By Laura Fawaz, TMO Contributing Reporter

Worldwide–Over the years, we’ve heard more and more celebrities openly converting to Islam, and making a statement while doing so. 

File:  Sean Stone

We all remember the notables such as Muhammad Ali, Cat Stevens, or the attention-grabbing Dave Chappelle, but the interesting aspect, is the manner in which it happens.  For example, Sean Stone, son of film director Oliver Stone, converted to Islam in early 2012 during a visit to Iran.  And Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law to former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair, who converted to Islam after traveling to Palestine and seeing the destruction of the occupied country. 

You will always see Sean Stone, 27, who adopted the Islamic name Ali, wearing his necklace that symbolizes the sword of Sayyidina Ali.  He told Iranian media he hopes his conversion to Islam helps Americans to understand more about the faith.  His father Oliver, who has supported his decision to convert to Islam, is no stranger to political controversy.  He has been targeted for making remarks that were considered as anti-Semitic, even though he is of Jewish decent.  Ali’s mother is Christian, and now he Muslim after his conversion while filming a documentary about Rumi, the 13th-century mystic Persian poet, in the Iranian city of Isfahan.  He even told Bill O’Reilly last year that after sitting down with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he is “misunderstood” because he’s said some sensational things to fight off other factions in the nation.  He said the best Iran could do with regard to the tensions surrounding the country over its controversial nuclear program was not to look to the West. Iran says it is enriching uranium only for civilian purposes. “Pay attention to the east, and work with its partners like China,” he said. 

“I feel good when I enter a mosque. I believe there is only one God and with this view it is not important whether you are Muslim, Christian or Jewish, ” said Ali.

News coming out of the Philippines in November 2011 was on actress Queenie Padilla, daughter of actor Robin Padilla, who has quit show business for her Muslim religion.  In an interview with ABS-CBN News, Padilla said she finds inner peace and direction in life in Islam.  “Islam is a way of life.  When you start to [become a] Muslim, you know [what] your life purpose really is.  I am such a sinful person, but Allah invited me to his house.  I am so close to him,” she said.

When interviewed after she returned from making the Islamic pilgrimage of Haj, Queenie said, “When I was in showbiz, I was very unhappy. I was lost and I always felt I never belong. But now that Allah is in my life, Alhamdullilah, La illa illalah, I am so happy and content in my life,”

The next convert was well known in his early years for saying, “Ain’t I pretty?,” and formerly-known-as Cassius Marcellus Clay.  Until he won his first heavyweight title in 1964, and later shocked the world as Clay announced that he had been a longtime member of the Nation of Islam, and a week later took the name Muhammad Ali.  No one, with the exception of Howard Cosell (an American sports journalist), accepted his name change.  The New York State Athletic Commission withdrew its recognition of his title, and did it again in 1967 when Ali refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War.  With countless acts of defiance and resurrection, Clay has, through the strength of his mind and his will, transforming himself into Ali the cultural icon, “The Greatest.”

We all remember Malcolm X.  He was Malcolm Little, a small-time crook from Boston, dealing drugs and working the occasional robbery, and thrown in jail in 1946.  There, he began reading everything he could get his hands on, and in 1948 he got a letter from his older brother Philbert saying that many members of his family had converted to the Nation of Islam.  The Nation of Islam was started by another ex-con, Wallace D. Fard, who preached that the white race is comprised of mutants.  Many know him from his original story, as the young man drawn to a group who dedicated themselves to transforming marginalized blacks into a spiritual force.  As for Malcolm, what that X stood for was his symbol to the fight to regain black history, preferably through civil rights or religious symbolism.

Cat Stevens, born as Steven Demetre Georgiou, created this as his stage name because he had eyes like a cat and because Americans love animals.  Another name change came in 1978 when he became Yusef Islam, a year after he converted to Islam.  The underlining story that lead to his conversion is almost biblical: in 1976, as Cat Stevens, he nearly drowned off the coast of Malibu.  He then prayed to God that if he were saved, he would dedicate his life to him.  Sure enough, he was carried to shore by a wave, and when his brother gave him a copy of the Qur’an, he was captivated.

When this man announced his conversion, most people were not sure if it was a rumor, or accurate.  As a well-known comedian, Dave Chappelle’s show was known for its pointed disrespect, and for “I’m Rick James, b—-!”  But in May of 2005, as his loyal fans enthusiastically awaited the premiere of his third season, the comedian abruptly disappeared to South Africa.  Chappelle had gone to there in part to renew his spiritual practice; he converted to Islam in 1998 and very few people even knew.  Chappelle explained, “I don’t normally talk about my religion publicly because I don’t want people to associate me and my flaws with this beautiful thing. And I believe it is a beautiful religion if you learn it the right way. It’s a lifelong effort. Your religion is your standard. Coming here I don’t have the distractions of fame. It quiets the ego down.”

15-19

By Anna Yukhananov

WASHINGTON, May 1 (Reuters) – Twenty of the world’s most troubled countries have made progress in efforts that range from reducing poverty to improving the education of girls and cutting down on the deaths of women in childbirth, the World Bank said on Wednesday.

The improvement is a big shift from just a few years ago for the 20 fragile and conflict-hit states.

Data shows these 20 countries have met at least one of a series of targets adopted by the United Nations in 2000 that aim to slash poverty, hunger and disease in poor countries by 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals, according to the World Bank’s analysis.

Another six are on track to meet the goals by the deadline in 2015, with the progress visible in part due to better data collection and monitoring.

Data gathered in 2010 and earlier had found none of these states had met any of the Millennium Development Goals.

Places like Afghanistan, Nepal and Timor-Leste have halved the number of people in extreme poverty, or increased the number of girls enrolled in schools.
“This should be a wake-up call to the global community not to dismiss these countries as lost causes,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said. “Development can and is being achieved, even amid fragility and violence.”

But states caught in repeated cycles of violence are still lagging behind the rest of the world in development metrics and are struggling to meet more than one target.

