» Archive: July 2005

Christoff in Lebanon

Independent journalist Stefan Christoff is in Lebanon, covering social movements and resistance to neoliberal policies there. He just filed a report about the growing tensions between Lebanese and Syrian governments and its affect on the working poor of both countries.

Right now, thousands of truckers have gone two weeks without pay, and are sleeping under their trucks, waiting for the Syria-Lebanon border to open.

A driver on the highway at the Masnaa border crossing spoke on the current crisis at the borders. "Those people in the offices in Beirut and Damascus are not asking about us, whether we are eating or not, whether we are alive or not, they are not thinking about us. This is not a normal situation. When the Lebanese and the Syrian governments are having political problems, the people of both nations suffer."

The rage and despair expressed by the drivers on the borders, illustrates the lack of support that governments of both nations have provided toward the working poor, impacted most heavily by the crisis. The Lebanese government has provided no compensation to the thousands of drivers stranded at the border, as they survive on bare necessities with little political representation.

Spam King Murdered

Mosnews.com: "Mosnews.com: "Russian-language media, both online and offline, has made little effort to conceal one central thought when dealing with the spammer's demise: that somehow the late Mr. Kushnir got what he deserved. "The Spammer Had it Coming"�, one headline reads. "Spam is Deadly"�, "Ignoble Death Becomes Russia's Top Spammer"�, "An Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem"� - 84 Russian-language news captions on Kushnir's murder, retrieved by the Yandex News search engine within a day of the event, seem to share the general feeling."

It's the Occupation, Stupid

Essential reading (from The American Conservative, of all places) on understanding the phenomenon of suicide bombings -- burying once and for all the vacuous Bush/Blair argument that "we fight the terrorists there so that we won't have to face them here":

"The Logic of Suicide Terrorism: It's the occupation, not the fundamentalism."
An interview with Robert Pape

"The central fact [of Pape's exhaustive global study] is that overwhelmingly, suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign -- over 95 percent of all incidents -- has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw. [...] Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us."

Haiti Solidarity, One Blog at a Time

Writer/Haiti Action Committee activist Ben Terrall blogs from Haiti.

A couple of solid new articles discuss Canada's role in Haiti. Both indicate how this story is finding it's way into broader indymedia circles. The first one is Mike Smith's, originally published in Toronto's Now Magazine, "Canada's Quiet War." The other one, by Ron Carten in The Republic, explains, based on interview with Yves engler how "Canada Subverts Haiti."

Speaking of Indymedia, the mother website has featured the Haiti crisis on its front page twice recently, the most recent focus being the arbitrary arrest and detention of Priest Gerard Jean-Juste. His crime? Feeding the poor and joining them in their call for Aristide's return.

Another solid blog, 'La Luchita'

Also, Shirley Pate's Haiti: The Gaza Strip of the Caribbean"

UN Massacre in Haiti

Village Voice: Haitians Accuse the U.N. of Massacre

What's undisputed in this case is that some 300 U.N. troops descended on the shanty town at 3 a.m. on July 6, rolling through in tank-like APC's, or armored personnel carriers. Witnesses say they shot up pretty much everything, in some accounts in a battle with armed gang members loyal to the ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But while eyewitnesses and human rights workers say a minimum of 20 people, including women and children, were gunned down, some through the walls of their shacks, the U.N. says no civilians were harmed.

One Haitian human rights worker, who says he cannot risk identifying himself for fear of being shot to death by the Haitian police or those working under the direction of the U.N., captured some of the gore on film from which stills have been taken.

Warning: graphic photos.

WSWS on Live8

Live 8: Who organised the PR campaign for Blair and Bush?

"The scale of the Live 8 event was spectacular. But its essential aim was of a far more politically sinister character than its altruistic pose would suggest. It was organised and backed by individuals and organisations with close ties to the Labour government of Tony Blair, and had the official backing of the government itself. By boosting the pitiful debt relief package agreed on by the G8 and hailing the proposals of Blair’s own Commission for Africa for aid and relief tied to free-market initiatives, it set out to provide a much-needed mask of humanitarian concern to both Blair and US President George W. Bush."

Barrick in Argentina

Upside Down World covers protests against Toronto-based Barrick gold in Argentina.

Open pit mining contains two key steps. First, entire mountains are opened up and ore is extracted and crushed into a powder. Second, the ore is treated with chemicals (lixiviation) to collect the trace amounts of gold, silver and copper that naturally exist in the ore. The lixiviation process uses vast amounts of water and highly toxic chemicals such as cyanide.

Two on the G8 from Green Left Weekly

John Pilger: "The illusion of an anti-establishment crusade led by pop stars -- a cultivated, controlling image of rebellion -- serves to dilute a great political movement of anger. In summit after summit, not one significant promise of the G8 has been kept, and the 'victory for millions'� is no different. It is a fraud -- actually a setback to reducing poverty in Africa. Entirely conditional on vicious, discredited economic programs imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the 'package' will ensure that the 'chosen' countries slip deeper into poverty."

Norm Dixon: MPH demands that 'the unpayable debts of the world’s poorest countries should be cancelled in full' and 'poor countries should no longer have to privatise basic services or liberalise economies as a condition for getting the debt relief they so desperately need'. Yet, the much publicised British government-brokered deal only cancels the multilateral component of the debt of 18 of the world’s poorest countries (with another 20 that may become eligible in the future). But this 'relief' comes with the very strings that MPH opposes — strings that will ensure that poor countries remain trapped in dire poverty."

The Celebrity Liberal View

Is it possible for rich Europeans to address African poverty without understanding colonialism, racism, corporate plunder, illegitimate debt run up by dictators and handed to corporations, or the humanitarian catastrophe that the IMF has imposed? If that's possible, then it must also be possible to conceive of an entire campaign to eliminate poverty in Africa that ignores the many African social movements, and assumes that it knows what is good for Africa better than Africans do. And if that's doable, then why not just go ahead and praise the people who are imposing this mess on the third world to the heavens?

Welcome to the UK's Make Poverty History campaign.

It's all very sensible.

Canadian Base in the Middle East

WSWS: "The Canadian government is in the process of establishing a long-term military base in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region. According to a recent article in the Globe and Mail, the Canadian government is negotiating with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to gain control of a section of the Minhad Air Base, located near Dubai, for years, if not decades, to come."

Revelation and Surprise

George Monbiot: "At the G8 summit we will hear the same tones of revelation and surprise. Now, as then, the political elite will give the impression of having discovered the importance of this issue for the first time. In 16 years we've gone nowhere."

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