Bolivia Peoples Climate Summit: Restoring the Balance

By Brenda Norrell of Censored News. This article has also appeared on Narco News.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, announcing the objectives of the upcoming Peoples Climate Summit, made it clear that the so-called developed countries of the world have usurped the bounties of Mother Earth at the expense of the poorest people in the world.

Cautioning mankind of the suffering and displacement which leads to forced migration, Morales called for The Peoples World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth’s Rights, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, April 19-22, 2010.

Stressing the need to reestablish harmony with nature and establish the rights of Mother Earth, Morales welcomed those willing to work for the good of all mankind, and those governments willing to work for the best interests of their people.

Morales said climate change represents a real threat to the existence of humanity, of living being and Mother Earth. The danger is serious for the islands, coastal areas, glaciers in the Himalayas, the Andes, mountains of the world, poles of the Earth, warm regions like Africa, water sources, populations affected by increasing natural disasters, plants, animals and ecosystems, he said.

Western Shoshone Ask Court to Enforce Ruling to Halt Gold Mining on Mount Tenabo

From Censored News, http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Western Shoshone and their allies have asked a federal court to enforce a ruling that would protect sacred Mount Tenabo from the destruction of Barrick Gold’s open pit gold mine, which would core out the sacred mountain where ceremonies are conducted.

A motion was filed Friday, February 5, in U.S. District Court in Reno for enforcement of an injunctive order recently issued by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It is part of the 14-month long lawsuit brought against the BLM and Barrick Gold of Canada to stop expanded gold mining on Mount Tenabo.

The lawsuit was filed by the South Fork Band Council of Western Shoshone, the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone, the Timbisha Tribe of Western Shoshone, the Western Shoshone Defense Project, and Great Basin Resource Watch. BLM approved Barrick’s proposal in November of 2008 and the Indian Nations immediately filed a request that the project not be allowed to continue until BLM complied with federal law.

The District Court in Reno denied the Indian Nations’ injunction request at which point the Indian Nations appealed to the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. After considering the evidence and conducting a hearing in San Francisco, the Ninth Circuit, on December 3, 2009, in a unanimous 3-judge ruling, published its decision agreeing with the Indian Nations. The Ninth Circuit ordered the District Court to issue the injunction.

Max Haiven of CUPE 3906 on Olympic Protest and Union Solidarity

h/t to Solidarity with Six Nations

Leonard Peltier: Alive and Kicking in the Iron House

From Leonard Peltier

Greetings from the Iron House. It has come to my attention that a rumor has been circulating about my death. Sorry to disappoint the Trimbachs, Ed Wood, and all the other vermin, but I am still alive and kicking. I continue to struggle for the truth about my case-much of it hidden in the 6,000 documents they are afraid to release-to see the light of day.

I have been monitoring the case with the Crow Creek tribe’s land issues, and have been asked my opinion. As in nearly all things, I come down on the side of the tribe. Sovereignty and self determination are the lynch pins to Indian freedom. I want the people of Crow Creek to know they have my fullest support in their endeavors. This case affects all Indians, and should matter to all people of conscience. Everyone should monitor this case to its fullest conclusion, and know it is yet another example of Indian people’s daily reality. The Indian wars are not over; they just are fought more in the courtrooms and the boardrooms these days. But the issues are mostly the same-the land, resources, and freedom. Freedom to think. Freedom to live as we wish. Freedom to be who we are. Don’t for a second allow yourself to think that the conspirators aren’t working. They’re out there, and as always they’re plotting ways to dispossess and marginalize Indian people at every opportunity.

We were all sad to learn of the passing this past week, of Howard Zinn. A brilliant author, researcher, activist, not to mention a fine human being and a friend to my cause, his loss is a blow to all of us who struggle against oppression. Please send up prayers for his family and loved ones, and that his spirit has a good journey.

As always, a big thank you to my family and everyone else helping out at the office, and all my supporters’ world wide. Through your efforts, one day we’ll win my freedom.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,
Leonard Peltier

Fifth Socialist International — Time for Definitions

By Luis Bilbao, translated by Janet Duckworth for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

Luis Bilbao is an Argentinean Marxist and is founding editor of the Latin American magazine America XXI. This article was initially published in America XXI, No 56, December 2009-January 2010 edition.

The first step has been taken. It has extraordinary strategic implications. It will shake up the left and right, the West and the East. It will blow in like a whirlwind through every political organisation, trade union or social, in every corner of the planet. On the evening of November 20, 2009, the day before the opening of the first extraordinary PSUV [United Socialist Party of Venezuela] congress, a feeling of vertigo swept over tens of thousands of people who heard Hugo Chávez, either on TV or on the internet, speak before delegates of parties from 30 or so countries, and launch a proposal that was as long desired as it was unexpected: to set to work to build the Fifth Socialist International.

The president of an ongoing revolution made this call. Representatives of others who are facing the same responsibilities in Bolivia, Ecuador and Honduras supported him immediately; those who are at the brutal beginning of the transition and those who aspire, feet firmly planted on the ground, to start the journey.

