PAKISTAN: Anger Seethes Over Siddiqi Verdict, Questions Remain http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50289

Apart from stoking increased anti-U.S. sentiment in this South Asian country, the Siddiqi case has also given fresh impetus to the issue of missing persons, a euphemism for kidnappings carried out by military spy agencies. "It has proven what we had been suspecting all along, that our rulers are more loyal to the U.S. than to their people," said Amena Janjua, whose husband Masood Ahmed Janjua was picked up in July 2005, for alleged links with al-Qaeda, and remains missing to date.

According to Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 242 people remained missing in 2009. A year after Aafia’s disappearance, in 2004, Pakistan’s interior ministry confirmed that she had been handed over to the U.S. authorities.

Bushra Gohar, a parliamentarian with the Awami National Party, said: "It shows how we have eroded our sovereignty and our citizens’ rights under some agreements made by dictators. Apparently, the government has paid a large sum of taxpayers’ money for her (Aafia’s) defence in the U.S., which is rather odd."  "First she is handed over and then we are spending huge amounts to fight her case," said Gohar, who strongly supports Aafia’s extradition.

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The US is Now a Police State http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02102010.html

There is no more complete or compelling evidence of a police state than the government announcing that it will murder its own citizens if it views them as a “threat.”Ironic, isn’t it, that “the war on terror” to make us safe ends in a police state with the government declaring the right to murder American citizens who it regards as a threat.

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Olympics: Showdown in Vancouver http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2010/02/olympics-showdown-in-vancouver.html

Upon arrival at Vancouver International Airport everything was smooth, suave, and sparkly. I immediately encountered colorful billboards splashed with 2010 Winter Olympic Games ad copy blending gold medals, commercial merchandise, and sports clichés. I was barraged with offers of assistance by friendly folks donning shiny nametags and chartreuse vests emblazoned with the official Olympic logo.

But as I took mass transit into downtown Vancouver—where the Olympic Games opening ceremonies will take place on Friday—I began to sense what activist Harsha Walia of No One Is Illegal and the Olympic Resistance Movement described as “the overall militarization of Vancouver, an encroaching police and surveillance state.”

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Venezuela Incinerates Three Tons of Drugs http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2010/february/11/latam-10021103.htm

Venezuela today incinerated three tons of narcotics in the ecological oven of Maiquetia International Airport, reported the National Anti-Drug Office (ONA). According to the executive of the Ministry of Interior and Justice, Miossoty Gomez, the destroyed narcotics were those seized by the body of laws and public order in the Capital District, during the last quarter of 2009.We incinerated marijuana and high purity cocaine occupied in different procedures by the Bolivarian National Guard, the scientific police, Metropolitana, and those from Caracas, Chacao and Baruta, she specified.

According to the official, the modern oven located in Maiquetia, allows the complete destruction of narcotics, without causing environmental damages. In the incineration, in addition to the ONA, participated the Attorney General and representatives of the security forces.Venezuelan authorities seized over 60 tons of drugs in 2009.The incineration of these narcotics takes place in a system of ecological ovens installed in the country, and new units should be incorporated this year..

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Venezuelan Ambassador Responds to Intelligence Report http://hcvanalysis.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/venezuelan-ambassador-responds-to-intelligence-report/

Venezuela engages openly with its regional neighbors through a number of mechanisms, including the Bolivarian Alliance of the People of Our Americas (ALBA), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the South American Common Market (MERCOSUR) and a variety of energy initiatives such as PetroCaribe. These mechanisms allow the countries of the region to better cooperate on issues of mutual concern, particularly in developing strategies to overcome poverty.

These alliances do not threaten the U.S. – in fact, a hemisphere more aggressively working together to fight social exclusion is more likely to be stable in the long-run.After reading Mr. Blair’s report, one cannot help but wonder what a country like Venezuela has done to the U.S. to justify the cynicism and unsubstantiated accusations its government so irresponsibly lobs at us.The only answer seems to be that we have refused to “obey” hegemonic prescriptions and have decided to chart our own path towards full democracy and equitable development.

We are only a “threat” to those that still see Latin America as part of the U.S.’s “backyard” instead of co-equal regional neighbors. Unfortunately, this report is just a carbon-copy of the Cold War mentality that for too long reigned over U.S. relations with the region, favoring dictatorships and allowing gross human right violations in the name of U.S. interests.Let me reassure you that, contrary to Mr. Blair’s report, there is no “anti-Americanism” in the Government of Venezuela. However, we do reject imperial policies that dictate the kind of development and democracy we should seek. This is why we demand respect for and will defend our sovereignty at any cost.

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“More Terror” in Honduras, as Another Unionist Murdered http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5522/another_honduran_unionist_murdered/

The body of 29-year-old Vanessa Yamileth Zepeda, still dressed in her nurse’s scrubs and killed by a bullet, turned up in the Loarque neighborhood of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on February 4. Zepeda had young children and was a leader of the SITRAIHSS labor union (Workers Union for the Honduran Social Security Institute). She had been abducted that afternoon while leaving a union meeting.  

