NEW YORKERS TAKE TO THE STREETS TO PROTEST ISRAELS CONFRONTATION AT SEA http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/new-yorkers-take-to-the-streets-to-protest-israels-confrontation-at-sea/
Days before a probable showdown at sea between Palestine solidarity activists traveling with a nine-ship fleet and the Israeli Navy, demonstrations took place across the United States and the world today to demand that Israel allow the activists safe passage to Gaza to deliver 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid.
Will The USD Be Replaced By The SDR Or The CNY As The Next Reserve Currency? http://www.zerohedge.com/article/will-usd-be-replaced-sdr-or-cny-next-reserve-currency
Jim O'Neill, who did not make any friends within the bear community earlier today, has written an interesting paper on the IMF's Special Drawing Rights
sprint1066: Canada: Is Universal Healthcare Killing Dissent? http://www.moneyteachers.org/Healthcare.Blackmail.htm
Indigenous Alliance without Borders: National Day of Action Against Racism http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2010/05/indigenous-alliance-without-borders.html
Jose Matus, Yaqui, director of Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras joins and stands strongly in support of all the people and organizers of the National Day of Action Against Racism and Racist public policies and laws. White America and especially Arizona's racist politicians are seeing a resurgence of Indigenous America in the form of immigrants who are descendants of North America's Indigenous populations.
As Indigenous America, they are terrifying precisely because they have a moral claim to cross the border imposed on their lands.Since the 1990's, the immigrant communities in Arizona have experienced in their everyday lives hatred, xenophobia, bigotry, abuse and rights violation while living in Tucson, Phoenix and throughout the state.
Navajos told to sit in back of the room at mining conference http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2010/05/navajos-told-to-sit-in-back-of-room-at.html
Three members of the Navajo Nation and a non-Indian supporter were told to sit or stand in the back of a room at a uranium conference, The Denver Post reported. The protesters wanted to attend a discussion on litigation at the National Mining Association and Nuclear Regulatory Commission conference. The NRC is a federal agency that has a tribal consultation policy.When tribal member Nadine Padilla, 25, saw an empty chair in the front of the room, she sat down. She was told to leave.
Homeless Iraqis Prompt Fears of Social Crisis http://uruknet.com/?p=m66412&hd=&size=1&l=e
In Iraq the spread of illegal squatter settlements has aid groups fearful of a looming social crisis. Recent reports from two international agencies found that of Iraq's 1.5 million internally displaced people, at least 500,000 have been forced to live in squalid camps without access to health care or public services. The UN High Commission for Refugees, UNHCR, has recorded a sharp increase in squatters since 2009, and activists are demanding the US and UN tackle the problem before it gets out of control.
Daniel Endres, UNHCR’s Iraq representative, said: "We have also found that many refugees who returned recently from other countries have ended up in camps." Endres says: "The squatter camps are the biggest humanitarian problem facing Iraq. Because of war and conflict, this is still a broken society, and all the people who slip through the cracks are ending up in these camps."
Analysts question Korea torpedo incident http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/05/asian_analysts_question_korea_torpedo_incident.html?hpid=news-col-blog
South Korean analysts are questioning how a submarine of a fifth-rate power was able to penetrate a U.S.-South Korean naval exercise and sink a ship that was designed for anti-submarine warfare. Articles appearing in the South Korean and Japanese media suggest the naval exercise was, in fact, intended to provoke the North to attack. According to this analysis, the resulting public outcry in the South would bolster support for the conservative South Korean government that is opposed to reconciliation efforts.
Japanese journalist Tanaka Sakai called the ship’s sinking “an enigma,” adding: "The Cheonan was a patrol boat whose mission was to survey .. the enemy’s submarines, torpedoes, and aircraft ... " Sakai wrote: "If North Korean submarines and torpedoes were approaching, the Cheonan should have been able to sense it quickly and take measures to counterattack or evade. .. It is hard to imagine that the Cheonan sonar forces were not on alert."
City Under Siege: The University of Toronto Joins the G20 Security Ring http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/361.php
So how should we understand the University's decision to shut its doors for a week of June – to expel its students and staff and barricade itself off from the outside world? Sadly, this is typical of an institution where the support of peaceful protest and free speech are nothing more than well-worn clichés. The University of Toronto has always been a bastion of Canada's ruling class. It is one of Canada's most conservative universities: an institution that has schooled many of the country's elite, that has long stifled dissent, that has played a primary role in defending neoliberalism.
