Former CIA asset Susan Lindauer describes how the Department of Homeland Security locked her up on a military base for 12 months and tried to detain her indefinitely without a hearing and drug her with Haldol and other psychotropic medication. Why? Because she possesses extensive documentary evidence that the CIA had foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks as early as February 2001. This, along with other important documents related to the Lockerbie bombing and the US wars on Iraq and Libya, are published as an appendix in her new book Extreme Prejudice.

Prior to her arrest, Lindauer was the chief CIA asset in charge of Iraqi and Libyan back-channel communications. She was under indictment for five years. Eventually her late partner’s exhaustive efforts to publicize her case paid off and she was granted a hearing – and released.

Towards the end of her talk, she describes her late partner’s conversation with Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! Amy’s flimsy excuses for refusing to cover the story, during a period when Lindauer was being held incommunicado at Caswell Air Force Base, aren’t at all surprising. Especially when you have a look at the CIA-funded foundations that finance Democracy Now! See Does the CIA Fund Both the Right and the Left?

Fast forward to 7:00 minutes, which is where Lindauer starts speaking. If video won’t play, there’s a free link at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68LUHa_-OlA&feature=related

Film Review

If video doesn’t play go to link: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/97-owned/

97% Owned is a documentary by a British group called Positive Money. It’s an ideal film for people who have difficulty comprehending that the government doesn’t issue money – that nearly all money is created out of a thin air by private banks when they issue loans. The film mainly focuses on the British banking system, with numerous comparisons with the US, which operates along identical principles. The total lack of transparency on the part of private and central banks is the main reason people have so much difficulty understanding where money comes from. One of the filmmakers laments that the majority of elected officials don’t understand where money comes from.

The film begins by pointing out that paper money and coins constitute only 3% of the money circulating in Britain. The 97% consists of digital currency. In other words, it only exists as numbers on a computer. Digital currency is created when banks generate loans. A lot of people have the mistaken impression that banks use their reserves or other depositors’ money to loan you money to by a house. What actually happens is that the money creates the money out of thin air by entering the amount of the loan into a computer.

Why Saving Money and Debt Reduction Causes Recession

Because this is the only legal way to issue money, keeping enough in circulation to carry out basic economic activities requires large amounts of debt creation. People must continually borrow money and banks must continually lend it. Although conservative politicians love to talk about the need for individuals and governments to save money, saving too much money throws the economy into recession. Likewise if all the world’s private banks suddenly failed, 97% of the global money supply would disappear.

It’s also virtually impossible for governments to reduce debt without taking money out of circulation and causing recession and/or deflation. We currently see this being played out in Europe, where austerity cuts are causing country after country to experience a decline in economic growth (aka recession). Using a recent speech by British prime minister David Cameron as an example, the filmmakers assert that, like Cameron, like most American politicians, doesn’t have a clue where money comes from.

How Government Increases the Money in Circulation

The only way governments can increase the money supply is by borrowing money by selling treasury bonds (a kind of promissory note) to investment banks or through “quantitative easing.” With quantitative easing, the government itself creates digital money, which it uses to purchase treasury bonds (from banks) or private bank assets. The World Economic Forum that met in Davos in January 2012 recommended that a $103 trillion global credit (i.e. debt) expansion was needed to keep the world economy from collapsing – through government borrowing and/or quantitative easing.

How Debt-Based Money Increases Wealth Inequality

One of the most serious draw backs of debt-based money is that it results in a steady redistribution of income from the poor to the rich. It’s mainly the wealthy elite that profits from the interest charges government pays on the money they borrow. It falls on low and middle income taxpayers to pay this interest, as well as the debt, owing to loopholes and offshore tax havens that result in banks and bankers paying very little tax. Low and middle income workers also suffer the most from the austerity cuts enacted to reduce government debt – by losing public sector jobs and/or access to public services, such as health care, tertiary education and disability benefits and services.

The Financialization of the Industrialized World

97% Owned also discusses the epidemic of deregulation and financial speculation that accelerated debt creation and overinflated the world economy in the decades that preceded the global financial crisis. This related in part to the “financialization” of the economies of the global north. Beginning in the mid-seventies, their focus shifted from producing manufactured goods to selling financial products. Many of the latter – derivatives, futures, options, credit default swaps, foreign exchange – were so speculative that buying them was really a posh form of gambling.

