This article talks about the situation of Haiti and its coup last year which led to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide being overthrown and forced out. On why Aristide was perceived widely as a corrupt and brutal leader:
"The North American liberal elite feels it can sit in judgment on the leaders of movements in Latin America who dare to challenge U.S. hegemony. Never mind that these leaders had the overwhelming support of the poor in their countries."

From an article in the Guardian of England speaking out on circumstances behind recent coups in former Soviet republics like Kyrgzstan:
"This myth of the masses spontaneously rising up against an authoritarian regime now exerts such a grip over the collective imagination that it persists despite being obviously false: try to imagine the American police allowing demonstrators to ransack the White House, and you will immediately understand that these "dictatorships" in the former USSR are in reality among the most fragile, indulgent and weak regimes in the world."

From the same site, on the situation in Iraq and the US occupation.
Things are going bad for the US and the poor US soldiers as hatred and rage against them grows and mounts with each passing month.

As the losses keep mounting for the US as well as Iraqis, the US army is desperate to gain new recruits as told in this Counterpunch article.

From alternet.org, a news log/blog on the war in Iraq .

Here's a small taste of the posts from it: Reservists and guardsmen now comprise almost half of the 150,000 troops currently in Iraq

The reconstruction of Iraq could become the "biggest corruption scandal in history.
Both are among the lesser-known but most troubling aspects of the situation in Iraq.

A personal account from a BBC correspondent in Congo, actually written a few years ago. It seems things have not changed one bit in terms of the suffering going on there and the mass indifference from the west especially media. A brief description of the situation in Eastern Congo.
Though many newsources refer to the country as Congo, its full name is the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was formely called Zaire and a colony of Belgium who exploited its vast natural resources while oppressing the native peoples.

4 million dead-Dec. 2004
The Congo war/conflicts/tragedy continues to extract a grim toll from Congolese civilians with hunger and disease causing most of the deaths.

Poll shows Congo war is world's top forgotten (and ignored) crisis
Describing the results of a recent Reuters poll of experts on which "forgotten" crises should be focused on by the media, Africa featured in the results with Congo, Uganda and Sudan topping.

The Western media is accused by experts "of routinely ignoring emergencies in countries of little geopolitical significance for big powers despite the enormous scale of suffering." A great point presented in this one sentence.


War poverty forces locals into sex trade with UN troops
This in itself is a major tragedy of the Congo war, however delving into the article one finds even more disturbing examples of how depraved the situation there is. Apparently many "Congolese tolerate the sex trade with the UN soldiers" because unlike the local militias the UN troops actually pay for their sex. War causes many horrible actions and the mass rape and kidnapping of women and girls is one of them.
Not content with having cheap sex with young girls, some UN soldiers have also been accused of rape. These poor women have suffered double tragedies, that of having to live in extreme poverty and turmoil because of the fighting and instability and then being forced by poverty to have sex with soldiers who are supposed to protect them, but who exploit them by paying them a dollar.

If you want to get a better understanding of why Iraqi "insurgents" or resistance battle against American forces in spite of overwhelming odds, read this brief post of an American soldier's sad experience in Iraq during his tour of duty.

A village protest turns into violent riot of thousands
Thousands of protestors and thousands of riot police that is. This happened in a coastal province in China where apparently violent and mass rural demonstrations have become increasingly common because of growing economic developments which have led to mounting corruption, mass layoffs and increasing construction which cause high pollution or displace many people from their homes. Beside rural villages and displaced persons, protests have even broken out over frustrations over unemployment as happened in Shenzhen at a job fair.
The government actually said over 58,000 protests occured last year with more than 3 million people taking part (from the guardian article described above).
This is a natural escalation from the widening urban-rural income gap that has been going on in China while it undergoes its economic boom. Note: this article was written in 2004.

The elections held in Iraq and Palestine don't mean a great new flourishing of democracy and freedom in the Middle East. As maintained in this article, manipulations were involved in the elections to ensure favorable results for candidates and parties that had American support and backing.
The UK's Independent paper has this commentary on methods America is utilising in Iraq to ensure ongoing political and military control over that country.

People please realise that elections by themselves do NOT mean successful democracy regardless of huge voter turnout. While democratic elections have led to significant improvements in some countries, South Africa and Malysia for example, many times elections have been tampered or manipulated or even overturned by major powers (see Chilean coup of 1973 and Augusto Pinochet) to bring on candidates who then proceed to loot or oppress their own countries.

An interesting piece, with more than a little truth in it, about illusions of civil society regarding political changes. It describes the funding of foreign political groups as well as the growing use of manipulative acts in American politics such as having "fake" reporters and think-tanks whose main purpose is more creating propaganda rather than ideas. This can already clearly be seen in the town-hall meetings with GWBush where the partisan audience is pre-selected and their questions are pre-approved before actually being asked to the President.

Tens of thousands of Shiite Iraqis marched in the streets of Baghdad yesterday to protest the US occupation yesterday, the anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to US forces 2 years ago. Sunni Iraqis also plan to protest the US occupation but at at another date and place.

An insightful and revealing article on the event of last Saturday's major attack on the notorious Abu Ghraid prison which wounded 44 American troops and dozens of Iraqi militants.


Even if they were really smuggling, was it right to kill them? Latest violence concerning Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip in Palestine.

In southern Iraq, a zealous young cleric rallies support against US occupation with his militia, which after suffering heavy losses in hard fighting with US forces last year, is regrouping and on the rise again. Clearly the US army does not have full control over a large part of the country though it's also accurate to say the US does not have much support in most of the country either.

The injustice of Bush's sale of fighter jets to Pakistan and offer of military arms supply to India. Escalation of tensions, increased chance of war, higher destructiveness of war if it does break out and the use of large sums of valuable money to buy these high-tech weapons of destruction which instead could have been used for building schools, housing and improving infrastructure- there's a wide choice of reasons. Indian academic and peace activist Mr. P. Bidwai explains all this in further detail.