Someone Is Watching: The Peril and Promise of School Surveillance http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/scribner280510.html
The thirteen chapters of Schools under Surveillance are grouped into five parts. Part 1 deals with the police and military presence in public schools; part 2 with schools as markets for surveillance equipment; part 3 with the social/psychological basis of the postmodern "security culture"; part 4 with accountability regimes and the disciplinary aspects of neoliberalism; and part 5 with student resistance to surveillance (p. 121). All five parts begin with a Foucauldian analysis of surveillance as an exercise of power before exploring several recurring themes.
carlos_the_mackeral1919: After French "Secopex" Mercenaries now its Germans in Somalia ... http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/56346
The scandal caused by the planned dispatching of more than 100 German mercenaries to Somalia, is further evidence of the expansion of German private security companies. The CEO of the Asgaard German Security Group (based in Telgte, close to Muenster in North Rhine Westphalia) has confirmed that the company plans to dispatch a triple-digit sized group of armed personnel to Somalia to support a local warlord, who has declared himself the country's president.
Chavez maintains that no country needs the brokerage operations http://www.telesurtv.net/noticias/secciones/nota/72655-NN/chavez-sostiene-que-ningun-pais-necesita-de-la-operacion-de-casas-de-bolsa/
Considering that such institutions are not required in any country, the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, reiterated his government's decision to keep intervening in spculative brokerage firms operated in the South American nation, a move that follows the investigation of alleged speculation operations illegal in buying and selling currencies. This observation was made by the Venezuelan head of state late on Thursday in Caracas, during the swearing Campaign Command Bolivar 200, which will promote the candidacies of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in parliamentary elections next September.
Chavez said that the operation of brokerage houses are not necessary for the economy of any country, let alone to Venezuela, which is developing a socialist system. He said that before the collapse of European and Asian exchanges earlier this week, the Venezuelan stock market has remained unchanged because it's under the intervention of the National Securities Commission (CNV). "The stock market here is now tranquil because we intervened. What do we need from thes blessed brokerage houses, nothing.No country needs them, much less here with socialism," Chavez said .
He said that these institutions, in the hands of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, engage in irregular practices which violate the foreign exchange control,wich exist to protect international reserves in Venezuela. "We all know them to cheat," Chavez said referring to the stock exchange, while recalling that early in his mandate,the Venezuelan bourgeoisie was free to enagage in the exchange of currencies in Venezuela, which gave them the green light to the Venezuelan bourgeoisie to steal some 30 billion dollars.
Message to the Colombian electorate Venezuelan President took the opportunity to send a message to the Colombian electorate, which on Sunday will face a voting process to choose the next head of state of the country, replacing the current president, Alvaro Uribe, who remained eight years in power. He expressed his best wishes for the electoral process, which indicated that there is keen competition, spent in good shape and announced its readiness to congratulate whoever is elected president of Colombia.
"Hopefully, this process ends well and the next president is a person we can talk to, to reach agreements to gnerate at least minimum relations, but you can not have relations with the current government, which lends itself to the game of the empire to attack Venezuela "he said in reference to the current situation with the Uribe administration. "On Sunday there are elections in Colombia (...) I'm waiting for Sunday. If there is victory in the first round, because they say it is very even fight, but if there is victory, I am willing to pick up the phone to congratulate the winner" he added. He cited as an example that Venezuela has good relations with other countries, the recent signing of cooperation agreements with Italy, whose foreign minister, Franco Frattini, visited the country since last Wednesday. The central part of the ceremony presided over by Chavez at the Teatro Teresa Carreño de Caracas was that corresponding to the command jurametación PSUV campaign, facing legislative elections in September. During the event, the Venezuelan president has submitted to the socialist leaders who will accompany the PSUV candidates in the campaign, through the command, led by Aristobulo Isturiz, will be in operation with five strategic directions and five committees of operations.
Chavez announced the Directorate of Strategy and Organization Electoral Command will be headed by Francisco Ameliach, muientras that the Department of Measurement, Evaluation and Monitoring will be coordinated by Andrés Izarra. The Directorate of Communication will be coordinated by Blanca Eekhout, while Dario Vivas lead the Event Management and Santaella Yelitza be in charge of the Directorate of Finance and Logistics.
Israel sold billions in arms to apartheid South Africa http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5934.shtml
In April 1976, Nazi sympathizer and South African Prime Minister John Voster visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem to lay a wreath to the victims of the German Reich he once saluted. They must have turned over in their graves.
Democrats and the McCarthyite attack on detainee lawyers http://coto2.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/democrats-and-the-mccarthyite-attack-on-detainee-lawyers/
Over at Balkinization, Law Professor Steve Vladeck has done a superb job highlighting a truly vile provision in the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2011, which directs the Pentagon’s Inspector General to “conduct an investigation of the conduct and practices of lawyers” who have represented Guantanamo detainees and then report back to Congress. That provision is the brainchild of GOP Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida, who has labeled efforts to represent detainees (specifically as part of the John Adams Project) a “treacherous enterprise” and smeared those lawyers as “disloyal.”
