Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video says about itself:

Japans natural aversion to nuclear weapons didnt stop its then Prime Minister, Eisaku Sato, in 1965 from asking the U.S. to be prepared to launch a nuclear strike at communist China, if a major military conflict erupted. Declassification of the nuclear files which state that according to a secret agreement the U.S. will protect Japan with its nuclear arsenal in case of a military conflict with China foul security and economic relations in the Pacific region, says political analyst Maksim Bratersky.

From ddinews in India:

Sunday 22 November, 2009.

Japan to admit secret nuclear pact with US: reports

A Japanese government team has found documents on an alleged secret pact with the United States to transport nuclear weapons through its territory, after decades of official denial, reports revealed on Sunday.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s centre-left government launched a probe into the alleged nuclear pact and other secret agreements with the United States days after it took office in September.

The probe team reported to Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada on Friday that it had discovered documents linked to the pact from among thousands of files at the foreign ministry, the Mainichi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun newspapers reported, citing unnamed ministry sources.

“Foreign minister admits ‘nuclear secret pact’” declared the headline in the Mainichi Shimbun, while the Yomiuri Shimbun echoed: “Government view likely to change — ‘nuclear secret pact’.”

The existence of the agreement has been denied for decades by previous conservative administrations, even though US documents declassified last month showed US officials believed they had an understanding with Japan when the allies signed a new security treaty in 1960.

“The question of black or white will become clear in January. We will clear the burden of previous administrations which had insisted there was no secret pact,” Okada said on Saturday, the newspapers reported.

Okada will set up a committee of experts to examine the documents before announcing the government’s final judgement in January.

By Paddy McGuffin in Britain:

Bagram: A living hell

Friday 20 November 2009

The US military has allowed journalists into its newly expanded secret detention centre at Bagram air base in Afghanistan this week.

The base has been described by campaigners as Guantanamo Bay’s “more evil twin” and the allegations of torture and murder within its secretive walls continue to this day.

The US claims this is proof of its determination to provide greater transparency and openness in its policy of extraordinary rendition and detention without trial.

The claim was somewhat undermined by the fact that the touring journalists had no access to the hundreds of inmates held at the facility.

Omar Deghayes is one man who has personal experience of both Bagram and Guantanamo. He was not impressed by US grandstanding.

He had seen it all before and has strong reason to doubt the announcement of improved conditions at Bagram.

Having suffered hellish torture there himself, he has now discovered that his brother-in-law has been detained at Bagram for the last two months and, if anything, he appears to have been treated even more brutally.

Deghayes was born in Libya in 1969. He was forced to flee the country with his mother and siblings after the torture and murder of his father by the Gadaffi regime.

Arriving in Brighton as a teenager, he went on to study law in Wolverhampton. The family were granted refugee status here in 1987.

In 2002 Deghayes was arrested in Pakistan and was “sold” to the US for a bounty. He was taken first to Bagram and then Guantanamo, where he was imprisoned without trial for five years.

During his time at Guantanamo he was blinded in one eye, which was already damaged since childhood, after guards repeatedly rubbed pepper spray in it.

The only “evidence” against him was a clip from an Islamic propaganda film showing Chechen fighters, one of which the US authorities claimed was him.

It later transpired that the image was not of Deghayes but of an Abu Walid, a Chechan rebel who had been killed some time in 2004.

Deghayes had in fact never been to Chechnya and had always maintained as much.

Speaking to the Morning Star, he gave his opinion on the US press tour of Bagram.

“This is how they manipulate things,” he says.

“I have experienced it personally at Guantanamo. They gave guided tours of the camp like it was a tour of the Himalayas or something.”

In 2002 a group of congressmen were given a guided tour of “Gitmo,” albeit a much sanitised one.

Following his tour of the facility Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe told CNN: “We are giving very good treatment to these people.

“Quite frankly, I personally think better than they deserve. We’re dealing with terrorists here.”

As if to complete the bizarre theme park atmosphere, each congressman was given a souvenir cap, a Guantanamo flag and a DVD of their visit to take home with them.

Select journalists were also given guided tours, reminiscent of this week’s at Bagram.

Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who represented Deghayes and many other Guantanamo prisoners, notes in his invaluable book Bad Men that, for one tour, “there was a show block in camp four … there was a show interrogation cell in camp five, designed to make solitary confinement look like a private suite.”

