Photostory: The month in pictures, June 2008Electronic Intifada - 2 Jul 2008rr r r rr r rr r rr r rr r rr rrr rThe following slideshow is a selection of images from the month of June 2008. The month in pictures is an ongoing feature of The Electronic Intifada. If you have images documenting Palestine, Palestinian life, politics and culture, or of solidarity with Palestine, please email images and captions to photos A T electronicintifada D O T net.
The privileged prisoner of Black BeachUKWatch.net - 2 Jul 2008It is listed in one of the world?s top ten most notorious jails. Just the name Black Beach sends shivers down the spine of any convicted felon. The jail in Malabo, in Equatorial Guinea in central Africa has a gruesome reputation. Torture and starvation of inmates is said to be routine. The human rights organization Amnesty International describes incarceration in the prison as ?a slow, lingering death sentence?. One political campaigner from the country, released in 2006 said bluntly. ?Prisoners are tortured and just disappear and die. They weight their bodies with rocks and throw them in the sea. Their families never know what happened to them.? Equatorial Guinea is run by the iron-fist of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who seized power in a coup in 1979. Human rights groups say Mr Obiang?s corrupt regime is one of the worst abusers of rights in Africa. His reputation is fierce and he is said to enjoy eating the brains and testicles of his political opponents. This gruesome fate is unlikely to meet Black Beach?s most famous current inmate, the British mercenary Simon Mann, who had admitted to being central to an international plot in 2004 to overthrow the government of this oil-rich state. In his show trial this week, Mann pleaded guilty to being a member of a coup attempt to replace Mr Obiang with Severo Moto, an exiled opposition leader living in Spain. It was back in March 2004 that Mann and 69 South African mercenaries were arrested at Harare airport with a plane load of arms en route to Equatorial Guinea. Mann, who is a soldier of fortune, was educated at Britain?s top private school, Eton and later joined the country?s most elite regiment, the SAS. He was sentenced to seven years in Zimbabwe, which was subsequently reduced to four, although he was then transferred to Black Beach earlier this year. The bespectacled Mann has consistently tried to underplay his importance in the coup with a view of getting a reduced sentence. His friends try and portray him as an ?English gentleman?. One profile of Mann on the BBC last week, included the quote calling him a “humane man, but an adventurer… very English, a romantic, tremendously good company”. Even his defence lawyer claimed last week that a ?gentleman? who had collaborated with the court ?out of a sincere desire to repair the damage done to our people?. But this ?English gentleman? has also managed to get privileged treatment at prison, having his own his own cell, an exercise machine, books and magazines. He is allowed to make regular calls home and is said to lunches most days with the country?s Minister of Security, with special food and wine delivered to the prison. The simple fact is that Mann collaborated with the Equatorial regime as he does not want to spend years rotting in an African jail. Mann has claimed that his collaboration is out of concern for the people of Equatorial Guinea. But the bottom line is that he is a hired killer who has made millions out of being a soldier of fortune in Africa and elsewhere. In the early nineties he set up Executive Outcomes, that made millions protecting oil installations from rebels in Angola. He then set up another company, Sandline International, which shipped arms to Sierra Leone in flagrant contravention of a UN embargo. As part of his strategy to gain freedom, Mann has named what he called the main backers of the plot, who remain at large. Speaking in court, Mann alleged Ely Calil, the British-based secretive Lebanese tycoon, was known to the coup team as “the cardinal?. ?Calil was very much the boss. So nothing could happen without Calil telling me yes or no,? Mann told the trial. Calil, who is reported to have invested more than $700,000 in the coup attempt, has always denied the allegations. Another person named by Mann is Mark Thatcher, son of Britain?s ex-Prime Minister. Thatcher met Mann when they both lived in South Africa. Thatcher was arrested after the aborted coup, where he struck a plea bargain with the South African authorities, fined $450,000 and given a four-year suspended sentence for ?unwittingly? investing in the plot. A rather unflattering profile of Thatcher in the British press recently said he was ?Famous for getting lost during the Paris-Dakar motor rally and making his mother cry in public, notorious for shamelessly exploiting her name to further dodgy business ventures, renowned for his rudeness, arrogance and pomposity, and no stranger to controversy, but