremated equal” [Adapted from Dexter Gordon]

Endnotes and Appendicest: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/11/27/the-waters-investigation-and-the-bombing

Toxic Intervention: Are NATO Forces Poisoning Libya with Depleted Uranium as They ‘Protect’ Civilians?

WarOnYou — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:21:07 +0000

Toxic Intervention: Are NATO Forces Poisoning Libya with Depleted Uranium as They ‘Protect’ Civilians?

Dave Lindorff

This Can’t Be Happening, March 23, 2011

President Obama’s criminal launch of an undeclared and Congressionally unauthorized war against Libya may be compounded by the crime of spreading toxic uranium oxide in populated areas of that country.

This is latest concern of groups like the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons, which monitor the military use of so-called depleted-uranium (DU) anti-tank and bunker-penetrating shells.

Images of Libyan civilians and rebels celebrating around the burning hulks of the Libyan army’s tanks and armored personnel carriers, which had been hit by US, French and British aircraft ordnance in the early hours of the US-led assault on the forces of Col. Muammar Gaddafy, could well have been unknowingly inhaling the deadly dust of the uranium weapons favored by Western military forces for anti-tank warfare.

Libyan rebels celebrating on burned-out Gaddafy military vehicle may be unknowingly inhaling toxic uranium oxide

Specifically, the British-built Harrier jets used by British naval air forces and also by US Marine pilots, are often equipped with pod-mounted cannons that fire 20 mm shells–shells that often have uranium projectiles designed to penetrate heavy armor.

So far, the US has not introduced its A-10 Thunderbolts, known also as Warthogs, into the Libyan campaign, probably because these sub-sonic, straight-wing craft, while heavily armored, are vulnerable to shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles which Libyan forces are known to possess in large numbers. Once the air-control situation is improved by continued bombardment, however, these specialized ground-attack aircraft will probably be added to the attacking forces. The A-10 has a particularly large automatic cannon which fires an unusually large 30 mm shell. These shells are often fitted with solid uranium projectiles for attacking tanks, APCs or groups of fighters holed up in concrete bunkers.

A-10s were heavily used in the Balkan conflict, and officials of Kosovo were dismayed to learn that some 11 tons of uranium weapons were fired there, leaving dangerous uranium dust fallout in their wake.

The US military is fond of DU weapons because the material, made from uranium from which the fissionable U-235 has been removed, because it is extremely heavy, and, in alloy form, also extremely hard. Because of its mass, such projectiles can penetrate even the heaviest armor. Then, in the heat caused by the collision with an object, the uranium bursts into flame at extreme heat, causing an explosive (and toxic) inferno inside a tank or other vehicle, which usually also ignites any ammunition being carried. Soldiers inside a target vehicle are incinerated. The problem is that the resulting uranium oxide produced by such explosions, besides being highly toxic chemically, is also a microscopic alpha-emitter, which if inhaled or ingested by human beings is extremely carcinogenic and mutagenic.

Depleted Uranium projectile from a 30 mm cannon shell, like those fired by US A-10 attack jets

Cities in Iraq where DU weapons were heavily used, such as Basra, Samara, Baghdad, Mosul and probably especially Fallujah, which was virtually leveled in a November 2004 Marine assault, are showing high rates of birth defects, many of which, along with unusually high rates of leukemia, medical experts say are emblematic of fetal radiation damage.

A University of Michigan peer-reviewed study of births in Fallujah published in December 2010 found that of 547 births in Fallujah General Hospital in May of 2010, six years after the all-out US assault on that city of 300,000, in which DU weapons were reportedly used widely, 15% of babies had birth defects–a rate more than five times higher than the global average of 2-3%.

It would be a tragic irony if rebels in Libya, after calling for assistance from the US and other NATO countries, succeeded in overthrowing the country’s long-time tyrant Gaddafy, only to have their country contaminated by uranium dust–the fate already suffered by the peoples of Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.

:: Article nr. 76157 sent on 24-mar-2011 08:56 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=76157

White House: Libya fight is not war, it’s ‘kinetic military action’

WarOnYou — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:57:41 +0000

White House: Libya fight is not war, it’s ‘kinetic military action’

Published on 03-24-2011

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Source: Washington Examiner

In the last few days, Obama administration officials have frequently faced the question: Is the fighting in Libya a war? From military officers to White House spokesmen up to the president himself, the answer is no. But that leaves the question: What is it?

In a briefing on board Air Force One Wednesday, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes took a crack at an answer. “I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone,” Rhodes said. “Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end.”

Rhodes’ words echoed a description by national security adviser Tom Donilon in a briefing with reporters two weeks ago as the administration contemplated action in Libya. “Military steps — and they can be kinetic and non-kinetic, obviously the full range — are not the only method by which we and the international community are pressuring Gadhafi,” Donilon said.

Rhodes and Donilon are by no means alone. “Kinetic” is heard in a lot of descriptions of what’s going on in Libya. “As we are successful in suppressing the [Libyan] air defenses, the level of kinetic activity should decline,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a meeting with reporters in Moscow Tuesday. In a briefing with reporters the same day from on board the USS Mount Whitney, Admiral Samuel Locklear, commander of Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn, said, “The coalition brings together a wide array of capabilities that allow us to minimize the collateral damage when we have to take kinetic operations.” On Monday, General Carter Ham, head of U.S. Africa Command, said of the coalition forces, “We possess certainly a very significant kinetic capability.” And unnamed sources use it too. “In terms of the heavy kinetic portion of this military action, the president envisions it as lasting days, not weeks,” an unnamed senior official told CNN Saturday.