He goes on to say that “various military personnel were wheeled out for interviews about one humanitarian highlight of the prison or another.

“Whenever an inconvenient question might arise, they could shelter politely behind the barricade of institutional security.”

Deghayes agrees. “Those on the tour, the congressmen and reporters were not allowed to meet the prisoners. They were shown all the new facilities and it was like a nice party for them.

“Then they went back and gave glowing reports about how good it all was there,” he says.

“It was only when a whistle-blower told the real story that they became aware of what it was really like.

“The Obama administration is just copying the same policy as Bush. It is the same bureaucrats giving the same camouflage and using the same deceptions.”

Asked what credence he gave to the US claims of improved conditions at Bagram, he stated: “My brother-in-law is in Bagram now.

“He was just picked up a few months ago. He went to visit his in-laws in Afghanistan and they arrested him.

“My sister was finally able to visit him and she said the conditions were even worse than when I was there.

“She said he was in very bad condition. His eyes and face were battered and bleeding. It is worse there now than it ever was.

“They are saying there are all these new facilities, but that is not the issue,” says Deghayes.

“The real issue is that they are subjecting people to brutal and inhuman torture.”

Perhaps the most perfidious aspect to the situation in Bagram is that the US has stated that Afghan nationals held there have no legal rights.

Foreign nationals held there are said to have “some” legal rights, but those imprisoned in their own country by an invading foreign power have none.

The only way to ensure the freedom of those who still suffer torture and indefinite imprisonment is for the people of the US, Britain and elsewhere to continue to campaign and vocally criticise the policy. This is something Deghayes is keen to emphasise.

“When Obama came into power it was under a mandate of closing Guantanamo and stopping these abuses, but he has not done it. He has not come up with any new system,” says Deghayes.

“There is no legal system, no court system in Guantanamo or Bagram.

“Everyone who has been released from either Guantanamo or Bagram has been released due to campaigning and pressure brought on their behalf, not by any legal system or by being found innocent. Many people have been told they should have been released but are still there.

“I know from personal experience that campaigning is the only thing that works and we will continue to campaign for the release of my brother-in-law and all the others.”

Bagram’s brutal record

Bagram air base is located 27 miles north of Kabul and is estimated to house in excess of 600 prisoners. The recent extension will bring the number of prisoners it can hold to over 1,000.

The reason for this extension of the facility is seen by many to indicate an intention to increase US troop numbers and presumably therefore prisoners in the region.

The base was originally used to process prisoners during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 - part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

But since then Bagram has been filled with detainees held for years without charge, trial or legal rights.

Unlike Guantanamo where, after a hard-fought struggle, US lawyers have been granted access to detainees, those incarcerated in Bagram remain in a legal black hole.

Since 2002 there have been numerous reports of torture and at least two cases of murder.

In one of the worst cases a taxi driver by the name of Dilawar was beaten to death there in December 2002. His body was found to have suffered over 100 savage blows to the legs, apparently for the sadistic amusement of guards.

The autopsy report said that his legs had become “pulpified” and that he had died from blunt force trauma.

Omar Deghayes described his time at Bagram as follows: “Lying on the floor of the compound, all night I would hear the screams of others in the rooms above us as they were tortured and interrogated.

“My number would be called out and I would have to go to the gate. They chained me and put a bag over my head, dragging me off for my own turn.

“They would force me to my knees for questioning and threaten me with more torture.”

This video from Associated Press in the USA says about itself:

Judge: Katrina Flooding Due to Corps Negligence

A federal judge in New Orleans has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers’ failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding from Katrina. (Nov. 19)

From KAUZ.com in the USA:

Army Corps Of Engineers Blamed For Hurricane Katrina

A federal judge has ruled the Army Corps of Engineers’ failure to properly maintain a navigation channel, led to massive flooding by Hurricane Katrina.

In a landmark decision, U.S. District Judge Standwood Duval Ruled in favor of residents, who claim the Army Corps’s oversight of the Mississippi River- Gulf Outlet, led to the flooding of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish.

Wednesday’s (November 18) ruling just says what New Orleans’ residents have been saying since the storm hit on August 29, 2005, [it]was a man made disaster caused by the Army Corps’ failure to maintain the levee system protecting the city.