none of his previous dubious escapades can compare with his reckless involvement in an ill-fated plot to oust the offal-loving president of Equatorial Guinea.? Thatcher, like Mann, has always tried to downplay his involvement in the coup too. When Thatcher was arrested in South Africa, he said: ?I have no involvement in any alleged coup in Equatorial Guinea and I reject totally all suggestions to the contrary.? Giving evidence last week, Mann contradicted this by saying Thatcher was ?not just an investor. He came on board completely and became part of the management team.” Leaked documents suggest Thatcher was involved, something the plotters wanted to keep quiet. One document, that looked at ?threats?, was headed by the initials ?MT?, which the South African police argue stood for Mark Thatcher. It said: ?If involvement known, rest of us, and project, likely to be screwed as a side- issue to people screwing him. Would particularly add to a campaign, post-event, to remove us.? Moreover, telephone records obtained by a private detective working for the government of Equatorial Guinea, show Mark Thatcher and Mann speaking ?with increasing frequency? in the days before the coup. Other documents uncovered by the South African security services show the extent to which the coup plotters were going to exploit the resources of Equatorial Guinea. The plotters actually set up a trading company after the coup, called the Bight of Benin Company (BBC).The company would have controlled the country?s economy, its oil reserves, army and police, as a ?private fiefdom?, modeled on the British colonial company the East India Company. The documents suggest that BBC was to have ?sole right to have physical or other access? to the new president Moto. It would have been the only company that could ?make agreements or contracts? with the new regime. The plotters also knew about how they would have to spin their coup to the outside world. They planned a massive public relations exercise to avoid ?unfavourable scrutiny?. Part of this campaign would have been to trick the outside world that the new regime would be ?transparent? over its policies, including on human rights. However this ?transparency? campaign was to be followed by one of ?disinformation? to convince outsiders that the Americans were behind the coup, and therefore to ?back off.? ?It is potentially a very lucrative game,? one document said: ?We should expect bad behaviour; disloyalty; rampant individual greed; irrational behaviour (kids in toyshop type); back-stabbing . . . and similar ungentlemanly activities.? The truth is that, despite how supporters are trying to spin this story, Mann is no gentleman. He is a soldier of war. Mark Thatcher is no gentleman either, whose controversial business career in arms and oil has been linked with scandal. In the early eighties Thatcher was rumoured to have been paid a $2 million commission for the construction of a university in Oman, which had been negotiated by his mother, then Prime Minster. Three years later he was said to have received $24 million from the biggest arms deal in history, the $80 billion Al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia, also signed by his mother. President Obiang?s government has now issued an international warrant for Thatcher, who the President calls a ?dirty player who lives his life getting himself involved in all sorts of dubious deals that are of benefit to himself?. Thatcher remains in hiding in a secure gated residence in South Spain. He is said to be running out of places to hide: South Africa has evicted him, the US would arrest him, France and Switzerland have said he is not welcome. If Thatcher was arrested, the chances of a fair trial in Equatorial Guinea are as remote as free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. But it is time the world really found out how the son of a British Prime Minister helped finance this dirty plot and his exact involvement. Maybe Thatcher should volunteer to be tried in neutral country. If convicted though he should not be given any privileged treatment. Neither should Mann, when he is sentanced either. Both men were reportedly set to make millions from this venture. They gambled and they lost. As Mann has said ?You go tiger shooting and you don’t expect the tiger to win.? Well this time the tiger won. They can sit there together with their tails between their legs.
Police force terror journalist to share notesMedia Workers Against War - 2 Jul 2008Freelance journalist Shiv Malik must hand over his source material on terrorism to the police, the High Court ruled last week, slamming Malik for daring to take the case to a judicial review – and forcing him to pay costs. Malik?s crucial test case succeeded in reining in the police, who had raided his house in [...]