The administration of the newly inaugurated President Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo has called Zepeda’s murder and other recent attacks common crime. But the Honduran resistance movement – mobilized since the June 2009 coup against then-president Manuel Zelaya – see it as a clear message.Trade unionists, especially public sector workers like Zepeda, are among the strongest and largest factions making up the resistance coalition. Opposition to powerful unions was apparently among the motivations for the coup in the first place, and all the country’s major union federations are part of the resistance front.

Unions are an impediment to neoliberal pushes to increase privatization, and foreign companies fear clashes with unions or unionizing efforts in Honduras’ maquila (factory) sector.Since Lobo’s inauguration on January 27, there have been 10 to 15 assassinations of resistance members and leaders, according to Victoria Cervantes, a Chicago activist who recently returned from meeting with unionists and other groups in Honduras with the group La Voz de los de Abajo.

comment-also see...Washington behind the Honduras coup: Here is the evidence http://links.org.au/node/1147  

ISS - Key leaders of Honduras military coup trained in U.S http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/06/key-leaders-of-honduras-military-coup-trained-in-us.html

Foreign Policy in Focus | Honduran Coup: The U.S. Connection http://www.fpif.org/articles/honduran_coup_the_us_connection

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Christians in Resistance Honduras http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/2010/02/christians-in-resistance-honduras.html

“So under this situation of the coup we took the brave and risky position to be on the side of justice, on the side of persecuted, suffering people, and denounce those who used weapons against the people with the blessing of the church hierarchies. Those of us here represent Christians who have a clear theological position about what is happening in Honduras.”“The Popular Christian Movement is ecumenical and includes Protestants, Catholics, and those who are not of any particular faith. Our fundamental theology is the theology of liberation.”

The pastors involved with the Ecumenical Human Rights Observation told us , “We accompany the resistance; we are in the streets, we march with the resistance, we pray with the resistance and we sing with the resistance, and we are beaten and swallow tear gas with the resistance because we see the Christ who walks with the people. But also we provide humanitarian help, medical help, food, and lodging when the resistance has needed it.

The pastors said that there has also been pressure from the U.S. religious leadership on Honduran churches not to oppose the coup. There has also been repression against religious figures in resistance. “Father Tamayo had his citizenship nullified by the golpistas and he was expelled from Honduras. (Note: Father Tamayo is a prominent resistance priest who was originally from El Salvador and became a Honduran citizen)

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Students as Spies: The Deep Politics of U.S.-Colombian Relations http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2358-students-as-spies-the-deep-politics-of-us-colombian-relations

The police and armed forces, of course, are institutions whose crimes have been many and varied on Uribe’s watch, as evidenced by the “false positives” scandal in 2008, in which it came to light that since 2002, the Colombian army has given officers and soldiers incentives and rewards to disappear and murder perhaps 1,700 unemployed young men across the country and dress them up to look like guerrillas. In January, 46 officers and soldiers charged with these crimes were freed on a technicality and confined to a base just south of Bogotá, where they will remain awaiting trial.

The army gave them a welcome-home party featuring therapeutic workshops and aromatherapy, massages and makeovers for their wives, and clowns for the kids. This is the army that has received the bulk of the $7 billion that the U.S. government has dispensed through Plan Colombia and its successors under Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama. As anthropologist-historian David Price reports for CounterPunch, Uribe’s drive to recruit informants among university students is similar to what is taking place in the United States, where Washington has served as a pilot project.

With operations on 22 campuses set up since 2006, the so-called Intelligence Community Centers of Academic Excellence represent the largest recruitment drive on U.S. campuses since the early Cold War. Recruiting today, however, is open and a matter of public record, though not a matter of public protest, since the professoriate has thus far remained silent on the issue.

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Globalization is Killing the Globe: Return to Local Economies http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Globalization-Is-Killing-T-by-Thom-Hartmann-100208-651.html

The transnational corporations benefiting from globalization are also, in most cases, the transnational corporations that own our media, so even the word globalization is rarely heard in reports on economic crises around the world.

But globalization is the villain here, and one that needs to be taken in hand and brought under control quickly if we don't want to see virtually the nations of the world end up subservient to corporate control, a new form of an ancient economic system known as feudalism.

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Brazilian farmers declare war on Monsanto http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/i-news-item/11918-razilian-farmers-declare-war-on-monsanto

Growers in [the Brazilian State of] Mato Grosso have declared war against Monsanto, the multinational corporate owner of the GMO soya technology known as RR (Roundup Ready). After exhausting all attempts to engage the company in dialogue, the growers are now considering legal action. In Cuiaba, Aprosoja (the Association of Soya and Corn Producers Association of the State of Mato Grosso) is preparing a lawsuit. In Sinop (500km North of Cuiaba) the growers are looking to sue the company as well.