U.S. President George W. Bush, visiting the Saudi capital on Friday, hoped to formalize new agreements that would give the relationship between the two countries a boost.

Among them was an agreement for the U.S. to assist the kingdom in developing civilian nuclear power. Another agreement involves U.S. promises to help protect any Saudi nuclear infrastructure with training, the exchange of experts and other support services as needed. Hadley said it would not involve U.S. troops.

But the rising price of oil commanded attention. Saudi Arabia’s leaders made clear they see no reason to increase oil production until customers demand it, apparently rebuffing Bush amid soaring U.S. gasoline prices.

That would be the ‘Kingdom’ from where most of the 911 hijackers originated and that Bin Laden chap…kinda a Saudi bigwig, but Iran….Noooo, they mustn’t have nuclear power, they aren’t Empire aligned. They don’t hold hands with George.

Background on the history.

As many have recounted he rolls up in the Knesset and proceeds to give a speech variously-

• Playing the Holocaust card (despite his families fascist past -coup plotting in the US- and support and dealings with the Nazis).
• That he’s like the people who didn’t appease Hitler and fought back for freedom and all that good stuff in WWll (except he’s the one invading countries in wars of aggression, institutionalising torture and designating people legally sub human).
• And is so rabidly Zionist even manic Zionists are overwhelmed with his zeal -He later proposed that Bush should replace Olmert-(never mind this leads to suspicions that this born again idiot has swallowed the dominionists end timer shit whole, that Israel must occupy all the lands to trigger the apocalypse where the Jews must either be slain or convert to Christianity as they fight the ‘Beast’ and the rapture saves the righteous right out of their shoes).

As has been observed this is green light to the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestine, there’ll still be the fiction of ‘peace talks’ after all easier to coordinate atrocities under cover of talks. And the main attraction-yes we are with you all the way me and my neo-con/Likudnik friends in getting our war on with Iran.

To top this Bush now needs to appear live on stage balls deep in a 3 year old girl pledging to find Madeleine McCann and stamp out the horrors of child abuse, he then slits the girls throat and finishes with a sanctity of life bit and how abortion is bad as the red stains spread on his $400 shirt- Thank you and goodnight, try the veal!

There comes a point when you can no longer afford to ignore it. You may, if you are lucky, have found it hard to get worked up about the fact that the average loaf of sliced bread now costs £1.15, compared with less than £1 last year. You may have shrugged on learning that a pint of semi-skimmed milk will currently set you back approximately 20% more than it did in May 2007. But you would have to be really very relaxed - or very flush - indeed not to be moved by the realisation that when a dozen medium free-range eggs are also up 47%, salted butter 62%, Basmati rice 60%, cheddar 25%, pork 7% and beef nearly 5%, you are paying an awful lot more for your groceries than you were a year ago.

According to the Office of National Statistics, food prices have climbed 6.6% over the past 12 months (and April’s hike equalled the fastest increase recorded since the consumer price index was invented 11 years ago). The big supermarkets, which constantly juggle prices across the whole of their range, dispute this figure. But a survey of 24 staple products this week by the mysupermarket.co.uk website, which compares prices at Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and online supermarket Ocado, found that the average family is now spending around 20% more on its weekly food shopping than it was 12 months ago

Yeah the 6.6% figure is not at all reflective of the reality but of course figures like that and fiddled inflation figures will be how various pay & benefits is indexed so even statutory increases are in fact not keeping pace with reality and represent defacto reductions. So does the govt. and the other neoliberal parties think the poor will keep taking this crap as the rich continue to accelerate their wealth acquisition? Certainly informal barter economies and exchequer invisible cash transactions are on the increase, that’s part of how people not blessed with that wonderful term ‘disposable income’ survive. If the state no longer is interested in the welfare of the people then the people are going to get on without it, when government is just the middle management for the ruling class (trans-Atlantic at that) people know which side their increasingly expensive bread is (increasingly expensive) buttered. And it ain’t Nu-fucking-Labour. Sadly the media pretends there are only three parties (price of admission to this clique appears to be uncritical acceptance of neoliberal tenets), the left is fractured and censored out of mass market information but the need for it is greater than ever. The leftists who are still Labour members and the left outside (and that includes disaffected LibDems) of Labour need to find what they agree on and the millions betrayed by the big parties need to be reached via all kinds of media new and old, in the meantime enjoy a paramilitary police force armed with Tasers and look forward to BlairXtreme! Awesome Dude!- Prime Minister David ‘the toff you can trust’ Cameron. Jeebus.

