Tibetan Protest

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Return of the Mayan Macaw

Texted Death Threats to Human Rights and Indigenous leaders Martha Giraldo and Aida Quilcue
The Black Eagles are a Colombian paramilitary organization. A prime example of the degree of violence and chaos that has spread through the current Machiavellian political system that embraces the paramilitary, mercenary, and police brutality.

At 9.39pm on 30th December 2010, the following text message was received by Martha Giraldo, coordinator of the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes Valle del Cauca branch (MOVICE), and Aida Quilcue, ex-leader of the Cauca Regional Indigenous Council (CRIC) and the Minga of Social and Communitarian Resistance:

“guerrilla rats, this is how we wanted to have you, cornered and crying for help all over the place. MOVICE, ECATE, CUT, NOMADESC, death to you communist dogs.

Tonight at midnight we start with Martha Giraldo, Berenice, Luz Marina, Cristina, the Indian Quilcue, Yon, Posso, Wilson and with every one of your children.

Black Eagles cleansing the country of these communist sons of bitches, you won’t see the New Year.”

The message was sent from the same number which has been used to send previous threats to the same organisations.

Impunity

impunitythefilm.com
freedom for colombia

Drugs, inequality and a US-backed dirty war
--aljazeera-- Barack Obama visits El Salvador to talk security cooperation while the facing the ghosts of past dirty wars.
Chris Arsenault Last Modified: 23 Mar 2011 16:31 US President Barack Obama arrived in El Salvador to talk about drug violence, but he also tried to make peace with history, visiting the tomb of Oscar Romero, a popular Archbishop gunned down by a US-linked death squad in 1980.

Despite cutting his visit short to deal with the situation in Libya, Obama still made time to visit the tomb, showcasing its symbolic importance.

"Obama is sending a message, taking a moderate approach to the region, and getting big points for going to Romero's grave," says Carlos Velazquez, an El Salvadorian political researcher at York University in Canada. "It is an emotional thing for Salvadorians."

Twelve years of internal conflict, between leftist rebels from the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the right-wing US-supported government, ended with a peace deal in 1992.

But violence continues to grip the country. "El Salvador has one of the highest homicide rates in the world," according to the US State Department, as violence between rival gangs and drug cartels is far worse on a per capita basis than neighboring Mexico, where killings draw more media attention.

Violence and inequality

Today’s violence has similar root causes to the issues which started the political conflict in the 1980s, including judicial impunity, economic inequality and social fragmentation, says Ivan Briscoe, a conflict researcher and Latin America expert at the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands.

"In El Salvador, there was an absolutely brutal conflict that has been passed down to gang violence," he says. "Inequality led to the insurgency, but now this inequality has found expressions in other forms."

Archbishop Romero, a theologian who mixed ideas of heaven in the next life and liberation on earth, was highly critical of US military aid. In a letter to then-US president Jimmy Carter, Romero said aid would "sharpen injustice and repression against the people’s organisations" which were struggling for "respect for their basic human rights". After his murder, least 75,000 people died in El Salvador's dirty war.

In some respects, times have changed. Obama has shown a willingness to work with some democratically elected leftist leaders in Latin America, analysts say.

Mauricio Funes, El Salvador's current president, who is supported by the FMLN, told Al Jazeera that he welcomes American security assistance. "I will ask president Obama for more funds to strengthen our police, army, and the judiciary but also to get more involved in fighting our structural problems like poverty and social inequality," Funes, a former TV host, said.

During his visit, Obama promised $200mn to Central American governments to fight drug cartels, as part of a package to "strengthen courts, civil society groups and institutions that uphold the role of law" while addressing the "social and economic forces that drive young people towards criminality".

Competing security concerns

But those lofty goals of poverty reduction and institutional empowerment are inhibited by broader US interests, according to one security analyst. "I think the US operates with a double agenda in Central America," says Ivan Briscoe.