He Taught Us to Use Our Voice

Marlene Martin of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty talks about what Howard Zinn meant to those fighting for a better and more just world. Reproduced from Socialist Worker.

Howard Zinn onstage at the 2009 Campaign to End the Death Penalty convention

LAST JULY, I sent an invitation to Howard Zinn, asking if he would be the keynote speaker at the Campaign to End the Death Penalty’s convention in Chicago in November.

It was a long shot, his close friend and collaborator Anthony Arnove told me–not because he wouldn’t want to do it, but because he had so much to do on The People Speak film project, and because his health was not the best. “But you should go ahead and ask” was Anthony’s advice.

So ask I did. I told Howard that the people attending the Campaign would be moms, sisters, fathers, brothers and grandfathers, struggling to stick by their family members on death row; former prisoners brutalized by the criminal justice system; and the kind of activists who hold grassroots struggles together. I told him that we took the name of our newsletter from his book SNCC: The New Abolitionists, and that we would be honored if he would join us.

When Scholars Join the Slaughter

Dahr Jamail, author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, reports on how the U.S. military has used anthropologists and other social scientists to further the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. First published at Truthout.org.

As a side note I found this article quite interesting as well as timely because I myself am currently in university working towards an eventual doctorate in anthropology with a side interest in sociology ((undergrad minor) and social psychology (I have a good friend who is working in that area). In particular my Master’s Degree level studies are in the field of Public-Issues Anthropology and I have recently been involved in discussions around the exact topic that this article covers. Indeed, last night the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada (which I attend) hosted Dr. Neil Whitehead who gave a talk on this subject, and on March 18th we will be hosting Dr. David Price who will be speaking on “Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: the Problems of Harnessing Anthropology for Counterinsurgent Conquests.” I believe this is an extremely important subject that all social scientists, not just anthropologists, sociologists and social psychologists should be engaging in.

member of a Human Terrain System team talks with local school administrators in Nani, Afghanistan (Staff Sgt. Michael L. Casteel)

A CORE tenet of the Obama administration’s plans for “victory” in Iraq and Afghanistan is an increased reliance on counterinsurgency.

As previously reported, the U.S. military has sent shock troops–anthropologists, sociologists and social psychologists–with their own troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan, who also donned helmets and flak jackets.

By the end of 2007, American scholars in these fields were embedding with the military in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a Pentagon program called Human Terrain System (HTS), which evolved shortly thereafter into a $40 million program that embedded four- or five-person groups of scholars in the aforementioned fields in all 26 U.S. combat brigades busily occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. The program is currently comprised of approximately 400 employees, and is actively seeking new recruits.

Bitter Sweet or Toxic? Indigenous People, Diabetes and the Burden of Pollution

By John Schertow, an Indigenous rights advocate and author of the blog, Intercontinental Cry.

WINNIPEG—Diabetes is now widely regarded as the 21st century epidemic. With some 284 million people currently diagnosed with the disease, it’s certainly no exaggeration—least of all for Indigenous people.

According to the State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples Report by the United Nations, more than 50 per cent of Indigenous adults over the age of 35 have Type 2 Diabetes, “and these numbers are predicted to rise.”

Diabetes is referred to as a “lifestyle disease,” its rampant spread believed to be caused by obesity due to our increased reliance on the western diet (also known as the “meat-sweet” diet) and our avoidance of regular exercise.

While these may certainly be contributing factors, there is growing evidence that diabetes is closely linked with our environment. More than a dozen studies have been published that show a connection between Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs); carcinogenic hydrocarbons known as Dioxins; and the “violently deadly” synthetic pesticide, DDT and higher rates of the disease.

Anarchists in the Global Justice Movement

Jackie Esmonde reviews David Graeber’s book about an important anarchist current in the global justice movement, “Direct Action: An Ethnography” (AK Press, 2009). Special to newsocialist.org

Jackie Esmonde is a member of the Toronto New Socialists who was active in the global justice movement from 2000 until its untimely demise in 2001.

Vilified by the media, romanticized by scores of young people, viewed by some as the bane of the global justice movement – like it or not, the Black Bloc anarchists who first entered public consciousness at the Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in 1999 came to symbolize the resistance to global inequality of the late 1990s and early 2000s in North America. The association of black-clad anarchist protesters was so associated with youth counter-cultural rebellion that – to their chagrin I’m sure – the Gap was inspired to display faded black jeans in its storefronts across the United States, with the words “independence”, “freedom” and “we the people” spray-painted in black. In addition to the Gap’s reliance on sweatshop labour, this marketing decision inadvertently created yet one more compelling reason to smash Gap windows.

But there was much more going on than smashing windows, as David Graeber’s new book makes clear. Graeber is an anthropologist and activist who teaches at the University of London. Direct Action: An Ethnography emerges from his fieldnotes and observations made while participating in a number of anarchist organizations in New York City between 1999 and 2001. The book documents the fundamental features of the organizations of the “direct action anarchists” who played such an influential role in the global justice movement.

