Uribe clears hurdle

Not everybody agrees, but Alvaro Uribe has cleared one hurdle toward getting reelected.

Colombia's Congress passed a bill allowing President Alvaro Uribe to seek a third consecutive term, a move that increases the likelihood that he will join a wave of Latin American leaders trying to stay in office.

Mr. Uribe's drive for another four-year term echoes similar moves by a group of leftist Latin leaders. The Colombian's bête noir, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, has been in power a decade and changed the constitution to allow himself to run for re-election indefinitely. Ecuador's Rafael Correa and Bolivia's Evo Morales have changed their national charters to allow re-election.

A move to change the constitution and allow re-election led the Honduran Supreme Court and military to oust President Manuel Zelaya in June.

Supporters of the Colombian president say he is much more of a democrat than, for instance, Mr. Chávez, who has gutted Venezuela's democratic institutions with moves such as stacking the courts. Critics say a third term would allow Mr. Uribe to dominate Colombia's traditionally independent institutions. For example, another term would allow him to name the majority of the members of the Constitutional Court.

Senator goes face to face with dissent

Senator Arlen Specter left with his security detail after a town hall meeting in Lebanon, Pa.



I give Specter credit for little, but give him great credit for doing this: facing loud-mouths, allowing people to voice their opinions, and trying to conduct a town-hall meeting despite raucous disruptions.







Many said the Obama administration’s plans for a new health care system were just another example of a federal government that had again gone too far, just as it had, they said, with the economic stimulus, the auto industry bailout and the cap-and-trade program.

What if the government hadn't intervened? What if it allowed the recession to deepen, allowed the car industry to implode and be taken over by foreign firms?

“This is about the dismantling of this country,” Katy Abram, 35, shouted at Mr. Specter, drawing one of the most prolonged rounds of applause. “We don’t want this country to turn into Russia.”

Russia is a capitalist nation. Autocratic, but capitalist.

Ms. Abram described herself as a stay-at-home mother from Lebanon, and in many ways she was representative of the almost entirely white and irritable crowd, most of whom were from the area. Based on interviews with several dozen people who attended, it appeared that about 80 percent of those who showed up opposed the planned changes to the health care system.

Does she cling to her guns? White and irritable.

Anger at a Town Hall Meeting

This guy condemned Senator Specter, and told him God would judge him in due time. What that has t do with health care reform perhaps only he knows.

It was the angriest people who got in line first.

And their anger, while intense, is not representative of general public sentiment.

The crowd was largely hostile to Mr. Specter, who was repeatedly booed and heckled as topics like health care, immigration, government spending and the cap-and-trade program to control pollution were brought up. Many also expressed broad if unspecified disdain for the government and for President Obama.

Broad if unspecified disdain for government and the President: well, if they had the nerve to be politically incorrect rather than just angry, they might say the word black, the one they wish they could, but will not, say.


most of those who spoke Tuesday seemed unlikely to vote in the Democratic primary. Many seemed concerned about issues that are either not in the health care legislation or are peripheral to the debate in Washington — abortion, euthanasia, coverage of immigrants, privacy.

Abortion is not part of the health care bills being offered, and euthanasia is not part of any bill up for consideration: it is a word bandied about as a scare tactic to rile people. Immigrants? A flase target.

“It says plainly right there they want to limit the type of care elderly can get,” said Laurel Tobias, an office manager from Lebanon, referring to a bill in the House. “They are talking about killing people.”

Threat to Niger 's Democracy

A woman selling vegetables at a market in Niamey, the capital of Niger. The country ranks fifth from the bottom in the United Nations human development index.
















Tens of thousands have taken to the streets to protest President Mamadou Tandja’s slow-moving coup d’état, as his critics call it: his plan to stay beyond the legal limit of two terms in his colonial-era palace, a gleaming oasis of whitewashed order amid dilapidated government buildings and mud-brick houses.

In his push for a new constitution that would abolish term limits and give him more power after 10 years as president, Mr. Tandja dissolved a high court that ruled against his bid to remain in office; dismissed a fractious Parliament; took steps to muzzle the press, including shutting down a radio and television station; and arrested opposition leaders.

Just as Chávez, Correa and Morales have done, as Zelaya want to do, In Latin America, one in power in Africa works to perpetuate his power.

Niger’s president, Mamadou Tandja, is seeking a new constitution that will allow him to stay in office past two terms and increase his power.






Democracy is new here in one of the world’s poorest countries, barely a decade old in this vast land of about 14 million people, most of it desert, bigger in area than France, Spain and Portugal together. Uranium deposits, among the world’s largest, provide the government with revenue, but the citizens here do not have much.

Yellow cake, W. Bush announced, Iraq sought to get, and he and Blair used that line to help justify their decision to make war.

Most of Niger’s citizens live on less than a dollar a day.






Most live on less than a dollar a day, and mortality rates for mothers and children are well above the African average — double in the case of women giving birth. The country ranks fifth from the bottom in the United Nations human development index, and persistent malnutrition stalks rural areas, aid workers say. In the capital, the hugely swollen limbs of insistent beggars testify to the effects of unchecked disease.