"The US says it is supportive of judicial reforms, strengthening police forces ect. But it is constantly willing to militarise regions, applying states of emergency [where legal regiments are suspended], applying the full force of local power in a very Manichean version of good versus evil," Briscoe told Al Jazeera.

A more subtle version of that "Manichean struggle" may have been on display during Obama's visit. Despite the focus on security and the so-called war on drugs, Obama refused to meet with Manuel Melgar, El Salvador's Justice and Security Minister.

US diplomats accuse Melgar of having "blood on his hands", linking the security minister to the 1985 killings of four US marines in an upscale restaurant in San Salvador, the capital.

Melgar was once an FMLN guerrilla. Today, US diplomats see him as a hard-liner, closely allied to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

Obama's decision to visit Romero's tomb may be linked to divisions within Latin America's left, analysts say.

"President Funes looks to Brazil and Chile for his models," says Briscoe. "His rivals in the same party were front line guerrillas who look to Venezuela. There is a divide."

To gain support from so-called moderate Latin American leftists, Obama may be trying to distance himself from US-backed violence and destabilisation campaigns during the Cold War.

Military responses

Despite Obama's attempts to reach out to some Latin American leftists, Ivan Briscoe, the security analyst, believes elements within the US military’s Southern Command are advocating a "hard-line military response" to security problems in the region, even though this strategy has failed in the past.

Guatemala, another impoverished Central American country, recently followed this "hard-line" approach when authorities declared a state of emergency to battle drug gangs.

Maximo Ba Tiul, a professor at the Universidad Rafael Landivar in Guatemala, watched as the Guatemalan government imposed a two-month-long state of siege, which prohibited public gatherings, allowed for warrantless searches and suspended other constitutional protections in Alta Verapaz state where he lives.

"This state of emergency was decreed through legislation written during the era of military dictatorships," said Tiul, during an interview at his home in January. The siege, which ended in mid-February, netted at least 20 arrests, hardly a major victory against a drug trade worth tens of billions of dollars.

Professor Tiul, who lived through Guatemala's dirty war, doesn’t believe that suspending constitutional protections is the way to enhance the institutional reforms Obama advocated during his El Salvador visit.

"The [Guatemalan] government has creates a situation of marginilisation. This has permitted narco traffickers to assume roles that should be dealt with by the state," Tiul said, referring to the schools, social events and health clinics that cartels finance in some rural areas.

The lack of public services pushes many young people into the arms of cartels, analysts say. Other central Americans simply move to the US.

Obama recognised this dichotomy. "I thought that President Funes gave a very eloquent response to one of my questions during our bilateral meeting, He said: 'I don’t want a young man in El Salvador or a young woman in El Salvador to feel that the only two paths to moving up the income ladder is either to travel north or to join a criminal enterprise,'" Obama said.

With a total population of about 6 million, more than 2.5 million El Salvadorians live in the US. Las Maras, El Salvador's fearsome, heavily tattooed street gangs, first formed in Los Angles, drawing their ranks from expatriate El Salvadorians in the city's prisons.

The gangs were then exported back to El Salvador through migrant networks. More than 500 Salvadorians leave the country every day, says Velazquez, and the country uses the US dollar instead of a national currency.

Oligarchic power

Structural problems in Central America, leaving average people with few viable options, can be traced to the mentality of local elites, says Carlos Velazquez, the El Salvadorian political researcher.

"Elites are oligarchic in their mentality. They want the state to benefit their interests only. They despise the idea of social justice, the idea of paying taxes," says Velazquez, who left El Salvador as a teenager to get a better education.

In Brazil and Chile, countries with strong economic growth, elites have a different mentality, says Ivan Briscoe.

"In Brazil, the upper classes realize that to reach the next stage of development, a country needs to create a mass internal market. That requires a level of egalitarianism, to create consumers, to create equality of opportunity," he says. "In Central America, the geopolitics meant that extremely conservative, unenlightened, elites, were in charge of the situation."

