The Dominion - Argentina

NB Port Workers Said NO CANDU

Moira Peters — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 05:11:24 +0000

Argentina honours Saint John longshoremen for 1979 act of solidarity

They said, “We don’t care about our wages
and we don’t care about the boss.
When your brothers and sisters are dying,
there’s lines you just don’t cross.”
No Hot Cargo for Argentina!
No Hot Cargo for Argentina!
No Hot Cargo for Argentina!

—Maritimes folk singer Nancy White, in “No Hot Cargo,” a song inspired by the 1979 event this article celebrates.

FREDERICTON—Hundreds gathered at Lily Lake Pavilion in Saint John on Saturday, March 13, to honour the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 273 for what has been called "the single most dramatic example of Canadian trade union solidarity with workers in the Third World."

Argentina’s Ambassador to Canada, Arturo Guillermo Bothamley, presented the Orden de Mayo to Pat Riley, business agent for the Saint John Local of the ILA, for the union’s 1979 protest that prevented the shipment of heavy water to Argentina’s military dictatorship—an action that resulted in the release of 11 political prisoners. The Orden de Mayo is the highest award given by the Argentine government to citizens of another country for courage, honour and solidarity.

“We are going to pay an old debt from the heart to some people who put their security at risk for people thousands of miles away,” said Bothamley at the ceremony.

On the morning of July 3, 1979, port workers refused to cross a picket line on the west side of the Saint John harbour the day the workers were supposed to ship a load of heavy water to Argentina for the CANDU nuclear reactor Argentina had bought from Canada in 1973. Heavy water is a component necessary for the functioning of nuclear reactors fueled by unenriched uranium.

The picket had been organized by the NO CANDU committee, the New Brunswick Federation of Labour, and the Saint John and District Labour Council. With signs and buttons stating, "NO CANDU FOR ARGENTINA," and "HOT CARGO," the protesters demanded the release of 17 political prisoners in Argentina, most of whom were trade unionists.

The action was part of a national campaign started by the Group for the Defence of Civil Rights in Argentina—initiated by Argentine expatriates—in response to the brutal military dictatorship that took power in Argentina in 1976.

“The 1979 Argentine military junta was a rogue government in league with other rogue governments, such as the government of South Africa, which was itself notorious for its apartheid policies and its similar threat of acquiring nuclear capabilities," said Riley at the award ceremony.

"The military junta’s most appalling practices were not well-known. Whether you were a newspaper editor, a university professor or a university student, a trade unionist, or simply a person of conscience, you could well disappear if you spoke out about the inhuman practices of the junta.”

It is estimated that 10,000-30,000 people were tortured, murdered or “disappeared” between 1976 and 1983. The government of Canada was enthusiastically supporting business with Argentina, including the export of nuclear technology, despite the Argentine government’s refusal to sign the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The picket line was joined by members of many local unions, including the Canadian Paperworkers, the United Auto Workers, the International Association of Machinists, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Church groups and members from the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, Project Ploughshares and the Maritimes Energy Coalition also joined the picket.

As a result of the protest, 11 of the 17 political prisoners were released within days and three were sent into exile.

Another prisoner identified by the NO CANDU campaign, union leader Alberto Piccinini, was released a year later. During a visit to Canada, he expressed his gratitude to a group of Canadian workers: “Unity is the unity of all of us; and it must go beyond national boundaries. I am very clear that I am free today because of the struggle first of the people in my country and second because of workers elsewhere—especially in this beautiful country.”

At the March 13 award ceremony, Saint John mayor Ivan Court spoke of the workers’ decision to respect the picket line on the July morning, 31 years ago: “People matter first and foremost... So when the longshoremen in this city in 1979 said to the boss, ‘We’re not crossing the picket line. Life is more important than a paycheck,’ that’s what Saint John is all about... People were willing to say, ‘no,’ and ‘no’ did save lives,” he said.

"They were ordinary people knowing that they were doing something to try and change the living conditions—the lives—of people a long way away," said Barbara Byers of the Canadian Labour Congress at the ceremony. "But they were ordinary people taking extraordinary actions. They were ordinary people making history."

Byers went on to draw connections to current political issues in Latin America, including the recent coup d’etat in Honduras and the proposed Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement:

Today the widespread military dictatorships may be on the wane, but we now have a dictatorship of the free markets and free trade agreements. And the labour movement has been at the forefront of the resistance to that new kind of dictatorship going back to the fight against the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement. We learned many lessons from those struggles and we are applying them to the current fight to oppose the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Colombia may not be ruled by a military dictatorship, but human rights violations taking place in that country are equally surreal. The dirty war there is being waged against trade unionists and leaders who dare to organize a union, lead a strike or oppose the government in any way.

Upon accepting the Orden de Mayo from Ambassador Bothamley, Pat Riley expressed his gratitude for the recognition of their action 31 years ago, and reflected on the event.

“The story of the 1979 NO CANDU for Argentina picket line was a story of immense courage, ingenuity and resolve. For the disappeared political prisoners. For the mothers of the disappeared. For the Group for the Defence of Civil Rights in Argentina. For the NO CANDU for Argentina committee and so many others. For the 1979 Port of Saint John picket line and demonstration. The determination to see justice done...was a path for those involved,” said Riley.

Marie-Christine Allard is a member of the New Brunswick Media Co-op. An original version of this article was published by the New Brunswick Media Co-op.

Argentina honours Saint John longshoremen

Media Pie

Tim McSorley — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:40:12 +0000

Argentina’s bold new law and the future of the press

BUENOS ARIES—In 1867, as Canada became itself, every town big enough to have one newspaper had two. Why? When our constitution was fresh and new, the notion of democracy demanded people be informed. And, informed, the people demanded partisanship. Toronto, for example, had the liberal-backed Globe and the conservative Mail, each directly funded by their respective parties. The political ties were clear, and each paper kept its alter ego in check.

With the rise of advertising at the turn of the century, and the ties between the press and the government waned, the responsibility of many newspapers drifted away from the citizens en mass to land in the padded laps of the citizen elite. The private media empires were born, and the invisible hand of the market has fed a few enough to grow them into giants. Meanwhile, this year alone our government’s starvation tactics have lost the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 800 jobs and a string of programmes.

Yet, just as last century saw its rise, this century is witnessing the fall of advertising. Canwest’s publishing revenues dropped 19 per cent in one year; its staff lost 560 jobs; and Izzy Asper’s empire teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. NewsCorp CEO Rupert Murdoch announced in November that his model is failing, while experts predict that in the next two years, 85 per cent of newspapers will cease to exist.

The model we know is collapsing. And although both are certainly kicking, the public press is too enfeebled and the private is too panicked to propose a viable alternative.

So how about an old-time duel, the kind Canadians used to demand from their local papers? In Argentina the battle between public and private has been raging around a radical new law that redistributes broadcast licences into three equal parts: private, public, and NGO.

As this law comes into force, the Argentinian example serves as a case study of how fascinating things can get when press, politics and power take off their masks—and fight.

A Newspaper

This September, Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner hauled a media bill through Congress and the Senate in record time: in October it was signed and became law. The Audiovisual Communication Service Law (LSCA, by its Spanish initials) certainly appears to be popular if you ask the crowds of people marching to mark its victory in the streets of Buenos Aires: “Our current law was passed in 1980 by the dictatorship—it had no place in today’s democracy!” insists an elegant young woman.“ Only commercial interests have been able to publish or broadcast under the old law,” says an elderly man with a soft face.

This was October 10 at 2am: the moment the Senate passed the LSCA 44 votes to 24. Half an hour later, Argentina’s biggest newspaper, El Diario Clarin, responded on its website, claiming, in bold font, that “many [members of the crowd] conceded that they didn’t know what they were supporting or what had happened, and that they had been paid.” The others, the article claimed, “repeated by memory the slogans the government has launched against Clarin.” It was with this exasperated article that Clarin, Argentina’s largest media conglomerate, conceded its defeat.

The media group had fought with claws and teeth for months, throwing all its weight and hate across the countries’ airwaves and front pages. Pick up any copy of Clarin from 2009, and you will be stunned: the newspaper, its vicious headlines and vile adjectives, bold fonts and awful photographs, had become a war cry.

It turns out the now-ousted dictatorship-era law had one principle beneficiary: Clarin. The newspaper reported the 1976 military coup to be “inevitable,” and then reaped the bounty of the new regime: censorship, privatization, and the nation’s press controlled by the State Intelligence Agency. Private media holders in turn supported the dictatorship by silencing reports across the country of systematic murders, in which an estimated 30,000 civilians disappeared.

The dictatorship saw to the eradication of Clarin’s competitors, and the subsequent neoliberal reign of the 1990s brought a series of conglomerations and shady backroom deals that have lifted the newspaper’s parent company, Grupo Clarin, to a close monopoly of Argentina’s television, radio and print. Today, the media group holds more than 264 broadcast licenses nationwide, over a dozen print publications, two of the three nation-wide television networks, and two national radio stations. Clarin is the most watched and read newsgroup in Argentina: El Diario Clarín circulates half a million copies daily, and its electronic version is the most visited Spanish language newspaper on the Internet, whereas Clarin cable reaches 80 per cent of the homes in Buenos Aires and half of homes nationwide.

And just as it had cajoled the dictators during their terror, and president Menem during his infamous beeline into national bankruptcy in 2001, Grupo Clarin faithfully supported Peronista president Nestor Kirchner when he was elected in 2003. At the height of his presidency, President Kirchner enjoyed a 70 per cent approval rating nationwide.

A President

When Nestor Kirchner’s wife, Cristina Fernandez, won the 2007 elections with a sweeping majority (22 per cent above her closest opponent), Clarin was enthusiastic about her win and what they called the continuation of Modelo K. On the front page of the post-election paper, El Diario Clarin affectionately called the new president "Cristina," and quoted her saying that she wanted to call together “the whole society, because a country is not only its government.”