Banning the Creation of Money by Private Banks

The filmmakers believe only solution to the current economic crisis is to ban private banks from issuing digital money. They argue that only democratically accountable public bodies should be given the authority to create money. Until we make this happen, private banks will continue to use their control of the monetary system to undermine genuine economic and political reform.

Learning that Goldman Sachs is being sued for insider trading for their role in misleading investors about Facebook’s initial public offering (IPO) is raising a lot of red flags here in New Zealand. Goldman Sachs is one of three investment banks New Zealand’s National government has chosen to manage the IPO of our publicly owned energy companies and Air New Zealand.

Just to be clear: insider trading is a federal crime the US. However given Obama’s extremely poor track record when it comes to prosecuting investment banks, the move by Facebook investors to file civil lawsuits against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the banks who managed the IPO was a good call. It has prompted the state of Massachusetts, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee to launch investigations. In addition Morgan Stanley, one of the investment banks being sued, has announced that it will reimburse “some” investors who were ripped off by the insider trading. But according to analysts StarMine, Facebook shares are still overvalued and the stock price could drop as low as $9.59 a share (see Facebook IPO).

Why Facebook and Their Bankster Friends Are Being Sued

US mainstream coverage of this high profile crime has been somewhat sketchy. For example, most reports refer to the banks being sued as “Morgan Stanley and others.” You have to read the business or international press to learn that Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, as well several smaller banks, were also among the perps. The reason Facebook et al are being sued and investigated is that they shared information about an anticipated drop in Facebook revenue growth with “insiders” (Facebook and institutional investors), but not with the general public. As a result public investors lost more than $2 billion when Facebook stock lost more than 17% of its original value ($38 per share) in its first day of trading. The Nasdaq exchange is also being sued, as much of this drop occurred in the first 17 seconds of trading, when Nasdaq software malfunctioned and investors were unable to buy, sell or cancel trades. (Facebook investor sues Nasdaq).

In my view, Goldman Sachs is a particularly important player in this debacle. Goldman Sachs and funds they manage already owned $850 million in Facebook shares. They sold 28.7 of their 65.9 million shares at $38 per share for $1.9 million. According to my calculations, that works out to approximately 500% profit.

Public Opposition to the Privatization of State-Owned Assets

Even before this latest scandal broke, a lot of New Zealanders were really unhappy about our government’s plan to pay Goldman Sachs and two other investment banks $150 to manage the IPO of “a partial sale” of five of our state owned companies (see Oral Questions to Ministers). A lot of people view the decision to privatize our extremely profitable state owned energy companies as “ideological” (i.e. benefiting investment trusts and wealthy New Zealanders who are Prime Minister John Key’s major backers). Key himself is a former investment banker and a former member of the New York Federal Reserve (NZ Parliament John Key).

It sure makes no economic sense to sell companies providing an average 7.6% return to New Zealand taxpayers – at least not when the cost of overseas borrowing is 4-5%.(see 10 myths about asset sales). A recent study shows that past privatization of publicly owned companies by the Labour government made the New Zealand economy worse off. Not only did the loss of revenue necessitate an increase in overseas borrowing, but ever since these companies wound up in foreign hands, there has been a steady loss of our country’s wealth in profit/dividend transfers to foreign investors (see Ganesh Nana study).

Organized Opposition to Asset Sales

There is a particularly strong opposition to the asset sales in the Maori community, which they feel violate the Treaty of Waitangi some of their chiefs signed with the British in 1840. The New Zealand Maori Council has filed a legal challenge with the Waitangi Tribunal.

On May 12th, a coalition of other groups (Grey Power, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions (CTU), the Labour Party and the Green Party) launched a petition demanding a Citizens Initiated Referendum on state assets sales. As a member of both Grey Power and the Green Party, I’ve been out in the streets nearly everyday collecting signatures. Nearly everyone I approach signs. They already know the people who run Goldman Sachs are crooks – and don’t want them anywhere near our public utilities or Air New Zealand.