Ret. Gen. Thomas McInerney: Here’s what I would suggest to you. Number one, we take the National Council for Resistance to Iran off the terrorist list that the Clinton Administration put them on as well as the Mujahedin-e Khalq at the Camp Ashraf in Iraq. Then I would start a tit-for-tat strategy which I wrote up in the Wall Street Journal a year ago: For every EFP that goes off and kills Americans, two go off in Iran. No questions asked. People don’t have to know how it was done. It’s a covert action. They become the most unlucky country in the world…

As the piece goes on to say this is pretty well much already happening, but when it is openly advocated- the terrorism of the Empire’s War OF Terror- that the IDF’s idea of several eyes for an eye has more fans in the Homeland, along with the torture and wars of aggression…

Also the UK weakly (as in not enough to effect it and piss off it’s Whitehouse masters) gave up appealing the neocons favourite terrorist group be taken off the the list. A Confederacy of Wankers!

I am preoccupied by unpleasant 3D world things, so some unpredictability is in the mix and will be for a while. Meanwhile here’s a nice editorial by Raed Jarrar & Erik Leaver which is a good answer to those appalling war criminals (of all political hues) who having destroyed Iraq, killed over a million people, made 5 million refugees and installed a puppet regime who then blame the Iraqis for not doing enough to rebuild the country in the neoliberal image the invaders dictate (of course the other good answer to them is: Which part of ‘Go Fuck Yourself War Criminal Scum- Withdrawal, Reparations, Prosecutions’ don’t you understand?)-

Congress should stop blaming the Iraqi government for our economic woes. As our economy sputters to a halt and Congress is set to spend an additional $160 billion on the war, U.S. lawmakers are openly criticizing the Iraqi government for not paying the bills.

New legislation for funding the Iraq War includes language demanding Iraqis pay for half of future reconstruction and provide subsidies for fuel purchased by the U.S. military.

Such calls by lawmakers ignore the fact that the financial hardship our nation is suffering has much more to do with our own housing mess and with the high costs of the war than with the Iraqis not paying their way. And as a matter of fact, a recent audit by the inspector general for Iraq found that Iraq has spent more than the United States on reconstruction.

Even though the United States has international legal obligations for reconstruction as an occupying power, it has spent less than $30 billion on reconstruction projects over the last five years.

To date, there is little to show for the money spent by the United States for reconstruction.

Iraq’s infrastructure is a disaster.

Electricity, access to water, sanitation, roads and health care are still, in most cases, at levels lower than before the occupation began. Three out of every four Iraqis have no access to basic services, and 20 percent to 60 percent are unemployed. Reconstruction projects have helped U.S. contractors far more than the Iraqi people.

Yes, the Iraqi government certainly deserves criticism. It is highly corrupt, unpopular and unrepresentative.

And, yes, ultimately it is up to the Iraqis to rebuild their own country. But no incentives for reconstruction or reconciliation exist without a timeline for U.S. withdrawal. As long as fighting is still taking place and the country remains occupied by a foreign power that is supporting a handful of political leaders against the rest of the population, any hopes for reconstruction and reconciliation are idle.

Instead of trying to shift the blame to the Iraqis, the U.S. government needs to provide a timetable for U.S. withdrawal and to secure long-term funding for the reconstruction that can get under way once we leave.

Reconstruction is not an impossible task. Iraq has gone through two major reconstruction campaigns during the last two decades: one after the Iraq-Iran war and the other after the 1991 Gulf War. Both times, Iraqis managed to mobilize their human resources and fix the country. They can do it again.