Not two years later, every copy of Clarin discharges the name "Cristina" alongside a string of insults: oligarchy, colonialism and corruption have boldface priority. Dreadful photographs of the president, poorly cropped, red-eye enhanced, and features skewed—a photo editor’s vengeance—relentlessly depict her as a furious despot: and this is exactly how she is now perceived by a great number of her country’s citizens. In a country in which every citizen between 18 and 70 is subject to enforced compulsory voting, recent polls place the president’s popularity at 20 per cent.

Cristina Fernandez has blamed Clarin directly for her fall from grace.

As of December 10, 2009, having lost the midterm vote, president Kirchner will sit seemingly powerless atop the last two years of her coalition government. And so, in her last two months at the helm of Argentina’s quickly sinking Kirchnerism, she has rushed to sign the new media law, which, many people claim, is nothing more than a dagger of retaliation, aimed right at the heart of the writhing Grupo Clarin.

A Law

The people are partly right: the new law is daring and drastic, the kind of law necessarily born from fear and loathing. It has echoes of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s media reform, but it has a singular approach.

By this time next year, Argentina’s media pie will be reallocated in three even slices of 33 per cent each: one will be retained by the private conglomerates, including of course the Grupo Clarin, whereas the other two will be redistributed between state-funded press and non-governmental organisations. Seventy per cent of radio content and 60 per cent of television content be produced in Argentina, and cable TV companies, now fountains of North American media, will be required to carry channels operated by universities, unions, Indigenous groups and other NGOs.

Clarin, furious, is now being forced to sell its empire, at a minimal price, to what has become its enemy: the government.

In a crucial editorial titled, "Don’t violate the freedom of expression," Clarin denounced the State as an imperialistic oligarchy, under whose control Argentinians will be left with nothing more than “a gigantic network of media outlets, apparently diverse, but actually obeying a single voice and serving one single ideology.” What "Cristina" is planning, another editorial fumes, is “to colonize our media.”

The president has been vilified before her entire country, and her attempts to redeem herself by buying expensive commercials and publicly denouncing the mighty Clarin, have, in the eyes of her voters, done nothing but discredit her. Cristina Fernandez has held but three press conferences in two years: her relationship with journalists is clearly reluctant—when not altogether confrontational. Does she now propose herself to be guardian of the media?

A recent poll found most Argentinians agree it is high time for a new law. Yet, almost unanimously, people interviewed on the street have more trust in Clarin than they do in their democratically elected leader.

Although the Argentinian government has perhaps won the airwaves, it seems to have lost the public trust.

A prominent Argentinian journalist, whose anonymity is required to protect his job, pointed out how the situation—Clarin’s arrogance and the government’s vicious new law—is a symptom of the country’s immature democracy. Both Clarin's and the Kirchners' bully tactics have reduced the discussion of the new law to a petty contest, he says, instead of a critical debate about democracy, information, and the future of the press.

The changes in Argentina's media landscape point to a debate that should be worldwide. Argentina has taken a significant step: while journalism is dying elsewhere, it is being turned on in Argentina.

The fall of Argentina’s old law effectively refutes the notion that media is a commercial venture. The Internet negates it; the newspaper gravestones confirm it. In the last two years, the United States has laid off a quarter of its journalists. We have all been watching: “The free market,” as American journalist John Nichols claims, “is killing journalism.”

There is no money in media. But is there no future?

Let's return to the beginning, back when our constitution was shiny and new: At the time, the newspapers in Canada and the US were the most subsidized newspapers in the world. “If there is to be journalism,” says Nichols, “there has to be government intervention,” through a free, federally-subsidized press. It is, he argues, the only answer.

Maybe Argentina is on to something.

Samara Chadwick is a Canadian journalist/filmmaker currently traveling through Latin America. More at http://justsostories.org.

QUICK FACTS

- Percentage of Argentinean media privately owned in 2009 and 2011, respectively: 80, 33
- Percentage of broadcast licences reserved specifically for NGOs in 2009 and 2011, respectively: 0, 33
- Approximate number of hours per day allotted to local television production in 2009 and 2011, respectively: 3, 15
- Grupo Clarin net profits in the third quarter of 2009: 103 million pesos (US$27.1 million)
- Grupo Clarin estimated net profits in the third quarter of 2011: much much less

LINKS

Maria Trigona’s well-researched article on the media law (there aren’t many!): http://upsidedownworld.orr/main/content/view/2166/1/, including a map of Argentina’s current media landscape: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/images/stories/Oct09/medios.gif

Another good article by Eduardo Szklarz: http://ciempre.com/bin/content.cgi?article=846&lang=en

The government-funded, pro-LSCA website, featuring tv-spots and the testimonies of recognized artists, Indigenous leaders, and Diego Maradona himself: http://www.argentina.ar/_es/pais/nueva-ley-de-medios/

"The Future of Journalism" by John Nichols: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuie5rSlY9c

World Bank Poster Child Gets Naughty

Tim McSorley — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 10:00:00 +0000

Politicians and protesters show their true mettle in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES–Julián Rooney, Vice-President of Bajo la Alumbrera, Argentina's largest gold and copper mine, was charged this past summer with crimes against the environment. The charges – the result of 10 years of action by community organizations – stemmed from four proven toxic spills, and a dozen formal complaints filed for pollution.

This is the first time in Latin America that this form of legal action has been taken against a mining company executive for crimes against the environment. Journalist David Mordersbach wrote that the charges alone sent 'shockwaves' through the Argentinean mining community.

The charges against Rooney represent a small victory, but opponents of unchecked mining development in Argentina still face many hurdles in reforming the country's mining sector. Argentina's by-the-book effectuation of the World Bank economic policies pushed throughout the world in the '80s and '90s the vast amount of unexplored land with high mining potential, and the high commodity prices make it a prime destination for multinational mining companies.

During the 1990s, under the leadership of neo-liberal President Carlos Menem, with the active participation of Angel Maza – then National Secretary of Mining – and with governors of the relatively poor but mineral-rich provinces of San Juan, Catamarca and Tucumán, the government revamped national mining policies.

The resulting legislation, instituted in 1993, prohibited the state from exploiting the country's mineral resources (effectively forcing privatization in the mining sector), guaranteed investors tax stability for 30 years, granted 100 per cent deduction of exploration costs from income taxes, and capped the maximum royalty payment to the government at three per cent.

In 2001, a decade of World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies at the hand of Menem led Argentina to economic collapse. Some of the results include the devaluing of the peso to a third of its previous worth and unemployment rates skyrocketing to over 20 per cent, up from 16.4 per cent before the crisis. Interestingly, the province affected most by unemployment – at 25.5 per cent – was Catamarca, currently a mining leader in the country.

The collapse was beneficial to mining investors, as the newly devalued peso meant doing business in Argentina became much cheaper than it had been, while their earnings, tallied up in dollars, were not affected.

The mining policies of the centre-left government of Néstor Kirchner, who was in office from 2003 to 2007, strongly supported mining investment and activity in the country.

Building on the 1993 Mining Law, Kirchner launched a “Mining Plan” in 2004 to strengthen mining investment and activity in Argentina. Among other issues, the Mining Plan set the stage to ensure a secure environment for mining investments and sought to create opportunities for market development at national and international levels.

The current National Secretary of Mining deems the Mining Law and Mining Plan responsible for the impressive upsurge in mining investment over the last decade.

Mining investments in the country stood at over $2 billion by 2007, a massive increase over the $220 million invested in 2003.

With six projects currently in production, 10 under construction and well over 200 in exploration, the last decade has seen Argentina take a leap from being a small player in the mining world to becoming a stronghold for the transnational mining industry. Ninety per cent of mining concessions in Argentina are held by transnationals.

****

The changes in mining policies in the 1990s were followed by the creation of several junior mining companies in Canada that focus either exclusively or mostly on mining ventures in Argentina.

These include Mirasol Resources, Argentex Mining Corporation, and Yamiri Gold and Energy Inc. Concerning gold mining in particular, more than 80 per cent of mining companies currently exploring in Argentina are based out of Canada.

At least seven projects from Canadian corporations are at an advanced exploration stage or under construction. Two such sites are expected to be among the world's largest mines.

Barrick Gold's controversial Pascua Lama project proposes mining an area that straddles the mountainous border between Argentina and Chile, a region covered by glaciers in a World Biosphere Reserve granted legal protection by UNESCO.

Yamana Gold Inc's Agua Rica, a gold mine projected to be three times larger than Alumbrera – currently Argentina's biggest mining site – is situated only 34 kilometres from the existing giant.

Alumbrera, going into its 13th year, is among the 10 largest copper projects in the world and is also a significant gold producer. Alumbrera is 50 per cent owned by Swiss company Xstrata; the other half of the ownership is shared between Goldcorp and Yamana Gold.

The Alumbrera project alone means Catamarca accounts for 80 per cent of Argentina's metal exports.

In addition, Barrick and Yamiri Gold and Energy Inc are in the exploration stage of the controversial Famatina project in La Rioja province.

Barrick, the world's largest gold-mining company, owns the entirety of the Veladero project (located within the same World Biosphere Reserve as the Pascua Lama development) in the nearby province of San Juan.

****

Angel Maza, National Secretary of Mining during Menem's first term in office in the early 1990s, eventually returned to his home province of La Rioja, where he was elected governor. During his three terms in office, he pushed hard for the development of the mining sector.

Under his political tutelage, Yamiri, a provincially owned company, underwent a series of fraudulent changes to become a private entity, which allowed it to maintain its legal entitlement to continue work in the province.

Vancouver-based TelcoPlus acquired control of Yamiri S.A. in 2005, buying just under 80 per cent of the company's shares. TelcoPlus then changed its name to Yamiri Gold and Energy, and began trading under that name on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Earlier that year, Yamiri SA signed a controversial agreement with Barrick Gold. The deal grants the latter exclusive rights to exploration of the highly coveted gold and silver Famatina project. This agreement was helped along by Maza's visit to Barrick's Canadian headquarters in 2006.