Bush Is Trying To Impose A Classic Colonial Status on IraqUKWatch.net - 2 Jul 2008Whatever the Iraq war was about, we were assured, it definitely wasn’t about oil. Tony Blair called the idea a “conspiracy theory”. It was about democracy and dictatorship, weapons of mass destruction and human rights, anything but oil. Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, insisted the conflict had “literally nothing to do with oil”. When Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, wrote last autumn, “Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he was treated as if he were some senile old gent who’d embarrassingly lost the plot. That argument is going to be a good deal harder to make from next week, when four of the western world’s largest oil corporations are due to sign contracts for the renewed exploitation of Iraq’s vast reserves. Initially, these are to be two-year deals to boost production in Iraq’s largest oilfields. But not only did the four energy giants — BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Total — write their own contracts with the Iraqi government, an unheard-of practice: they have also reportedly secured rights of first refusal on the far more lucrative 30-year production contracts expected once a new US-sponsored oil law is passed, allowing a wholesale western takeover. Big Oil is back with a vengeance. It’s a similar story when it comes to the future of the US occupation itself. The last thing on anyone’s mind, we were told when the tanks rolled in, was permanent US control, let alone the recolonisation of Iraq. This was about the Iraqis finally getting a chance to run their own affairs in freedom. But five years on, George Bush and Dick Cheney are putting the screws on their Green Zone government to sign a secret deal for indefinite military occupation, which would effectively reduce Iraq to a long-term vassal state. In April, I was leaked a draft copy of this “strategic framework agreement”, intended to replace the existing UN mandate at the end of the year. Details of the document, which came from a source at the heart of the Iraqi government, were published in the Guardian — including indefinite authorisation for the US to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security”. Since then, much more has emerged about the accompanying “status of forces agreement” the US administration wants to impose: including more than 50 US military bases, full control of Iraqi airspace, legal immunity for US military and private security firms, and the right to conduct armed operations throughout the country without consulting the Iraqi government. This goes far beyond other such agreements the US has around the world and would shackle Iraq with a permanent puppet status. Not surprisingly, it has led to uproar in the country and opposition in the US, where congress will be denied a vote on the arrangement because the administration has chosen not to call it a treaty. But it also evokes powerful memories in Iraq, which has been down this road before. After Britain invaded and occupied Iraq during the first world war, it imposed a strikingly similar treaty on its puppet government in 1930 in preparation for the country’s nominal independence. Just as in George Bush’s version, Britain awarded itself military bases, the right to conduct military operations, and legal immunity for its forces — though the proposed new US powers and restrictions on Iraqi sovereignty go even further than in the pre-war colonial treaty. To add to this sense of imperial revival, the four oil companies now preparing to return in triumph to Iraq were the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company, which Britain gave a free hand in the 1920s to dine off Iraq’s wealth in a famously exploitative deal. The Anglo-Iraqi treaty and those bitterly unjust oil concessions dominated Iraqi politics for decades, feeding riots, uprisings and coups until the monarchy was overthrown, the tables turned on the oil companies and the British were finally sent packing by the radical nationalist General Qasim in 1958. The 50th anniversary of the 1958 revolution appropriately falls next month. But Bush and Cheney seem increasingly determined to force through both their security agreement and the stalled law for the privatisation of Iraq’s oil industry before the US election. The signs are that, despite intense Iraqi opposition, a combination of strong-arm tactics, bribery and some watering down of the most extreme US demands may yet secure the full imperial package. When Bush contradicted Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki earlier this month on the occupation deal and predicted: “If I were a betting man, we’ll reach an agreement with the Iraqis,” he sounded as if he knew what he was talking about — rather as he did when he explained a couple of weeks ago that he was “confident” Gordon Brown would not after all be cutting British troop numbers in Basra according to any fixed timetable. Meanwhile, Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, is suddenly sounding similarly confident about “progress” on the oil law because “the