Read Full Article Here…

David Icke – Fork in The Road (They Want To Trigger World War III)

WarOnYou — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 04:04:45 +0000

David Icke – Fork in The Road (They Want To Trigger World War III)

Filed under Vintage Jack Blood

Clip from From DEADLINE LIVE w/ Jack Blood 3.18.11 – We thank you for using our work, please credit the source when you do so.

Libya’s Sea of Fresh Water Beneath the Desert, But Wait, There’s More

WarOnYou — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 03:59:25 +0000

Libya’s Sea of Fresh Water Beneath the Desert, But Wait, There’s More

March 23rd, 2011

We all know about the obvious oil component to what is happening in Libya, but that’s definitely not he full story. Here are some other factors to keep in mind as the U.S. leads a war in Libya for “humanitarian” reasons.

Saudi Aramco, Seas Beneath the Sands:

Libya is already pumping water from the Kufra Oasis, in its southeast corner, through a four-meter-diameter pipeline to its thirsty coastal cities. When fully operational, that project will pump some 3.6 million cubic meters per day. Still, at current extraction rates, the aquifer is not likely to be depleted for a thousand years.

Christian Science Monitor, Libya’s Qaddafi Taps ‘Fossil Water’ to Irrigate Desert Farms:

While many countries in the Middle East and North Africa bicker over water rights, Libya has tapped into an aquifer of ‘fossil water’ to change its topography – turning sand into soil. The 26-year, $20 billion project is nearly finished.

As I was reading about how bone dry (on the surface) and sunny Libya is, I thought, “Wow, sounds great for solar power.” And then I found this, from the Tripoli Post:

Moreover, since this report came out, there has been some encouraging progress in Libya on the practical front regarding the issue of solar power. In October this year (as reported by the Tripoli Post in issue 171) the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it was sending a team of experts from its National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado to collaborate on concentrating solar power in Libya. The DOE confirmed that Libya, with its low humidity and numerous sunny days, had the ideal conditions for the possible exploitation of solar power technologies.

This is indeed encouraging news. Libya has an area of almost 1.8 million square kilometres, 90% of which is hot sunny desert. Libya, through its proximity to mainland Europe, already supplies Europe energy by pipeline via the Greenstream pipeline – the longest sub-sea pipeline in the Mediterranean. If this new technology is realized, it would hopefully put Libya in the centre of any future post-oil era energy industry.

Damn Straight: When it comes to dealing with austerity, Africa wrote the textbook Published on 12-13-2010 Email To Friend Print Version

WarOnYou — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:03:51 +0000

To get a sense of the impact of these reforms it helps to take a close look at the African experience; fortunately, this has been widely documented over the past three decades. From Nigeria to Ethiopia, Uganda to Zambia, and Tanzania to Mozambique, a diverse set of realities characterised the different responses to IMF programmes.

Let us review three key lessons that require attention.

First, is the erosion of sovereignty over the direction over economic policy in the recipient country. African heads of state might arrive for IMF meetings in Washington on private jets pretending to be “big men” but everyone knows that they are nothing more than glorified beggars in expensive suits with bowls in hand – even the jet fuel for their planes is funded by donors.

Brian Cowen, the Taoiseach, could do with a couple of stiff drinks going forward. It is not only to the Irish people that he is now accountable but the suits from Washington and Brussels, too. Jose Socrates, the Portuguese prime minister, has said his country “has no need for any aid” and insisted that Portugal’s difficulties are different from those in Ireland. This is typical posturing, but in the end the statistical health of the country has a voice of its own.

Secondly, the underlying logic of these austerity measures is designed by technocrats with little sensitivity for the social-political consequences. Cuts in social services are not just a “technical matter” but a human one and with potential to impact the future human capital of the nation and accelerate or undermine its recovery.

There is a need for recipient countries to agitate that the architects of these economic measures be held responsible for their outcomes too. In Africa, the IMF quietly walked away from SAPs, rebranding them as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) – a supposedly “African-owned” and much more polished variant of the original programme. The jury is still out, three decades on. It is still difficult to establish the criteria for what constitutes a structural adjustment success story in Africa.

Thirdly, soon to follow will be a set of unintended consequences. In many African countries that adopted SAPs, urbanisation together with the casualisation of labour became major unanticipated results of cuts in government expenditure and the abolition of the minimum wage. Huge social insecurities emerged and irrevocably redefined the rural-urban dynamics. For Europe, though, the potential is for depressed local manufacturing and the competitiveness of the agricultural sector. In Nigeria, the textile industry collapsed as a result of the reform measures, so did Senegal’s peanut economy.

It would be unfair to place the whole blame at the steps of the IMF. Kleptomaniacs with Kalashnikovs became the managers of state in 1970s and 1980s Africa and wreaked havoc on their economies. European governments engaged in the more seductive but equally damaging excess of out-of-control spending, unsustainable borrowing and the promises of entitlements that couldn’t be paid for.