Opposing the Olympics

“There are ample grounds to resist the Olympics,” writes Harold Lavender from Vancouver in the first of two articles on the Olympics and activism. Special to newsocialist.org

Movements opposing the 2010 Winter Olympics appear to be gaining momentum with the much-hyped spectacle only a couple of weeks away. While a campaign of intimidation and harassment by security forces has made Vancouver the front line in the criminalization of dissent, this has failed to quell opposition.

A series of activities will be staged during the Olympics, including a February 10 to 15 convergence organized by the Olympic Resistance Network, and an opposition festival and march on February 12, the day of the opening ceremonies (see the end of this article for a calendar of actions).

How wide is the opposition?

Many in BC are not at all happy with the games. Despite a massive government, corporate and media propaganda campaign, recent surveys showed 69 per cent of BC residents felt governments had spent too much on the Olympics. Only 50 per cent thought the Olympics were good for BC, while 30 per cent thought they were bad. There is also considerable resentment in Vancouver about the disruptions of daily life imposed in the name of staging the Olympics.

But will resistance be confined primarily to the radical left and a few affected communities? The still-to-be-answered question is the size, scope, public impact and future legacy of anti-2010 organizing.

Cuba and the South African Anti-Apartheid Struggle

It has been twenty years now since Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison in Paarl, South Africa. That moment was a historic victory for the people of South Africa, and for oppressed people in the rest of Africa and around the world. His release and the soon to happen final downfall of the racist apartheid system was the product of a long and courageous struggle by people of South Africa for freedom and justice. Revolutionary Cuba played a vital role in the international movement against white minority rule in South Africa, as the following article by Nicole Sarmiento describes.

Nicole Sarmiento is a graduate student based in Cape Town, South Africa. This article first appeared in Pambazuka News.

Cuba’s relations with African liberation movements began as early as the 1960s, and shortly after the triumph of the struggle against the Batista dictatorship in Cuba. Members of the Cuban leadership travelled to Algiers to build formal relations with the Algerian National Liberation Front (Gleijeses, 1996a). Che Guevara’s trip around the African continent in 1963 was a significant turning point in strengthening Cuba’s relationship with liberation movements around the continent.

Olympic Blues in Vancouver

Dave Zirin of Socialist Worker explains to his American readers how disillusion with the Games is growing as the financial burden becomes public.

[As a side note, as someone who crosses the border regularly (I am a born American citizen living in Canada) I have found it interesting that most of the American left have had no idea about what is going on up here in Canada vis-à-vis the Olympic Games, and that those I do know who are aware have reported little if anything on it (the Kasama Project for example posted an article here the other day, but precious little else has been put up). It seems most of the more recent writings on the Olympics in the American leftist mediasphere has come in the wake of the hassling of Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman at the Washington state – British Colombia border a few months ago. The Canadian government was concerned that somebody with her clout on the left was going to cause a stir by mentioning the Olympics in a talk she was to give. Goodman though, as she self-reported, had little to no idea of what they were talking about. Now enlightened she was given a 48 hour pass to enter and leave Canada.

Since the incident with Goodman at the border, and her subsequent reporting on what she had found out about the Olympic situation, there has been a slow trickle of reporting about the resistance to the Olympics in the U.S. (Dave Zirin has written a handful of article on the subject for Socialist Worker for example), however in some cases the miss the point somewhat, Zirin’s below article being a good case of that. Much of the recent American reporting on the Olympics focuses on the economic impact of the Games on Vancouver, while ignoring a number of other important points. For example, there is little mention of the fact that the resistance to the games got a lot of its original motive force from indigenous communities as the Games are to take place on unceded and unsurrendered Coast Salish land. This is why the primary anti-Olympic slogan has been “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land,” however this receives no mention in Zirin’s article. His article does have a one liner about protesters being concerned about Native rights, and then a paragraph later mentions the Stolen Sisters Awareness Walk. Zirin’s article also mentions little or none of the other major issues such as the environmental impact, the impact on women’s rights or the massive police state that has been built up around the games.

Nicaragua, ALBA, and Intellectual Betrayal

By Toni Solo writing for Venezuela Analysis

People in Latin America have frequently found themselves fighting regular forces and mercenary contractors coordinated ultimately by the United States Southern Command, the State Department and related US government bodies. That was true in Central America in the 1980s. It has been the case in Colombia for many years. On a smaller scale it is happening now in Honduras. Shortly, they may well find themselves fighting regular forces and mercenary contractors coordinated by NATO.

2009 marked the transition via a practically seamless continuity in US government foreign policy in Latin America from one gangster US government administration to another. The international intellectual and information-media manager classes have failed to report assertively and adequately the US government’s escalating war on the peoples of Latin America. For overstretched US military forces, anxious to apply pressure to perceived enemies in Latin America, resorting to NATO’s mutual defence Article 5 – as they have in Afghanistan – is an attractive option. With its new military bases in Colombia, the US government can readily provoke an incident as they did fifty years ago in the Tonkin Gulf.