***

Hall of Shame

Below is a list of the Facebook inside traders who cashed in big by selling their shares before the stock price plummeted:

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO

Shares sold: 30.2 million

Value: $1.13 billion

Accel Partners, venture capital investor

Year invested in Facebook: 2005 for $12.7 million

Shares sold: 49 million

Value: $1.86 billion

Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder

Year invested in Facebook: 2004 for $500,000

Shares sold: 16.8 million

Value: $640 million

DST Global Ltd, investment firm based in London and founded by Russian oligarch

Year invested in Facebook: 2009 and late 2010 for $200 million

Shares sold: 45.7 million

Value: $1.74 billion

Goldman Sachs, investment bank

Year invested in Facebook: 2011 for $450 million

Shares sold: 28.7 million

Value: $1.09 billion

Elevation Partners, private equity firm with Bono as spokesman

Shares sold: 4.6 million

Value: $176 million

Greylock Partners, venture capital investor

Year invested in Facebook: 2006 for $27.5 million

Shares sold: 7.6 million

Value: $289 million

Wenzhou: birthplace of Chinese capitalism

Last week I was surprised to learn that private lending is illegal in China. In view of the country’s economic miracle, I was even more surprised to learn that small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which make up 90% of businesses, are ineligible for start-up or bridge funding from Chinese banks. The latter are still government owned.  The vast majority of Chinese SMEs are financed by private “illegal” loans, amounting to 3.7 trillion yuan or $US 500 billion dollars per year. About half of this financial activity occurs in Zheijiang province, whose most prominent city is Wenzhou, the birthplace of China’s private economy. It’s currently home to 360,000 small businesses that make a major portion of the world’s consumer goods.

70% Interest Rates and “Penalties” for Missed Payments

Until recently, government enforcement of the ban on private lending has been piecemeal and arbitrary. They supposedly go after lenders when the rate of interest exceeds four times the interest charged by state-owned banks (currently about 6%). However many lenders get away with charging interest rates as high as 70%. Borrowers have been happy to pay high rates for start-up funding, owing to the immense profit potential of small factories producing consumer goods for export.

Loans are typically informal. The loan originators pool savings from family members and friends. Borrowers are often friends, as well, and loans are typically agreed with a handshake, rather than a formal contract. People who miss an interest payment get a visit from thugs who beat them up. With the recent slowdown of the Chinese economy, many borrowers, unable to make monthly interest payments have fled Wenzhou. There has also been one high profile suicide.

About 60% of borrowers had taken out loans to invest in the local property boom. When the Chinese government intervened in November to rein in the real estate bubble (by limiting the number of houses people could purchase and increasing the size of deposit required), Wenzhou lenders lost millions of dollars, when loans became tied up in unsellable homes and commercial buildings. At the end of 2011, the shortage of finance capital caused approximately one fifth of Wenzhou’s 360,000 SMEs to cease operating – owing to the unavailability of bridge financing.

Death: the Government Penalty for Usury

In the most high profile illegal lending prosecution, Wu Yung, one of China’s most famous multi-millionairesses was sentenced to death in 2009 for charging an “unreasonably high rate of interest.” The 2011 credit crunch, as well as the uproar Wu Yung’s sentence provoked in the legal and small business community, has spurred the Chinese government to legalize and reform private lending. They are starting with a pilot program in Zheijan and Shenzhen province, based on legislation drafted by Zhou de Wen, head of Wenzhou’s small and medium business association. It will provide government support for the creation of numerous small private funding institutions, including rural banks, micro-financing firms and most importantly,  a private equity fund run by the city government, to invest in its private companies.

In a separate but related development, the Chinese supreme court has commuted Wu Yung’s death sentence and ordered her retried.

Teena Borek

Florida farmer Teena Borek was on Radio New Zealand National last weekend. In the US, Teena seems relatively unknown outside of her own state, where she works tirelessly to support family farmers struggling to compete with factory farms and cheap imports from Latin America. Teena, who took over her husband’s farm when he was killed in 1989, was named Homestead/Florida City Agriculturist of the Year in March. In 2004, she was named Florida Female Agriculturist of the Year.