Europe’s leaders have also failed in their cardinal responsibility to speak truthfully to their citizens about the economic prospects and realities that lie ahead – something African leaders seldom do as they tend to reserve candour for the donors who fund their regimes.

• Andrew Rugasina is chairman of Good African Coffee

Wiki-Leaks and plausible lies – Where have all the critical thinkers gone? by Joe Quinn

WarOnYou — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 20:45:25 +0000

While the revelations in the Wiki-leaks documents about the true nature of the US government and its imperial attitude towards other nations are welcome, I find myself in the strange position of having to agree with Hillary Clinton, David Cameron et al that the leaks won’t affect anyone’s relations with anyone.

Our leaders are an inherently hypocritical bunch and over the past 10 years, even the most uninformed have come to understand that our leaders have a definite tendency to say one thing and do another. Who doubts that such hardened politicians fully understand that lying to each other is par for the course in the sordid game of modern global governance? As such, why should the public be overly surprised to see confirmation of this in the Wiki-leaks documents? Entertained and even intrigued, but surprised?

I am not saying that there is no value in certain aspects of the documents themselves to the extent that they provide a chance to disseminate government corruption and mendacity to a wide audience, but titillating details such as Gadaffi’s buxom ‘nurse’ is nothing new and, much more importantly, such details are by no means the main focus of the documents themselves.

Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran…

The Wiki-leaks documents need to be considered in a broader context. By all means, alternative news sites should continue to expose American, British and any another government inequity that the documents reveal. But where is the criticism of the rest of the documents that confirm the standard Israeli/American narrative – that Iran poses ‘an existentialist threat’ to Israel and to ‘moderate’ Arab states?

Does anyone care that these documents clearly support US and Israeli war-mongering? Does anyone else find that to be astonishing? Where is the critical thought?

The problem is that, when the dust has settled (as it soon will) over all-too-familiar US government attempts to spy on UN officials and the pusillanimity of the British government assuring the Americans that their Iraq invasion inquiry would have a pro-US bias, we will be left with some core details which, far from being refuted or covered up, are being accepted as fact. Details such as:

Iran is the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East. This is a blatant lie as every alternative, anti-war analyst who has studied the facts has declared vociferously for years now. And suddenly, with a widely publicized leak, the mainstream media wants to try and shove it down our throats again? Because it is a “leak” and Assange is being “hunted down” like Osama bin Under-the-bed? What kind of truth has ever gotten this kind of press in all the years since the Fascist take-over by the unelected G.W. Bush?

Iran received missile technology from North Korea that may enable it to attack Europe in a few years. That’s pure propaganda, and every one of you alt news analysts and commentators know that. Iran is making its own missiles and, in any case, Iran is entitled to defend itself. You’ve all been saying that for years, based on hard data and researched facts. All of a sudden, a leak appears and the mainstream media wants to convince us otherwise? And you compare it to Watergate? Did you read Fletcher Prouty’s expose on Watergate, how many of the documents were created and planted to be leaked because they served the agenda of the PTB?

Middle Eastern leaders want the US and Israel to attack Iran. How can this not been seen as further US and Israeli propaganda? And what Middle Eastern country in its right mind would want that considering that the entire area will be unfit for human habitation for years afterward?

Tehran used Red Cross ambulances to smuggle arms to Hizb’allah during its war against Israel in 2006 . Even if true, Iran is entitled to help the Lebanese defend themselves against Israeli aggression just like UK helped the U.S. attack Iraq and Afghanistan. Haven’t all of you people been saying this for years now?

Iran harbors ‘al Qaeda’. Why would this be seen as anything other than more of the tired old US ‘al-qaeda’ imaginings designed to scare the masses, at home and abroad?

Iran could produce an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States by 2015. And Saddam could ‘hit the UK in 45 minutes’, remember?

Pakistan continues to support the ‘Mumbai terror attack group’. Why no details of David Headley, the CIA agent who planned the Mumbai attacks and who, according to the CIA, ‘went rogue’? Again, yeah, right!

And let’s not forget previous Wiki-leaks ‘dumps’ of data, which included nuggets of US and Israeli government nonsense like Iraq really did have WMDs! And there you were thinking that the WMD business was a total lie! Well, guess again, thanks to some of the Wiki-leaks documents, we now know that the US was totally justified in invading Iraq and killing 1.5 million innocent civilians. And if that isn’t enough for ya, then just remember…9/11! Bin Laden (who is alive and well according to previous Wiki-leaks documents) killed about 3,000 Americans that day, which leaves the US and Iraq just about even (500 Iraqi lives being equal to one American life). And don’t go spouting any spurious conspiracy theories, because Mr Assange is annoyed that such ‘false conspiracies” [like 9/11] distract so many people (like you).

As Phyillis Bennis wrote recently on the Huffington Post:

“If you watched only Fox News or some of the outraged-but-gleeful mainstream pundits, you would believe that the documents prove the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program and world-wide support for a military attack on Iran. If you read only the Israeli press, you would think the documents provide irrefutable proof that “the entire world is panicked over the Iranian nuclear program.”

