Gee, is this a great time to be alive or what? More good news from TruthOut.

One in Six Countries Facing Food Shortage
By John Vidal and Tim Radford
The Guardian UK

Thursday 30 June 2005

One in six countries in the world face food shortages this year because of severe droughts that could become semi-permanent under climate change, UN scientists warned yesterday.

In a stark message for world leaders who meet in Gleneagles next week to discuss global warming, Wulf Killman, chairman of the UN food and agriculture organisation's climate change group, said the droughts that have devastated crops across Africa, central America and south-east Asia in the past year are part of an emerging pattern.

RFE/RL Newsline reports July 1 that a leading Uzbek opposition figure, Muhammad Solih, is seeking to use a visit to Washington to urge the US and European Union to expand their support for "democracy activists" in Uzbekistan.

"We do not ask for a lot from the West," Solih said. "We want the West to aid the legalization of political parties in Uzbekistan. We would like the West to aid the leaders of the opposition to function in Uzbekistan, to ensure the conduct of fair elections in Uzbekistan and the participation of the opposition in those elections and to ensure the existence of a free press. This in and of itself is enough to ensure the peaceful removal of this antidemocratic regime."

Still only rumors at this point, but chilling ones, and a UN rapporteur considers them credible enough to warrant an investigation. Thanks to TruthOut for sending this one from AFP June 29:

US Suspected of Keeping Secret Prisoners on Warships: UN Official
The UN has learned of "very, very serious" allegations that the United States is secretly detaining terrorism suspects in various locations around the world, notably aboard prison ships, the UN's special rapporteur on terrorism said.

From Ha'aretz June 30:

Book: Rabin backed transfer of Arabs in '56
By Amir Oren

Assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin proposed transferring the Palestinians from the West Bank while serving as a major general in the Israel Defense Forces in 1956, according to a book published by the State Archive last week.

The transfer suggestion was raised at an IDF staff meeting attended by then-prime minister and defense minister David Ben-Gurion. Rabin proposed initiating a war against Jordan and using it to deport Palestinians from the West Bank.

Russia has increased its support for the embattled government of Uzbekistan, announcing that it will soon conduct joint military exercises with the regime of President Islam Karimov. The announcement by Sergei Ivanov, Russia's defense minister, was broadcast in Moscow after a meeting with Karimov. Ivanov said the maneuvers would be in central Uzbekistan this summer, the first since Uzbekistan broke from the Soviet Union in 1991.

From the JTA June 30:

French extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen met with a Russian ultranationalist during a visit to Moscow.

Sergei Baburin is deputy speaker of the Rodina Party, some of whose legislators backed a letter earlier this year calling for Jewish groups to be outlawed in Russia. Le Pen was in Russia promoting his idea to close off the European Union to people from the Third World.

See our last post for more on the Rodina Party.

Well, the (supposedly) final design for the "Freedom Tower" that is to rise where the World Trade Center stood has been unveiled after a long, tortuous process. And the design, a brutalist product of politics and paranoia without even a whiff of human spirit, renders the tower's name more Orwellian than ever. Such a ghastly construction can only be understood in the context of the new anti-terrorist police state; indeed, this is probably the first major public building explicitly designed under the direct influence, and with the veto power, of a city police department.

After much speculation following their announcement of a "red alert" last week, on June 26 the Zapatista rebels in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas issued a communique announcing that their "consulta," or consultation with their base communities, was complete, and stating that they would soon release a new statement outlining a "new national and international political initiative." The new statement would be called the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Selva, after their jungle stronghold. The rebels, known officially as the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), have issued such "declarations" at various critical junctures since their 1994 rebellion. (June 26 statement online at the University of Texas Chiapas95 archive.)