See also here.

Well, the Army Corps of Engineers is of course a United States federal government institution. And as such, it can hardly be blamed as the sole culprit of the Katrina disaster.

The George W. Bush administration had been, and was still, cutting back on the Army Corps of Engineers’ anti flooding work, in order to throw tax money into the bottomless pits of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It had sent local National Guard people, who otherwise might have helped the flood victims, to those wars. These Bush policies cost many lives.

This video is called No to George Bush and torture enablers in Canada.

From the National Post in Canada:

Canada Ignored Torture: Ex-Envoy

Afghan Detainees; Allegations can’t be verified, Tories say

Janice Tibbetts, Canwest News Service Published: Thursday, November 19, 2009

A senior Canadian diplomat said he was on orders from his Ottawa superiors to leave no paper trail about his allegations that Canada was handing detainees over to Afghan custody where they were allegedly tortured and abused.

Richard Colvin, a top Foreign Affairs official posted in Afghanistan in 2006-07, told a House of Commons committee yesterday that the government and the military turned a blind eye to what was happening to their captives, a claim that the Prime Minister’s Office and Conservative MPs questioned yesterday.

…

But Mr. Colvin alleged the government imposed a “wall of secrecy” after he wrote and distributed reports about the Canadian military routinely and haphazardly handing over prisoners and then failing to follow up on their fate.

“There was certain information that was seen as too hot potato,” said Mr. Colvin, who was the political officer at the Canadian-run reconstruction base when troops began handing over prisoners to Afghan authorities three years ago.

Mr. Colvin said he was specifically told by Mr. Harper’s former foreign affairs advisor, David Mulroney, to use the phone instead of putting anything in writing about prisoner abuse, which Mr. Colvin said contradicted Canadian policy and international law against surrendering to the risk of torture.

“There was indeed a policy, but behind the military’s wall of secrecy, that’s exactly what we were doing,” said Mr. Colvin, who is now the deputy head of intelligence at the Canadian embassy in Washington.

Mr. Mulroney had just left the Prime Minister’s Office to become deputy minister of Foreign Affairs at the time that he allegedly warned Mr. Colvin to watch his step in April 2007.

At the time, senior Cabinet ministers in Ottawa were on the hot seat over the prisoner abuse allegations, denying daily in the House of Commons that there were any credible reports of torture.

Mr. Colvin also alleged that Rick Hillier, the former defence chief, knew that Afghan detainees were being abused and he turned his back to it. …

Mr. Colvin maintained that he learned from credible sources that Canadian detainees handed to Afghan control were beaten with power cables, given electrical shock and were sleep deprived in Afghan jails.

“According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured,” said Mr. Colvin, who said most of them were insurgent foot soldiers or innocents who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, rather than hard-core Taliban.

He said he first learned of the abuse soon after arriving in Kandahar in the spring of 2006 and that he later saw evidence himself after visiting prisons and seeing torture marks on prisoners. Canada handed over far more prisoners than either the British or the Dutch and that Canada, unlike its allies, did no follow up on the fate of those they surrendered, Mr. Colvin said.

“We kept hopeless records, and apparently to prevent any scrutiny, the Canadian Forces leadership concealed all this behind walls of secrecy,” he said.

The result, said Mr. Colvin, was that Canada helped strengthen the Taliban by spreading fear of foreigners among the Afghan people.

“Instead of winning hearts and minds, we caused Kandaharis to fear the foreigners,” he said. “Canada’s detainee practices in my view alienated us from the population and strengthened the insurgency.”

Mr. Colvin was called before the House of Commons committee after he filed an affidavit with the Military Police Complaints Commission, alleging that he warned senior government officials and military brass of “serious, imminent and alarming” reports of detainee abuse soon after he arrived in Afghanistan. …

In the House of Commons question period yesterday, Mr. MacKay was grilled on why it took 18 months for the government to act on allegations of detainee abuse. While sidestepping questions, he repeatedly affirmed that the government in 2007 improved a weak prisoner transfer arrangement that had been implemented by the former Liberal government.

See also here.

“We detained, and handed over for severe torture, a lot of innocent people,” a Canadian diplomat has told a parliamentary committee on the Canadian Armed Forces’ Afghan mission: here.