The Venezuelan government recently expressed concern about the intentions of the US government in relation to its bases in the Dutch Antilles- Aruba and Curacao. Holland is a member country of NATO. The well known NATO war games known as Plan Balboa posited unequivocally a joint NATO operation against Venezuela. Despite this, leading US intellectuals like Noam Chomsky dismiss the chances of a US government-led aggression against Venezuela. (1) Their failure of imagination only makes sense in the broad economic, political and propaganda context of the Americas.

The Kidnapping of Haiti

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the “swift and crude” appropriation of earthquake-ravaged Haiti by the militarised Obama administration. With George W. Bush attending to the “relief effort” and Bill Clinton the UN’s man, The Comedians, Graham Greene’s dark novel about exploted Haiti comes to mind.

The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured “formal approval” from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to “secure” roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in an American naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training.

The airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is now an American military base and relief flights have been re-routed to the Dominican Republic. All flights stopped for three hours for the arrival of Hillary Clinton. Critically injured Haitians waited unaided as 800 American residents in Haiti were fed, watered and evacuated. Six days passed before the US Air Force dropped bottled water to people suffering thirst and dehydration.

The first TV reports played a critical role, giving the impression of widespread criminal mayhem. Matt Frei, the BBC reporter dispatched from Washington, seemed on the point of hyperventilation as he brayed about the “violence” and need for “security”. In spite of the demonstrable dignity of the earthquake victims, and evidence of citizens’ groups toiling unaided to rescue people, and even an American general’s assessment that the violence in Haiti was considerably less than before the earthquake, Frei claimed that “looting is the only industry” and “the dignity of Haiti’s past is long forgotten.” Thus, a history of unerring US violence and exploitation in Haiti was consigned to the victims. “There’s no doubt,” reported Frei in the aftermath of America’s bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003, “that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East… is now increasingly tied up with military power.”

Ecuador’s President Correa Faces Off With Indigenous and Social Movements

By Roger Burbach. Roger Burbach is the director of the Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA). This article first appeared on the NACLA Web page.

Quito, Ecuador. Beginning his fourth year as president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa confronts a major challenge from some of the very social actors that propelled him into office. In an address to the country in early January, Correa expressed his ire with a “coming series of conflicts this month, including indigenous mobilizations, workers, media communications, and even a level of the armed forces.”

While the country, amidst the global crisis, is facing a downturn in the economy and chronic electrical outages, the roots of the current confrontation run much deeper, to the growing disenchantment with the “Citizens Revolution” that propelled Correa into office in 2007 and formed the basis for his political organization, the Alianza Pais, or Country Alliance. Correa promised to re-found the country with a new magna carta and to rid the country of the corrupt partidocracia comprised of the financial and political elites that had imposed disastrous neoliberal economic policies on Ecuador for almost two decades.

Early on he enacted a series of social spending programs that have in part tapped the country’s oil revenues to assist the poorest and convened a constituent assembly that drafted a pluri-national constitution providing for ample public participation in the country’s social and economic institutions. Reelected president under the new constitution, he declared in his inaugural address last August 10 that the Citizens Revolution “adheres to the socialist revolution of the twenty-first century.”

Standing Aside or Speaking Up?

Sherry Wolf, author of Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics and Theory of LGBT Liberation, weighs in on the debate about the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban. This article originally appeared on Socialist Worker.

Taking a stand at the National Equality March in Washington, D.C.

AS HE did on the eve of the 200,000-strong National Equality March in October, President Barack Obama called in his State of the Union speech for lifting the ban on gays, lesbians and bisexuals serving openly in the U.S. military.

It appears that Obama will eventually get around to lifting the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban that was established by President Bill Clinton in a 1993 executive order. After all, with expanding wars and occupations amid economic misery, boots on the ground are needed, and dismissing highly trained personnel is costly.

Given our opposition to U.S. wars and occupations, how should socialists and other radicals view this step?

Many leftists express ambivalence or even hostility to the call for lifting “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Why should opponents of U.S. imperialism, they ask, advocate or even care about ending a ban on LGBT people serving openly in the military?

A Historian Who Made History

Nation columnist Dave Zirin honors the author of A People’s History of the United States and a fighter in many struggles over half a century. Reproduced from Socialist Worker.

Howard Zinn and Dave Zirin at the 2009 Campaign to End the Death Penalty convention

HOWARD ZINN, my hero, teacher and friend, died of a heart attack on Wednesday at the age of 87. With his death, we lose a man who did nothing less than rewrite the narrative of the United States. We lose a historian who also made history.

Anyone who believes that the United States is immune to radical politics never attended a lecture by Howard Zinn. The rooms would be packed to the rafters, as entire families, black, white and brown, would arrive to hear their own history made humorous as well as heroic.

“What matters is not who’s sitting in the White House. What matters is who’s sitting in!” he would say with a mischievous grin. After this casual suggestion of civil disobedience, the crowd would burst into laughter and applause.