Phyillis is correct, but here’s the problem: a vast number of people do watch only Fox News or one of its affiliates, and what gets said in the Israeli press is very often received with a sympathetic ear across the US media.

So why is no one contesting these very dubious and much more serious claims? These are claims that could be used to justify an attack on Iran and the murder of millions of Iranian civilians?

Yes, the US government is full of two-faced creeps who spy on friend and foe alike, and if the Wiki-leaks documents help to imprint that on the global awareness, then so much the better. But what will it change in the long run? And more importantly, at what price will come the wholesale acceptance of these documents? If, by simply referring to the precise details and the dominant discourse of the documents, I conclude that some aspects serve the goals of peace and public truth but many others serve the goals of the war-mongers in Tel Aviv and Washington, does that mean I hate Whistle-blowers and want to protect the US government? This whole thing is like the well-known ploy of the psychopath to engage the sympathy of their victim by admitting to flaws and failings – even a few seemingly painful admissions – putting the target to sleep thinking they now have the whole confession, all the while they are being set up for a really big con.

Our world is run by people who lie for a living, so let’s examine the situation microcosmically and then all you have to do is extract the principle and apply it on a larger scale.

“Our culture agrees on the signs of lying. Ask anyone how to tell if someone is lying and they will tell you that they can tell by “lack of eye contact, nervous shifting, or picking at one’s clothes.” Psychologist Anna Salter writes with dry humor: “This perception is so widespread I have had the fantasy that, immediately upon birth, nurses must take newborns and whisper in their ears, “Eye contact. It’s a sign of truthfulness.” [Anna C. Salter, Ph.D.]

The problem is, if there is a psychopath – or those with related characteropathies – who doesn’t know how to keep good eye contact when lying, they haven’t been born. Eye contact is “universally known” to be a sign of truth-telling. The problem is liars will fake anything that it is possible to fake, so in reality, eye contact is absolutely NOT a sign of truth telling.

Anna Salter writes:

The man in front of me is a Southern good-ole-boy, the kind of man I grew up with and like. If anything, I have a weakness for the kind of Southern male who can “Sam Ervin” you, the Southern lawyer who wears red suspenders in court along with twenty-five-year-old cowboy boots and who turns his accent up a notch when he sees the northern expert witness coming. A “northern city slicker” on the witness stand will elicit the same kind of focused interest that a deer will in hunting season. You can have some very long days in court with men who wear red suspenders and start by telling you how smart you are and how simple and dumb they are.

I survey the man in front of me. I am not in court; I am in prison, and he is not an attorney but a sex offender, and he has bright eyes along with that slow, sweet drawl. He is a big man, slightly balding, and he has – I have to admit there is such a thing – an innocent face. …

My Southern good-ole-boy certainly knows eye contact is considered a sign of truthfulness. He describes his manner in getting away with close to 100 rapes of adults and children. He tells me:

The manner that I use when I was trying to convince somebody – even though I knew I was lying – I’d look them in the eye, but I wouldn’t stare at them. Staring makes people uncomfortable and that tends to turn them away, so I wouldn’t stare at them. But look at them in a manner that, you know, “look at this innocent face. How can you believe that I would do something like that?” It helps if you have a good command of the vocabulary where you can explain yourself in a way that is easily understood. Dress nice. Use fluent hand gestures that are not attacking in any way.

It’s a whole combination of things. It’s not any one thing that you can do. It’s a whole combination of things that your body gestures and things that say “Look, I’m telling you the truth, and I don’t know what these people are trying to pull. I don’t know what they’re trying to prove, but I haven’t done any of this. I don’t know why they’re doing this. You can check my records. I’ve got a good record. I’ve never been in any trouble like this. And I don’t know what’s going on. I’m confused.”…

As if reading my thoughts, he breaks off: “You don’t get this, Anna, do you?” he says. “You think that when I’m asked, “Did I do it? that’s when I lie. But I’ve been lying every day for the last twenty-five years.”

The practiced liar: a category of liar that even experts find it difficult to detect.

Problem is, even when dealing with people who are not practiced liars, such as college students who have volunteered for a research study of lying, most observers are not as good as they think in detecting deception. The research shows consistently that most people – even most professional groups such as police and psychologists – have no better than a chance ability to detect deception. Flipping a coin would serve as well.

“If you want to deny something, make sure you’ve got an element of truth in it. It sounds like it’s true, and there are elements of it that are very true that can be checked out, and try to balance it so that it has more truth than lie, so that when it is checked out, even if the lie part does come out, there’s more truth there than lie.”

This man was good enough that once he got away with stomping out of court in a huff. He was accused by his sister of raping her and molesting her daughter on the same day. He played it as a preposterous charge. His sister, he told the court, had once accused his uncle of abuse. She was well known in the family for making up crazy charges like this. He said he wasn’t going to put up with such nonsense and walked out. No one stopped him, and no one ever called him back. The charge just disappeared somehow. He now admits that both charges were true.

It is ‘likeability’ and charm that he wields as weapons.

The double life is a powerful tactic. There is the pattern of socially responsible behavior in public that causes people to drop their guard, and to turn a deaf ear to disclosures. The ability to charm, to be likable, to radiate sincerity and truthfulness, is crucial to the successful liar – and they practice assiduously.