The close links to Barrick Gold and accusations of Maza holding 41 per cent of the shares of Yamiri S.A. before the involvement of TelcoPlus were instrumental in igniting the public outrage that helped lead to his impeachment in early 2007. Argentina's current Secretary of Mining, Jorge Mayoral, from the mining-rich province of San Juan, also owns a considerable volume of shares in three mining companies active in Argentina.

Public servants’ financial engagements with private mining companies violate Argentina’s Law of Public Ethics, but the country's anti-corruption agency deems this acceptable so long as Mayoral refrains from intervening in the affairs of the companies.

****

During the 2001 economic collapse, when all bank accounts were frozen, street riots finally resulted in the resignation of then-president Fernando de la Rúa. When a highly controversial pulp mill in Uruguay that drains into one of Argentina's main rivers was proposed, Argentine protests brought the issue before international courts and gained the world's attention. Argentines have a tradition of standing up and speaking out when their interests are affected. Mining, and particularly Canadian mining, have not been an exception.

In response to frequent protests, governors of La Rioja and San Juan drew up policies that penalize public protests against mining with imprisonment and which prevent social organizations from giving talks about mining in schools.

In some cases, local action and the need for increased state benefits have led to higher taxation of and legislated protection against destructive mining practices.

In December of 2007, the government of Kirchner modified some export tax breaks for mining companies, changes that companies are attempting to evade by claiming they contribute otherwise to society through education and social programs in the areas where they operate, and through royalties.

In 2003, a well-organized group of concerned residents in the town of Esquel in Patagonia held a public consultation, during which 81 per cent of the population expressed opposition to the proposed Cordón Esquel open-pit gold mine, currently owned by Yamana Gold.

These actions led to the provincial governments declaring a mining moratorium in parts of the province until 2009.

With the increase of mining activities over the past five years, other forms of community organizing have led to changes in the provincial legislatures of Jujuy, La Rioja and San Juan.

Most recently, in September and early October, the provincial legislatures in Córdoba and then San Luis also passed bans on open-pit mining.

The conditions might still be ripe for extensive mining in Argentina, but so long as communities are organized – and they increasingly are – social and environmental challenges will continue to expose realities that corporations and governments would gladly do without.

M. Olimpia Boido, BA, MA, a specialist on political intercultural relations, has been following mining developments as they pertain to Canadian corporations in Latin America.

Esquel from above

Mural in Esquel

Mining the Truth

dawn — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:07:28 +0000

A Canadian judge rules on indigenous land in Patagonia

MIDDLE MESA, ARGENTINA–"We always said no. We always said no. Why is it so difficult for them to understand us?" asks 75-year-old Victornio Cuel, born and raised in the town of Gan Gan, in the heart of Patagonia. He is speaking of the opposition to the Navidad project: an open-pit operation only 40 kilometres from Gan Gan, owned by the Canadian mining firm Aquiline Resources.

Victorino Cual is a Tehuelche elder. The Cual family has lived in the area since 1902; official documents prove their title to 15 leagues (over 66,000 acres) of land. Today the Cual family survives on only three of their original 15 leagues, insufficient for sustainably raising animals, the main source of income for residents of the town of Gan Gan.

The Navidad project has been advancing over indigenous lands, violating the national laws and international treaties that require previously informed consent of any project affecting native persons and their livelihoods. Mining of the lead deposit, with reserves worth $10 billion, is opposed by the indigenous people due to the negative consequences of lead – on the environment as well as human health – and for its tremendous use of water.

The co-ordinator of the Water Observatory of the National University of Patagonia, Lino Pizzolón, has studied water quality for decades, and has travelled throughout the steppe of Río Negro and Chubut many times. "There is not the quantity of water in the Plateau that the mega mining operations need,” he explains.

“For now,” he warns, “they will pump it from where it is, they will dry out the wells, the mallines [flooded meadows] and wetlands where livestock range, in a huge area of land. Mining activities will compete destructively with the livestock-pastoral activities, increase the depopulation of the lands and the desertification and cause large-scale relocation of people into the slum villages around the cities in the coast.”

The manager of the Navidad project, Guillermo Salvatierra, recognizes that Aquiline still has not carried out in-depth investigations into the availability of underground water in the region (despite five years of work in the area), but assures, "We comply with all of the studies that the province requires of us. They have never objected to anything."

****

Off Provincial Route 4, which connects Gan Gan to the town of Gastre, a 1,200-year-old chenque, or cemetery, was until recently located at the heart of the future open-pit mine. Local communities and social organizations accuse Canadian mining company Inversiones Mineras Argentinas Explorations (IMA) of entering indigenous territory and desecrating the sacred space.

"The existence of ancient graves is irrefutable proof of traditional occupation and pre-existing indigenous presence. The company knew that a cemetery in the mining operation zone would halt the activity. This is why they pressured hurriedly, maneuvering with trickery and pressure to get this potential obstacle out of the way," explains lawyer Eduardo Hualpa, member of the National Pastoral Indigenous Group (ENDEPA) and specialist in indigenous law.

These actions were carried out with active participation of provincial officials and scientists of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), violating the Argentine Constitution and international laws which require indigenous consent.

"The interests of all parties were harmonized – the indigenous peoples, the Secretary of Culture, the archaeologists and the company," said archaeologist Julieta Gómez Otero, the scientist responsible for the removal and relocation of the ancient burial grounds, speaking at a conference of archaeologists held in Catamarca in July 2007.

Now, a year later, Otero has other feelings. After receiving many accusations, she recognizes that it was "a bitter situation," and says that she wasn't aware of communities who were opposed to the relocation. She explains that she did not recommend the relocation of the graves, but the chenque was in danger and this is why she removed it.

****
In a ruling made by Canadian judge Mary Marvyn Koenigsberg, the title Navidad project was transferred from IMA to another Canadian mining company, Aquiline Resources, in July 2006.

The mining deposits in question do not belong to either company, according to Article 99 of the provincial constitution, but are the "original and eminent domain" of the people of Chubut. In August 2005, the Superior Court of Justice of Río Negro ordered the provincial government to protect the rights of the indigenous communities who were threatened by the activities of foreign mining companies in their lands. The Argentine judges affirmed that the mining project was advancing "without observing the constitutional, legal and international norms, which exist to protect indigenous communities, their resources and the environment; that they should be informed, consulted, have participation in the management of their resources and respected with regards to ethnic, social and cultural heritage."

Nevertheless, the Argentine mining deposits were transferred by a Canadian judge from one Canadian company to another (the result of Aquiline's suing IMA for violating a confidentiality clause). To this day, neither provincial Mining and Geology authorities nor any Argentine government official has commented on the case.

Koenigsberg's ruling, issued in Canada, was complied with immediately.

Aquiline Resources has taken control of some 500,000 hectares in Patagonia. In contrast, the Mapuche and Tehuelche peoples of both provinces have been struggling for decades for the titles to the lands they have inhabited for 10,000 years.

****

Chubut Governor Mario Das Neves, who has positioned himself for a run at the presidency in 2011, spoke on June 25, 2008 at the Canadian embassy in Buenos Aires. Canada is home to the majority of the mining companies active in Patagonia.

"I believe that the Navidad project is a fantastic experience,” affirmed Das Neves, betraying the sentiments of his constituants. “You all can rest easy, knowing that in my province we are not at all prejudiced against mining activity, that we are careful and we want you to know that when someone invests, we are not going to change the rules of the game.”

The 120 Canadian businessmen present applauded and smiled with satisfaction, according to an account written by Aquiline itself, which published a chronicle of the cocktail event on its website.

Darío Aranda is a journalist and frequent contributor to Página 12, a newspaper based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Luis Manuel Claps is a journalist and editor of the Mines & Communities Website now living in Cuenca, Ecuador.

A Spanish version of this article was published in Pagina 12.

Assembly

The Gold Standard

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 23:42:26 +0000

Chileans fight to protect their environment from Canada's Barrick Gold

In what direction is Barrick's Pascua Lama mine headed? photo: Mining Watch

In the face of local grassroots opposition, the Chilean government has given Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold the go-ahead for its controversial Pascua Lama mine. Chile's National Environmental Commission heard only two of the nearly 50 complaints filed against Barrick before giving the project its approval.

Founded in 1983 by Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, Barrick is the foremost gold mining corporation in the world, with sales exceeding $2.6 billion in 2005 and the largest reserves in the industry, at nearly 90 million ounces.

High in the Andes Mountains, the Pascua Lama mine straddles the border of Chile and Argentina and represents a $1.5 billion investment for Barrick. The company plans to extract 615,000 ounces of gold, 30 million ounces of silver and 5,000 tons of copper annually over the 21-year lifetime of the open-pit mine.

Despite all the wealth that will soon be extracted, few Chileans are likely to benefit. Thanks to a combination of favourable tax legislation, legal loopholes and corporate malfeasance, no Canadian mining corporation paid any Chilean income taxes in the 1990s.

The mine is located in the Huasco Valley, a semiarid ecosystem that is entirely dependent upon the mountains for water. Residents argue that the mine will poison the land upon which they depend, endangering their health and jeopardizing their agriculture-based livelihoods.

In order to process the ore at Pascua Lama, Barrick will use 7,200 kilograms of cyanide and 10 million litres of water per day. Cyanide contamination of water resources can be devastating -- cyanide concentrations as little as 1 microgram (one-millionth of a gram) per litre can be fatal to fish. Barrick's site manager, Julio Claudeville, insists that cyanide is innocuous.

One report on mining in northern Chile found high levels of arsenic in the region's ecosystems. Health problems directly linked with arsenic exposure include cancer, deformation, miscarriage and underweight children. Other toxic contaminants found in nearby water supplies include sulphuric acid, diesel oil, urine and faecal matter.