Only Howard could pull that off because he was entirely authentic. When he spoke against poverty, it was from the perspective of someone who had to work in the shipyards during the Great Depression. When he spoke against war, it was from the perspective of someone who flew as a bombardier during the Second World War, and was forever changed by the experience. When he spoke against racism, it was from the perspective of someone who taught at Spelman College during the civil rights movement, and was arrested sitting in with his students.

The People’s Historian

Alan Maass of Socialist Worker pays tribute to a historian who helped make history.

HOWARD ZINN, an activist and author for half a century and probably the best-known voice of the U.S. left, died January 27 at the age of 87.

Howard was a fixture of countless struggles for justice and equality in the U.S. over many long decades. He was as determined in his 80s as he was many years before as a witness and participant in the great battles of the civil rights movement and the fight against the Vietnam War.

He died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, Calif., where he was enjoying a few days’ vacation. But according to friends, he was also looking forward to his next speaking event in a week’s time–to a packed audience, as always.

Howard is best remembered for A People’s History of the United States, which taught millions about the hidden tradition of protest, resistance and rebellion in America. A People’s History has sold over 2 million copies–it’s almost unique in the publishing world for continuously selling more copies each year than it did the year before.

A People’s History of American Empire

“He’s made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture…He’s changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can’t think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect.” – Noam Chomsky on Howard Zinn

Haiti Under the Eagle

AS THE U.S. media describes the devastation of Haiti by the January 12 earthquake, they typically leave out any mention of the disaster visited on the island for many decades beforehand–the long and bloody role of the U.S. government intervening to protect and promote its interests in what is now the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Since the 1900s, the U.S. viewed Haiti as a key part of maintaining its dominance in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 1915, the U.S. military began a 19-year occupation of Haiti that only came to an end after a massive rebellion against the U.S. presence. The U.S. was forced to leave–but after 19 years during which it claimed it was there to “uplift” the Haitian people, it left behind a 98 percent illiteracy rate, an economy dependent on one crop, coffee, and a large U.S.-trained military with practice at repressing domestic rebellions.

That military would later play a key role in upholding the Duvalier dictatorships, so even when U.S. forces weren’t physically in Haiti, American influence was still felt. But after the downfall of the Duvaliers, the U.S. returned to more direct methods of imposing its domination, including in its campaign against the democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Here, I reprint a featured article by Helen Scott that appeared in the International Socialist Review in May-June 2004, titled “Haiti Under Siege: 200 Years of U.S. Imperialism.”

Helen Scott teaches Caribbean literature at the University of Vermont. Her writings include “Replacing the ‘Wall of Disinformation’: The Butterfly’s Way, Krik? Krak! and Representation of Haiti in the USA” in the Journal of Haitian Studies, and “The Mark Twain They Didn’t Teach Us In school,” ISR 10, Winter 2000. Her book on economic globalization and Caribbean women writers is forthcoming from Ashgate Publishers.

Everything You Need to Know About the Anti Olympic Convergence

From the No One Is Illegal chapter of the Coast Salish Territories – Vancover.

The 2010 Winter Olympics will take place in Vancouver & Whistler, on unceded Indigenous land, from February 12-28 2010. We call on all anti-capitalist, Indigenous, housing rights, labour, migrant justice, environmental, anti-war, community-loving, anti-poverty, civil libertarian, and anti colonial activists to come together to confront this two-week circus and the oppression it represents. We are organizing towards a global anti-capitalist and anti-colonial convergence against the 2010 Olympic Games.

BELOW IS LEGAL INFO, LOGISTICAL INFO, WAYS TO SUPPORT AND MORE.

SUPPORT THE CONVERGENCE:

You can help by providing:

1. HOUSING:
If you have a couch or extra floor space, please help us out by providing sleep space for out of town activists. Fill out the housing form at: http://olympicresistance.net/content/2010-convergence-billeting-form

Crow Creek Land is Not for Sale

The Prince of Denmark

By Akbayan! Representative Walden Bello. Reposted from Focus on the Global South.

Walden Bello is a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines representing Akbayan (Citizens’Action Party), president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, and senior analyst at the Bangkok-based institute Focus on the Global South.

Like Hamlet, Shakespeare’s conflicted Prince of Denmark, China was caught between conflicting currents in Copenhagen.  Its failure to manage these led to its biggest diplomatic debacle in years.

Almost a month after the debacle at the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen (Conference of Parties or COP 15), the question of who scuttled the talks elicits fury and derision.

Interestingly, in many accounts, President Barack Obama comes across either as a figure who valiantly tries to rescue a doomed conference or as a well-meaning head of state whose hands are unfortunately tied by the realities of US politics

As the villain of the continuing climate drama, Washington has been replaced in much of the media by Beijing.  China did make mistakes in Copenhagen, but the media portrayal of it as the spoiler of the climate change negotiations is neither accurate nor fair. Like Hamlet, Shakespeare’s conflicted Prince of Denmark, China was caught in multiple crosscurrents in Copenhagen.  Its failure to manage these led to one of its biggest diplomatic setbacks in years.