States are also vulnerable to relapse. Yemen was on track to reduce the number of women dying from childbirth before violence erupted during the Arab Spring in 2011.

One of the challenges in helping fragile nations is trying to bridge the gap between long-term development and humanitarian assistance, which tends to pour in once a country emerges from conflict but just as quickly dries up after international attention fades or there are no immediate signs of progress, Caroline Anstey, managing director at the World Bank, said.

“There are pathways out of fragility. They require that support continues after the cameras leave,” Anstey said in an interview. “They require that we focus on clear deliverables, that we track results, and that support is transparent and accountable.”

The World Bank has started to work more closely with the United Nations, which has typically focused on peace-keeping and humanitarian assistance. Kim, the World Bank’s president, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon are planning a joint visit to the Great Lakes Region in Africa later this month, one of the first ever missions attended by heads of both organizations.

“Humanitarian aid isn’t going to enable you to build institutions, to have those long-term investments in training or even education and health,” Anstey said. “We think that by working more closely with the UN, we can bridge that development gap.”

With belt-tightening across Europe and in the United States, the World Bank has put more focus on strenuous oversight of how aid money is used and if it actually impacts the poor.

Increasingly, that means talking to local communities and countries themselves, and targeting projects to their needs -including trying to address the causes of the conflict.

“What we’re trying to do is ensure that in all the conflict and fragile states that we work in, we try to get better analysis of the drivers of conflict and fragility,” said Joel Hellman, director of the World Bank’s Global Center on Conflict, Security and Development.

“Because if you don’t address those basic drivers … other investments could be undermined by the return to conflict,” he said.

15-19

Last week, TMO reported that the Boston Marathon bombing suspects’ home had been razed, based on radio news. Recent reports state that the home on Norfolk St. in Cambridge has not been razed, but the basement had been cleared of bomb making materials.

By Julie Lévesque

April 26, 2013: As with many “terrorism” related events since 9/11, the Boston bombing official narrative proves to be a web of lies as important facts are revealed. It turns out that the FBI has lied about its knowledge of the alleged suspects, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, already being presented as guilty not only in the mainstream press but by the President himself.

According to the suspects’ mother, the FBI had been following them for years:

The FBI originally feigned ignorance over the identity of the two Boston bombing suspects, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, as they appealed to an unwitting public to help them “identify” and “find” the suspects. […]

Russia Today, in an article titled, “‘They were set up, FBI followed them for years’- Tsarnaevs’ mother to RT,” stated of the suspects’ mother:

But her biggest suspicion surrounding the case was the constant FBI surveillance she said her family was subjected to over the years. She is surprised that having been so stringent with the entire family, the FBI had no idea the sons were supposedly planning a terrorist act.

She would say of the FBI to Russia Today:

They used to come [to our] home, they used to talk to me…they were telling me that he [the older, 26-y/o Tamerlan] was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites…they were controlling him, they were controlling his every step…and now they say that this is a terrorist act! Never ever is this true, my sons are innocent!

[…] The FBI would then be forced to concede that indeed it had interviewed the suspects, in 2011, two years before the Boston bombings. (Tony Cartalucci Boston Bombing Suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev Reported Killed, Was Alive When Detained: Tamerlan’s Aunt, Global Research, April 22, 2013.)

We were also told that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in an exchange of gunfire after he and his brother had robbed a 7-Eleven:

When the shootout ended, one of the suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, a former boxer, had been shot and fatally wounded. He was wearing explosives, several law enforcement officials said. (Katharine Q. Seelye, William K. Rashbaum and Michael Cooper 2nd Bombing Suspect Caught After Frenzied Hunt Paralyzes Boston, The New York Times, April 19, 2013.)

With a bomb strapped to his chest, one of the Boston Marathon suspects was killed early Friday after he and his accomplice brother robbed a 7-Eleven, shot a police officer to death, carjacked an SUV and hurled explosives in an extraordinary firefight with law enforcement, authorities told NBC News. (Pete Williams, Richard Esposito, Michael Isikoff and Erin McClam, NBC News, One Boston Marathon suspect killed; second suspect, his brother, on loose after firefight, NBC News, April 19, 2013.)

The events surrounding Tamerlan’s death reported by the media are simply not true. It turns out that Tamerlan’ aunt identified him as a “naked, cuffed, clearly alive and well detainee seen in video aired by CNN”:

Tamerlan Tsarnaev in custody

Was Tamerlan Assassinated?

The Boston Globe confirmed that Marathon Bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was in custody, contradicting earlier reports that he had been killed in crossfire. If he was in custody and is now dead, does that not suggest that he might have been the object of an extrajudicial assassination? The circumstances of his death remain to be clarified.

Moreover, the 7-Eleven robbery was actually unrelated to the Tsarnaev brothers:

There was a 7-Eleven robbery in Cambridge last night, but it had nothing to do with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.

Margaret Chabris, the director of corporate communication at 7- Eleven, says the surveillance video of the crime was not taken at a 7-Eleven and that the suspect that did rob the 7-Eleven does not look like Tamerlan or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

“The suspect in the photos for that particular 7-Eleven robbery looks nothing like the suspects,” Chabris says. “The police or someone made a mistake. Someone was confused.”

[…] Again, they might be guilty. But as Glenn Greenwald notes:

The overarching principle here should be that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is entitled to a presumption of innocence until he is actually proven guilty. As so many cases have proven – from accused (but exonerated) anthrax attacker Stephen Hatfill to accused (but exonerated) Atlanta Olympic bomber Richard Jewell to dozens if not hundreds of Guantanamo detainees accused of being the “worst of the worst” but who were guilty of nothing – people who appear to be guilty based on government accusations and trials-by-media are often completely innocent. Media-presented evidence is no substitute for due process and an adversarial trial. (Washington’s Blog, Boston Terror Narrative Starts Falling Apart, Global Research, April 23, 2013)

On April 19 Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested and brought to a hospital. According to Reuters, “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was wounded during at least one of two gun battles with police on Friday, suffering gunshot wounds to his head, neck, legs and hand […]“. On April 24, the Huffington Post reported:

Two U.S. officials say the surviving suspect in the Boston bombings was unarmed when police captured him hiding inside a boat in a neighborhood back yard.