Canada’s new guide for prospective citizens no longer pretends that Canada is about social programs and saving the environment. Instead, it celebrates a land reigned over by a monarch and that possesses a tough, no-nonsense military: here.

“I currently don’t have a family care plan, but they told me they did not care and for me to get ready to go to Afghanistan,” explained Oakland, California native Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, a 21-year-old soldier based at Hunter Army Airfield outside of Savannah, Georgia: here.

In August, we launched a campaign to “Free Army conscientious objector Dustin Stevens and the end illegal pre-trial punishment of the Fort Bragg 50!” With your help, we did just that! Dustin is certain that he would still be facing over a year in the stockade if it were not for your support. It is not everyday that we win an outright victory for GI resisters: here.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai was inaugurated Thursday amid a state of siege in Kabul. Western officials who were present issued hypocritical demands that Karzai fight corruption: here.

This video from the USA is called Seymour Hersh: The secret war in Iran.

A former British ambassador to Iran warned yesterday against attacking the country over its nuclear ambitions, saying that doing so would “make the world a more dangerous place”: here.

This video is called The Corrupt Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Remember George W. Bush’s and his cronies’ propaganda about their wars? If we were to believe them: No, really, the Iraq war was not about oil; perish the thought … And the Afghan war did not have anything to do with pipelines … It was all about Saddam Hussein being behind 9/11 … err, sorry, after the war was already well underway, the United States Bush administration itself retracted their earlier propaganda on this. It was about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction … err, sorry, after the war was already well underway, the Bush administration itself retracted their earlier propaganda on this.

After the two official reasons for starting bloody war had proved to be spurious, the Bush propagandists came with a third pretext: they were so full of love for the poor Afghan and Iraqi people, especially for women and children, that they wanted to bring prosperity, democracy and good government to their countries, by bombing them, firing guns at them, and opening torture prisons in them.

The Bush regime also really loved the poor Somali people, especially women and children. They wanted to bring prosperity, democracy and good government to Somalia as well. They had the US Air Force bombing Somalia. Though they left most of the invasion, aimed at bringing prosperity, democracy and good government to Somalia, to their buddy Meles Zenawi, dictator of Ethiopia. Mr Zenawi being well known for being prosperous himself, though his subjects are starving, enjoying free speech himself though suppressing it among his subjects, seemed exactly the right guy for bringing Bush style democracy to the Horn of Africa.

In the propaganda of the Bush gang, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan would become shiny examples, models for the other countries of the Middle East and Africa.

Well, how are things eight year years later, now that Bush’s presidency is finished, but his wars are not?

Let’s look at Iraq. Where there had been a really bad dictator, Saddam Hussein, and US sponsored economic sanctions on top of that. Things then, just before Bush’s war started, were so bad that many people could not imagine them becoming even worse. Still, they did.

Now, there are definitely more jails in Iraq, and more torture.

Over a million more deaths.

More unemployment, less women’s rights, less gay rights, far less electricity and water, in Iraq. And far more refugees from Iraq, than in the darkest days of Saddam Hussein.

Iraq may hang 126 women by year’s end despite international appeals: here.

Let us look at corruption. What does Associated Press today have to say about Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, which, if we would believe the Bushists, will surely after those eight years be shiny beacons of prosperity, democracy and good government?

Associated Press says:

Afghanistan slips in corruption index despite aid

17 Nov 2009

BERLIN - Afghanistan has slipped three places to become the world’s second most-corrupt country despite billions in aid meant to bolster the government against a rising insurgency, according to an annual survey of perceived levels of corruption.

Only lawless Somalia, whose weak U.N.-backed government controls just a few blocks of the capital, was perceived as more corrupt than Afghanistan in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

Iraq saw some improvement, rising to 176 of 180 countries, up two places up from last year.

Some ‘improvement’ in Iraq … at least half of it caused by corruption in Afghanistan getting even worse.

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai’s inability or unwillingness to tackle cronyism and bribery the past five years have resulted in an increase of support for the Taliban insurgents. That has prompted calls by the Obama administration for Karzai to tackle the practice or risk forfeiting U.S. aid.

Since 2001, the U.S. Congress has appropriated more than $39 billion in humanitarian and reconstruction assistance for Afghanistan, according to a report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. European nations send about 1 billion euros ($1.49 billion) a year, a total of 9 billion euros since 2002.