Why Resist the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver?

By Chris Shaw

Chris Shaw is a professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of British Columbia where he conducts research into the origins and treatments for neurological diseases. He has been an vocal anti-Olympics critic and is the author of Five Ring Circus, Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games. His blog is hosted on www.VancouverObserver.com. This article is reproduced from rabble.ca

“The Olympic Games are coming and you can’t stop them, so what’s the point of protesting now?” is a question I get asked virtually every day. Sometimes the question is posed by journalists sincerely puzzled by the fact that opposition to the Games still exists and seems to be growing just a month before the opening ceremonies. Other times, the query comes from members of the public or even from friends and family. Inevitably, the tone is akin to, “It rains a lot in Vancouver so what’s the point of bitching about it?” The usual tag line to both is “If you don’t like it, stay home” or “Move somewhere else.”

Unlike the rain, which is beyond the power of normal mortals to control, the Olympics are not a force of nature, rather one of human construction whose impacts have been acutely harmful to a lot of people. Most of us grew up or moved to Vancouver knowing it was going to rain a lot, a fact we chose to accept as part of life. The Games, however, were not the outcome of a fair choice; rather they were foisted on the city by a small band of developers and politicians who stage-managed a plebiscite (functionally an opinion poll) involving only 12 per cent of British Columbia’s population in order to get a desired result.

Jesus Camp

Jesus Camp is a 2006 American documentary film directed by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing about a Pentecostal/charismatic summer camp for children who spend their summers learning and practicing their “prophetic gifts” and being taught that they can “take back America for Christ.” According to the distributor, it “doesn’t come with any prepackaged point of view” and tries to be “an honest and impartial depiction of one faction of the evangelical Christian community”.

Unfortunately only 7 out of 8 parts is available on YouTube, with the last part not available because of Copyright issues, but you do get most the movie here and it is definitely worth a watch.

Part 1 of 8

Peru’s Amazon Uprising: Indigenous Resistance to the Corporate Agenda

By Bill Weinberg, World War 4 Report. Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute. Earlier versions appeared in the November/December 2009 issue of NACLA Report on the Americas and Oct. 9 in the weekly Indian Country Today.

In the wake of this past year’s indigenous uprising in the Amazon, Peru is in many ways fundamentally changed. For the first time, indigenous leaders from the rainforest are in direct dialogue with the highest levels of government. For the first time, a powerful alliance has emerged between rainforest peoples and highland campesinos and urban workers, who joined in the protest campaign. The days when Lima’s political elite could treat the rainforest as an internal colony seem definitively over.

Yet there has been a high price in human lives—and it is only the most controversial of President Alan García’s “legislative decrees” that have been overturned. These decrees—promulgated under special powers granted to García by Peru’s congress in 2008 to ready the country for the new free trade agreement with the United States—would undo a generation of progress in protecting indigenous territorial rights in the rainforest, and open indigenous lands to oil and other resource interests as never before. And an indigenous pledge to physically resist the operations of Hunt Oil of Texas on communal rainforest lands could re-ignite the uprising.

Outstanding Demands

After consulting with some 300 apus (traditional chiefs) from Amazon communities in early September, the Amazonian indigenous alliance AIDESEP—for Inter-ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest—announced that it is putting off a decision to return to its paro (protest campaign) to give dialogue with the government more time. A key factor in the move was hailed the government’s formation of an investigative commission on the June 5 massacre at Bagua, where the National Police opened fire on an indigenous roadblock.

Philippine Community Blocks Entry of Large Mining Firm

From Intercontinental Cry.

The community of Anislagan on the island of Mindanao has successfully blocked the Philex mining company from entering their lands.

According to a press release from the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan (LRC-CdO), nearly the entire community gathered to greet Philex, the largest mining firm in the Philippines, with a makeshift checkpoint they put together, on January 11, 2010.

The company was planning to commence work on a “livelihood training center.” However, “The Philex 6-vehicle convoy backed out after they failed to pass through the thousand residents of Anislagan,” states the LRC-CdO.

To reinforce the checkpoint, the community formed into a human a human barricade, leaving the company with nowhere else to go

“Women and children here are ready anytime to defend our land. This land is where we survived. We should fight for it!” said Rizalina Lisbos, a mother of four, who was on the front line of the barricade.

Dept. Rules Against Native Rights, Says Eagle Rock Isn’t Sacred

From Intercontinental Cry.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, has shamelessly and underhandedly given its final approval for Kennecott’s proposed Eagle Mine project, a nickel and copper sulfide mine on the Yellow Dog Plains.

In issuing the approval, the MDEQ overstepped the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community’s treaty rights, and dismissed a 2009 ruling by Administrative Law Judge Richard Patterson, who found that Eagle Rock is a place of spiritual importance to Keweenaw Bay Community and should be protected.