Authorities originally said they had exchanged gunfire with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for more than one hour Friday evening before they were able to subdue him. (Adam Goldman and Pete Yost, Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Reportedly Unarmed When Arrested In Boat, Officials Say, Huffington Post, April 24, 2013.)
 
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was unarmed and obviously brutalized by police

We still don’t know what really happened in Boston and who committed the attacks even though the mainstream media report that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has admitted being guilty. What we know for sure is that the official Boston bombing narrative is filled with lies and that since 9/11 and in the context of the fictitious “War on Terror”, Western governments, intelligence agencies and mainstream media have proven to be untrustworthy sources of information on alleged “terrorist attacks” or “foiled terrorist plots”.

Canada’s Complicity in the War on Terror

Three days after Boston was locked down, invaded by a colossal police-military apparatus on a surreal “teenagehunt”, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police made a very timely announcement: they had foiled a terrorist plot targeting a Via Rail passenger train. Or so they say.

In a very absurd press conference where three RCMP officers repeatedly answered questions with “we cannot comment as the investigation is ongoing”, the only information they seemed very eager to disclose was that the suspects “received guidance from Al-Qaeda in Iran”.
 
RCMP press conference

While the Canadian mainstream media take these RCMP allegations at face value, independent news outlets suspect hidden political motives behind the highly publicized announcement:

Neither the police nor government have given any reason as to why, after allowing the accused to remain at large for months, they were suddenly arrested Monday afternoon and in a very high-profile manner. […]

Speaking Tuesday after Jaser’s arraignment in a Toronto court, his lawyer, John Norris, drew attention to the timing of the police-government announcement that they had uncovered Canada’s first “al-Qaeda-sponsored” terror plot. Said Norris, “The timing of the arrest is a bit of a mystery and certainly I would like to hear the RCMP’s explanation for that. They have been very clear that there is no risk of public safety and it is surprising to say the least that this arrest would be made now, close on the heels of what happened in Boston and timed perfectly with what was happening in the House of Commons yesterday.”

On Friday, the Conservative government announced that it was changing the House of Commons’ agenda, scheduling third and final reading of its “Combating Terrorism Act” (Bill S-7) to begin Monday and conclude this week. Bill S-7 gives the state vast new powers. These include: the right to hold terrorism suspects for 72 hours without charge, to convene “investigative hearings” at which those believed to have information about an imminent terrorist attack are stripped of their right to remain silent, and the power to place restrictions for up to a year on the movements and rights of persons deemed by the state to be terrorist suspects but against whom they have insufficient evidence to lay charges. […]

US authorities have been quick to trumpet the Canadian claims of a thwarted terrorist attack—claims that boost their own efforts to portray North America as under siege from terrorists and justify a vast expansion of the national-security apparatus and coercive powers of the state. The US ambassador to Canada, David Jacobson, issued a statement Monday saying the arrests of Esseghaier and Jaser “were the result of extensive cross-border cooperation” and had underscored “that we face serious and real threats.” […]

At Monday’s press conference, the RCMP asserted that Esseghaier and Jaser had acted under the “direction and guidance” of “al-Qaeda elements located in Iran.”

The RCMP said that they had no evidence of Iranian government involvement. […]

The Harper Conservative government, which has declared itself Israel’s strongest ally and has expanded Canada’s decades’ old military-strategic alliance with Washington, broke off diplomatic relations with Teheran last summer. In justifying this action, Conservative Foreign Minister John Baird labeled Iran “the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today.” (Keith Jones Canadian Government unveils “Terror Plot” as it Adopts Draconian New Law, World Socialist Web Site, April 24, 2013.)

We may recall a “terrorist plot” revealed in late November 2001. According to mainstream reports, Ahmed Ressam, who was convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport in 1999, had also planned to bomb a Montreal area with “the most visible concentration of Jews in Canada — a vibrant area of some 5,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews who stand out because of their traditional outfits of black coats and hats for men, long skirts and wigs for women. » (Ingrid Peritz, Montreal’s brush with terror, The Globe and Mail, November 30, 2001.)

The Globe stated further:

Members of the Hasidic community in Outremont responded with shock after hearing that Mr. Ressam and Samir Ait Mohamed wanted to detonate a bomb in the area because it was predominantly Jewish.

The stated choice of explosives — a bomb on a gasoline truck — evoked the detonating power of the fuel-laden planes that ripped through the World Trade Center. (Ibid.)

Samir Aït Mohamed happened to be a fake Algerian refugee and “an informant for Canadian law-enforcement authorities [RCMP].” (Mike Carter, Montreal bomb plot revealed in Ressam case documents, Seattle Times, November 30, 2001.)

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was also involved in a terrorist plot. Joseph Gilles Breault, a.k.a. Youssef Mouammar or Abou Djihad, had threatened to attack the Montreal metro with a biochemical weapon in 1998. He was a CSIS agent.

With that in mind, the latest RCMP “exploit” raises even more questions on this revived Al-Qaeda threat focused on Iran. Who’s behind Al-Qaeda in Iran?:

As the FBI reels from what now appears to be revelations it was directly involved in the Boston Marathon bombings, a deluge of FBI “success” stories have been “serendipitously” splashed across Western headlines. Among them was an allegedly “foiled” terror attack in Canada, reported to be the work of terrorists supported by “Al-Qaeda operatives in Iran.” The Globe and Mail, in its report, “Canada joins U.S. in alleging al-Qaeda has operatives based in Iran,” states:

[…] The Sunni-based al-Qaeda and Shia Iran belong to different branches of Islam that have been at odds historically. But in recent years U.S. officials have formally alleged that Iran has allowed al-Qaeda members to operate out of its territory.”