Americans are very keen”. Perhaps they are all coming to believe the Bush administration propaganda that the surge has succeeded and Iraq is starting to “fix itself” in time for the US election, as the Economist’s cover story put it last week. Much is still being made of the decline in US casualties and resistance attacks to 2004 levels, even though the factors behind that drop are widely acknowledged to be contingent and precarious. Given the carnage of the past few days alone — including seven US soldiers killed since the weekend and a Baghdad car bomb that butchered 65 people — as well as this week’s withering US Government Accountability Office report on the administration’s claims of “progress” in Iraq, any other view would seem perverse. What is certain is that, if Bush’s blueprint for indefinite foreign rule in Iraq and the takeover of its oil is forced down the throats of the Iraqi people, resistance and bloodshed will increase. Of course, it’s true that the US and Britain didn’t invade Iraq only for its oil. It was a projection of American power in the world’s most strategically sensitive region, with oil at its heart, which has brought catastrophe to Iraq and great danger to the Middle East and the wider world. That’s why the struggle to restore Iraq’s independence matters far beyond its borders — it is a global necessity.
Zimbabwe election: US and UK move to impose sanctionsUKWatch.net - 2 Jul 2008Robert Mugabe was inaugurated for a sixth term as President of Zimbabwe on Sunday, following an election campaign characterised by government backed violence and intimidation. Mugabe, standing for the ruling ZANU-PF, claimed to have received more than 85 percent of the vote. But his only opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had withdrawn from the campaign because of the level of violence and intimidation. International observers condemned the elections. ?The current atmosphere prevailing in the country did not give rise to the conduct of free, fair and credible elections,? said Marwick Khumalo head of the Pan-African Parliament monitoring team. Observers from Zimbabwe?s neighbours in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) concurred. ?The elections,? the SADC observers concluded, ?did not represent the will of the people of Zimbabwe.? The elections were ?worse than those we witnessed in Angola in 1992, after decades of war, and are not credible,? one SADC observer said. Zimbabwean observers called off their plans to monitor the polls because it was too dangerous. A government-sponsored campaign of beatings, kidnappings and murders has left 104 people dead and 3,500 injured. Doctors who have been treating the wounded say that this is just the tip of the iceberg. ?What we are seeing is probably 10 percent of what has actually happened,? a doctor who wished to remain anonymous told reporters. He said that the violence was the ?worst the country has witnessed.? The injuries he had treated were more serious than those experienced during the liberation war of the 1970s. ?This is much, much more severe,? the doctor said, ?We are not seeing simple fractures, we are seeing bones smashed into 20 pieces. People being forced to walk on burning coals, having scalding water poured over them and their wounds poisoned.? Marwick Kumhalo said that monitors had evidence of violence and intimidation all over the country in the run up to the election. The turnout, he said, was low. In Mashonaland the number of votes announced by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) exceeds the number of registered voters. The ZEC claimed that the turn out was comparable to that in the first round of the elections in March. But some polling stations in Bulawayo reported that they did not receive a single voter. In Harare, the capital, few voters were seen. Many registered voters said that they did not intend to vote. There were a large number of spoilt ballot papers. Some had obscene language directed at Mugabe. Turnout was very low in major urban areas. Voters in those areas can expect retribution. Reprisals have already been reported in the working class suburb of Chitungwiza outside Harare. In the wake of the election the repression is continuing. Anyone who does not have the red ink stained finger that shows they voted is immediately at risk. The ZEC has handed the details of polling patterns in each electoral ward to the government. Security forces and government-backed militias will be able to target voters in wards that did not endorse Mugabe. Leaked minutes from the Joint Operations Command (JOC), which has been coordinating the coercion, indicate that the regime has decided to wipe out the opposition MDC. The UK based Independent has seen sworn affidavits from reserve bank officials who transported money to regional organisers to finance the campaign of violence against the opposition. There are reports that re-education camps at which opposition voters have been tortured are being