After discovering dead fish floating in the San Juan River in 2004, locals found Barrick trucks dumping waste from their nearby Veladero mine into the adjacent wetlands. Barrick admitted to the practice, but argued that the waste was treated and posed no harm to the environment. No explanation was given for the dead fish.

Deeply concerned about the environmental dangers posed by the new mine, locals formed the Coordination for the Defence of the Valley of Huasco. Several demonstrations took place in 2005, culminating in thousands gathering in the Chilean capital of Santiago for a vibrant protest. In November, a petition signed by 18,000 valley residents and people opposed to Pascua Lama was delivered to President Lagos.

Seeking an international intervention, the Chilean Consumers' Organization filed a complaint with the Organization of American States alleging that the mine represents a great risk to the subsistence rights of the local indigenous population and that Chile would be breaking its international commitments by allowing the Barrick project to go ahead. More recently, the environmental group Oceana held a demonstration outside of the Canadian embassy in Santiago, arguing that the mine would enrich the Canadian corporation but would "do nothing for Chile except destroy its environment."

The president of Barrick Gold South America acknowledged the local resistance, pointing out that sustained opposition to the company was by no means unique to the Pascua Lama project. "The biggest challenges we are facing by far, in both South America and Africa, are social in nature."

Although the mine is still slated to go ahead, these grassroots efforts have proven successful. Initial plans for the mine included the "relocation" of three glaciers that form the basis of the valley's water system. In its first environmental impact assessment, Barrick withheld this information from the Chilean government, who remained ignorant of the plans until residents brought the situation to their attention.

In approving the Pascua Lama mine, the Environmental Commission stipulated several conditions, including one that prevents Barrick from "intervening" in the glaciers. According to Argentinian biologist Raúl Montenegro, "it is absurd to pretend you can just move glaciers, as if it were a sustainable practice." Opponents of Pascua Lama are claiming this as a significant victory and only hope that there are more to come.

Chileans worry the Pascua Lama mine will pollute their water and destroy their way of life. Rob Maguire learns that Canada is involved.

After the Collapse

Sat, 06 Aug 2005 21:13:33 +0000

A review of <em>Argentina: Hope in Hard Times</em>

Thousands marched on the capital after the collapse, and were met with tear gas and sometimes deadly bullets.

Cartoneros in Buenos Aires.

Residents of Buenos Aires banging on the windows of banks after the savings of thousands of Argentinians were "lost" after the economic crash.

A demonstration demanding "que se vayan todos" (throw them all out).

Many middle class neighbourhoods held events in solidarity with the cartoneros, raising money to pay for tetanus shots and other necessities.

All images from Argentina: Hope in Hard Times

Throughout the nation of Argentina, tens of thousands of unemployed people search the streets and garbage dumps for recyclable products. Called Cartoneros, many of them are young, some of them barely teenagers. Each Saturday, a truck drives by their neighborhood to buy some of what they have collected. This is their means of survival in the new Argentina.

Illustrating this day-to-day struggle of unemployed and poverty-stricken Argentines is an inspiring new documentary by Seattle-based independent film makers Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin. Entitled Argentina: Hope in Hard Times, the film reveals how ordinary people in dire circumstances can overcome incredible challenges by working together for common goals.

The story of Argentina over the past decade has been a sad one: due to financial pressures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the government privatized state assets, fired tens of thousands of civil servants, deregulated financial markets, slashed social program spending, raised interest rates, and cut public sector wages and benefits. Not surprisingly, the incomes of the wealthy and powerful increase almost exponentially, while unemployment and poverty skyrocket for the poor and working class, leaving the country with greater inequality and poverty. Added to this is the financial collapse that began in 2001, when even hundreds of thousands of middle-class Argentines started to lose their jobs and savings.

When this crisis hit, Young and Dworkin were actually on vacation in South America. But with millions of Argentines taking to the streets shouting "Que se vayan todos!" ("throw them all out!") and thousands of desperate workers taking over abandoned factories to protect their jobs, the film makers went back to the United States and later returned to Argentina with their film equipment.

Whereas other documentaries such as Naomi Klein's The Take focus on democratically-controlled businesses in Argentina, Hope In Hard Times embraces a much broader perspective on the Argentine free market tragedy. The documentary not only examines how Argentines have adapted their lifestyles to a crumbling economic system, but asks larger questions about human nature and the possibilities people have of building a different kind of economy and a new society.

It is difficult to believe that 100 years ago, Argentina had one of the largest economies in the world, and the per capita income was about 70% of that of the United States (today, that number is about 25%). Historically being the richest country in the continent, many Argentines used to consider themselves more European than South American, although recently this attitude has begun to evaporate.

Some of the more memorable scenes from the documentary include its dire illustrations of shanty towns that look remarkably similar to those of apartheid-era South Africa, demonstrating the widening divide between the rich and the poor. Young and Dworkin also take the viewers into the street corners of Buenos Aires, where organized groups of activists, many of them unemployed, gather on a regular basis to discuss ideas and proposals for future actions, such as street demonstrations, tax revolts, land occupations, and more ambitiously, lobbying government officials to refuse additional IMF loans. Every suggestion is voted on democratically by the group, with each member having a vote.

This egalitarian form of organization mirrors many of the factories recently taken over by workers throughout the country. With the economic collapse came the abandonment of hundreds of businesses by their owners. But instead of joining the ranks of the unemployed, some workers decided to not-so-legally take control of their companies and manage them democratically, without bosses. The film examines the worker-controlled Ghelco company, Industrias Metalurgicas Y Argentina (IMPA), and the celebrated Brukman clothing factory of Buenos Aires.

Related to these industries are the newly-developed cooperatives that have sprung up throughout the countryside, all of whom integrate significant levels of democratic decision-making. The Light of Hope Community Centre, which was created on the site of a former garbage dump, includes 340 families. Just a few miles down the road there exists another cooperative where more than 130 people farm on nine hectares of land. Child-care cooperatives, barter fairs (where people can freely exchange goods and services), and a growing array of charitable organizations further symbolize the new forms of collaboration growing in the country.

Viewers might expect the documentary to deal with the politicians, IMF officials and other elites who were largely responsible for the crisis. It refuses to do so, and it is the film's interaction with ordinary Argentines that is most stimulating. A young protester is interviewed and proudly states that his local church raised funds for the victims of 9/11. He then ironically asks "if someday the U.S. will help us." One elderly woman, a member of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who march every week through a square in Buenos Aires carrying pictures of their sons to remember the 30,000 people killed by the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, comments on the larger picture: "Globalization is still capitalism, they've just given it another name. Capitalism always turns into imperialism."

It is this collective outlook of the Argentine people that reveals their true character. One would think that desperate people would turn inwards and concern themselves with their own well-being. As Hope in Hard Times illustrates, millions of people decided instead to work together for the common good to improve their conditions. During a political or economic crisis, what is it that makes one society turn to equality and democracy, such as contemporary Argentina, and others to turn to fear, repression and exploitation, such as 1930s Germany? What would happen if such an economic catastrophe were to strike North America, something which no longer seems that unfeasible. How would we respond? Would people work together to tackle such problems as poverty, unemployment and inequality, or would they turn to xenophobia, immigrant-bashing, leader worship, and the neo-liberal orthodoxy of "greed is good?"

What is most unfortunate is that the recent story of Argentina has largely been ignored by the mainstream media (just imagine the news coverage if this kind of economic crisis and eventual revolt of the masses were to take place in Cuba or Venezuela). Hope in Hard Times should be required viewing for economics professors and government leaders who still have faith in the neo-liberal policies of the IMF and the World Bank. Shown recently at several film festivals throughout North America, it paints a very hopeful picture and reveals the huge potential for billions of people throughout the Global South to overcome even the most spectacular failures of free market capitalism.

Sean Cain is a freelance writer from Oakville, Ontario. He can be reached at seancain@hotmail.com.

» Review of Argentina: Hope in Hard Times

» The Dominion: The "Piquets": Argentina's unemployed build direct democracy for basic needs

» Andrea Di Martino: The Ghost Train of the Cartoneros

» Monkeyfist.com Direct Action, Direct Democracy

After the Argentinian economy collapsed, people began to work together, laying the groundwork for a new kind of democracy, says Sean Cain.

L'Argentine: Survivre par le Troc

Wed, 23 Feb 2005 10:02:14 +0000

Le 9 mars 2004, le gouvernement argentin et le Fonds Monétaire International sont parvenus à un accord de dernière minute évitant ainsi la cessation du paiement de la dette de l'Argentine évaluée à plus de 150 milliards de dollars. Déconsidéré par la grande organisation financière, en 2001, l'ancien « bon élève » du FMI avait sombré, du jour au lendemain, dans une crise économique sans précédent. Les gouvernements sont tombés les uns après les autres et les Argentins, après avoir tout perdu et s'être vu refuser l'accès à leurs épargnes banquaires, ont été forcés d'imaginer des solutions pour survivre.

A cause de ce désastre économique et social, le pays a même fini par être classer parmis les pays du Tiers Monde : 14 millions de démunis (sur 37 millions d'individus), dont 5 millions vivant au-dessous du seuil de pauvreté. Plus de 200 000 argentins ont quitté le pays et 20 % de la population vit maintenant grâce à une économie parallèle ingénieuse où l'argent n'existe pas : le troc, soit la forme d'échange économique la plus vieille du monde. Totalisant des transactions d'un montant équivalant à 100 millions de dollars par an, les « clubs de troc » semblent s'imposer comme le remède à la pauvreté et au chômage dans lesquels s'enlise la population.