“Niceness is a decision,” writes Gavin De Becker in The Gift of Fear. It is a “strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait.”

Despite the decades of research that have demonstrated that people cannot reliably tell whose lying and who isn’t, most people believe they can. There is something so fundamentally threatening about the notion that we cannot really know whether or not to trust someone that it is very difficult to get anyone – clinicians, citizens, even police – to take such results seriously.

Assange on Netanyahu

In a recent Time Magazine interview, Julian Assange stated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is not a naive man” but rather a “sophisticated politician”. That’s Assange’s assessment of a man who is clearly a psychopath. In the same interview Assange said:

“We can see the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu coming out with a very interesting statement that leaders should speak in public like they do in private whenever they can. He believes that the result of this publication, which makes the sentiments of many privately held beliefs public, are promising a pretty good [indecipherable] will lead to some kind of increase in the peace process in the Middle East and particularly in relation to Iran.”

Apart from the fact that he appears to be praising a pathological war criminal, Assange displays an amazing level of naivete. Netanyahu’s comment about Middle Eastern leaders making their private opinions public was in reference to the leaked allegation that the Saudi, Jordanian and Emirati governments were privately in favor of “cutting the head of the Iranian snake”, something that Netanyahu has been cheer-leading for several years. Despite this, Assange believes that this will lead to “some kind of increase in the peace process in relation to Iran”.

Say what?!

But not everyone is fooled. On Wednesday, a senior Turkish official blamed Israel for the Wiki-leaks release. Addressing reporters, Huseyin Celik, deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party, hinted that Israel engineered the leak of hundreds of thousands of United States diplomatic cables as a plot to pressure the Turkish government.

“One has to look at which countries are pleased with these,” Celik was quoted as saying. “Israel is very pleased. Israel has been making statements for days, even before the release of these documents.”

“Documents were released and they immediately said, ‘Israel will not suffer from this.’ How did they know that?” Celik asked.

He doesn’t even realize that probably many of these documents were created FOR leaking! Again, the reader is referred to Fletcher Prouty’s book The Secret Team.

Critical Vs ‘Black and White’ Thinking

The Wiki-leaks documents that provide evidence for what is already understood should be accepted, the documents that echo what we already know to be US and Israeli propaganda should be understood as just that – US and Israeli propaganda. Is that so hard?

Why are many alternative news writers who railed against similar lies and disinformation when it came from US and Israeli ‘Intel reports’ now accepting, or ignoring, the same propaganda simply because it comes via Wiki-leaks? Do the Wiki-leaks documents have to be all good or are all bad? Is such black and white thinking ever a good way to discern truth from lies in a world where almost everything has some element of spin? Are we so desperate for a truth-telling hero – like the practiced liar described by Anna Salter above – that we have lost our ability to critically think? What happened to our ability to understand and identify the nuances and subtitles of big government propaganda?

The broad view of Wiki-leaks and its documents, so far, paints a picture of a concerted effort to supplant the alternative, anti-war media with an illusion of truth. As the Western mainstream media continues to reach new heights of mendacity and obfuscation of the truth, an increasing number of ordinary people have been turning to alternative news sites for a more accurate perspective of what is happening on our planet. This has posed a clear threat to those whose positions of influence and power depend on a misinformed population.

The solution to this problem would be the appearance on the scene of an organization that goes one better than the anti-war, alternative media and produces ‘smoking gun’, officially documented evidence of government lies and deception. Such evidence would, after all, come from the horse’s mouth, a veritable admission of guilt from the wrong-doers themselves rather than accusations from third-party alternative news web sites. Re-read Anna Salter’s description of the pedophile she was interviewing above to get a real picture of the pathology at work here. The deception, of course, lies not in the release of official documents, but in the use of those documents, which in themselves do not constitute high crimes, as a cover to promote the same big government lies. I submit that, based on the clear evidence, Wiki-leaks is just such an organization and is designed to fulfill just such a role: the dissemination of Plausible Lies.
Global Research Articles by Joe Quinn

North American Union – “U.S. Super Spy Center” Uncovered in Mexico

WarOnYou — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 05:40:25 +0000

North American Union – “U.S. Super Spy Center” Uncovered in Mexico

November 15, 2010 by supermario
Filed under Featured

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- Mexican Magazine Proceso reveals the location of a US Military-Intelligence Megaplex in Mexico City.

-Megaplex includes offices for the CIA, FBI, DEA, Defense Intelligence, BATF, Department of Treasury and others.

- U.S. Intelligence Operatives will no longer have to disguise themselves as diplomats.

- Mexico will now have a Military ‘Liaison’ for NORTHCOM.

- U.S. is now in charge of all tactical efforts against the drug war, counter-insurgency, and counter-terrorism in Mexico.

- Obama and Hillary Clinton are credited for the creation of the Office of Bi-lateral Intelligence in Mexico (OBI).

Jorge Carrasco and Jesus Esquivel
am.com.mx
Translated by Mario Andrade

With the approval of Felipe Calderón’s Administration, the U.S. Government finally got what it always wanted: To set up a super spy center in Mexico City. It was the escalation of the drug war in the country what opened the door to all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the military, to operate out of the Federal District without having to disguise their agents as diplomats.