Judge Patterson, in his ruling, stated that both Kennecott and the MDEQ “did not properly address the impact on the sacred rock outcrop known as Eagle Rock” and suggested that they move the mine’s entry point somewhere “away from the rock”.

The MDEQ unilaterally decided that the judge’s ruling was unnecessary “…because it pertained to Eagle Rock as a place of worship. They believe that a place of worship must be a building and therefore negates comments that were not in favor of the mining company,” explains the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve, who works along side the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and others opposed to the mine.

However, the MDEQ did much more than dismiss the ruling and deny the sacredness of Eagle Rock. First, it handed the matter down to a Senior Policy Advisor, who made the decision on his own and just two days before the MDEQ was formally dissolved.

Waiting for Armageddon

In my academic studies in anthropology and sociology I have developed a very strong interest in the study of religion, and recently this has taken the form of academic study into Cults and New Religious Movements, as well as Millenarianism and Violence. At the University of Waterloo we happen to have two of the world’s leading scholars of Cults and NRMs, Doug Cowan and Lorne Dawson, and I am currently studying under Dr. Dawson as to the question of apocalyptic violence.

Anyway, to make a long story short, on the first night of lectures for my recent class with Dr. Dawson he pointed our small class to a new documentary that was at the time was just about to make its premier (it did on January 8th) called Waiting for Armageddon. WOA promises to be an incredibly interesting insight into a specific part of American Evangelical Protestantism, namely the belief that the Christian eschatological event will happen soon, within our lifetimes even, and the subsequent belief that in order for this to happen the “Jews” must be in control of the Holy Land, specifically Jerusalem. In other words, what the film documents and puts on display for the world is the violent, apocalyptic beliefs that are the foundation of modern Christian Zionism.

While I consider myself to have long outgrown outgrown the elitist atheist thought of Richard Dawkins, the bile filled writings of Christopher Hitchens and the utterly reactionary politics of Sam Harris (in large part due to my anthropological and sociological studies in religion), as well as the juvenile antics of groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation, I am still deeply concerned about the role of right-wing Christian theology in the United States. And as such I hope that this film will join the likes of Jesus Camp and Christopher Hedges’ book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America in exposing the dark underbelly of modern American religious ideology.

In Defence of Chavez’ Call for a Fifth Socialist International

By Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer.

Ann Robertson is a Lecturer at San Francisco State University and a member the California Faculty Association. Bill Leumer is a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 853 (ret.). Both are writers for Workers Action and may be reached at sanfrancisco@workerscompass.org.

Critics who have planted themselves firmly on the sidelines, have been lobbing all kinds of disapproving missives at President Hugo Chavez’ call for a new international, urging others who have been carried away with enthusiastic support to join them on the sidelines. The laundry list of complaints is extensive: Chavez is the head of a bourgeois government; Chavez only pursues reformism, not genuine revolution; he made his call in the presence of an audience that included avowed supporters of capitalism; and so on.

We do not dispute that these criticisms contain a grain of truth. For example, the Chavez government is currently tied to a capitalist state. In other words, the economy of Venezuela is still predominatly capitalist and, to a significant degree, defends current property relations. Also, there are many functionaries in the government more than eager to accept bribes, and capitalists do not hesitate to take advantage of their wealth to press their needs on compliant bureaucrats. Moreover, Chavez’s vision of socialism, which has not been spelled out in detail, might indeed contain flaws. One critique claimed that Chavez called for the building of socialism in collaboration with businessmen, which was interpreted to mean that capitalists would not be expropriated. However, if Chavez had small business owners in mind, this interpretation would not be warranted.

Why We Can’t Wait: Reading Dr. King in the Age of Obama

By Billy Wharton. Billy is the co-chair of the Socialist Party USA and the editor of The Socialist and the Socialist WebZine.

Albert Boutwell’s election as Birmingham, Alabama, mayor in 1963 might have signaled the end of the modern civil rights movement. As a moderate Democrat, Boutwell promised to temper the harsh repression unleashed by the city’s notorious chief of police and his mayoral opponent Eugene “Bull” Connor. Mainstream leaders of the black community were told to wait it out –- let the storm pass and incremental changes could begin. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. refused to wait. Instead, he launched Plan “C” (confrontation), a large-scale protest campaign that broke the back of Southern segregation.

Today, US President Barack Obama is held up as the logical outcome of the movement King led. Such a claim avoids a basic fact of US history. Elections do not deliver much in the way of social change. More often they provide sleeping pills -– skillfully crafted illusions meant to demobilise, to dull the senses and to prevent serious demands for social justice from emerging. King understood this process well. One can assume that if Martin Luther King were faced with two active wars, 48 million people without health care and more than 20 million unemployed, he would be able to see through the illusions being offered from the top. The good news is that a new movement for justice need not start from scratch -– it can learn the lessons of history. The civil rights movement offers nearly all the instincts necessary for movement building — a scepticism about elections, an unquenchable desire for grassroots mobilisation and a firm conviction that the movement is operating on the side of justice.