Alternative à une monnaie qui n'a plus de valeur

Photo: Indymedia Argentine

Le premier « club de trueque » (club de troc) est né en 1995 à l'initiative d'une vingtaine de personnes pour pallier la crise mexicaine dont la rapide propagation, appelée « l'effet tequila », avait touché l'Argentine de plein fouet. Le troc est vite devenu populaire auprès des citoyens apeurés et ne pouvant plus faire confiance à un gouvernement incapable de les nourrir.

Dès 1999, plus de 150 000 personnes et plus du double après 2001 ont participé au système de troc. Tout est parti de la banlieue de Buenos Aires où la population, à défaut d'argent, a commencé à s'échanger des services. Par exemple, un jeune étudiant aidait une dame à réparer sa plomberie et cette dernière, en guise de paiement, lui préparait des plats cuisinés pour la semaine.

Rapidement, leurs idées ont évolué en fonction des besoins de la population. Ce système d'échange touchant bientôt tous les secteurs d'activités (certains services de santé se troquant contre du pain ou des œufs), il est apparu nécessaire pour les citoyens de se constituer en club. Les clubs de troc ont encouragé alors les chômeurs et les plus démunis à produire leurs propres biens et services puis à les échanger ensuite sur le marché « social ».

Le nombre de personnes concernées par le troc augmentant de façon constante, les participants ont été obligés de comptabiliser les échanges et de les instrumentaliser. Désormais, des bons, portant le nom de « creditos », sont émis sur une base de confiance, principe fondamental du Réseau Global de Troc regroupant tous les clubs de troc : « Les seules conditions que nous demandons aux membres du Réseau de respecter sont d'assister aux réunions périodiques des groupes, de s'engager dans les programmes de formation, de produire, de consommer des biens et des services et d'échanger le savoir à l'intérieur du Réseau. Nous soutenons que chaque membre est l'unique responsable de ses actes, produits et services ».

Les « creditos » sont des « crédits à l'heure » qui permettent de revenir à la véritable « monnaie » d'échange qu'est le travail : on échange des heures de travail plutôt qu'une monnaie abstraite. Il circule aujourd'hui plus de 200 millions de crédits, soit 80 % des monnaies existantes en Argentine (pesos, dollars, monnaies provinciales).

Une économie parallèle qui prend de l'importance

Les réseaux de troc ont permis à la population de remédier à ses problèmes d'argent en jonglant avec deux systèmes économiques : d'un côté, les pesos des salaires paient le loyer, les frais scolaires et les impôts ; de l'autre, les « creditos » permettent de remplir le frigidaire et de s'habiller.

Selon Eduardo Ovalle, du groupe de réflexion « Nueva Mayoria », « rejoindre les milliers de gens qui vivent actuellement sans argent -ou presque- grâce au troc, c'est la seule manière de subsister en Argentine. Celle-ci est assez commune dans la classe ouvrière, mais elle s'est récemment répandue dans tous les échelons de la société et même dans les pays voisins ».

En effet, des expériences similaires se développent au Brésil, en Uruguay, en Bolivie, en Équateur ou encore en Colombie. Synonyme de coup de pouce de fin de mois, les clubs de troc ont donné lieu, par la suite, à une véritable économie parallèle qui a permis la participation d'autres acteurs sociaux, en particulier l'État. En 1997, le secrétaire des Affaires sociales de Buenos Aires, ayant compris les bénéfices des échanges de biens et services, a établi un programme d'appui au troc multi-réciproque qui légitime implicitement les opérations en crédits émis par les usagers. Le soutien officiel de la capitale à ce système ouvre de nouvelles perspectives à ce qui était jadis considéré comme un « marché noir ».

Ainsi, le gouvernement pousse-t-il les entreprises à s'adapter aux exigences d'un système économique à deux marchés autonomes. Certains maires acceptent même le troc direct en paiement des retards d'impôts : un mécanicien peut rembourser sa dette en réparant des voitures.

Selon Heloisa Primavera, professeur à la Faculté des sciences économiques de Buenos Aires et participant actif au réseau, la « victoire n'est pas seulement d'avoir réinventé la vie en réinventant le marché, nous avons surtout ouvert un chemin aux exclus du progrès social et de la croissance économique ».

Solution vouée à l'échec?

Cependant les économistes sont de plus en plus inquiets devant la montée fulgurante de cette économie où l'argent n'existe plus. Selon Marshall Goldman, économiste américain, le troc pourrait avoir des conséquences aussi désastreuses en Argentine qu'en Russie il y a dix ans.

Avant la chute de l'économie russe, en 1998, le troc équivalait à près de la moitié des transactions commerciales. Or, à cette échelle, rappelle Goldman, l'échange de biens et de services encourage l'évasion fiscale, l'inefficacité et la corruption. Mais, pour lui, tout n'est pas sans espoir : « Le troc est un signe que quelque chose ne tourne pas rond dans l'économie, mais c'est aussi la preuve que les gens tentent de s'en sortir et de relancer la production ».

L'économie argentine est en effet malade, mais le troc semble une solution plus que salutaire pour une population qui n'aurait jamais pu survivre sans entraide. Aujourd'hui, les « creditos » donnent accès aux soins de santé, permettent de payer ses impôts et même de prendre l'avion. C'est à se demander si le troc n'est pas la solution d'avenir…

Le troc est vite devenu populaire auprès des citoyens apeurés et ne pouvant plus faire confiance à un gouvernement incapable de les nourrir. Par Rim Boukhssimi

Insisting on Working

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 09:43:20 +0000

An interview with <cite>The Take</cite> Director Avi Lewis

The Take, directed by Avi Lewis and written by Naomi Klein

Avi Lewis is the director of The Take, a documentary about factory occupations in Argentina. The Take opened in Canadian theatres on October 29th. A longer version of this interview originally appeared in Seven Oaks Magazine (sevenoaksmag.com).

What was your initial motivation in making this film?

Avi Lewis: We set out to make a resolutely hopeful film. We wanted to find people constructing real alternatives to corporate capitalism. And we looked all over the world where people were doing interesting things, and it just happened, when we were looking, that in Argentina it was on fire--a laboratory of democracy.

You are from a very well known social democratic family here in Canada. What lessons do you think the movement in Argentina, what's depicted in the film, has for the labour movement here?

I think this film--and this movement--is a real challenge to the traditional labour movement. And an opportunity, I would add. What they do down there is they invert the traditional labour action. Instead of withholding their labour, which--in a globalized era of downsizing and closing of public services--is exactly what they want us to do, they insist on working. A strike is kind of meaningless in that context, when a factory is closing. But insisting on working is an inversion of the traditional labour action. In terms of optics it's incredible because you put the onus on the authorities to stop people from working. And in an economy where people are desperate for work, here and there, that's a very powerful symbolic statement.

There's also a real debate between how much of our energy, as activists and people who want to change the world, we put into electoral politics versus outside the electoral system; and I believe that you don't have to choose. At election time, we should get out there and try to get rid of the worst Campbells and Kleins, and Paul Martins, and try to get the slightly less bad politicians. But not think, in that way that my parents' generation and my grandfather [David Lewis] did, that we're actually going to see real change at the legislative level anytime soon, because all of their hands are tied by the same trade agreements and by the same forces of international capital. And things have gotten dramatically more globalized and more centralized in globalization since my grandpa's day. And so I think that the grassroots movements and the electoral movements have to work together, and I don't think we have to choose. But right now, where we feel the energy [is best used] is outside the political system.

The workers of the Brukman textile factory march in Buenos Aires. The Brukman factory, which was successfully taken over by its workers after the owner closed shop, is one of several hundred such factories in Argentina, which are the subject of Lewis and Klein's The Take. photo: Argentina Indymedia

There's a segment in the film where one of the central characters invites you back to film a sequel, to see the movement's progress. In terms of sequels, are you considering looking at the process in Venezuela, where you have that interplay between government and grassroots, and where there's a growing cooperative sector?

There's a huge amount of autonomous organizing in Venezuela. It's a totally different situation because the space is being created by the state. And there's a lot of debate about how much is being co-opted by the state and how much Chavez is actually creating community media and community services that are autonomously run and are not politically indebted the way the Peronist machine uses all social services to keep people in the service of The Party.

I haven't been [to Venezuela], so I wouldn't be able to weigh in; I know it's a big debate. But in terms of the sequel: I think it's being lived right now all over the world. I'm interested in seeing the sequel in Canada. I'm really interested in seeing what happens as these ideas leak into Canadian communities that are losing work and the increasing number of places where the crisis has arrived in Canada. And where people are fighting back and building things, not just protesting.

In this interview, The Take director Avi Lewis talks about the film, and the implications of "inverting the traditional labour action".

Lo Que Hemos Aprendido

Tue, 13 Jan 2004 05:15:31 +0000

The Right Whale Program of Peninsula Valdes

Each September, right whales gather off the coast of Peninsula Valdes in Argentina's Chubut province. Since 1971, researchers have gathered there, as well: an unlikely group of biologists, conservationists, and whale-lovers, engaged in one of the world's longest-running studies of a marine mammal population. This past September, photographer John Haney and I spent a week on Peninsula Valdes, and got a window into the history of this study, onshore and off.

Photographs by John Haney

Substitute camera for harpoon, and Iain Kerr is one part Ahab, one part Ishmael.

Vice-president of Ocean Alliance, a conservation organization based in Lincoln, Massachusetts, Kerr is Ishmael in that he is a brilliant raconteur. Over the course of this trip he has regaled us with tales of his courtship with his wife, of their adoption of a mongrel dog on the coast of Alaska, of his swimming with a sperm whale in the Indian Ocean, and of his coming upon a plane wreck in the Colombian Andes while adventuring with a frenchman named Jean-Paul. Now Kerr has taken us along on his evening's whale-watch, and his desire to get a good photograph is bringing out the Ahab in him. As we're motoring out into the belly of Golfo San Jose, he says to Diego Taboada, at the tiller, "All right. Now what I want is a whale breaching, while giving birth, backlit by the sunset." He is half-joking. "The fact remains," he says to me, "that if you want to capture people's hearts and souls about these animals, the best way to do that remains through photography." He adjusts the f-stop on his telephoto lens. "There!" he exclaims, spotting a fluke in the distance, and off we go.