[…] Hersh in his 2008 New Yorker piece titled, “Preparing the Battlefield: The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran,” spelled out a damning indictment of US involvement in bolstering, arming, and funding terror organizations, not linked to, but described as actually being Al Qaeda […]:

One of the most active and violent anti-regime groups in Iran today is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement, which describes itself as a resistance force fighting for the rights of Sunnis in Iran. “This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists,” Nasr told me. “They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture.” The Jundallah took responsibility for the bombing of a busload of Revolutionary Guard soldiers in February, 2007. At least eleven Guard members were killed. According to Baer and to press reports,the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefiting from U.S. support. (Tony Cartalucci, Who is Behind “Al Qaeda in Iran”?, Global Research, April 23, 2013.)

Otherwise the brothers’ links to Chechen terrorists makes very little sense, since the latter, like many other terrorist groups and/or so-called freedom fighters depending on the strategy of the day, have been supported by the US:

What is abundantly clear is that the US government is not committed to fighting terrorists.

Quite the opposite. US intelligence has been recruiting and grooming terrorists for more than thirty years, while at same time upholding the absurd notion that these terrorists, who are bona fide CIA “intelligence assets”, constitute a threat to the American Homeland. These alleged threats by “An Outside Enemy” are part of a propaganda ploy behind the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT).

[…] The development of an Islamist terrorist militia in different countries around the World is part of an intricate US intelligence project.

While the Tsarnaev brothers are casually accused without evidence of having links to Chechen terrorists, the important question is who is behind the Chechen terrorists?

In an utterly twisted logic, the protagonists of the ‘Global War on Terrorism” directed against Muslims are the de facto architects of “Islamic terrorism.” (Michel Chossudovsky, BOSTON TRUTH: The “Chechen Connection”, Al Qaeda and the Boston Marathon Bombings, Global Research, April 22, 2013.)

Even former US Ambassador Craig Murray says the “Chechen Connexion” story is surreal:

We are asked to believe that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was identified by the Russian government as an extremist Dagestani or Chechen Islamist terrorist, and they were so concerned about it that in late 2010 they asked the US government to take action. At that time, the US and Russia did not normally have a security cooperation relationship over the Caucasus, particularly following the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. For the Russians to ask the Americans for assistance, Tsarnaev must have been high on their list of worries.

In early 2011 the FBI interview Tsarnaev and trawl his papers and computers but apparently – remarkably for somebody allegedly radicalised by internet – the habitually paranoid FBI find nothing of concern.

So far, so weird. But now this gets utterly incredible. In 2012 Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who is of such concern to Russian security, is able to fly to Russia and pass through the airport security checks of the world’s most thoroughly and brutally efficient security services without being picked up.

He is then able to proceed to Dagestan – right at the heart of the world’s heaviest military occupation and the world’s most far reaching secret police surveillance – again without being intercepted, and he is able there to go through some form of terror training or further Islamist indoctrination. He then flies out again without any intervention by the Russian security services.

That is the official story and I have no doubt it did not happen. I know Russia and I know the Russian security services. Whatever else they may be, they are extremely well-equipped, experienced and efficient and embedded into a social fabric accustomed to cooperation with their mastery.

This scenario is simply impossible in the real world. (Craig Murray, The Boston Bombings and the FBI: “Official Tsarnaev Story Makes No Sense”, 21st Century Wire, April 22, 2013.)

The idea that Tamerlan was, in fact, a US intelligence asset seems closer to the truth, since according to a Russian newspaper, he attended a US-sponsored workshop in the Caucasus, the goal of which was to destabilize southern regions of Russia:

Today, Russian newspaper Izvestia alleges that the older Boston Tamarlan bombing brother attended a workshop – sponsored by an American organization – on destabilizing the Russian satellite states:

At the disposal of “Izvestia” has documents Counterintelligence Department Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia, confirming that the Georgian organization “Fund of Caucasus” [here’s their website], which cooperates with the U.S. non-profit organization “Jamestown” (the board of directors of NGOs previously entered one of the ideologists of U.S. foreign policy, Zbigniew Brzezinski), was engaged in recruiting residents North Caucasus to work in the interests of the United States and Georgia.

According to the reports of Colonel Chief Directorate Counterintelligence Department Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia Gregory Chanturia to the Minister of Internal Affairs Irakli Garibashvili,“Caucasian fund” in cooperation with the Foundation “Jamestown” in the summer of 2012 conducted workshops and seminars for young people of the Caucasus, including its Russian part. Some of them attended Tsarnaev Tamerlane, who was in Russia from January to July 2012.

“Caucasian fund” writes Tchanturia was established November 7, 2008, just after the Georgian-Ossetian conflict, “to control the processes taking place in the North Caucasus region.” Accordingly, the Department of the Interior Ministry counterintelligence case was brought intelligence operations called “DTV”. Main purpose is to recruit young people and intellectuals of the North Caucasus to enhance instability and extremism in the southern regions of Russia. (Washington’s Blog, Was Boston Bomber “Radicalized” at a U.S. Sponsored Counterterrorism Workshop, Global Research, April 24, 2013.)

Overall, the Boston tragedy is clearly and sadly being exploited to revamp the “War on terror”, justify the police state apparatus in the US and other Western countries such as Canada, and legitimize attacks on our rights and liberties.

Global Research brings to the attention of its readers a list of articles on this very important topic.

Global Research, Url of this article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-boston-bombing-web-of-lies/5332981

15-19

By Karin Friedemann, TMO

Karin Friedemann

There are currently 166 people imprisoned in Guantanamo, the majority of whom are known to be innocent. 86 of them have already been cleared for release by the US government since many years. Yet their indefinite detention without trial continues. More than 130 of the prisoners are now embroiled in an agonizing hunger strike to draw attention to their plight. Shaker Aamer, the sole UK citizen still at Guantanamo, who has been locked up for 11 years despite being cleared for release 6 years ago, has already lost more than a quarter of his body weight.

“I barely notice all of my medical ailments any more – the back pain from the beatings I have taken, the rheumatism from the frigid air conditioning, the asthma exacerbated by the toxic sprays they use to abuse us. There is an endless list. And now 24/7, as the Americans say, I have the ache of hunger,” Aamer told the Observer, UK.