As tempting as it may be to try to make the Iraqis pay the massive bills the war is costing the United States, the best way to reduce the burden of the war and occupation on the U.S. economy is not to find someone else to foot the bill. It’s to stop the war.

[Raed Jarrar is a consultant for the American Friends Service Committee. Erik Leaver is the policy outreach director for the Foreign Policy In Focus project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. They wrote this for Progressive Media Project]

As Andy Rowell and James Marriott have noted, the key fact is that “some 30 per cent of America’s oil will come from Africa in the next ten years”. (Rowell and Marriott, A Game as Old as Empire - The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption, edited by Steven Hiatt, Berrett-Koehler, 2007, p.118 )

The US has plans for nearly two-thirds of Somalia’s oil fields to be allocated to the US oil companies Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips. The US hopes Somalia will line up as an ally alongside Ethiopia and Djibouti, where the US has a military base. This alliance would give America powerful leverage close to the major energy-producing regions.

Chatham House, a British think tank of the independent Royal Institute of International Affairs, commented on US and Ethiopian intervention last year:

“In an uncomfortably familiar pattern, genuine multilateral concern to support the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Somalia has been hijacked by unilateral actions of other international actors - especially Ethiopia and the United States - following their own foreign policy agendas.” (http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/15545)

Predictably, the government’s strategic silence is reflected in press reporting. In the last year, the words ‘Somalia’ and ‘famine’ have appeared in a grand total of seven British broadsheet newspaper articles discussing the topic. Of the few references to the latest US attack in the British press over the last week, only the Independent and the Sunday Times made briefs references to Somalia’s humanitarian crisis. The Independent noted that life for Somalia’s nine million residents has become “unbearable”. The Guardian merely quoted Reuters:

“Western security services have long seen Somalia as a haven for militants. Warlords overthrew dictator Siad Barre in 1991, casting the country into chaos.” (Reuters, ‘US airstrike kills head of al-Qaida in Somalia,’ Guardian International, May 2, 2008 )

The Amnesty report was mentioned in three broadsheet newspapers. Of these, the Guardian failed to mention the US role at all. Ian Black commented:

“Ethiopia sent in troops in December 2006 and ejected them. Since then, Mogadishu has been caught up in a guerrilla war between the government and its Ethiopian allies and the Islamist insurgents. Up to 1 million Somalians are internally displaced.” (Ian Black, ‘Somali refugees speak of horrific war crimes,’ The Guardian, May 7, 2008 )

By contrast, a short Independent piece led with the US role:

“Amnesty International has called for the role of the United States in Somalia to be investigated, following publication of a report accusing its allies of committing war crimes.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news /world/politics/call-for-inquiry-into-us -role-in-somalia-822166.html)

Amnesty’s Dave Copeman was cited:

“There are major countries that have significant influence. The US, EU and European countries need to exert that influence to stop these attacks.”

This is the sole reference to Copeman’s comments in the entire national UK press.

On 3rd May Cyclone Nargis hit Burma and caused massive destruction. The death toll from the cyclone continues to rise and over 1.5 million people are now at risk. We know that diseases, such as cholera, dysentery and malaria, are spreading. If the world does not intervene soon, the death toll could rise by thousands every day.

No country could cope with a disaster of this scale alone, yet Burma’s Generals are shunning the world’s offers of help; they’d rather see their citizens die than accept help from overseas.

If any country can make the generals change their mind, it is China. We have witnessed the recent terrible loss of life in China following the devastating earthquake. However, the response to the two natural disasters could not be more different. While the Chinese government responded quickly, dispatching 50,000 troops, and Premier Wen Jiabao immediately flying to the disaster area, the Burmese regime continues to block aid efforts.

China has a very close relationship with Burma’s generals, supplying them with weapons, economic assistance and protecting them at the UN Security Council. This weekend China blocked moves at the UN for a Security Council resolution telling the generals to let aid in. Every hour China protects Burma, more people will die.