All day we've been watching from land the group of right whales that congregates, May through December, in Golfo San Jose. Some five or six hundred creatures come to this peninsula to calve, mate, and raise their young. Far out, we'd see in silhouette a whale hurling its 40 tonnes into the air, then crashing down into the water. We'd watch the breach take place in eery silence; the sound of the impact would reach us several seconds later, like thunder, over the bay. Now, out in the zodiac, I am haunted by thoughts of what that crash-landing would do to this fifteen-foot boat. "Um, Iain," I say, as a nearby trio of whales dives, showing us their flukes one after another, "is there any way to tell when a whale is going to breach?"

"They tend to dive first," he says, digging in his camera bag for another roll of film. "Rather like that, actually." He gestures at the 'footprints' left by the submerged trio.

"Shouldn't we, um, get out of here?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "Once they go under, it's best not to move. If we stay still, they'll know where we are."

That's just what I'm afraid of.

"If they know where we are, they'll avoid us," he says.

Avoid us?

Kerr reassures me that, although there have been close calls, no scientist - or photographer - has ever, to his knowledge, been breached upon; in fact, there are stories of whales going to great lengths to keep from upsetting a boat.

Debbe Crandall, an environmentalist from Bolton, Ontario, came to Peninsula Valdes to see the right whales in 1991."'I was walking along the beach one night,'"she told me, "sort of stumbling." (The beach is made of polished pebbles, which can make for difficult walking, though Crandall confessed she'd had a glass or two of wine.) "I got thinking about it: here are these creatures, and we've harassed them and harpooned them, propellered and polluted them. We've practically hunted them to extinction, and yet they'll swim right up to the boat and treat it as gently as if it's their baby. They're so tolerant of us. I got a little maudlin," she admitted. "I was quite teary-eyed."

'Quite pie-eyed,' said her sister, whod been listening in.

Too old to hang out with their mothers but too young to mate, the adolescent right whales are the most avid people-watchers. They will sidle up next to the loitering zodiac and raise their heads out of the water to have a look at us. Mariano Sironi is in the final stages of a doctoral dissertation on the social development of these young whales. He's piloting the zodiac today, and he knows these creatures as if he had grown up with them - which, in some sense, he has. We are nervous observers of his careful dance with this 40-foot-long adolescent. Again and again, with slow deliberation, the whale approaches the boat. In the instant before he touches us, Sironi moves the boat away. The whale dips under, wheels around with surprising agility, and approaches us again. "Shall we let him touch us?" Sironi asks. "Let's take a vote." There is a chorus of abstentions. Sironi holds his ground. The whale approaches. "Ramming speed?" says one of us, half joking. We brace ourselves. The great head goes under, then gives us the gentlest poke.

"Did he touch us?"

"I don't know. Did you feel it?"

Satisfied, the young whale swims away.

It is a fact widely recognized but seldom discussed that the novelty of whale-watching is not so much the experience of watching the whales as it is the experience of being watched by them. The mutual curiosity that exists between an adolescent right whale and a boatful of human observers makes whale-watching an activity of an entirely different nature than, say, bird-watching - or even people-watching. Sarah Haney of the Canadian Whale Institute has been a supporter of the Right Whale Program for over a decade. The first time she came to Peninsula Valdes, a whale approached her zodiac. As he swam past the boat, he kept his gaze fixed on her. She still remembers the glimpse she caught of the white of his swivelled eye. "When you look at the eye of a fish or shark, it's slate-grey, dead-looking," she says. "Whales are different. When you look a whale in the eye it's like looking at a dog or another person. There's a feeling of connection."

Vicky Rowntree, director of the Right Whale Program, prefers to observe the whales from land. Almost every morning, she takes her backpack, stocked with notebook, spyglass, water and food, and makes the hike out from the research station, along the tawny cliff which lines the bay, to the 'cliff hut' - little more than a sheet-metal wind-break, constructed by scientist Roger Payne in the 1970s. If the weather is fair, she sits outside, often with her legs dangling over the precipice, the spyglass propped between her knees. She'll focus on a group of whales, and she'll watch -- for hours, sometimes. "The spyglass is great because it focuses you," she says. "It's like you've gone through this tunnel into the world of the whales. If you watch for long enough, you begin to anticipate what they will do."

Most often Rowntree fixes the spyglass on a mother-calf pair. The mothers seem to use the shallow waters of this bay to shield their calves from predators: orcas, sea lions. In five-metre water, the girth of a mother whale forms an effective blockade. In recent years, however, the mothers have proved unable to protect their calves from a new threat. An inflated population of gulls, nurtured on fish-processing waste from nearby Puerto Madryn, has discovered a new food supply: a gull will land on the back of a surfaced whale and rip at its flesh and blubber. The whale will thrash about, go under; the gull will circle around and wait for the whale to resurface, then attack again. Most of the whales that Rowntree spots from the cliffs these days bear open wounds along their backs.

The mother whales don't eat while they are in the nursery ground. They try to keep still, to conserve their resources of blubber and mother's milk. (The calves, on the other hand, love to cavort. A calf will hump up onto the back of the sleeping mother, breach onto her, cover her blowhole with his tail. All this she bears with extraordinary calm.) The real concern about the gull attacks is that, in evading the gulls, the mothers may be expending the energy they need to nurse their calves and to make the trip back to their summer feeding grounds.

By sea and by land the scientists make their observations. Then there is John Atkinson, who observes the whales by air. Each September he makes the trek by plane from Toronto to Buenos Aires, then from Buenos Aires to Trelew, and finally, by truck, from Trelew to the town of Piramides, where he rendezvouses with a crew of apprenticing pilots from the Argentine navy. He'll spend the next three days, if the weather co-operates, hanging from a harness out of an eight-seater navy plane, taking photographs of whales from an altitude of 300 feet.

Atkinson is a veteran traveller and a closet writer. He has four unpublished novels stashed away. He's published children's books in English and in Spanish. I ask him how he wound up working as an aerial photographer.

"My main qualification is that I don't get airsick," he says. "And I seem to take pretty good pictures."

Aerial surveys have been part of the research program at Peninsula Valdes for 32 years. Because the heads of right whales bear distinguishing patches of rough skin, called callosities, a good overhead view allows scientists to recognize an individual whale, year after year. The scientists on Peninsula Valdes have compiled a database of information on over 1800 individuals. In recent years, computer mapping has allowed them to quantify this visual data, and to compare it with data gathered on right whale populations in Brazil. Initial comparisons show that a few whales have moved back and forth between the two populations. In coming years, comparisons may be extended to the catalogues compiled by scientists working in South Africa and Australia.

Kerr, Rowntree, Sironi, Atkinson. I gradually come to know this population of researchers, which returns year after year to Peninsula Valdes in an ironic mirroring of the whales. The unlikely group that's present at the research station when I visit is rounded out by Luciano Valenzuela, a soft-spoken Argentinian who is beginning a study on the factors affecting group formation of whales in the nursery ground. I also meet Roxana and Diego Taboada, the husband-wife team that has been the driving force behind the formation of the Instituto de Conservacion de Ballenas, a Buenos-Aires-based organization which promotes whale conservation in Argentina. (Over the course of the past few years, the Taboadas have weathered their country's economic collapse, raised two small children, and still managed to turn the Right Whale Program from an American-driven, top-down research effort into a vital, grassroots organization which combines local expertise with international interest, environmental goals with economic demands, and academic research with conservation and education.) The final members of this right-whale team are Sarah Haney and Alan Calderwood of the Canadian Whale Institute (CWI).

Spend a week with these people, and you begin to realize that the behaviour patterns evident in the human population of Peninsula Valdes are as complicated as those evident in the whale population. There are politics upon politics. The property on which the research station is located belongs to the Argentine navy. It is leased to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which in turn permits the Right Whale Program to do its work. The Right Whale Program is affiliated with the Whale Conservation Institute (WCI), a branch of Ocean Alliance, and also with the Taboadas' Instituto de Conservacion de Ballenas (ICB). The program is funded in large part by the CWI, and is a member of the South American Marine Mammal Working Group (SAMMWG). This stew of acronyms has been a hotbed of competing interests and conflicting approaches, all complicated by the interests and approaches of outside groups: the whale-watching industry, fishermen, the Argentine government, and other groups of scientists, studying armadillos, guanacos, gulls. But Rowntree and the Taboadas have proved masters of diplomacy; perhaps their background in animal-behaviour research stands them in good stead. When I leave the peninsula, they are preparing for a conference which will bring together right whale researchers and conservationists from Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile. Valenzuela is helping Rowntree translate her lecture from English into Spanish. Roxana Taboada is distributing educational posters to local whale-watching tourists and guides.

All week, I have been meaning to ask someone about the connection between research biology and conservation. At the end of the day, when all of the aerial surveys have been completed, the observations taken down, and the callosity patterns recorded and compared, are we really any closer to restoring this ocean? Any less likely to continue our oftentimes unwitting assault on the natural world? Are these whales better off for our efforts?

As a parting gift -- and as if in answer to my question -- Roxana Taboada gives us a copy of her poster. Printed in large script across the bottom of the poster is the motto of the ICB: Solo podemos amar lo que conocemos, conocer lo que entendemos y entender lo que hemos aprendido; We can only love that which we know, know that which we understand, and understand that which we have learned. I'm guessing that love does not get mentioned in Rowntree's research papers about the whales of Golfo San Jose, but it is implied in the quiet intensity with which she speaks about these whales, and with which she works on their behalf. There is, perhaps, an unstated prefix to the ICB motto: It is only that which we love that we desire to preserve.