One thing the people have dearly acquired, though, after decades of coups, military strongmen and weak governments, is a political order that has resembled democracy, albeit with lapses: two successful presidential elections, defeated candidates who go home without causing turmoil, an outspoken opposition and an alert if beleaguered press. The citizens are manifestly unwilling to give up their shaky gains.

In the presidential palace, an airy Moorish-style edifice built for the French governors and well hidden from the road, Mr. Tandja beamed and said he wanted to stay on only because the people were begging him to do so. “The people demand it,” Mr. Tandja said. “My obligation is to never betray the aspirations of the people. It’s the people who asked.”

What people, one wonders.

Although the United States and the European Union have condemned Mr. Tandja’s moves, analysts say that because of an oil deal with the Chinese and support from the Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, he may be relatively invulnerable to Western pressure, despite the considerable presence of outside aid in Niger’s budget.

Mr. Tandja insisted that he had not “violated any act of the Constitution.”

A union leader here who also heads the protests angrily disagreed.

“Unfortunately, he’s made us miss our entrance into the great court of democratic nations, like Ghana and Mali,” said Issoufou Sidibé, secretary general of the Democratic Confederation of Workers in Niger. “He’s made us totally miss what would have been our triumphant entry. It’s made every Nigerien who is proud of his country very angry.”

Premier of Iraq Is Quietly Firing Fraud Monitors

Nice work.

The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is systematically dismissing Iraqi oversight officials, who were installed to fight corruption in Iraqi ministries by order of the American occupation administration, which had hoped to bring Western standards of accountability to the notoriously opaque and graft-ridden bureaucracy here.

So much for change.

The dismissals, which were confirmed by senior Iraqi and American government officials on Sunday and Monday, have come as estimates of official Iraqi corruption have soared. One Iraqi former chief investigator recently testified before Congress that $13 billion in reconstruction funds from the United States had been lost to fraud, embezzlement, theft and waste by Iraqi government officials.

Waste? Well, in that sense Iraq is becoming a modern society.

The moves have not been publicly announced by Mr. Maliki’s government, but word of them has begun to circulate through the layers of Iraqi bureaucracy as Parliament prepares to vote on a long-awaited security agreement. While some Iraqi officials defended the dismissals, saying there had been no political motivation, others pointed to the secrecy involved as supporting their view that those removed had lost their posts without good cause. Each of Iraq’s 30 cabinet-level ministries has one inspector general. These oversight officials are supported by varying budgets and staffing.

Secrecy is not a good sign.

In one case, investigations of a former electricity minister landed him in jail before he escaped and fled to the United States, and an Oil Ministry inspector general detailed extensive smuggling and extortion schemes that he said bedeviled the industry.

How curious that this former minister wound up in the US.

Iraq Case Sheds Light On Secret Contractors

It is a disturbing pattern: the Bush government has outsourced governmental functions to private contractors who make scads of money and are not accountable to Congress or the people in any way.

Overall, the U.S. has about the same number of contractors as military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are about 30,000 US troops in Afghanistan, and about 150,000 in Iraq, adding up to 180,000 troops. Thus 180,000 contractors. What are the costs? And the implications?

... a fast-growing type of government contracting largely escapes such scrutiny: secret programs, or "black" contracts, assisting intelligence agents as they operate in war zones. These contractors have carried out some of the government's most sensitive work – conducting interrogations, manning secret prisons and guarding spy-agency personnel. The programs' existence, size and scope are classified, and so are the details of their troubles.

Private contractors, which, or who, could also be labeled private soldiers, interrogating, manning secret prisons? This is ludicrous, and dangerous. And it is classified?

The House of Representatives Wednesday passed a broad bill tackling a wide range of intelligence policy issues, including tightening oversight of such contractors. It would force intelligence agencies to keep Congress better informed about their use as well as any formal probes into wrongdoing. But the legislation faces serious headwinds: The White House threatened a veto Wednesday, arguing that some of the provisions would hamper its spying operations.

That is the crux of what the Bush government has been: secretive, arrogant, disdainful of oversight.

MVM Inc. is one of these contractors; its website describe the firm as providing Physical Security, Detention Services, Personal Security Details, Prisoner Escort/Transportation, Training, Language Services, and related services to US Government clients. Further, it has 3,000 employees and $200 million in revenue. Those are two hundred million US tax dollars.

Our highly cleared personnel protect federal property and information all over the world says its website; shouldn't that be done by government personnel?

Another of those contractors is Blackwater Worldwide. Its website states: We are guided by integrity, innovation, and a desire for a safer world. That is quite a reach.

Security contractors in Iraq have been in an intense spotlight since employees of another firm, Blackwater Worldwide, were involved in a shooting incident last fall that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, leading to a Justice Department investigation and efforts by the Iraqi government to clamp down on their actions.

How did it come about that private contractors are half of the US effort in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Mr. Boone's little-known employer, MVM Inc., before 2001 mainly provided school and courthouse guards in U.S. cities. As the U.S. sought to supplant its own overstretched forces, MVM quickly grew to become one of the top few providers of secret security in Iraq and Afghanistan, alongside companies including Blackwater. MVM has handled much of the Central Intelligence Agency's and National Security Agency's personal security in war zones.

From school guards to Bagram Prison; quite a success story. It was in place to get business as he U.S. sought to supplant its own overstretched forces. Talk about being in the right place at the right time.