Please take action now.
Please help us break the deadlock. Please email China and demand that they stop blocking UN action. Your email will be sent to the Chinese representatives at the UN and in the UK.

Dozens of US and foreign companies will be forced to fight off costly lawsuits claiming that they helped South Africa’s white rulers repress blacks during the apartheid era, after the US Supreme Court failed to intervene on Monday.

ExxonMobil, IBM, Credit Suisse and 30 other companies had tried to persuade the court to reverse an appeals court ruling that had allowed the apartheid case, American Isuzu Motors v Ntsebeza, to proceed.

Several justices had earlier expressed a dim view of the apartheid “reparations” litigation, but the court was unable to intervene because too many justices held stock in or had some family connections with the companies involved, and so had conflicts of interest that prevented them from sitting on the case.

The Supreme Court’s failure to act will allow the lawsuit, which at one point claimed $400bn in damages, to go forward in a New York court.

But this does not guarantee victory to the plaintiffs, apartheid victims who claim big multinational companies aided and abetted apartheid South Africa’s violations of international law.

The Bush administration had backed the companies before the Supreme Court, saying that the lawsuit, “effectively seeks to overturn South Africa’s post-apartheid policy of reconciliation”.

The case involves the Alien Tort Statute, which allows non-US citizens to bring suit in US federal courts for some violations of international law.

The US business community has been struggling for years to persuade the Supreme Court to limit such Alien Tort suits and yesterday’s move constitutes a setback for this effort.

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of elite capitalist bigots, their own investments, their own unprincipled greed finally throws on a big hat with KARMA written on it and their game is up.

The Emergency Assistance Team (EAT-BURMA) is working at the grassroots level to provide aid and assistance to the people affected by Cyclone Nargis in the Irrawaddy and Rangoon division areas.

EAT is working with networks of local organisations and concerned individuals in Burma to get food, water, cooking equipment, shelter, clothing, health services and rehabilitation to those most in need. This will be provided by working directly with the affected communities.

For the safety of our teams and the people inside, we cannot give out information regarding the exact location of our teams, nor their identities. But we are working with a team of about 40 people on the ground who are each working with their own networks of local organisations and people.

You can make a donation through the Mae Tao Clinic donation page. Please put “Cylcone Nargis Disaster Relief” in the ‘Purpose’ field.

Currently, we urgently need funds to support the people inside and to address the most important needs of the people there. We will provide regular reports and updates to all of our donors on how this money is used. We hope to be able to provide photos of the work we do as well as these reports.

We estimate that we need 10 million baht for the first three weeks.

Mae Tao Clinic has been designated to take responsibility for the funds by the group. Donations may be sent through Mae Tao Clinic’s website (www.maetaoclinic.org) or by contacting Mae Tao Clinic directly: win7@loxinfo.co.th (attention Lisa).

Via Burma Campaign UK

The UK’s first memorial to the one million disabled people who were persecuted, sterilised or killed by Nazi Germany has been unveiled. Survivors, celebrities and disability groups were at the event, where a rose and plaque were dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust’s disabled victims. Plans for a permanent sculpture were also revealed at the Holocaust Centre in Laxton, Nottinghamshire.

Artist Alison Lapper said it had been “an amazing day”. Ms Lapper, who was the model for Marc Quinn’s statue that occupied Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth, added: “It is so important that these people have finally been put on the map. “It has been an excellent day, I hope it has opened people’s hearts and minds.”

The centre’s Stephen Smith said there had been “little recognition” of the persecution the disabled suffered. Up to 270,000 disabled people died in the Holocaust. Six major killing centres for the disabled were set up around Germany. Mr Smith said: “While discrimination against those with disability is outlawed in our society, we must work together to counter the prejudice that remains.”

Yeah we should shouldn’t we…

The draconian measures laid out in the Welfare Reform Act 2007 are now being implemented in Britain by the Labour government of Prime Minster Gordon Brown. The Act represents a wide-ranging attack on millions of the poorest and most vulnerable people who rely on Incapacity Benefit (IB). Recipients of the benefit are deemed unable to work due to poor physical or mental health.