* * *

Amanda Jernigan currently lives and writes in Sackville, New Brunswick. She is a contributing editor of The New Quarterly and of Canadian Notes & Queries.

John Haney's photographs have been exhibited in New Brunswick and Ontario. The images included here are part of a larger body of work examining human and animal life on Peninsula Valdes.

The Right Whale Program of Peninsula Valdes

International News: November 11

Mon, 10 Nov 2003 23:14:02 +0000

Argentinian lawmakers vote to turn over the Buenos Aires Brukman factory to its workers. photo: Indymedia Argentina

Brukman Factory Turned Over to Workers

After a two year battle with police, owners, and the government, workers at the Brukman factory in Buenos Aires celebrated a government decision to turn over the factory to the workers. The Argentinian legislature voted to recognize the workers' control of the factory following the bankrupcy of Jakob Brukman, the factory's owner.

Following Argentina's economic collapse of 2001, Brukman shut down production. The workers subsequently occupied the factory and restarted production, this time operating as owners of a cooperative. Along with hundreds of similar factory occupations across Argentina, the new collective was able to find enough business to keep the mostly-female workforce employed.

Since then, the Brukman factory was subject to two police blockades and street battles. After a massive solidarity campaign from other factory occupations, workers, and unions, the turnover is seen as a major symbolic victory for widespread radical workers' movements in Argentina.

» Americas.org: Brukman: Snapshot of a Worker-Occupied Factory in Argentina

» Naomi Klein: The Brukman Battle

» Workers Online: Brukman Evicted

» Indymedia Argentina photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

* * *

Iraqi Money Missing

British humanitarian group Christian Aid released a report charging that the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) had only accounted for $1 billion out of $5 billion of Iraqi oil revenues and funds siezed from Saddam Hussein's government. The report quoted one "senior diplomat" as saying: "We have absolutely no idea how the money [from Iraqi oil revenues] has been spent. We know that more than US$1 billion has already been transferred from the UN escrow Oil-for-Food account and we don't know how this money has been spent, and this is Iraqi money." The report says that $5 billion have been reported as spent, but "at least $4 billion are unaccounted for."

L. Paul Bremer III, head of the CPA, brushed off the accusations, and insisted that "we are going to be fully transparent." Christian Aid and other NGOs have called on governments to withhold aid until the Iraqi money has been accounted for.

A recent Newsweek report raised numerous issues of accountability concerning the Iraq reconstruction effort itself. A USAID official was quoted as saying, "Saddam had better accountability [in his economic affairs] than the CPA does." (Newsweek, Christian Aid, Oneworld)

» Oneworld: Billions Unaccounted for from Iraq Accounts, Charge NGOs

» Foreign Policy in Focus: The Madrid Donors Conference: A Cover for Maintaining U.S. Control

» Christian Aid: Iraq: the missing billions - Transition and transparency in post-war Iraq

» Newsweek: The $87 Billion Money Pit

» Associated Press: A Private Army Grows Around the U.S. Mission in Iraq and Around the World

* * *

If the US does it, so can we: Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed his position that it is entitled to launch preventive strikes to maintain national security, after the precedent set by the United States in Iraq. "If the principle of preventive use of force continues to develop in international practice, then Russia reserves the right to act in an analogous manner to defend its national interests."

Preventive strikes differ from preemptive in that they refer to a perceived rather than imminent threat. Preemptive strikes are conducted against an enemy that is about to attack. The "principle of preventive use of force," as adopted by the US government in its invasion of Iraq, involves striking an enemy that may attack in the future.

Putin did not follow the US precedent of developing "battlefield nukes," maintaining that Russian nuclear weapons would only be used as "a means of political deterrence." "All nuclear powers are improving their nuclear potential and Russia will do the same," he said.

However, Putin claimed that the Russian SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missile would be "perfect" for breaking through defensive systems like that currently being backed by the Bush administration. "These rockets could easily break through any missile shield for decades to come," said Putin. (Agence France-Presse)

» Agence France-Presse: Putin reaffirms Russia's right to preemptive strikes

» Dominion: Readings on National Missile Defense

* * *

US Reinstating the Draft?

A recent push by the Pentagon to fill vacant draft board seats across the United States has provoked speculation that the draft will be reinstated for the first time since the Vietnam war. The Pentagon insists that there are no plans to draft young men into military service, but many experts have speculated that the US is already running low on troops for its continued occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

"We've failed to convince our allies to send troops, we've extended deployments so morale is sinking, and the president is saying we can't cut and run. So what's left?" US Democratic representative Charles Rangel was quoted as saying.

Observers say that it is highly unlikely that a draft will be called before the election, but many others point to the lack of another viable source of soldiers to maintain the costly military occupations.

» US Govn't: Serve Your Community and the Nation

» Salon: Oiling up the draft machine?

The "Piquetes"

Sat, 27 Sep 2003 20:36:55 +0000

Argentina's unemployed build direct democracy for basic needs

Translated from the Spanish by Ivan A. and eleusa (radicalexchange@lists.riseup.net)

Unemployed workers blockade a highway near Buenos Aires. Similar groups have moved from working for basic survival to building libraries, bakeries, democracy and collectively run factories. photo: Indymedia Argentina

When Argentina's economy collapsed in January of 2002, thousands of Argentinians lost their jobs, and others lost their life savings when foreign banks closed suddenly. In the face of massive unemployment which existed well before the collapse, unemployed workers formed collectives to democratically petition the government for temporary employment ("plans"). After being consistantly ignored, the poorest of the unemployed, often starving, began to set up roadblocks (piquetes) on important Argentinian roads in support of their demands for work. They have also set up bakeries, bartering systems, and occupied abandoned factories and restarted business as usual--without the owners and with a radically democratic model of organizing.

Middle class and poor Argentinians alike have rallied around the slogan "que se vayan todos". This means, roughly, "they must all go," an accusation of universal corruption in the national government. But instead of finding new, uncorrupted politicians to represent them, Argentinians have quickly come to take issue with the very idea of representation. Indeed, many familiar ideas have been reexamined in the light of the basic needs for survival and dignity. Many unemployed groups have found much in common between the seeming idealism of direct democracy and the basic pragmatism of survival; having used the tools of radical decentralization and direct democracy to achieve survival and dignity, these groups are now using their new means of existence to fashion a new kind of democracy and mutual aid throughout Argentina.

Further reading:

Direct Action, Direct Democracy, by Dru Oja Jay

An Interview with Evan Henshaw-Plath of Indymedia

Indymedia coverage of Argentina's democratic movements

Indymedia Argentina

The following is a conversation between the Situaciones Collective and multiple members of the Unemployed Workers Movement of Solano (Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados Solano). The following is an excerpt of a conversation that origianlly appeared in the book La Hipotesis 891: Mas alla de los Piquetes, Ediciones de mano en mano, November 2002, pages 54-62.

» MTD Solano: I think that the piquetes blasted away our sense of helplessness, but in a new way. We shook the country out of the lethargic dream that [President] Menem and his politics were selling, like a bolt of bright new light. Together with many other struggles, we woke the country from the sweet dreams of post-modernity. They branded us with a name--the Piqueteros--but for us the piquete became the only way in which we could talk with the rest of the country, our way of telling them that there were other methods of struggle, other ways to fire up our lives with dignity.

Collectivo Situaciones: How did this idea arise? How did you get organized?

Sol: The piquetes began in the interior, in Cutralco, Tartagal, Mosconi, Santiago del Estero, and they spread throughout the country, blocking the trade routes that fed the most important cities. Once that had started, people started to take the piquetes seriously as a way fighting, even here, in Buenos Aires, but there were tremendous arguments over the plans; over whether it was correct to ask for the work plans (1). Some said that we were only up to reformist self-help schemes. Instead of getting embroiled in that argument, we decided to put it into practice. At that point our organizing had only reached the level of church groups, but we were always talking about a greater struggle. We were always talking about taking over the Municipality, raising the stakes, and then there was the first road blockade. The first was somewhat improvised, and some of our companeros were arrested. But, little by little, it started to come into evidence that a new way of fighting had been developed. The most important thing, however, was that our numbers started to grow; we started to build productive workshops, to enable people, to teach what we were learning, all of those things that are so much more important than the blockades. The blockades are only the most visible element, and so it seems that they are all there is to see, but the struggle is really what we had been doing before.

» It's important to make it clear that from the beginning all of the left, including the progressives, accused us of begging, self-help, reformism, and did not see what the central demands of the organization entail: work, dignity, social change. At first, in the first blockades, we kept our faces completely uncovered, we did have some rocks, kept hidden, and we did not reveal them because we did not want to frighten people. It was a process; we suffered escalating repression and we started to cover our faces, so that we could not be identified. We only used violence as self-defense. We did not start to throw sticks and stones in order to attack, but to defend ourselves.

» There were some hard moments in the first blockades. We had strong disagreements on whether to keep our faces covered or not. It took time for people to understand that we needed some kind of self-defense, that the security companeros could not show their faces to the militias. We took that to the assembly, and the assembly decided that we might as well abandon the piquete if we were forced to go unmasked. The system considers the blockades as crimes. They are illegal, but to us they are entirely legitimate.

Sit: We understand that what makes you different from other organizations of the unemployed is that you organize workshops, projects, task groups, that you have a burgeoning collective life: how does this difference manifest itself in the conception of the piquetes?

Young women at a blockade near Buenos Aires. photo: Indymedia Argentina

» Our common development, our formation, holds all of this together. That's its bedrock. Nobody imposes a drinking ban, or stops a companero from drinking; we talk about these things at the assemblies. Basically, the coordinators don't get to decide whether drinking is forbidden or not, rather, we look for a consensus; we discuss the reasons why it might not be prudent. That's the great difference; it's not because you happen to wear a hood, or carry the biggest stick.

Sit: We have discussed the heterogeneity of the piquetero movement on several occasions. How do you explain this heterogeneity?