“I hope I do not die in this awful place. I want to hug my children and watch them as they grow. But if it is God’s will that I should die here, I want to die with dignity. I hope, if the worst comes to the worst, that my children will understand that I cared for the rights of those suffering around me almost as much as I care for them.”

Yemeni prisoner Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel wrote in a letter published in The New York Times, “The situation is desperate now. All of the detainees here are suffering deeply… And there is no end in sight to our imprisonment. Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made. I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late.”

The US Supreme Court ruled (Hamdan vs Rumsfeld) on June 29, 2006 that Guantanamo detainees were legally entitled to protection under the Geneva Convention and under US laws regarding prisoners’ rights during armed conflicts. In a speech on August 1, 2007, Obama, then a senator, said, “In the dark halls of Abu Ghraib and the detention cells of Guantanamo, we have compromised our most precious values.” On January 22, 2009, the new president Obama signed an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility within one year, in order to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism.”

Ramzy Baroud writes on antiwar.com, “While his second term is unlikely to deliver much of the “change” he had so industriously promised, skeletal men continue to sink into utter despair at the American gulag at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.”

Attorney Carlos Warner, who represents 11 prisoners at Guantánamo, told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, “The president has the authority to transfer individuals if he believes that it’s in the interests of the United States. He doesn’t have the political will to do so because 166 men in Guantánamo don’t have much pull in the United States. But the average American on the street does not understand that half of these men, 86 of the men, are cleared for release.”

Things had been improving at Guantanamo in terms of prison conditions. Torture had stopped. Once the prisoners were found to lack any useful information, the brutal interrogations stopped. Warner continues:

“There are about four years of détente between the guards and the men, where really, the guards were understanding of the men and the men were very respectful to the guards. And the guard force was changed in September. It went from the Navy to the Army. It was from that time, we started to have crisis…

“Basically, the Army made a decision: We want to take everything out of the camps and know what we’re dealing with. This all came to a head on February the 6th when the men’s cells were stripped and Muslim linguists were leafing through the Qur’ans with the Army looking on. And this was, as I’ve said, the spark that ignited this current strike. And from there, we’ve just devolved and devolved.”

Guantanamo prisoner Fayiz al-Kandry reported that he is being force-fed with a bigger tube than is required. This makes it difficult for him to breathe, and induces vomiting.

Sami al-Hajj, the al-Jazeera journalist who was held in Guantanamo for over 6 years, reported that while he was on the hunger strike that led to his release, guards forcibly shoved a large tube through his nose down into his stomach, and violently yanked it out after the feeding was done. They reused the same tube filled with blood and vomit to shove inside the hunger striking prisoners.

The new Army guards have attempted to break the hunger strikers’ resolve by placing them in solitary cells. This led to violent clashes, with guards firing “non-lethal” rounds on prisoners.

On March 21, 2013, al-Kandry sent a gift to Attorney Warner with a letter that reads: “I made this lantern with my brothers. It’s made with bits of paper and cardboard. We used a water bottle sanded on the floor as glass. We painted it with bits of paint and fruit juice. It’s held together by pressure only. We made this lantern for those in the world who remember and pray for us during this time of suffering. Let its light fill you. Use it to bring peace to your heart.” Attorney Warner said that it felt like a goodbye letter.

Without any serious pressure from concerned Americans to close Guantanamo, and without any heroic attempt by the Cuban people to rid themselves of the grotesque American occupation on their soil, it appears that an entire corporate industry has grown around the continuing injustice towards these men, most of whom were randomly kidnapped while traveling abroad, and sold to the US for a couple thousand dollars’ bounty. Releasing them would mean Americans admitting they were wrong. Something we are not used to doing.

Ryan J Reilly reports in the Huffington Post, “As Obama’s second term begins, Guantanamo seems to be putting down roots. Indeed, parts of the naval base have taken on the appearance of a new beach side housing development. Hundreds of homes are currently under construction in neighborhoods with names like Iguana Terrace and Marina Point, to house the growing population of military personnel, civilian contractors and their families, which currently stands at approximately 5,000… The base features a Starbucks, a Subway, a McDonald’s, a KFC/Taco Bell, a supermarket, a golf course, a restaurant serving Jamaican jerk chicken and an Irish pub. A gift shop sells stuffed iguanas and T-shirts emblazoned with Guantanamo Bay slogans like ‘Close, But No Cigar.’”

15-19

30.4.13

File:  An Amnesty International “Close Guantanamo” protest.

On Friday, I received an alarming message from inside Guantánamo, from a reliable source who described the impact of the prison-wide hunger strike, now nearing the three-month mark, by stating that the the guards were “putting people in isolation and all day long making lots of noise by speaking loudly, running on the metal stairs and leaving their two-way radios on all day and night. People cannot sleep.”

The source added, “There are at least four people that are at the very edge and one named Khiali Gul from Afghanistan is in a bad shape and cannot move and cannot talk or eat or drink. When other detainees tell the guards about him, they say, ‘When he is completely unconscious, then we will take him.’ The chances are that he will die.”

I have been reporting on the hunger strike since it first became public knowledge in February, and it is reports like the one above, and the statements that have been featured in prominent newspapers — by Samir Moqbel, a Yemeni, in the New York Times, and Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, in the Observer — that have helped to put the spotlight back on Guantánamo, after several years in which most people had lost interest.

President Obama took office in 2009 promising to close Guantánamo within a year, but when he failed to do so, through his own inaction and obstruction in Congress, the mainstream media and the American people largely moved on, even though the injustice of Guantánamo ought to become more pronounced rather than less the longer it is open.

Of the 166 men still held at Guantánamo, 86 were cleared for release by an inter-agency task force established by the President in 2009, but are still held with no end in sight to what is their indefinite detention — for the rest of their lives, unless there is a major change in the way America operates. If these men’s indefinite detention was not quite planned, 46 others have an executive order, issued by President Obama in March 2011, to thank for their predicament. Found to be too dangerous to release, even though no evidence exists that could be used in court (meaning that it is fundamentally unreliable), they were promised periodic reviews of their cases when they were consigned to life imprisonment without charge or trial, but those reviews have never materialized.