The main aim is to force people into work under threat of poverty. The government has stated it intends to cut the number of Incapacity Benefit claimants by 20,000 each year.

Since the measures were first mooted in 2006, a campaign based on demonising Incapacity Benefit claimants has swung into operation. This has been fuelled by incessant media scare stories about Incapacity Benefit “scroungers”, “spongers” and “cheats” who claim the benefit “fraudulently” instead of working.

Features of the reform are familiar from other policy areas. First, a demonisation of a needy or vulnerable group, followed by a rebranding: so claimants become not even “clients” but “customers” (as in the just published “Commissioning Strategy” document); incapacity benefit becomes employment and support allowance; sick notes are redrafted for doctors to certify, not what patients can’t but what they can do. Next come “partnerships”, on an unchallenged assumption that the public sector has failed. The new system is farmed out to for-profit or non-profit-making agencies paid by results. This entails targets, and where targets are set, sanctions follow, for any who “fail to recover”

After John McCain nailed down the Republican nomination in March, his campaign began wrestling with a sensitive personnel issue: who would manage this summer’s GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn.? The campaign recently tapped Doug Goodyear for the job, a veteran operative and Arizonan who was chosen for his “management experience and expertise,” according to McCain press secretary Jill Hazelbaker. But some allies worry that Goodyear’s selection could fuel perceptions that McCain—who has portrayed himself as a crusader against special interests—is surrounded by lobbyists. Goodyear is CEO of DCI Group, a consulting firm that earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil, General Motors and other clients.

Potentially more problematic: the firm was paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent Burma’s military junta, which had been strongly condemned by the State Department for its human-rights record and remains in power today. Justice Department lobbying records show DCI pushed to “begin a dialogue of political reconciliation” with the regime. It also led a PR campaign to burnish the junta’s image, drafting releases praising Burma’s efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing “falsehoods” by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses. “It was our only foreign representation, it was for a short tenure, and it was six years ago,” Goodyear told NEWSWEEK, adding the junta’s record in the current cyclone crisis is “reprehensible.”(ht2 C&L)

When you took the money they were also reprehensible, so shut up. I’d also just like to suggest the reason McCain gets such an easy ride from the empire’s corporate press is because they hold views broadly similar to his and prefer them coming from a white guy with military accoutrements than anyone else. Class, patriarchy, imperialism, whatever. Stop being surprised by this!

Here’s how the figures add up, just for Americans. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have thus far produced 300,000 psychological casualties, 320,000 brain injury casualties, plus 35,000 (probably understated) officially reported “normal” casualties. This adds up to 655,000 US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, an average of just under 101,000 Americans killed or wounded every year since the wars began. If the idea of 101,000 casualties for every extra year in Iraq and Afghanistan gets out and infects the voting public, imagine the effect on the currently torpid national debate over leaving in five years versus fifteen years!

The Associated Press and major newspapers outlined the RAND report’s astounding numbers and then the story slid from view, which is a very bad thing, since the report disclosed in compelling numbers that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are steadily filling every American community with psychologically and physically mutilated victims of war. Many of them will endure lives saturated with physical pain and mental turmoil or confusion. A proportion will be prone to alcoholism, drug use and violence, sometimes deadly. Their partners and their children will suffer all measure of scarring.

Myanmar puts vote before aid effort- Al Jazeera’s Veronica Pedrosa, reporting from neighbouring Thailand, said the government was determined to push through the referendum which the ruling military hopes will secure backing for a new constitution. “Despite the disaster - despite perhaps a million and a half people at risk of dehydration and starvation - this election is the absolute number one priority for the government,” she said.

Al Jazeera correspondent Tony Cheng, who posed as a tourist to cross into northern Myanmar on Saturday, saw a heavy security presence on the streets as voting go under way. He said there had been a lot of intimidation from the military for a yes vote to back the new constitution.