Income taxation, to redistribute wealth from rich to poor, is often seen as a fairly simple way to combat inequality and entrenched elites. The US favors a higher tax rate in El Salvador, as it would result in better public institutions and thus fewer migrants sneaking into the US, Velazquez says.

But President Funes has his hands tied.

If he confronts the oligarchy, he risks being associated with Hugo Chavez’s socialist policies, Velazquez says. But if Funes doesn’t confront elites, important reforms to the country’s political economy will remain stalled.

A sniper killed Archbishop Oscar Romero because he promoted social justice and reform; he criticised the status quo. Carlos Velasquez thinks El Salvador’s current security and economic stability depends on someone else taking up that mantra. "The oligarchy has to be confronted there is no other way.”

Despite the difficulties, Ivan Briscoe sees hope in the democratistion and economic development happening in South America. "Structures can be changed," he says. "There is evidence of that in Latin America."

Follow Chris Arsenault On Twitter: @AJEchris

Reagan's Attack on America: The First Anti-American President
--ThinkProgressive--

1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.

2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.

4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.

5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to choose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice.

6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.” He wrote in his memoirs that “[m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” “This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war — and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,” the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan’s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but “also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control” for the the entire world — a vision acted out by Regean’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.

7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.

8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran. Reagan and other senior U.S. officials secretly sold arms to officials in Iran, which was subject to a an arms embargo at the time, in exchange for American hostages. Some funds from the illegal arms sales also went to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua — something Congress had already prohibited the administration from doing. When the deals went public, the Iran-Contra Affair, as it came to be know, was an enormous political scandal that forced several senior administration officials to resign.

9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act. which placed sanctions on South Africa and cut off all American trade with the country. Reagan’s veto was overridden by the Republican-controlled Senate. Reagan responded by saying “I deeply regret that Congress has seen fit to override my veto,” saying that the law “will not solve the serious problems that plague that country.”

10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Reagan fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union by training, arming, equipping, and funding Islamist mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan. Reagan funneled billions of dollars, along with top-secret intelligence and sophisticated weaponry to these fighters through the Pakistani intelligence service. The Talbian and Osama Bin Laden — a prominent mujahidin commander — emerged from these mujahidin groups Reagan helped create, and U.S. policy towards Pakistan remains strained because of the intelligence services’ close relations to these fighters. In fact, Reagan’s decision to continue the proxy war after the Soviets were willing to retreat played a direct role in Bin Laden’s ascendancy.

Houma Tribes in Louisiana Bayou Suffer from BP Spill
The Associated Press January 31, 2011, 3:31AM ET
MONTEGUT, La.

Kenneth Feinberg, the administrator of BP's $20 billion oil spill compensation fund, says he wants to pay American Indians in coastal Louisiana who no longer can live off the land as they once had.

At a recent meeting with American-Indian tribes, Feinberg said claims should be paid to people who must now go to the store to buy what they once got from hunting or fishing.

There are about 20,000 American Indians in coastal Louisiana, and tribal leaders say they're worried members won't get compensated fairly. They're working with a New York City law firm to help tribal members in the claims process.

The spill has created uncertainty among American Indian communities, which were already battered by hurricanes and social changes.

US will back UN on rights of native peoples
MATTHEW DALY
AP News
Dec 16, 2010 17:43 EST

President Barack Obama said Thursday that the United States will reverse course and support a United Nations declaration defending the rights of indigenous peoples. The U.S. voted against the declaration when the General Assembly adopted it in 2007, arguing it was incompatible with existing laws. Three other countries, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, also opposed the declaration, but have since announced their support.

The declaration is intended to protect the rights of more than 370 million native peoples worldwide, affirming their equality and ability to maintain their own institutions, cultures and spiritual traditions. It sets standards to fight discrimination and marginalization and eliminate human rights violations.