When these facts are known, the hunger strike becomes readily comprehensible, and now that some key parts of the mainstream media have woken up to the ongoing injustice of Guantánamo — and, fortunately, show no sign of giving up on it in the aftermath of the Boston bombings, which some dark forces within America wanted to use to stir up a whole new wave of Islamophobia — it remains crucial that the voices of the men continue to be heard.

Last week, Jason Leopold of Truthout helped to keep the spotlight on some of the men that the prisoners themselves claim are refusing food, through discussions with their lawyers. The US authorities, having initially responded to the news of the hunger strike by claiming that it didn’t exist, have steadily been acknowledging that it does, and have been revising their figures upwards of the numbers of prisoners taking part. As of April 26, the military stated that 97 prisoners are hunger strikers, that 19 are being force-fed, and that five have been hospitalized. Even this, however, fails to match the prisoners’ own claims that around 130 of the remaining prisoners are on the hunger strike.

One of those on the hunger strike is Abdulsalam Al-Hela, a 45-year old Yemeni businessman kidnapped in Egypt in September 2002 and held in “black sites” before his transfer to Guantánamo in September 2004. As Leopold described it, he “does not understand why he and other Guantánamo prisoners reside in a perpetual state of legal limbo.” In a meeting in March, he asked his attorney, David Remes, “Can it really be true that US, with all its power, all over the world, can’t solve the problems of 100 men?”

Al-Hela has been on the hunger strike since the first day, February 6, and is “gaunt and weak” like most of the hunger strikers. Remes told Leopold that he “walks with the aid of an aluminum cane,” and “has lost more than 30 pounds” since the hunger strike began.

The hunger strike began in response to a change in the behavior of the guards. This apparently started last summer, when a new guard force arrived, and, as Leopold explained, “The Navy personnel who has previously patrolled the cellblocks were replaced by soldiers returning from tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prisoners complained to their lawyers bitterly and often about being ‘tormented’ and ‘provoked’ by the guards.”

Carlos Warner, an attorney with the Office of the Federal Defender for the Northern District of Ohio, who represents Fayiz al-Kandari, one of the last two Kuwaitis in the prison, “noted on March 20 that his client complained not only of guards ‘provoking’ the prisoners, but threatening to kill them — a claim that Pentagon and Guantánamo officials have vehemently denied in all cases.”

Fayiz has long been a resilient prisoner, regarded by the authorities as difficult because he had not been “broken” by years of interrogation, but he is now extremely weak, and, as his military defense team, led by Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, explained on April 14, “Reflecting on our latest trip to Guantánamo Bay, the picture of Fayiz keeps coming to our mind. Fayiz has become abnormally thin due to extreme loss of body weight. You could fit your hands around his waist with both hands touching.”

In Truthout, Jason Leopold also delved into an incident on January 2, a month before the hunger strike began, when non-lethal rounds were fired at a prisoner in the recreation yard for those in Camp 6, regarded as the most compliant and cooperative of the remaining prisoners, who were allowed to spend a lot of their time communally until a clampdown on April 13, when most of them were put in solitary confinement.

The authorities claimed that one prisoner tried to climb the fence and “a small crowd of detainees began throwing rocks at the guard tower,” after which the rounds were fired, and one Afghan was hit in the throat. However, Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, a Yemeni, is one of several prisoners who said that “it wasn’t the prisoners who provoked the guard force, but a guard who overreacted” after a prisoner entered the recreation area against his wishes.

David Remes, who represents 13 Yemeni prisoners, provide unclassified notes of a meeting on March 7 with Uthman, which stated, “Detainee started shaking door (very common). Guard in tower pointed rifle at him. Brothers in yard started shouting. Guard swung around with his rifle and started shooting at them — just one bullet, which hit a detainee in the throat.”

Another Yemeni, Yasein Ismael, told Remes on March 5 that the prisoners were “surprised when a guard in a tower pointed a gun at detainees and shot into the group.” He said, “We were defenceless. We had no weapons.” He added that he spoke to the staff judge advocate, the people in the psychiatric ward, and the investigators, and said, “I told them I thought my life was in danger. I didn’t go out for a month because I thought I’d be killed by mistake or on purpose. They keep creating provocations, bringing Hummers with machine guns. No reason.”

Ismael, Remes said, weighed just 115 pounds when he saw him in March. He added that he “was unable to keep his balance and had to drink a ‘sugary water substance’ to remain alert.”

After the shooting incident, there was a five-day hunger strike. An officer in charge apparently met with the prisoners and apologized, but soon after legal papers were confiscated from the prisoners’ cells, and then came the Koran searches that caused the initial outrage amongst the prisoners, leading to the hunger strike that is still ongoing.

The trigger was apparently the death, last September, of Adnan Latif, who allegedly hoarded medication that he used to kill himself. Investigators thought he might have hidden it in his Koran, leading Col. John Bogdan, the commander of Guantánamo’s Joint Detention Group, to order the prisoners’ Korans to be searched, despite protestations from the prisoners.

Yasein Ismael described how certain guards tried to provoke the prisoners. “We thought they wanted us to react violent to give excuse for them to harm us,” he said, and Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman added that some prisoners “started breaking cameras in their cells.” Then came the Hummers. “[Three] groups, one with gun, one with sticks and one with shields,” Ismael said, adding, “Brothers tried to forestall attack by agreeing to be peaceful. A peaceful protest. We passed word to that block [that was attempting to dismantle surveillance cameras], who calmed down. So we foiled the Army’s plan. But the guards entered anyway. They used pepper spray on the men from large canister.”

Uthman explained, “That was the beginning of the [hunger] strike. We covered cameras, stopped attending classes, had sit-ins. Everyone went on the hunger strike.”