I've come across another interesting independent mediasite online. INTHEFRAY is an online magazine that looks at social issues such as race,belief and class in countries all over the world both rich and developing. It is primarily concerned with social justice and activism. I've only started visiting it last week so I haven't read much yet. It's definitely worth a look.

Fighting rages on in Chechnya.
Then again, fighting has been raging on for over 5 years. Currently we are in the second Chechnya war, the first which lasted between 1994 and 1996.

Chechnya war is largely ignored which is not surprising since the war takes place in a small obscure, mountainous Central Asian region. Terrible atrocities have been commited against the locals who fight back with fierce guerilla tactics and extreme measures like suicide bombings.
Also similarities have been made to the Afghan war in that though controlling the cities, vastly numerically and technologically-superior Russian military forces are being tied down in a brutal war and suffering heavy losses by local resistance hiding out in the countryside who doggedly refuse to allow occupiers (Soviets in Afghanistan-1980s) total control of their nation.

As fighting rages on in Iraq whilst GWBush keeps on coming up with new reasons to justify the invasion and the US Army desperately tries to boost enrollment of recruits, the American casualty rate climbs upwards steadily and daily. Countless Iraqi civilians suffer from the effects of occupation, seeing their country afflicted with crime and destruction when not being victims of fighting or arrests by US forces. Widespread opinion maintains that this suffering and instability is the fault of the "terrorists" or "extremists" who are evil and don't want their country to prosper. People don't seem to realise that maybe these "extremists" represent the majority of Iraqis who want American forces out. The resistance is indeed putting up good resistance against American forces and show no signs of defeat.
Immense damage and death has been caused by both Americans and insurgents/resistance forces. One of them is the invader but is generally perceived as the "good" side.
Look at this site to see some graphic and horrendous images from the Iraqi occupation. Some of them are disturbing. There's a lot of debate over the righteousness of the invasion of Iraq and most of it centers around GWBush and his administration and whether they were right or wrong. It's easy to forget or overlook the suffering of the Iraqi people themselves. It seems that everytime the injustice of the invasion and occupation comes up, Saddam keeps coming up as an convenient excuse for justifying the actions of the Americans.

There's some parallels with the Vietnam war. While much was made of the Communist threat and the role of Americans in defending the South from the North, a lot of suffering was inflicted by the Americans on the North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese peasants.
This is an excerpt from Jane Fonda's book on her visit to North Vietnam and how she broadcast messages from Hanoi appealing to US pilots of the damage done to dykes which when destroyed could drown civilians. The sadness should be for your country, your soldiers. They don't know why they are fighting us

Brief insight into sheer plight of Zimbabwe from CSM

You can't argue with this- more billionaires and millionaires, more poor people.

While the situation in Iraq receives lots of media attention regularly, though ironically the more violence and instability that happens the less the coverage (whereas the more optimistic or supposedly positive, the coverage picks up again like in the recent elections)
Afghanistan features little in the media 2 years after the invasion.
There was some publicity with US First Lady Laura Bush's visit last week. But regarding everything else such as the aftermath of the elections and the conflict and poverty afflicting much of that country, nothing.

Suspected Darfur perpetrators to be tried in ICC (International Criminal Court)

Time to wake up to the truth. Modern America's decline?

Very incredible to believe, blame it on the drunkard. If this was really so, this means the most powerful nation on Earth based their whole invasion of Iraq on the lies of some crazy lying scam-artist.

Hezbullah accused of offering money to fundamentalist fighters to launch (suicide) attacks in Israel. It is known that Iran is the main supporter/ sponsor of Hezbullah but it seems the article's headline is a bit too presumptive. The article itself offers scant evidence that Iran directly offered cash for bombs to break Palestinian truce.

People who think Iraq has undergone so much benefits since the US invasion and question why Iraqis aren't grateful enough to the US and why there are so many anti-US critics and advocates regarding Iraq should read this thoroughly.

Update on Lebanon

Syrian troops continue to pull out to meet UN and US demands for total withdrawal before the upcoming elections. Fears and suspicions abound of civil unrest as Lebanon gets ready for its parliamentary elections in May. Still members of the different factions have been making efforts to unite and find common ground to prevent unnecessary bloodshed and agree on issues they can work on to improve their nation.

Mugabe wins elections in Zimbabwe after securing a majority with his ZANU-PF party. This isn't unexpected given Mugabe's rule over his country and the conditions under which the election was held, with alleged fraud, voter intimidation and threats to withhold food for rural citizens if they voted for the opposition.

US intelligence ‘dead wrong’ on Iraq threat

Yet weren't they saying Iraq had no WMDs back then, specifically fall of 2003? GWBush certainly wasn't listening then and even more damning is now, he accuses the intelligence community of not having the very information... which they had on Iraq and he didn't choose to listen to?
GWBush and his administration actually interfered, even tampered with the findings of the intelligence agencies back then to justify their invasion of Iraq.
I try to be more objective in my blogging but with today's findings and hypocrisy by GWBush, it's impossible to hold back my disgust for him.
Mugabe, Bush, Hussein... same injustice but in different forms.

Elections are underway in Zimbabwe as the oppostion tries to win an improbable victory inspite of dirty tricks and intimidation by incumbent ruler Robert Mugabe and his ruling party. These last few years have seen Zimbabwe slide deeper and deeper into a morass as Mugabe has turned into a despot with his diatribes,tightening of control over society using his feared state security srvice and his encouragement of armed invasions of white-owned farms and jailing of opposition party members and journalists. Once considered one of the most prosperous African countries Zimbabwe is now wrought with corruption, instability, repression and famine.