Sol: Our difference to that of other movements is becoming increasingly apparent. Many others still work in the classical way: they say, "we seize power from above and then we change things;" while we say "from below, without any desire to seize power, we struggle." Those other organizations see themselves as political actors and they have revolutionary strategies; we see ourselves, like the Subcomandante Marcos says, as rebels seeking social change. For example, they say that what we call popular education deforms people rather than informing them. They don't make any attempt to tie popular education to political education, on the contrary. We were below, at the bottom, and we don't want to rise, we want to stay there; we will always be rebels. We are at the bottom and we don't want to come up. We have a lot of companeros that stand out, but none that aspire to lead. We all lead, all of the time.

» In any case, these differences won't let us lose sight of the fact that we have to organize, that we have to coordinate and articulate, that it is necessary to go on discussing things and coming to agreements, struggling together. We are not saying that we know the truth and the others don't. We know that we build things differently, but these differences can be coordinated, just as long as we keep raising the call for social change, for dignity, and that we don't take advantage of people, say, by using them to win elections.

» I have heard some piquetero companeros complain that they felt "useless," "forgotten," or "left behind," in their everyday lives, yet, at the blockades they feel different. They feel "empowered;" they feel that they "have a choice."

Sol: It's true. It's a liberated zone, the only place where the cop won't treat you like trash. There, the cop says to you, "pardon me, we come to negotiate." That same policeman would beat you to death if he saw you alone on the street.

» It's true that you feel yourself to be in control of an area during a blockade, but I believe that the companeros are aware that organizing empowers them; that it is not only the blockade, but the organization that makes you strong.

Sit: People say that some of the companeros have a purely pragmatic relationship with the movement; that they only come to get the plan. How does this actually work out in the piquetes?

Sol: The majority of the companeros that join the movement--more than eighty per cent--start out only because they have concrete necessities. They need something to eat, they don't have groceries, they don't have work; they have nothing. At first they come for the plans, but once there is a real process, things change, they begin to feel the excitement and the need to get organized. But yes, some companeros only go because the assembly voted that those failing to attend the blockade don't get a plan.

Sit: Some say that taking to the streets is a way of saying "no" to a model, "no" to a system. I think that this can be understood in two different ways: in the first we speculate that the model failed and that you represent the moment when the victims stand forth: those that are "left-out," those that beg, the impoverished, the forgotten. But, there is another way to see the issue, one where the model did not fail, where exclusion simply does not exist because there is no place of inclusion, where exploitation is merely a desirable variable in the system. Things being as they are, we feel that the stance taken by most of the people that participate in the piquetes is not that of the victims, rather, they present a very clear subjective desire to work and think actively.

Sol: We don't want to be included. At least, I know that I don't want to be exploited ever again, to have Fortabat or Macri as bosses again, that's for sure. I have not struggled just to return to exploitation. I believe, personally, and I believe that many companeros share this belief in regards to themselves, that I am not made to be included, but this is something else altogether.

» One of the things that we know with certainty is, precisely, what we don't want; getting organized makes this clear. To discover where we want to go, what it is that we are building, that is what is uncertain, new, and this is something that has not been closed-off, it's unfinished, something that we think anew every day. The organization is dynamic, it changes and it reflects upon its changes. It's true that the blockades are exciting, but what is truly exiting about the organization is that it brooks no dissociation between that excitement and our everyday lives. That's where the reality of the organization lies; the piquete can only express what we have managed to build in our everyday life, otherwise it is useless. The system has nothing to offer us in regards to this task, and we are forced to build an alternate history. We don't demand things because we want to be included; we only demand things in order to continue getting organized.

Sit: How is a piquete agreed upon, how and where do you block the road; who makes the decisions?

Sol: Each and every zone reports on their situation. Then, depending upon each neighborhood's situation, a battle plan is proposed. We discuss whether we will march or blockade. Each neighborhood assembly decides upon their action first, then, at the table, we try to reach a consensus based upon the choices made by the different assemblies. We begin to see what we may be able to achieve as the proposals are presented. We never talk about the specific location that we intend to block at the assembly, for security reasons. We choose the method but not the details.

» In the assemblies we determine the roles and the zones. For example, we determine which of the companeros will take care of food, security and any injuries. That is to say, the different zones coordinate particular activities and then there is someone who is elected to serve as a nexus for all these zones. In contrast, other organizations have leaders who decide who does security; yet the location of the blockade and, therefore, the security zone itself--in our experience it is security that decides where a blockade will occur--remains unclear to the leaders. There are many different kinds of organization.

Sit: It seems as if security and the political criteria of the blockade always respond to the internal needs of the organization, rather than to the political conjuncture or to any possible external support.

Sol: Yes, but these internal necessities entail much more than our "economic needs." For example, we blockaded because of the events at Mosconi; those events implicated our identity, because if a companero is affected in Mosconi, well, that also concerns us, even if it is something that does not seem to affect us directly in Solano.

» Likewise, we blockaded the Pueyrredon Bridge because the companeros at La Matanza were under the threat of repression; we said to the government, "to repress over there, you'll have to also repress over here." We saw that they were beating our brothers (despite D'Elia and Alderete), so we had to come out to fight for them. Keep in mind, though, we do not build toward the conjuncture. We are not interested in elections, whether people should vote or not.

» Another example: when [Labour Minister] Patricia Bullrich organized an offensive (5), we said, "we have to come out because they want they want to cut our plans, they don't want to renew them." It was an attempt to put a stop to our organization. What we never do is to come out when a super-structural power tries to convene us, when an organization with a pre-determined political agenda tries to mobilize us; we analyze and decide upon a situation according to our own agenda.

» We don't want to foreclose anyone's space; we don't want to be a vanguard. We build because there is a reality that needs to be transformed, and we organize and join-up with those that are changing their situation. We are not interested in going to La Matanza to harangue and agitate, just in order to gain space. We don't conceive politics in that manner. Yes, we believe that the base needs to be organized, but it is up to the companeros at La Matanza to organize their own area. We want to coordinate our movement with those that are building theirs, but we don't dispute them any political space.

» It can't be said, as others claim, that we are just a "base" movement. We do have a political project. In fact, we do know how to read the current political conjuncture, but our project occurs at the neighborhood level, with the people. Our analysis is more comprehensive, precisely, because we work in this manner. They can't reproach us for lacking a strategy and a guiding political structure; that's a lie. The movement itself is a political tool; all of us, all the companeros in the movement, constitute this tool and we all work on the analysis. When we are asked what our political project is, we explain that it is this: politics from below, a comprehensive politics from below. Our goal is the complete formation of the person, in every possible sense. Everything counts, everything is important.

» We don't believe that we need a national front, one that encompasses the entire country, in order to succeed. I don't believe that there will be an alliance or a front that will take power; there will be many fronts.

International News

Sun, 18 May 2003 03:23:33 +0000

Tommy Franks Charged With War Crimes
A Belgian lawyer and 19 Iraqis are charging US General Tommy Franks with war crimes under a Belgian law that allows citizens to charge foreigners for violations of international law. "We have a very specific case, with specific evidence," said Jan Fermon, the lawyer filing the suit.

» AP: Iraqis to file war crimes case against Gen. Tommy Franks
» BBC: US anger at war crimes threat
» Daily Telegraph: America threatens to move Nato after Franks is charged

Iraq Civilian Death Toll Jumps to 3700
According to numbers compiled from press reports by the Iraq Body Count Project, the number of recorded civilian deaths in the war on Iraq has exceeded 3700. Recent reports of more than 1400 deaths from 19 different Baghdad Hospitals were responsible for the sharp increase. Other recent causes of civilian casualties have been unexploded munitions from cluster bombs, which are often mistaken for food aid packages, and the US shooting of 15 people at a recent protest in Fallujah.

The project monitors the web sites of news agencies and major newspapers, and counts only reports that appear in more than one source. When reports differ, a maximum and minimum number of reported deaths is recorded. The most recent maximum total was 4805.

» The Iraq Body Count website includes a description of methodology and a listing of all reports compiled, and their sources.

Argentinians Protest Brukman Factory Evictions
Thousands of Argentinians have been staging continuous protests following the eviction of workers who had occupied the Brukman clothing factory in Buenos Aires. The men's clothing factory had been shut down two years ago by the owners during the height of Argentina's economic collapse, but was reopened by workers who were desperate for income.

The factory, along with over 200 others in Argentina, was run collectively by the workers until police locked the factory overnight and set up a blockade.

Over 10,000 attended a May Day protest at the factory, which ended with tear gas from the police and molotov cocktails from activists. On May 7th, several of the evicted workers staged a "sew-in" in the street outside the Brukman factory, making blankets and clothing for victims of a flood disaster in southern Argentina.

» Christian Science Monitor: Frustrated Argentines take business into own hands
» Naomi Klein: Argentina's Luddite Rulers
» Indymedia Argentina has many photographs, and coverage in Spanish.
» Americas.org: Brukman Struggle Continues
» Americas.org: May Day March, Brukman Pact

US Task Force Abandons Search for Illegal Weapons
The 75th Exploitation Task Force, the group responsible for finding Weapons of Mass Destruction in post-war Iraq is preparing to discontinue their operations without having found any illegal weapons, according to sources quoted by the Washington Post. The sources partially blamed looting and burning for the lack of available evidence.

According to officials, the search will continue, but biologists, physicists, and other experts will be moved off-site until there is something for them to look at. "I don't think we'll find anything," one Army Captain commented, noting that any weapons would have disappeared in the post-war chaos by now.

» Washington Post: Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq

Stop Ignoring the Congo, Says UN Human Rights Commissioner
United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Vieira de Mello said that the international community has been ignoring atrocities in the Congolese civil war. De Mello said that additional peacekeeping troops were necessary to prevent further tragedies.

» Reuters: UN rights chief says world ignoring Congo violence