The establishment of the Office of Bi-national Intelligence (OBI) was authorized by Calderon, after negotiations with Washington, which began under the government of his predecessor, Vicente Fox Quesada. The creation of the super spy center was authorized by the director of the Center for Investigation and National Security (CISEN), Guillermo Valdés Castellanos, without taking into account any objections from the Mexican military.

Through the OBI, Calderon has given the green light to U.S. Intelligence agents to spy on organized crime syndicates and drug cartels. They can also spy on Mexican government agencies, including the Secretariat of National Defense, Navy, and the diplomatic missions in Mexico.

The building headquarters, which includes offices from the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and the U.S. Department of Treasury is located at 265 Paseo de la Reforma Avenue, approximately 250 meters from the U.S. embassy.

The most significant presence at the OBI building is that of the Pentagon, which includes the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the National Security Agency (NSA). It is followed by the U.S. Department of Justice, also with three agencies: the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

With two services, there is the Department of Homeland Security: Coast Guard Intelligence (CGI) and the Bureau of Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE), while the Treasury Department has officers of the Bureau of Intelligence on Terrorism and Financial Affairs (TFI) .

In addition, the OBI opened two remote offices: one in Ciudad Juarez and one in Tijuana, housing U.S. agents and “task force commanders” who coordinate operations against drug trafficking with the support of Mexican Government personnel.

It is not known how many intelligence agents from the U.S. are operating in Mexico with the authorization of the Mexican Federal Government, since the creation of this center was announced on August 31st. The maintain that the exact number is “classified.”

The building occupied by the OBI in the Federal District is right next to the Mexican Stock Exchange and is part of what the security and intelligence services in Mexico define as a “soft target area” in reference to the possibility of an attack on U.S. interests in Mexico.

At this strategic point for Washington in the Mexican Federal District, there are also facilities for transnational corporations such as Ford, American Airlines, as well as Marriott and Sheraton hotels, among others.

The building where the OBI is located gives the impression of an ordinary business facility, with banks, insurance, telecommunications, commercial offices and private offices. The only thing that stands out is the entry and departure of U.S. citizens.

The building directory lists the names of the occupants all the way up to the 21st floor. However, after the 22nd floor, there are three penthouses that are only listed as “occupied.” And on the roof there is a dozen satellite dishes placed just above the logo of the telecommunications company Axtel.

“It’s the best covert location for the agencies to operate,” said the source that provided the location of the OBI. The ordinary appearance of the building is the way in which the United States often disguise intelligence centers around the world.

The reception and parking are guarded by private security services, while Federal District Police provide outside support.

Furthermore, the city government has installed special surveillance cameras with sirens to observe the movement of pedestrians and vehicles outside the building.

The scope and power of the OBI in Mexico is similar to the El Paso Intelligence Center, in Texas (EPIC), which dates back to 1974 and operates exclusively to combat drug trafficking, weapons and money laundering on the border between Mexico and United States.

EPIC has been credited for creating the strategies launched against drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico. Among the most successful are Operation White Tiger, which was used to investigate the activities of the Hank Rhon family in 1997, the capture and extradition, a year earlier, of Gulf Drug Cartel Leader Juan Garcia Abrego, and the discovery of narco-graves in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, in 1998.

Subordination

Overrun by drug trafficking, the government of Felipe Calderón agreed to the establishment of the OBI in Mexico a proposal of the then head of National Intelligence in the United States, Admiral Dennis Blair, who last March was accompanied by Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, during his working visit to Mexico.

According to the formal agreement, the new U.S. office workers interact with their Mexican counterparts, under the coordination of the State Department and the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE).

For the Pentagon, the strong presence of its agents in Mexico is intended to merge the intelligence and espionage services of both countries to identify and exploit the vulnerabilities of drug trafficking organizations and organized crime gangs.

Under this directive, issued on 18 March by Gen. Victor Eugene Renuart, then head of Northern Command (NORTHCOM), Mexico has carried out several operations against drug traffickers.

Since then, among some of the actions taken the drug lords have been the killing of Arturo Beltran Leyva, (aka El Barbas), Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, and Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen (aka Tony Tormenta), in addition to the arrests of other drug lords, such as Edgar ‘Barbie’ Valdez Villarreal.

Since the killing of Beltran Leyva in December of 2009, U.S. intelligence services, mainly the DEA, have mentioned their participation in various operations, against the very Arturo Beltran Leyva, Barbie Valdez, Teodoro Garcia Simental (aka El Teo), Jose Gerardo Alvarez Vazquez (aka El Indio or El Chayán), operator of the Beltran Leyva organization and Carlos Ramon Castro, a drug dealer who worked for several organizations.

As part of the Mexican government’s need to justify the militarization of the fight against drug trafficking, the Pentagon has strengthened its cooperation with the Mexican military. In early 2009, just as the Department of State and the Mexican Exterior Relations Secretariat (SRE) fine-tuned the details for the establishment of the OBI, the U.S. Department of Defense stepped up military training for Mexicans in Mexico and in several U.S. military bases.

The training has been an unprecedented event in the history of military relations between the two countries. For the first time, the Pentagon has brought counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism expertise from Iraq and Afghanistan to their offices in central Mexico.