School House Suffrage

Fourteen Defining
Characteristics Of Fascism
By Dr. Lawrence Britt
Source Free Inquiry.com - Rense.com
5-28-3


Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

From Liberty Forum

http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_constitution&Number=642
109&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1&t=-1

Support from an indigenous community from Ecuador for another indigenous tribe in Louisiana that has been affected by the spill

Sri Lanka's Vindictive Peace
BY SOMA ILANGOVAN | MAY 17, 2010
--ForeignPolicy.com--

Last May, Sri Lankan soldiers captured the final piece of land held by the separatist Tamil Tigers, killing hundreds of rebel fighters, including the group's leader, and definitively ending a 26-year civil war that claimed as many as 100,000 lives. On May 19, the first anniversary of the war's end, however, there is little to celebrate. As many as 93,000 Tamils remain in detention camps and transit centers, while 11,700 more (of which 550 are children) are being held as ex-combatants without charges, denied access to an attorney or their families. Conditions in the camps and prisons are appalling, with human rights groups documenting cases of torture and rape, in addition to poor housing, health, sanitation, and education facilities.

This is not what peace is supposed to look like. And the centers and camps are only the most visible symptom of the Sri Lankan government's apparent disinterest in genuine reconciliation. Far from ending the root conflict, the end of fighting has left the island as ethnically divided as ever, undermining the prospects for a durable peace and regional stability. In many ways, Sri Lanka has simply traded the horror of war for conflict of another, more tedious, continuous sort: a two-tiered society in which Tamils are kept at the bottom. (cont...)

India's Failing Counterinsurgency Campaign
BY ANUJ CHOPRA | MAY 14, 2010
--ForeignPolicy.com--

The Maoists got their start in 1967 as a peasant revolution against rich, exploitative landlords, and the movement has germinated in rural areas stalked by poverty, misery, and disease ever since. In 2004, when the rebels were present in nine states, India's Home Ministry put the movement at an estimated 9,300 hard-core underground members. Since then, they have spread into 22 of India's 35 states and territories, and their numbers have increased by several thousand, prompting the Indian government to declare them the country's biggest internal enemy. Currently, some estimate that the movement is made up of 40,000 permanent members and 100,000 additional militia members.

Over the years, Naxalites have developed a symbiotic relationship with the indigenous tribal people, adivasis, or "tribals," living in remote parts of India, who find common cause with the Maoists in accusing multinational companies and the Indian government of trying to usurp their mineral-rich lands. To date, more than 40 million tribals have been displaced by dams, industries, and power projects since independence in 1947. As I saw myself, the tribals are used as human couriers, serving as a rudimentary intelligence and communications network in areas of the jungle where cell phones don't work. Comrade Vijay was wrong: It's not IEDs that are the rebels' greatest strength -- it's their relationship with the tribals.

For the tribals, Naxalism, with its emphasis on Mao Zedong's doctrine of armed peasant revolution, doesn't seem out of date. Naxalism has taken root in villages that have been completely ignored by the government. In the rebel-controlled villages, as in most tribal Indian villages, life hasn't changed for decades. There is no electricity, schools, or hospitals. People die of snake bites and treatable diseases like malaria and tetanus. Villages are full of naked, chronically malnourished children with distended bellies. Gaunt men clad in dirty loincloths toil in scorched farms, while women in frayed saris look after the goat and cow barns outside mud-and-clay huts, worried about the next meal. Many tribals survive on leaves and berries.

For the tribals, Naxalism, with its emphasis on Mao Zedong's doctrine of armed peasant revolution, doesn't seem out of date. Naxalism has taken root in villages that have been completely ignored by the government. In the rebel-controlled villages, as in most tribal Indian villages, life hasn't changed for decades. There is no electricity, schools, or hospitals. People die of snake bites and treatable diseases like malaria and tetanus. Villages are full of naked, chronically malnourished children with distended bellies. Gaunt men clad in dirty loincloths toil in scorched farms, while women in frayed saris look after the goat and cow barns outside mud-and-clay huts, worried about the next meal. Many tribals survive on leaves and berries.