re-supplied for a second phase of the campaign. An opposition activist told reporters that local businesses in Chinhoyi in Mashonaland West are being forced to make contributions to fund the repression. ?These camps are now regrouping. They?re going to unleash another terror campaign,? he said. Mugabe went almost directly from his inauguration to the African Union (AU) summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. The response of other African leaders to his presence was muted. They are reluctant to criticise a fellow African leader in public. Many of them have records of repression as bad, or worse than Mugabe?s. Other African leaders, such as the summit?s host Muhammad Hosni Mubarak, are notoriously corrupt. Mubarak is accused of rigging the 2005 election. These were the first multi-party elections to take place since he came to power in 1981. He has maintained a state of emergency rule for the last 25 years. Mubarak and his fellow African leaders have no more desire to allow democratic rights to their people than Mugabe. All the African rulers at the Sharm el Sheikh summit have for the most part enriched a tiny elite at the expense of the majority of the population. But these regimes value their relationship with the United States and are coming under intense pressure to isolate and condemn Mugabe. Egyptian prisons, for example, have proved invaluable in providing a secret base for the torture of US detainees in the so-called war on terror. The Italian authorities are currently investigating the ?extraordinary rendition? of Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric living as a refugee in Italy. He was seized by the CIA from the street in Milan in 2003. He was then taken to the US airbase at Brescia and flown to Ramstein in Germany from where he was taken to an Egyptian prison and tortured. Even the Sudanese government, which is regularly condemned in the US press, has proved useful in intelligence matters to the US government. Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya was recruited to the US ?war on terror? in 2004. The African states may well acquiesce to US demands on Mugabe, if they want to maintain their favoured status as allies in the war on terror. Zimbabwe has become something of test case for US power in Africa, which has suffered a serious setback following the military debacle in Iraq and the emergence of China as a major player on the continent. ?I would suggest that one not take from the soft words in an open plenary as a reflection of the deep concern of leaders here of the situation in Zimbabwe,? said US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Jendayi Fraser. ?I would expect them to have very, very strong words for him.? Her remarks were as much an instruction to the African leaders as a comment for journalists. The US, Britain and the European Union have made it clear that they will not recognise Mugabe as president of Zimbabwe. Visiting Beijing, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for China to support an arms embargo against Zimbabwe. But Chinese Foreign Secretary Yang Jiechi insisted that the only way forward was for the government of Zimbabwe to enter into talks with the opposition. It seems that a call for a negotiated settlement and a power-sharing government like that established in Kenya following the disputed election earlier this year may emerge from the AU summit. On the second day of the summit the South African paper Business Day reported that President Thabo Mbeki was close to brokering a deal between Mugabe and Tsvangirai. Even if Thabo Mbeki succeeds in establishing a government of national unity, that is unlikely to be the end of the matter. The US and UK seem to have already rejected this option. An article in the Financial Times on 25 June posed a somewhat different scenario. The article?s authors reflected on the recent pronouncements by a series of African leaders and former leaders denouncing Mugabe. Rising commodity prices and economic liberalisation has ensured that growth rates across much of Africa remain at 5 percent, the article said. But food prices and transport costs are rising fast, it warned. Under these circumstances, Mugabe?s intransigence may have unforeseen effects. ?Not only has Robert Mugabe put southern Africa in jeopardy. Like ripples on a pond, which can drown a man already up to his nose in water, his actions can strain an uneasy peace in Kenya, affect food shipments to refugees in east Africa and add to the trials of Britain?s beleaguered government.? The article was written by former Africa editor of the Financial Times Michael Holman and Dr Gregg Mills, director of the Brenthurst Foundation, a think tank founded by the Oppenheimer family to further the economic development of Africa. These two old Africa hands proceeded to imagine a scenario in which attacks on whites might lead the UK to attempt an evacuation of its nationals and a convoy to the South African border might be