An Endangered Species

In the US, the family farmer is becoming an endangered species. According to the USDA Census of Agriculture, the number of U.S. farms peaked at 6.8 million in 1935 and had plummeted to 2.1 million by 2002. In 2012, family farmers are being squeezed off their land faster than ever. They face ruthless price competition from large scale factory farms – and, with the passage of NAFTA in 1994, from cheap imports from Mexico and Central and South America. They also have serious cost pressures. Increasing urbanization has made investment groups and equity firms extremely keen to exploit farmland for commercial development. This serves to drive up property values and real estate taxes. The American Farmland Trust estimates an acre of U.S. farmland goes into development every two minutes.

This trend has very ominous implications for all Americans. As the American Farmland Trust explains on their website, the advent of Peak Oil and skyrocketing fertilizer and transportation costs means our reliance on large scale factory farms and imported foods is neither economically nor ecologically unsustainable. Our ability to feed ourselves into the future depends on the continuing availability of quality farmland. However once paved over for urban development, it becomes extremely difficult to reclaim for agriculture.

The Great Tomato War of 2012

In her interview, Teena describes successfully surviving these pressures for nearly two decades by specializing in heritage tomatoes and miniature vegetables she sells to local high end restaurants. She has also been a major player in Florida’s highly visible “buy local” campaign, helping to start a local farmers market, as well as creating her own Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme.

This year, owing to circumstances totally beyond her control, she was forced to leave most of her winter tomato crop in the field. Due to a flood of imported tomatoes from Mexico, the cost of labor to harvest her crop would have been greater than what local restaurants and supermarkets were willing to pay for it. It costs small Florida farmers $9-10 to produce a box of tomatoes, while Mexican producers sell the same box to Dade County supermarkets for five dollars. Lower production costs in Mexico relate mainly to lower land, labor and compliance costs. While Florida farmers can face thousands of dollars in food safety compliance costs, tomatoes imported from Mexico, which has very lax food safety regulations, aren’t even subject to inspection.

Teena explains in her interview that NAFTA was passed main to benefit large wheat and corn producers seeking to maximize overseas exports. In contrast, vegetable growers rate so low with federal authorities that the USDA refers to their products as “specialty crops.”

Other Florida agriculturists clearly support Teena’s views. The international online newsletter HortiBiz refers to “The Great Tomato War of 2012”. According to Tony DiMare, vice president of the Homestead-based DiMare Company, one of Florida’s largest shippers, the USDA is neglecting its statutory obligation to crack down on illegally low-priced Mexican tomatoes and on shipments that are not meant for export but wind up in the U.S. anyway.  Foreign competition under NAFTA, according to the University of Florida, has led to a situation where nearly all  Florida pepper and tomato production is controlled by a small number of large corporate agribusinesses, which can spread their “risk” over several crops or growing cycles.

The USDA gives lip service to promoting small farmers and local food production through their Know Your Farmer Know your Food Compass campaign. What the family farmers of south Florida really need is for the USDA to enforce the anti-dumping rules the US and Mexico have agreed on, as well as establishing an inspection protocol that subject  Mexican imports to the same food safety standards as US crops.

How to Support Family Farmers

As the American Farmland Trust website makes clear, none of these pressures are limited to Florida. The best way to support family farmers is to consume a diet consisting mainly of locally produced foods, purchased from local farmers markets or CSA schemes. As Teena suggests in her interview, people can also demand that local supermarkets stock locally grown, rather than imported, fruits and vegetables. Finally you don’t need to be a farmer to join the American Farmland Trust. I first became a member fifteen years ago when I lived in Seattle. A membership is $35, but they also have a special donor program where people can adopt an acre of farmland in their home state for $10.

Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC) - sponsor of HCR 107

HCR 107 is a resolution of impeachment against Obama, based on the President’s history of circumventing Congress in launching wars of aggression, as well as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s recent testimony that Obama doesn’t require constitutional authority to wage war.

Presidential candidate Ron Paul, as well as several moderate Republicans, have signed on as cosponsors.

If progressives are at all serious about ending government by corporation and preserving the last vestiges of our Constitutional government, they need to cut the umbilical cord to the Democratic Party once and for all and support the Republicans in this effort.