In the case of Mexico, the training courses are developed and run by the Defense Department, and are focused on intelligence and tactical operations against drug trafficking, terrorism and the implementation of counterinsurgency tactics.

In addition to the courses offered in Mexico, the Mexican military has significantly increased the number of special forces troops in the Army, Air Force and the Navy to attend specialized intelligence training in U.S. military bases.

Liaisons

The main example of this cooperation is the presence -for the first time in the bilateral relationship- a member of the Mexican Army as a “liaison” between the Mexican military (Central Command) and the Northern Command in Colorado (NORTHCOM), according to a military source who spoke to the Mexican magazine Proceso.

On Wednesday 10, The Washington Post published on its front page a note informing that the liaison will also serve as deputy commander of the Institute for Security and Cooperation in the Western Hemisphere at Fort Benning, Georgia. From the sixties to the eighties, these facilities housed in the so-called School of the Americas, which went down in history as a supplying center for Latin American dictators, which are characterized by the systematic violation of human rights.

A U.S. official, who told the Post on condition of anonymity, said that given the seriousness of the drug violence in Mexico, “we have received direct instruction from the President (Barack Obama) and the highest levels in government, to really examine what more can be done in this counter-narcotics cooperation with Mexico.”

The establishment of the Office of Bi-national Intelligence (OBI) implies that for the first time in the history of Mexico, surveillance, supervision and qualification of work against organized crime between federal government agencies, including the military, rests in part on foreign officials.

According to the document unveiled by the White House on March 25, 2009 on the establishment of the OBI, the office is also responsible for overseeing the proper use of resources that Washington provides the Calderon administration in combating drug trafficking through the ‘Merida Initiative.’

“We will be coordinating our efforts with the government of Mexico through high-level contacts, which in part are related to the new intelligence services responsible for overseeing the implementation of Merida Initiative,” according to the document released by the White House (published by Proceso).

A year later, on March 23, 2010, Hillary Clinton announced during her working visit to the Federal District, in the context of the implementation of Plan Merida, the establishment of two “pilot programs” in the Tijuana-San Diego and Ciudad Juárez-El Paso corridors.

The two governments declared in a joint statement, that in the case of Ciudad Juárez, the program considers the development of “a model for the Mexican Government to collect and analyze tactical intelligence” as well as to “take action against drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and other criminal activities.”

However, the actual operations of the OBI in security and intelligence services, Mexicans will be subordinates of the U.S.. Agencies of the U.S. Government will play the role as experts in intelligence work, apart from previous advisory roles in order to increase Mexico’s ability to use information resources against drug cartel operations.

Link to Original Article in Spanish

Red alert over bizarre North Korean plan to attack G20 summit with balloons filled chemical weapons

WarOnYou — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 05:38:53 +0000

Red alert over bizarre North Korean plan to attack G20 summit with balloons filled chemical weapons

Published on 11-12-2010

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Source: UK Daily Mail
A bizarre plot by North Korea to attack the G20 summit using balloons filled with biological or chemical weapons emerged last night.

The claim that ageing tyrant Kim Jong-Il will attempt to disrupt the gathering – attended by David Cameron and other world leaders – has been taken seriously by Western diplomats.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has asked China, North Korea’s chief ally, to rein in Kim. And security is now at red alert for the conference in the South Korean capital Seoul.

Kim Jong-Un, Kim’s third son and expected successor, is thought to have been ordered to find ways to overshadow the meeting.

His father’s secretive regime has acted aggressively in the past at times of internal change, external tension or when the rival South is the focus of world attention.

Full article here

Water Wars: World Bank Loans Mexico $100 Million to Improve Water Utilities Efficiency

WarOnYou — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 19:26:58 +0000

Water Wars: World Bank Loans Mexico $100 Million to Improve Water Utilities Efficiency

Published on 11-11-2010

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Source: InfoZine

The main beneficiaries of this project will be water utilities located in urban communities of more than 20,000 people.
Washington, D.C. – infoZine – The World Bank (WB) Board of Directors approved a US$100 million loan for the Mexico Water Utilities Efficiency Improvement Project, which seeks to improve efficiency of participating utilities through technical assistance and financing framed under the sector policy.

The main beneficiaries of this project will be water utilities located in urban communities of more than 20,000 people, which will have increased capacity to efficiency improvement. Eligible water utilities will also benefit from a better management of knowledge and information and will be able to provide efficient, reliable water and sanitation services to their users, who will be the ultimate beneficiaries from the project.

Limited availability and deterioration of water quality impact growth and sustainable development, and has an overall negative impact on the most vulnerable sectors of the population. This is compounded by the inefficient management of water. According to WB research, reversing this effect requires comprehensive actions such as water policies and solid financial mechanisms.

“The efficient provision of drinking water, urban drainage and sanitation services is strategic as well as a priority for this administration; this is why we have determined that the National Water Program will strengthen Water Operators in order to increase their physical and commercial efficiency,” said Jose Luis Luege Tamargo, Managing Director of the National Water Commission (CONAGUA). “With the support and cooperation of the World Bank, we will establish a program that will allow us to better coordinate water sector objectives and strengthen different operators to make this sector one of the most modern,” he added.