For the tribals, Naxalism, with its emphasis on Mao Zedong's doctrine of armed peasant revolution, doesn't seem out of date. Naxalism has taken root in villages that have been completely ignored by the government. In the rebel-controlled villages, as in most tribal Indian villages, life hasn't changed for decades. There is no electricity, schools, or hospitals. People die of snake bites and treatable diseases like malaria and tetanus. Villages are full of naked, chronically malnourished children with distended bellies. Gaunt men clad in dirty loincloths toil in scorched farms, while women in frayed saris look after the goat and cow barns outside mud-and-clay huts, worried about the next meal. Many tribals survive on leaves and berries. (cont...)

NEW PROTEST SITE
Jason Szep and Adrees Latif
BANGKOK --Reuters--
Sun May 16, 2010 2:02am EDT


Hundreds massed in the Klong Toey area, apparently a strategic attempt to distract the army from its main task of clearing protesters from Bangkok's commercial district, a popular tourist and shopping area they have occupied for six weeks. A night earlier, thousands massed in the Klong Toey area, creating a makeshift stage in what could be a new protest site. If the protesters manage to establish control of a new area of the city, this would complicate the military's operation that began on Thursday when a series of checkpoints were set up and renegade soldier Khattiya Sawasdipol was shot in the head.

Many protest leaders now face terrorism charges that carry a maximum penalty of death, raising the stakes in a two-month crisis that has paralyzed parts of Bangkok, stifled Southeast Asia's second-biggest economy and decimated tourism. The protesters, who have adopted red as a protest color and broadly support ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra, set fire to vehicles and hurled rocks at troops who set up razor wire across deserted roads on Saturday in the business district. Red shirt leader Nattawut Saikua told thousands still hunkered down in their main encampment late on Saturday that reinforcements were coming. (cont...)

Living wage
--wiki--

A term used to describe the minimum hourly wage necessary for shelter (housing and incidentals such as clothing and other basic needs) and nutrition for a person for an extended period of time (lifetime). In developed countries such as the United Kingdom or Switzerland, this standard generally means that a person working forty hours a week, with no additional income, should be able to afford a specified quality or quantity of housing, food, utilities, transport, health care, and recreation.

Social liberalism
--wiki--

The belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in asserting that a liberal state should provide jobs, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding civil rights.

the butcher
the baker
the candlestick
maker....
all taken-over
by the corperate
undertaker...

U.S. official to meet Suu Kyi, Myanmar ministers: diplomat
May 8, 2010 10:51 ET
By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - United States Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell will visit army-ruled Myanmar in the next two days to meet with government ministers and pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, a diplomat said on Saturday. Campbell, Washington's top official for East Asia and the Pacific, will travel to the new capital, Naypyitaw, on Sunday to meet officials from the ruling junta. He is expected to meet Suu Kyi and opposition politicians the following day. (cont.)

Water debate sparks Ecuador clashes
WEDNESDAY, MAY 05, 2010
13:11 MECCA TIME, 10:11 GMT

Thousands of indigenous Ecuadorean protesters protesting a water privatisation plan have been forcibly removed from the country's congress building. The demonstrators, armed with sticks, had entered congress on Tuesday as legislators were debating the water reform bill. They then prevented legislators from leaving the building in Quito. (cont...)

Suu Kyi's party 'to be dissolved'
Thursday, May 06, 2010
13:32 Mecca, 10:32 GMT
--AlJazeera.net--


Myanmar's main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, is expected to be disbanded on Thursday after it refused to re-register under controversial new election laws. NLD officials said the party would be forced to dissolve after it failed in a final legal bid on Wednesday to have the laws annulled. Under the legislation announced earlier this year, the party will be declared "null and void" if it does not to re-register by the end of Thursday. (cont...)