HCR 107 is currently in front of the judiciary committee. We all need to lobby the Republicans on the committee (they hold the majority) to hold hearings. It will be interesting how many of them are serious about getting their boy Mitt into the White House. As I see it, this is the only strategy that gives him a shot at it. I am also curious to see what excuses I suspect some of them will give for not upholding the Constitution. We need to make sure they get well-publicized.

Here’s the full text of the Resolution of Impeachment: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.CON.RES.107:

Here are the contact details for the members of the House Judiciary Committee: http://judiciary.house.gov/about/members.html

If you live in a Republican District, you should also contract your congressional representative and ask them to sign on as a cosponsor. Forget the Democrats. Kucinich is the only one with enough integrity to support this.

(If the above video fails to play, view it here:  NBC Chicago)

According to the National Lawyers Guild, the Chicago police have begun unlawfully detaining activists in anticipation of the protests planned at the NATO summit on June 22nd.  They have been breaking down doors without warrants and detaining them without charge. Read more here: Chicago cops start preemptive arrests

Someone needs to let the Chicago authorities know that NDAA is no longer the law of the land, not since a brave federal judge, U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Forrest declared it unconstitutional. Naomi Wolfe has an excellent article about this major victory in the Guardian.

Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao with President dos Santos

(This is the second of two blogs contrasting US and Chinese foreign policy in Angola and other oil-rich African countries.)

The Angolan civil war ended in 2002 with one million dead, four million permanently exiled and a country rich in natural resources littered with landmines and crumbling infrastructure. The MPLA government was left with the daunting task of clearing landmines, rebuilding the decimated infrastructure, retrieving weapons from a heavily-armed civilian population and resettling tens of thousands of refugees who had fled the fighting. Eduardo dos Santos, who has been president for more than 30 years, remains immensely popular, with the MPLA winning an 82% majority in the 2008 election, the second in Angolan history.

In addition to underwriting Angola’s oil industry, low interest Chinese loans and investment have helped fund mineral prospecting in the country’s copper, iron and gold mines, as well as financing landmine clearance necessary to re-establish coffee and cotton plantations. Now that oil revenues are no longer needed to purchase armaments and pay government troops, they are used for national reconstruction projects – roads, airports, bridges, hospitals and schools. Angolan refugees in their millions once clamored for admission to Portugal. Now the reverse is happening. With Portugal in severe recession, more than 10,000 Portuguese natives emigrated to Angola last year, in search of business and employment opportunities.

Extreme Income Inequality

The Angolan middle class is doing great. The Porsche dealer in Luanda, the capitol city, can’t keep up with orders. Ironically Angola was also in the unique position of having 4G mobile access ahead of most of Europe and much of the US. The government partnered in this venture with the Chinese phone giant ZTE. The latter provided all the equipment, including the handsets, and most of the installation engineers.

Unfortunately the majority of the Angolan people has yet to benefit from the economic boom. Seventy percent of the population still lives below the poverty line. Half the country lives on less than $2 and one-fifth of all children die before their fifth birthday (though this number has improved significantly with the end of the civil war).

The Angolan “Arab Spring”

Unita, the official opposition in Parliament, complains bitterly that the ruling party silences any and all criticism. In 2011 a group of young Angolans, influenced by the “Arab Spring” movement, protested in the capital demanding Santos’ resignation. Their protests were quickly and forcefully put down by the Angolan police. Dos Santos also receives unfavorable publicity about human rights abuses in Cabinda province, home to a separatist movement that predates the civil war. Much of the country’s oil wealth comes from Cabinda. Human rights groups allege that Angolan troops deployed there have committed civilian atrocities.

Given the CIA’s historic links with Unita, their historic opposition to the MPLA and the role of CIA-funded foundations, such as National Endowment for Democracy (NED), United States Agency for International Development, and Center for Applied Nonviolent Strategies (CANVAS) in funding and training other “Arab Spring” activists (see Smoking Gun: US Role in Arab Spring, it’s hard to believe the CIA doesn’t have their sticky fingers in Angola’s “Arab Spring,” as well. The Agency also finds separatist movements hard to resist, especially those in regions suitable for cocaine or heroin trafficking (as in Kosovo and Balochistan – see Our CIA Freedom Fighters in Pakistan).

It may be pure coincidence that Angola is a growing transshipment hub for Nigerian traffickers transporting Brazilian cocaine to Nigeria or Europe.