attacked. Zimbabwe?s second city of Bulawayo, the article suggests, might become a centre of resistance and railway connections might be severed. Mbeki might offer Mugabe sanctuary in South Africa, but President of the ANC Jacob Zuma and the South African trade unions might respond by organising ?countrywide protests.? In the midst of all that, Holman and Mills imagine, ?Somali-based terrorists bomb a tourist hotel? while in Kenya further ethnic riots disrupt the power-sharing government and hamper relief to refuges in central Africa. This could be the plot of a political thriller rather than an article in a sober financial journal. But the fact that it appears in the Financial Times and is the work of two senior commentators on Africa gives it a certain weight. Such is the fragility of the world situation following the credit crunch and the still expanding speculative bubble in commodity prices that Mugabe?s attempt to hang on to power threatens to destabilise not only southern Africa, but the entire continent. In recognising that threat, Holman and Mills evince a desire to seize the moment and precipitate a crisis that they envisage to be already on the horizon. How far the US and UK intelligence agencies would be behind the disastrous scenarios that Holman and Mills draft out, we may never know. But it is revealing that such influential commentators assume only a bloody outcome is possible in Zimbabwe. The article is an indication of the extent to which the attitude of the US and UK towards Zimbabwe has shifted. At present it is accepted that the US and UK cannot intervene openly in Zimbabwe. As the Economist recently said, ?other methods, with Africans to the fore, must be tried first.? But the scenario drafted out by Mills and Holman would provide a pretext for American and British intervention. An editorial in the Financial Times expressed the western powers? dissatisfaction with Mbeki?s attempts to establish a government of national unity in Zimbabwe. ?Thabo Mbeki, South Africa?s president, who has sought to resolve the crisis with a Kenyan-style national unity government, should accept he has failed. There is no way any western nation will send international aid to a regime that has Mr. Mugabe or ZANU-PF at the helm. An MDC government that included a small ZANU-PF contingent would be an acceptable price for ending the violence, but is unlikely to happen.? The Financial Times called for tighter sanctions and demanded that ?Western financial institutions should be debarred from operating in Harare.? US and UK policy is moving rapidly in this direction. President George Bush announced that he had instructed Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to ?develop sanctions against this illegitimate Government of Zimbabwe and those who support it.? The giant mining company Anglo-American has come under intense pressure to abandon its planned investment in a Zimbabwe platinum mine. Barclays bank is coming under pressure to cease business in Zimbabwe after more than a century. The UK-based supermarket chain Tesco has announced that it has stopped sourcing goods from Zimbabwe. These economic measures and the proposed sanctions will inevitably have more impact on the population of Zimbabwe than on the ruling elite, who have long since established their own secret channels for funding. Tesco, Barclays and Anglo-American are major employers in what is left of the formal economy in Zimbabwe. Sanctions will mean that it will become even more difficult for hospitals to source medicines and for ordinary people unconnected with the regime to buy fuel. As the West tightens the screws on the Zimbabwean economy, more people will flock across the country?s borders to escape poverty and malnutrition. The experience of the recent election has demonstrated that Morgan Tsvangirai?s opposition offers no alternative to Mugabe or to Western domination. From the outset, Tsvangirai?s party has been a pliant tool of the West and the international financial institutions. Tsvangirai?s pusillanimous performance in the second round of the presidential elections seems to have convinced any potential backers in the West that he is useless for their purposes. He announced his withdrawal from the election last week with a letter to the Guardian in which he appealed for international military intervention. Within days he had denied that he ever sent that article to the paper. On its part the Guardian, while loath to discredit Tsvangirai, had to point out that they had received the article from the usual sources. The ?usual sources? turned out to be a ?media consultant? who had provided 400 pieces under Tsvangirai?s byline for the Guardian, the Melbourne Age and the Washington Post. Inadvertently, Tsvangirai had admitted far more than he intended about the nature of his campaign and the extent to which it is run by big business interests and is far removed from the interests of the people who are being beaten and killed in Zimbabwe.