Better water management will allow the Mexican government to strengthen ongoing and future initiatives to confront the challenges associated with climate change. Furthermore, it will help to highlight the importance of this resource internationally in the lead up to the climate change meeting (COP 16) that Mexico will host between November 30 and December 10, 2010.

“Lack of access to water services is still a factor in poverty and exclusion. At a time when water shortages have multiplied as a result of climate change, it is crucial that an adequate water management policy is in place. As a consequence, improving its efficiency to achieve a more equitable and sustainable distribution of this resource will allow millions of Mexicans that still lack drinking water to gain access to it,” said Gloria Grandolini, World Bank Director for Mexico and Colombia. “This project supports government efforts to improve the financial sustainability and the efficiency of water service provision, mainly at the municipality level, which is something that should be highlighted,” she maintained.

The project has two key components:

Improving information and knowledge management in the water supply and basic sanitation service sectors.

Modernizing water operator services by financing mechanisms to improve both physical and commercial efficiency.

Some of the expected results include:

More water operators increasing their incomes by at least 5% according to production volumes;
Increasing the number of water operators implementing energy efficiency measures and whose energy consumption per cubic meter has decreased by 5%; and
A greater number of water operators increasing their income levels by at least 5% thanks to greater commercial efficiency.

The strategic alliance on water issues between Mexico and the WB has grown continuously since 2006, when the Technical Assistance for Efficiency Improvement Program (PATME) began. In June 2010, the Bank approved a US$450 million loan for Mexico to establish public policies aimed at supporting government efforts to promote adapting of its water sector to climate change.

Today’s operation is an integral part of a service package that includes advisory services, technical assistance, knowledge and coordination and meeting services, as well as financing, which will allow the Bank and government to work together in finding better solutions to water shortage and its effects on climate change.

The organization responsible for the implementation of this loan is CONAGUA, which in turn has designated the National Savings and Financial Services Bank (BANSEFI, in Spanish) as financial agent. It will have a total cost of US$200 million, US$100 million of which will be financed by the WB and US$100 million by the government counterparty.

This is an investment loan with a variable interest rate (6 Month LIBOR), plus a variable margin, with a 12-year, one-payment, maturity period. This is a dollar-denominated loan with risk management options. The opening fee has been fixed at 0.25% of the total sum. The project is expected to end on December 2014.

Mao Zedong Redux: G20 ushers in ‘great leap forward’ on development

WarOnYou — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 19:21:57 +0000

Mao Zedong Redux: G20 ushers in ‘great leap forward’ on development

Published on 11-11-2010

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Source: Reuters

EOUL (Reuters) – A new global development strategy to be unveiled at this week’s G20 summit marks a “great leap forward,” the head of the OECD said on Thursday.

The Group of 20 major economies plans to endorse the “Seoul Development Consensus for Shared Growth,” which includes an emphasis on infrastructure investment as a means to attain sustainable growth in poorer countries.

“This is really going to change the way in which we address development,” Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, told reporters.

He said the adoption of a multi-year action plan would be a “a very big deliverable” from the two-day G20 summit, which starts on Thursday.

The blueprint identifies nine areas where action is needed to ease development bottlenecks, including skills training, increased access to finance, expanded investment and improvements to the physical fabric of developing countries.

“The great leap forward here is that this is no longer a question of aid. It’s a question of development,” Gurria said.

Gurria applauded summit host South Korea for driving the new agenda, which says there is no one formula for development success.

Central bank governor Kim Choong-soo said South Korea’s graduation from aid recipient to donor added credibility to the strategy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed the plan as a step toward market-orientated growth. “We must quit the traditional path of development aid,” she told business leaders.

The G20 plans to set up a high-level panel to recommend ways to mobilize financing for infrastructure in developing countries.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick estimates the financing need at $900 billion a year. Actual investment is about half of that, Zoellick said in Singapore on Wednesday.

DON’T DODGE PROMISES

The Overseas Development Institute, a British think tank, said the G20′s emphasis on trade, investment and growth was the right one for long-term development. It described the G20′s agenda as going beyond aid, not replacing aid.

Other non-governmental agencies reacted more cautiously.

“Rich countries must not use the economic crisis or the G20′s focus on growth to wriggle out of their commitments to the world’s poorest at a time when they need help more than ever,” said Takumo Yamada with Oxfam, a British aid agency.

By Alan Wheatley, Global Economics Correspondent

SEOUL | Thu Nov 11, 2010 2:10am EST

The draft of a communique to be issued on Friday says the continued provision of soft loans will be remain essential for most poor countries. It also reaffirms G20 members’ aid pledges.

But Ben Phillips with Save the Children, another British campaign group, said the communique fails to reaffirm a commitment the Group of Eight rich countries made in Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005 to double their aid to $50 billion by 2010.

So far the G8 has provided $12 billion out of the promised $25 billion, he said: “Now is the time that we need aid. Countries are looking for excuses to break their promises.”

But Phillips said it was welcome that the G20 was stepping back from imposing the “Washington Consensus” of orthodox free-market policies on developing countries.

Instead, the draft communique says they must be engaged as “partners, respecting national ownership of a country’s policies as the most important determinant of its successful development.”

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