Interesting hearings in Canada where a competitor (not such a great witness but makes the point the burden of proof for the Tasers lethality has been put on the public victims, the corporation and authorities -the corporatist state- are not properly independently testing) and a cardiologist (much better and Taser tried to soft silence him, ie. let us pay for you to research, wink wink), the hearings are due to the widely distributed video of the police killing Robert Dziekanski with their Tasers in Vancouver International Airport-

VANCOUVER–The company that sells more conducted energy weapons to law enforcement than any other rushed to market with faulty safety and medical research, claims the head of a company that plans to market a device to compete with the Taser.

Ken Stethem, founder and chairman of Ageis Industries, told the public inquiry into Taser use that Taser International’s methodology was flawed in designing, developing and deploying the conducted energy weapons (CEWs). Normally a company would develop medical and safety data, then test the product on animals and humans, Stethem told the inquiry. “In my humble opinion that’s not how the current CEWs were developed and deployed. And that’s why we’re having problems today.”

Stethem disputed several claims made by Taser on medical evidence and safety connected to the device. He pointed to Taser’s patent information that says the device puts out between 100 and 500 milliamps of electricity. Medical experts say it only takes about 100 milliamps to cause the heart to go into a fatal rhythm, Strethem told the inquiry. He said medical studies say low voltage electrocutions can happen without any visible evidence of injury.

“Now the burden of proof has been shifted to the public that these aren’t safe, instead of law enforcement and manufacturers that they are,” Strethem told the inquiry.

Stethem’s company designs what he called intermediate force options similar to a conducted energy weapon in a baton that incapacitates muscles with electrical output. “I’m not here to bang Taser International or anybody else,” he told commissioner Thomas Braidwood. “I’m here to report what we’ve learned through our research.”

The chairman of Taser International, Tom Smith, will have a chance to respond to the accusations when he speaks to the inquiry on Monday.

A heart-rhythm expert also told the inquiry there are real risks to Taser use, despite the company’s safety claims. “Just because somebody collapses of sudden death minutes later after a Taser application doesn’t mean that the two are not connected,” said Dr. Zian Tseng, a San Francisco cardiologist and electrophysiologist.

Tseng said any normal, healthy person could die from a jolt of the conducted energy weapon if the shock was given in the right area of the chest and during the vulnerable point in the beating of the heart.

He stressed the risk of death is far greater if there is adrenaline or illicit drugs coursing through the body or if the person has a history of heart or other medical issues.

Tseng fell into studying conducted energy weapons about three years ago when he created a media storm by telling a San Francisco newspaper the device could induce cardiac arrhythmia.

“Shortly thereafter I was contacted by Taser directly to reconsider my statements to the media. They even offered to support (my) research, to give me grant funding,” Tseng said, adding he declined the offer in order to remain independent.

Tseng said there needs to be much more real-world studies on the use of the weapon, instead of using police officers – often large, healthy males – to test the device.

He also said medical examiners should be given more freedom to investigate such deaths, even seizing the weapon for investigation if necessary.

“If there’s a person that dropped dead suddenly after Taser application and you can find nothing else on the autopsy, I would venture to say that’s due to arrhythmic death.”

The risk to suspects being shocked could almost be zero to the heart if police avoided using the weapon in the chest area, and Tsang suggested that be one of Braidwood’s recommendations.

Tsang also said police should avoid repeated shocks to lessen the chance they’ll set the heart into an abnormal rhythm.

He said the risks are very low of a person dying while being arrested by police.

“What we don’t know is has the Taser increased that risk from that very low rate to a slightly higher rate.”

The inquest was launched after the very public video of the minutes before Robert Dziekanski’s death was aired world wide.

The Polish immigrant created a disturbance last October at the arrivals area of the Vancouver International Airport and was twice shocked by an RCMP Taser.

Also see this light hearted fluff (interesting that only Canada is seeming to take the issue seriously, with trials underway in the UK we need some serious investigations, while America embraces yet another weapon) about the marketing of lady tasers via parties, now in leopard print!