Portuguese president Passos Coelho with President dos Santos

(This is the first of two blogs contrasting US and Chinese foreign policy in Angola and other oil-rich African countries.)

Forget China and India. The World Economic Forum predicts that six of the ten most rapidly growing economies in 2012 will be on the African continent. Both Ghana and Nigeria have exceeded China as the fastest growing economies in the world. Based on GDP growth for the first quarter of 2012, the Ghanaian economy will grow by 16^% this year. The Nigerian GDP, which dropped to 3.4% in 2010-2011 is expected to hit 10% in 2012. Nigeria’s dip in economic growth related in part to the global financial crisis and in part to investor jitters over the militant environmental movement in Ogoniland, where most Nigerian crude is produced. Shell’s shameless production practices have led to massive coastline degradation, air pollution and health problems. The Ogoni people, who receive no employment or other economic benefits from Shell’s exploitation of their most valuable resource, are understandably angry. There is the additional and related problem of massive “bunkering” (illegal diversion of oil from the Shell pipeline), with total loss amounting to 7% of Nigeria’s total oil production.

While GDP growth in Angola isn’t expected to reach the top ten (they are only expected to grow by 10%), the country has become an even bigger magnet for foreign investment than Ghana or Nigeria. Moreover, like Nigerian president Jonathan Goodluck, their president Eduardo dos Santos has committed to help bail out the floundering Eurozone (the latter by helping their former colonial master Portugal).

The two main features all three countries share is a flourishing oil export industry and generous low interest Chinese loans. The latter has allowed them to develop their respective oil industries while simultaneously escaping the treacherous clutches of the IMF, World Bank and western investment banks.

US vs Chinese Foreign Policy in Africa

Here once again we see the stark contrast between US and Chinese foreign policy. Ever since African colonies began to win independence, the US has opted for covert and overt military intervention to destroy African infrastructure, thereby suppressing nationalistic struggles that might threaten the economic interests of US oil companies and their stockholders. China, in contrast, has embarked on a long term investment/development strategy that offers immediate economic and infrastructure support for countries devastated by years of western economic exploitation and civil war – and significant long term investment returns for the Chinese economy. In hindsight, US taxpayers would clearly have benefited more if the Reagan, Bush I and II, Clinton and Obama administrations had opted for a Chinese-style development/investment strategy in Africa. It’s a great pity we were never given a choice or even told the truth about Africom and the US military agenda in Africa.

The US media would have us believe that Africa is still a famine stricken backwater of warring tribes incapable of getting along with one another. This is extremely ironic, given that most of the civil wars that have plagued the continent – and the resulting famines – were the direct result of CIA destabilization campaigns, often involving mercenaries funded and trained by the CIA and/or our NATO allies.

Angola’s 27 Year CIA-Sponsored Civil War

Recently there has been special focus on Angola, as April 4^th was the ten year anniversary of the country’s 27 year civil war. Angola already had a well-established oil export industry when they first gained independence in 1975. Their big mistake was installing a nationalist government determined to use their oil wealth to improve the lives of ordinary Angolans. The same scenario, of Big Oil against freedom and self-determination, played out here as in the Middle East. The main US foreign policy objective there was to suppress Arab nationalism. With the support and encouragement of the US, South Africa’s apartheid regime invaded Angola to overthrow the new government, run by the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola). When Cuba sent fighters to support the government, the CIA intervened by funding and training Unita (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), a rival group led by Jonas Savimba. This, in turn, led to Soviet intervention on the side of the Angolan government.

After 16 years of fighting, which killed up to 300,000 people, a peace deal led to elections. But Unita rejected the outcome and resumed the war, killing an additional hundreds of thousands of Angolans. Another peace accord, backed by UN peacekeepers, was signed in 1994 and the UN. As the fighting steadily worsened, the peacekeepers withdrew in 1999. Subsequent concerns about a link between the civil war and the unregulated “blood diamond” trade led the UN to freeze bank accounts used in the gem trade.

The death of Unita leader Jonas Savimbi in a gunfight with government forces in February 2002 led the rebels to sign a ceasefire in April which ended the conflict.

To be continued.