Vladeck thoroughly documents how the lawyer conduct that is targeted by the mandated investigation is so broad that it could easily encompass every act of defending Guantanamo detainees, and thus, standing alone, could serve to intimidate and deter lawyers from vigorously representing those detainees in the future.
Obama: President of Cant by Tariq Ali http://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/files/NLR29505-1.pdf
Has US foreign policy really changed since the departure of Bush and the arrival of Obama?
US militarisation: The tragedy of Somalia http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/64754
As the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) force becomes ever more active in Somalia, questions must be raised as to the intentions of this militarised organisation, writes Explo Nani-Kofi. Nani-Kofi stresses that the African continent grows ever more vulnerable to a maturing breed of neocolonial occupation based on US-led proxy wars.
AFRICOM and the ICC: Enforcing international justice in Africa? http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/64752The ICC (International Criminal Court) prosecutor has called for the US military to enforce ICC arrest warrants in Africa, while American officials have declared a new phase of cooperation between the US and the ICC, write Samar Al-Bulushi and Adam Branch. What some see as a solution to the ICC’s lack of enforcement capacity, the authors argue, in fact poses a dramatic danger to peace and justice in Africa and to the future of the ICC itself.
National Guard at the Mexico border: a conversation with WOLA's George Withers http://bit.ly/bMtglC
Adam talks with George Withers, senior fellow for regional security policy at the Washington Office on Latin America, about the risks of the Obama administration's proposal to deploy 1,200 new National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Dirty Energy Croatia: activists demand European Bank to invest in sustainable development http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/Dirty-Energy?lang=es
Activists demand Chiquita donate profits to paramilitary victims http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/9927-activists-demand-chiquita-donate-profits-to-paramilitary-victims.html
Thirteen hundred U.S. activists signed a letter to the president of Chiquita Brands, demanding that the fruit company donate all profits earned in Colombia to victims of the paramilitaries that they funded."For 15 years, Chiquita paid millions for protection to the hemisphere's most brutal groups... Executives of the company knew that they were growing bananas in dangerous war zones.However, instead of leaving the area and jeopardizing profits, they decided to pay assasins to protect the company, despite knowing that the armed groups they were paying were murdering innocent civilians," Ken Crowley, from the human rights NGO Witness for Peace, told LaFM Thursday.
"Chiquita knew that they were paying brutal assassins and terrorists...But even after their lawyers and the Justice Department required them to stop paying [the paramilitaries], Chiquita continued the payments to ensure for their million in profits," Crowley went on.According to the letter, the activists are demanding that Chiquita create a fund for the victims of the paramilitaries that contains the full amount of profits that the company earned in Colombia between 1989 and 2004, the period in which they claim payments to the illegal groups were made.
The letter also demand that the company fire the employees who were involved in the illegal payments."Those employees knew that the payments provided material support to terrorists and they knew that innocent civilians were going to be killed as a result of the payments," Crowley said, adding that he feels that the employees "should be in jail... What message is Chiquita sending if they keep these people employed with the company?"In March 2007, Chiquita came to an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department in which the company would pay a $25 million fine to settle a criminal complaint for paying the AUC, Colombia's most notorious paramilitary groups, more than $1.7 million from 1997 to 2004.
For the activists, however, this is not enough, and in April of this year, nearly 250 Colombians who claim that they and their relatives were victims of violence by Colombian right-wing paramilitaries filed a lawsuit in the U.S. seeking more than $1 billion in damages from Chiquita.Responding to the charges, Chiquita's CEO Fernando Aguirre explained in a "60 Minutes" interview in 2009 that "These lands [in Colombia] were lands where there was no law.
It was impossible for the government to protect employees," and as a result, "the company was forced to pay taxes to the guerillas when they controlled the territory in the late 1980s and early 90s. When the paramilitaries, known as the 'AUC' moved in in 1997 they demanded the same thing."
British Coalition Government Announces Attack on Public Sector http://www.zcommunications.org/british-coalition-government-announces-attack-on-public-sector-by-chris-talbot
During the election, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives disagreed over the need to begin cutting public spending immediately. [They] have now made it clear that any differences that existed between their parties with regards to timing have dissipated in the wake of developments in Greece..."The fiscal crisis in Greece has shown the price that governments pay when they lose credibility in the markets...The Lib Dems now agree with the Tories on the need to demonstrate that the new government means business..."