Noticeably, the prisoners “offered to surrender their Korans and end their hunger strike instead of having them searched,” as happened with a similar situation in 2006, but the authorities refused. Salman Rabeii, another Yemeni, said he “believes the offer was refused because Korans provide the prisoners with ‘spiritual strength, so you will kill yourselves if you take it away.’” He added that the authorities were afraid they would “look bad in the media” if they took the prisoners’ Korans away.

As the hunger strike has progressed, there have been several suicide attempts, largely dismissed by the authorities, and prisoners disappearing from Camp 6. As Leopold explained, “The lawyers’ notes exhaustively describe the accounts of prisoners who said they saw dozens of other detainees falling unconscious and being hauled off to the maximum-security camp [Camp 5] by medical personnel to be held in isolation as punishment for participating in the hunger strike, never to return to compliant Camp 6.”

Hussein Almerfedi, another Yemeni, told David Remes on March 5, “A detainee dropped unconscious. We do not know if he’s alive.” The day after, Abdulsalam Al-Hela said, “Brothers try to revive the one who lost consciousness to spare him camps [i.e. Camp 5]. More than 20 have been sent to Camp 5, isolation, for punishment.”

Yasein Ismael said that, “in an attempt to break the hunger strike, the temperature in the cells was lowered to 62 degrees,” as Leopold put it. Ismael added, “That’s very cold, especially for weak men.” Others “said they were prohibited from discussing the hunger strike during phone calls with their family members, and if they uttered a word about it their calls would be disconnected.”

Meetings between officials and the prisoners have led to nothing. One involved “the colonel” — presumably Col. Bogden — and Salman Rabeii told Remes on March 7 that the “chief doctor” also tried to negotiate, but all attempts to negotiate have failed. The prisoners want freedom and justice, but neither are on offer.

In a letter to David Remes on March 11, Yasein Ismael wrote that the hunger strike “is going toward the worst. I believe I am going to die in this hunger strike and this might be my last letter, or today is probably my last day in this world.”

Two week ago, Remes told Leopold, “Ismael fell unconscious in his cell in Camp 5 and was moved to a hospital,” where he is now one of the 19 prisoners being force-fed.

The words above only touch on the horrors of Guantánamo as the men still held hold out for death or justice, but I believe, given the way they have been so shamefully abandoned by the Obama administration, Congress, the courts and the American people, that their despair is justified, and that their actions are indeed the only way for their plight to be noticed. The main question now is whether President Obama will act before any more of the prisoners in Guantánamo join Adnan Latif in death.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

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By Laila Abdelaziz

Tallahassee

A bill that would prevent Florida courts from violating our constitutional rights by enacting foreign law, a problem that does not currently exist in Florida courts, is moving quickly to a Florida Senate floor vote.

Senate Bill 58, formally titled “Application of Foreign Law in Certain Cases,” is a “preemptive gesture,” according to sponsor Alan Hays, R-Umatilla. “Your mom and dad would not want you to get sick from one of those dreadful diseases, and I don’t want any American to be in a Florida courtroom and have their constitutional rights violated by any foreign law,” he said. “That’s it. It’s not that complicated.”

The bill is confusing at best, and a harmful complication of our judicial system at worst. Our Florida and U.S. Constitutions already directly guarantee citizens’ fundamental liberties, rights, and privileges. In the absence of this bill, Florida courts have always tested the use of foreign law in Florida courts by questioning “whether application of the non-Florida law would offend Florida’s public policy,” as explained by the Florida Bar International Law Section.

Bill sponsors and advocates have, upon multiple requests, failed to cite a single Florida court case that presented a threat to fundamental liberties, rights, or privileges by the application of foreign law.

The bill is the latest version of similar legislation that Rep. Larry Metz, R-Yalaha, and Sen. Hays have been trying to pass for the past three years. In 2011, when the original bill was first introduced, dozens of states introduced similar legislation that would specifically prohibit judges from referring to Shariah law in U.S. courts.

As controversial as this legislation has been, Gov. Rick Scott released a statement of support for the bill immediately after the House passed SB 58’s companion bill, House Bill 351, in a 78-41 vote:

“America was founded on principles of religious freedom. In Florida, we have many religions and cultures that contribute to the rich diversity of our great state. As Americans, we have the expressed right to freely practice our religion, and I applaud the Florida House for passing HB 351 that would make clear the constitutional rights of our citizens will be protected.”

Gov. Scott’s statement begins with an affirmation of our First Amendment guarantee to religious freedom, but finishes in praise of a bill that aims to do the exact opposite. The history of the bill, as well as statements made by its sponsors, make it clear that the main aim of this bill is to ban Sharia law.

Over the past 10 years, a close-knit, organized coalition of individuals has been solely responsible for fueling the anti-Muslim rhetoric that has swept the nation’s state legislatures. The intended, but unfortunate consequences have been an uptick in hate-crimes against the Muslim population.

The initial wave of anti-Sharia legislation sent a dangerous and wholly untruthful message: Sharia law is a threat to the American way of life, and Muslim Americans are un-American and unwelcome in our country.

Most of this rhetoric stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what Sharia law is. Sharia law is a general guide to how Muslims should lead their lives. It is no different than Jewish Halakha law or Catholic Canon law. Like the massive body of common law that the United States follows, religious law is subject to varying interpretations, changed by both time and context.

Despite Rep. Metz and Sen. Hays’ attempts to substitute “Sharia law” with “foreign law,” those close to this bill understand it is designed to mirror previous failed attempts, with slightly different wording.

Gov. Scott’s ironic affirmation of our country’s principles of religious freedom should come by way of his opposition to SB 58, not his support. Senate leadership should ensure that SB 58 does not become law. This bill is unnecessary legislation that civil libertarians, conservatives and liberals should have common reason to oppose.

Laila Abdelaziz is a regional director for Emerge USA, a Florida based nonprofit, and leads the organization’s government relations efforts.