International donors are increasingly questioning how much of the billions of dollars in aid might have been misappropriated.

The report said examples of Afghan corruption ranged from the sale of government positions to daily bribes for basic services. …

In Iraq, corruption has become widespread since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 with scarcity of serious government measures against corrupted officials.

That has undermined the largest nation-building efforts with siphoning billions of dollars away from the country’s struggling economy, increasing frustrations among Iraqis mainly over corruption, lingering violence and poor public services. …

The United States, which was in 19th place compared with 18th last year, remained stable despite Transparency’s concerns over a lack of government oversight of the financial sector.

The report also pointed out that the U.S. legislature is another reason for concern, as it is “perceived to be the institution most affected by corruption.”

There were some bright spots in the new report — Bangladesh, Belarus, Guatemala, Lithuania, Poland and Syria were among the countries that improved the most.

US-occupied Iraq, Afghanistan among world’s most corrupt countries: here.

Afghan minister accused of receiving huge bribe: here.

An Australian man who worked with a security contractor in Afghanistan pleaded guilty to a scheme to solicit kickbacks from a U.S. contract, Washington said: here.

The deaths of 12 civilians in a rocket attack aimed at military and local leaders on Monday underscored the inability of NATO to defeat the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan, local observers have said: here.

A 21-year-old single mother serving in the US Army will likely face charges for refusing deployment to Afghanistan when she could not find care for her infant son: here.

Afghanistan’s Colombia connection: here.

Saudi Arabia bombards Yemeni rebels in policing role for US imperialism: here.

Vieques Island Activists on Bomb Range Impact: Ismael Guadalupe’s Witness from Wes Rehberg on Vimeo.

Residents of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques celebrated at the weekend after a US agency dropped claims that no health hazards had been caused by decades of US military exercises on and around the island: here.

From British daily The Morning Star:

NATO conference delegates joined anti-war protesters on Edinburgh’s streets on Saturday as they took their message to the doorstep of the organisation’s chiefs.

Up to 1,000 demonstrators against the war on Afghanistan marched through the city centre where the annual NATO parliamentary assembly is currently taking place.

Also from the Morning Star:

War mum demands pullout

Sunday 15 November 2009

Adrian Roberts

The mother of a soldier who was killed in Afghanistan demanded on Sunday that Prime Minister Gordon Brown bring the troops home. Sergeant Michael Lockett, from 2nd Battalion The Mercian Regiment, died while on a patrol in the Gereshk district of Helmand province on September 21. He had received one of the nation’s highest awards for gallantry and was investigating and confirming the discovery of an improvised explosive device when it exploded, killing him.

His mother April Lockett said the war in Afghanistan would not make a difference and was putting soldiers’ lives at risk unnecessarily. She told the Sunday Mail: “I just feel now that these lads are now sitting ducks, cannon fodder. They are just going out there to get shot at. “It is time for Gordon Brown to bring those soldiers home.” His mother said she was struggling to cope with the loss of her “golden boy,” who was from Monifieth in Angus.

“The grief is still as raw as the day I was told he was dead. People say it gets better with time, but it doesn’t,” she added.

A landmark report by Oxfam this week will also expose the real human cost of the war. The powerful dossier by the aid agency reveals how women and children in Afghanistan are bearing the brunt of the ongoing conflict, undermining the international community’s claims that they are the very people being helped by the West’s occupation. Its contents will add to mounting concerns among the public - and in some quarters of the military and the House of Commons - that the US and Britain are fighting an ill-conceived and ill-judged war. The conflict has left as many as 32,000 Afghans dead and 235,000 displaced.

Stop the War Coalition official Robin Beste asked on Sunday: “Why is it that 57 per cent of the British people know this war is unwinnable and Gordon Brown doesn’t? “The only conclusion must be that he is placing his own reputation above the needs of the country, for fear of having to admit the futility of all the lives lost and devastation caused by his war policies.

The institutions that scream the most how we must respect our fallen soldiers through poppies and Remembrance Day are the same ones that are most keen to have a new bunch of wars to create a new generation of dead soldiers to remember: here.

USA: Alexis Hutchinson, an Army Specialist, is being told either go to Afghanistan or be court martialed, even though she was told she’d be granted extra time to find care for her 11-month-old son: here.