`New Day in Birmingham’

King’s small essay entitled, “New Day in Birmingham”, should be seen as a blueprint to the pivotal Birmingham campaign. In it, he rails against the request by the white population to accept “polite segregation”. He views the election of Boutwell as less a sympathetic act by white voters, than an expression of how little they understood about the aspirations of the black community. When the hardcore segregationists dug in and filed a lawsuit to maintain themselves in office, even greater pressure was applied to the black community to wait. The judicial process was then held up as the ultimate arbiter of justice. A simple formula was offered — the polite segregationists would prevail in court, Connor and his allies would be removed and peace would be restored to Birmingham. According to mainstream commentators, all the established black leaders needed to do was keep agitators like King out.

Cuban Doctors in Haiti: `The Worst Tragedy is Not Bbeing Able to do More’

By Leticia Martínez Hernández, photos by Juvenal Balán. From Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti — January 18, 2010 — Granma — The little boy, with a drip attached to his hand — although at that stage it wasn’t helping him very much — couldn’t stop trembling. The fluid that perhaps in other circumstances would give him some strength was not passing through his collapsed veins. Lying on a piece of cardboard, his life was ebbing away, while, at his feet, a Cuban doctor lamented not being able to do more.

“They brought this little angel in this morning. He was buried under the rubble for three days. A rescue team member brought him; he has no family and he’s unlikely to survive. We’ve given him everything, we’ve cleaned him up, we’ve treated his injuries, and I don’t know what else to do to help him. This tragedy has been merciless on the children, the pain is unbearable.”

Aged 28, Sergio is already familiar with the face of death. These last few days have been terrible for this doctor from Santiago de Cuba, who has left his country for the first time to save lives. When asked what was the worst, he fired off two aspects from his heart: the suffering of little ones and not being able to help them all. That was what Sergio Otero González said, while a woman with bruised face clung to his hand.

The Real Martin Luther King

In this older article from 2003 Alan Maass, of Socialist Worker, examines the real legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

GEORGE W. BUSH had the gall to use Martin Luther King’s birthday as the occasion for announcing that his administration wanted to gut part of King’s legacy. “[W] e renew our commitment to the principles of justice, equality, opportunity and optimism that Dr. King espoused and exemplified,” Bush declared last month–as his administration sided against affirmative action programs in college admissions.

This latest slap in the face shows how comfortable Washington politicians have become with “celebrating” King’s life, while taking actions that are the opposite of what he stood for. And not only Republicans.

“It’s time for all of us to apply the same sense of consciousness, the same guts, the same determination, and the same impatience to change America for the better,” Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), an early favorite of many liberals for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, said of King. This from a man who voted for Bush’s war on Iraq–and offered only token opposition to the attack on affirmative action.

The truth is that Martin Luther King’s commitment to justice–and his determination to fight for it–sets him apart from everyone in the Washington establishment today.

How to Turn a Priest into a Cannibal: Haïti Through A Distorted Lens

This piece first appeared on Counterpunch. It is two years old — but no less revealing, since for many people Haiti only jumped in existence last week when the media turned its eyes on an earthquake. (H/t to the Kasama Project for it.)

When Haiti’s wealthy elites removed President Jean Bertrand Aristide from office in a February 2004 coup, they had the help of the Bush administration, as well as that of the French and Canadian governments. But they also had help from the U.S. press, which helped publicize a carefully planned narrative to justify the overthrow.

I have always been interested in how a supposedly independent press so often manages to report on foreign affairs from the point of view of the State Department. What are the mechanisms by which the government’s narrative ends up being the frame for stories about U.S. military interventions and CIA-backed coups in the Americas? Who are the foreign correspondents and how do they learn the “correct” way to report on a given crisis? Journalist Michael Deibert reported as a special correspondent in Haiti during the crisis, contributing to or authoring 16 stories, which were first published in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and then in Newsday. I chose to look at the stories of just one foreign correspondent because together they provide a perfect example of framing techniques used by the press to create acquiescence towards the coup, or at least to confuse the public.

As Colombian Resistance Unifies, Government Increases Repression

By Sam Holguin writing for the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

The posting of this piece should not be taken as an endorsement of either the FARC-EP or the ELN, or the analysis in the piece.

FARC and ELN Issue Joint Statement for Unity

On Dec. 16, 2009, the Revolutionary Armed Forced of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) released a joint statement, revealing a plan of unity between the two main guerrilla forces in Colombia. “Our only enemy is U.S. imperialism and its lackey (Colombian) Oligarchy.” (Columbia Reports, Dec. 16, 2009)

The statement articulated the right-wing President Alvaro Uribe’s failure to bring about any political, social justice or economic change to the country over the last eight years. Because of the economic erosion of the country, 61 percent of the population live in extreme poverty. Some 7,500 political prisoners are incarcerated in maximum security prisons, and over 18,500 Colombians have been disappeared by the government in collaboration with right-wing paramilitary groups.