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South-east Asian country’s untapped natural wealth is being opened up, regardless of the environmental and human costs

By Nafeez Ahmed

Protesters from the Islamic Action Front and other parties, during a demonstration after Friday prayers in Amman April 19, 2013. The signs read, “I am a Muslim, and our silence kills them, and Burma is our cause” (L) and “Jordanian movement Kifaya, it’s enough “ (in white, on R). REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed

This is Dr. Nafeez Ahmed’s first post on his new blog, Earth Insight, hosted by The Guardian. Nafeez is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, and writer/presenter of the film The Crisis of Civilization, based on his latest book, A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It. You can follow him on Twitter: @nafeezahmed

New evidence has emerged that the systematic violence against ethnic Rohingya in Burma – “described as genocidal by some experts” – is being actively supported by state agencies. But the violence’s links to the country’s ambitions to rapidly expand fossil fuel production, at massive cost to local populations and to the environment, have been largely overlooked.

Over 125,000 ethnic Rohingya have been forcibly displaced since waves of violence swept across Burma’s Arakan state last year, continuing until now, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) latest sobering report. The “ethnic cleansing” campaign against Arakan’s Muslim minority, although instigated largely by Buddhist monks rallying local mobs, has been the product of “extensive state involvement and planning”, according to HRW’s UK director David Mepham.

The group found:

“All of the state security forces [in Arakan] are implicated in failing to prevent atrocities or directly participating in them, including local police, Lon Thein riot police, the inter-agency border control force called Nasaka, and the army and navy.”

Burma’s Rohingya minority has resided in the country for decades, but been formally denied citizenship by the government, subjected instead to forced labour, arbitrary land confiscations, and routine discrimination. Although the latest violence raises urgent questions about the integrity of Burma’s ostensible democratic reform process, the west has refused to allow the campaign against the Rohingyas to interfere with efforts to integrate the regime into global markets.

The last two years has seen first the US, then the UK and the EU, lift decades of economic sanctions with a view to “open a new chapter” in relations with Burma.

Nestled strategically between India and China, Burma is rich in fossil fuels and other mineral resources, including oil, gas, gold, timber and jade. In recent months, even as genocidal violence has escalated, the country has been courted by world leaders, such as President Barack Obama, British foreign secretary William Hague, and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso.

As Forbes reports , thanks to Burma’s “vast, untapped reserves of oil and natural gas” – estimated at between 11 trillion and 23 trillion cubic feet – “and with sanctions over and a world thirsty for new sources of energy, Western multinationals are eager to sign deals.”

But foreign companies must partner with local companies to be able to bid. This condition has spurred Myanmar’s crony capitalist elite of fewer than 20 families – many of whom built their business empires on the back of state favours from the former military junta – to rebrand themselves as honest brokers for western investors looking for their next regional venture.

Attempting to consolidate their privileged position in a highly unequal but resource-rich economy, Burma’s business families are making renewed efforts to capitalise on the resource rush, highlighting their philanthropic activities, and forging new ties with Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Foreign investment is currently dominated by Chinese, Thai and Indian firms, who operated relatively unfazed by western sanctions, but American, British and French multinationals such as Chevron, BP, Shell, and Total are jockeying to make up for lost time.

Yet the scramble to open up Burma for business has played a direct role in inflaming community tensions. One of the most prominent culprits is the Shwe Gas Project led by South Korean and Indian companies, to export natural gas via pipeline from Arakan state to China’s Yunnan province. The 2,800km overland pipeline is slated to become operational this year.

The project plans to produce 500 million cubic feet (mcfd) of gas per day for 30 years, supplying 400 mcfd to China, and the remaining 100 mcfd to factories owned by the Burmese government, military and associated business elites.

The losers from this venture are the Burmese people and environment. An extensive report by the Shwe Gas Movement (SGM), a Burmese community-based human rights network, documented the destruction of local fishing and farming industries, including confiscation of thousands of acres of land to “clear areas for the pipeline and associated infrastructure”, from 2010 to 2011. Tens of thousands have been left jobless, with little or no compensation or employment opportunities.

The pipeline also cuts through the Arakan Yoma forest ecosystems of the Western Mountain Range, part of the Eastern Hindu Kush-Himalayan region, contributing to soil erosion and endangering species. One third of coral reefs north of Kyauk Phyu town have already been seriously damaged, undermining fish and marine life, and local fishing. Freshwater rivers and waterways have been dredged for sand and gravel for construction purposes, and are set to become dumping grounds for toxic materials.

In December 2011, the pipeline project sparked widespread anger across Arakan’s cities and rural areas, as local people demanded provision of 24 hour electricity. Ranked the second most impoverished state of Burma by the UN Development Programme, approximately 3 million people living in Arakan have no access to public electricity, with just a few major cities able to access only five to six hours of electricity per day, provided by private companies at extortionate prices of 400-600 Kyat per unit (compared to 25 Kyat per unit in Rangoon). Overall, Burma is by far the poorest country in Southeast Asia, with a third of the population living in poverty.

The eruption of ethnic violence across Arakan against ethnic Rohingyas six months later in 2012 was therefore most likely triggered by the simmering tensions wrought by escalating economic marginalisation. On the one hand, Arakan’s deepening economic crisis, fuelled by the state-backed pipeline project, laid the groundwork for an increase in xenophobia and racism toward the Rohingya. On the other, Burmese state agencies appear to have deliberately fostered the ethnic cleansing campaign to divert populist anger away from the devastating impact of the pipeline project, and instead toward the most easy and vulnerable target to hand.

Even as violence against the Rohingya escalates, conflict has also broken out along the pipeline route between Burmese security forces and local armed resistance groups linked to the Kachin state, where people have faced arbitrary arrest, torture, forced labour, rape and sexual violence at the hands of the Burma Army.

The plight of these different groups underscores that the fairytale of Burma’s rosy democratic transition is exactly that – a fairytale.

But lured by the promise of windfall profits, it is a fairytale convenient for competing global powers eager to capitalise on the country’s untapped natural wealth, regardless of the environmental and human costs.

April 26, 2013 – The Guardian (UK)

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