This week begins with a significant new straw in the political wind for President Obama to consider. The California Democratic Party has just sent him a formal and clear message: Stop making war in Afghanistan: here.

The US government has been accused of attempting a cynical whitewash over its Bagram airbase “black” detention facility in Afghanistan: here.

The increasingly public dissension within the Obama administration over the proposed escalation in Afghanistan reflects the reality that US imperialism has no good options in the war that it launched more than eight years ago: here.

In a shift, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg have been speaking frankly about devising a plan to get German troops out of Afghanistan: here.

Jobless, displaced and bitter—life inside the West’s occupation of Afghanistan: here.

This video from the USA is called Rethink Afghanistan (Part 3): Cost of War.

From the Raw Story in the USA:

New estimate for Afghan war: $1 million per soldier

By Joe Byrne

Saturday, November 14th, 2009 — 8:54 pm

Senior administration officials reported to the New York Times today that budget projections for the war in Afghanistan will cost U.S. taxpayers at least $1 million per soldier, per year.

The plan to add 40,000 American troops and greatly expand Afghan security forces, supported by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, is estimated to cost between $40 billion to $54 billion annually. “Even if fewer troops are sent, or their mission is modified, the rough formula used by the White House…appears almost constant,” according to the NYT.

The new estimate for the cost of war in Afghanistan will cancel out the $26 billion savings projected for a 2010 troop withdrawal in Iraq. Under this scenario, the overall military budget could rise as high as $734 billion. The highest annual military budget during the Bush era was $667 billion.

A senior administration official speaking anonymously with the NYT said that concerns over politically volatile spending influenced the President during a White House meeting on Wednesday. Obama was insistent that each military plan incorporates the quickest possible exit strategy. “He knows we cannot sustain this indefinitely,” the official said.

In 2006, Congressional researchers estimated that the accumulated costs for each soldier in Afghanistan would be about $390,000. The sharp rise in costs reflects the increase in mine-resistant troop carriers and surveillance equipment, in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The unique difficulties of transporting soldiers around the mountainous, isolated terrain in Afghanistan also burdens U.S. taxpayers, military analysts say.

Troop Morale Continues to Drop in Afghanistan: here.

Journalists have been allowed to inspect refurbished facilities at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, the largest US military hub in the region and home to a controversial prison: here.

War in Afghanistan: Not in our name. 71% of Britons back IoS call for withdrawal of forces within a year: here.

Britain: Of the 150,000 personnel who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, a third return wounded, physically or psychologically: here.

The Pakistani Army ran training camps for a Muslim extremist group, at least until recently, with the acceptance of the US Central Intelligence Agency, according to France’s foremost anti-terrorist expert: here.

This video says about itself:

Officials in Curacao have sealed and cordoned off the Freewinds, Scientology’s flag ship, after dock workers found dangerous levels of blue asbestos.

From Dutch news agency ANP:

Curaçao politician wants US base to close down

14 November ‘09, 21:42

WILLEMSTAD - The contract with the United States military ‘location’ on Curaçao which finishes in 2010, should not be prolonged. This Saturday, Curaçao politician Helmin Wiels of the opposition party Pueblo Soberano said that.

‘In this way, we will prevent that Curaçao will be dragged along into a future war between Venezuela and the USA.’ Wiels is convinced that the recently rising tensions between Colombia and Venezuela, will finally lead to a war between the USA and President Hugo Chávez’ country.

The USA have several military bases in Colombia and recently, contracts have been concluded for more bases there. According to Wiels, the USA are aiming consciously at a war against Venezuela. He thinks that this may have ‘disastrous’ consequences for Curaçao. ‘As long as we will allow the USA to have a military base of their own on Curaçao, we will be seen as traitors in Venezuelan eyes. We are a small country, and it is better for us to gave good relationships with all sides.’

The US American Forward Operation Location (FOL) is on Curaçao ever since 2000. From there, the USA flies over South America as part of the “war on drugs”. The ten year contract for the locations on Curaçao and Aruba will finish next year. If one of the two parties will not object, it will be prolonged automatically. Wiels calls on the government of the Netherlands Antilles to be active and to close down the FOL.

Colombian music and politics: here.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has rejected a White House offer at the weekend to “mediate” in the dispute over US military bases in Colombia: here.