People Before Profit blog

World Notes: Somalia, South Korea and more

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 15:33:00 +0000

Somalia: Fighting, danger to civilians mount

Shelling and raids intensified in Mogadishu on December 25 between African Union troops backing the U.S. supported Somali government and Islamic Al Shabaab combatants. Observers attribute worsening conflict to the merger a week earlier between former rival groups Hizbul Islam and Al Shabaab, each associated with Al Qaeda. As reported by longwarjournal.org, a Shabaab spokesperson sees conditions ripening for "a wider jihad in East Africa" and creation of a "greater Somalia." The ongoing humanitarian crisis is manifested by Somali people continuing to risk the dangerous Gulf of Aden crossing to Yemen. Two boatloads of migrants, including women and children, arrived on December 26. Some 54,000 Somalis entered Yemen in 2009, with most ending up in UN sponsored refugee camps.

South Korea: Villagers protest U.S. naval base

"The waters to the south of Jeju Island are pivotal to our security," opined the mainstream JoongAng Daily as it cited container ship traffic and border disputes with China and Japan. A court decision December 15 rejected claims from local residents who for three years have contested a proposed base for South Korean and U.S. naval vessels at Gangjeong Village, situated on the island's southern tip. On Christmas, Catholic Bishop Kang Woo-Il led a peace mass. Quoted on space4peace.blogspot.com, he vowed to be "together with the lonely and oppressed Gangjeong villagers." A "military base cannot save peace and life," he declared. On December 27 hundreds of protesters tried to block arriving construction machinery.

Cuba: Building oil partnership with Russian firms

The Russian Lukoil oil corporation announced plans recently to construct refineries in Cuba and investigate off-shore oil exploration possibilities in the Gulf of Mexico. Russia's Nafta-Sintez company is preparing to manufacture Cuban oil derivatives, while Russian companies will be building platforms for extracting undersea oil. In June, the Russian state-owned JSC Zarubezhneft Company agreed to undertake recuperation of old oil extraction sites. And other agreements it signed represented the first bilateral energy-related accords in 25 years. According to Pueblo en Línea news, current negotiations with Russian oil companies could result in Russia becoming Cuba's prime oil production partner. However, foreign operated oil extraction facilities containing more than 10 percent U.S. components violate U.S. blockade regulations.

Colombia: New human rights failures

The government of President and former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos faces new criticism. On December 16, activists accompanied judicial investigators to one of several common graves in Meta expected to yield 1,500 corpses. TeleSur suggests they represent "more civilian murders perpetrated by the Army." The Western Hemisphere's largest common grave - 2,000 bodies - was discovered a year ago in nearby Macarena. In both instances, civilians were killed and dressed as guerrilla casualties as tokens of army successes. And a bleak report from Oxfam and other groups surfaced in mid December. From 2001 through 2009, soldiers and paramilitaries occupying 409 municipalities were shown to have committed "direct sexual violence" against 489.687 women, amounting to 17.6 percent of the adult female population. U.S. military and police aid to Colombia came to $415 million in 2010, according to justf.org. In 2009, Washington provided arms and military equipment worth $114 million.

Israel: Prospect of short track to Palestinian sovereignty riles government

Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay, Argentina and Bolivia recently announced unilateral diplomatic recognition of a Palestine state defined by borders existing before the 1967 Israeli invasion. With 11 European nations upgrading diplomatic ties with Palestine, an alternative has appeared to a two-state solution reached through negotiations. To ward off a likely foreign policy crisis, Labor Party Cabinet minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer on December 19 called for a return to negotiations broken off when Israel resumed construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank in September. The Uruguayan Foreign Minister, quoted on rebelion.org, sees "equivalence of power" as necessary for successful negotiation. The U.S. House of Representatives on December 15 unanimously called for U.S. non-recognition of a Palestinian state if constituted unilaterally.

Russia: Threats mount against minorities

Some 1,500 Muscovites rallied on December 26 with signs such as "Russia is for everyone" and "Russia without Fascism." Speaking to reporters, politician Vladimir Ryzhk warned that, "Any outbreak of nationalism in Russia will ruin the country." They were reacting to fallout from the killing of Yegor Sviridov at a football match on December 6 when Russian and minority group spectators clashed. A week later, 5000 ultra-nationalistic Russian football fans demonstrating in Red Square caused dozens of injuries. Aljazeera reports widespread concern that governmental inaction signifies underlying disinclination to deal with a "rising tide of xenophobia." All but one of the December 6 murder suspects were released on bail.

Afghanistan: Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 16:27:00 +0000

Alongside the cautiously optimistic view of U.S. military accomplishments in Afghanistan President Obama offered last week, other reports are offering a much soberer view of the campaign's achievements and prospects for success.

Analysts are also considering how military actions can end in a way that leaves the Afghan people with the best chance to build a peaceful, politically and economically stable future.

While the administration was reporting "notable operational gains" in countering the Taliban and other armed insurgents, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was warning that the "main conflict-related challenges" the Afghan people face - civilian casualties, internal displacement and inadequate access to medical care - will continue in 2011.

On Dec. 15, just before the administration reported on its review, Reto Stocker, who heads the ICRC's Afghanistan office, said in a statement, "In a growing number of areas in the country, we are entering a new, rather murky phase in the conflict in which the proliferation of armed groups threatens the ability of humanitarian organizations to reach the people who need their help."

Stocker said many people see fleeing as their only alternative, with many ending up in refugee camps or with relatives in neighboring districts. Together with the Afghan Red Crescent, the ICRC has provided food, water and other relief to 140,000 people throughout Afghanistan this year alone.

As the conflict has intensified and spread geographically, civilian casualties have risen compared with earlier years, Stocker said. Mirwais Regional Hospital in Kandahar, in an area where military operations have stepped up this year, has cared for over 2,650 wounded patients this year compared to 2,100 in 2009, he said.

Earlier this month Senate Intelligence Committee members were briefed on a new National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan. The Associated Press said officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, referred to "inkspots" of progress in places like the capital, Kabul, and parts of Helmand and Kandahar provinces where there are enough U.S. and NATO troops to maintain security. But, they said, other parts of the country are controlled by or vulnerable to armed insurgents.

The officials said U.S. efforts to build infrastructure and get security forces where they are needed are lagging. It was noted that the intelligence assessment was conducted earlier in the fall than the annual review on which the administration based its statements.

A Dec. 17 Inter Press Service report by investigative journalist Gareth Porter also cited increasingly brutal U.S. military tactics in the much-vaunted offensive in Kandahar Province during the fall.

Noting that the offensive, which captured three rural districts outside Kandahar City in October, was "opposed clearly and vocally" by the local provincial leadership, Porter said the operation "was accompanied by an array of military tactics marked by increased brutality," notably large-scale demolition of houses that has outraged civilians.

In mid-December, 60 analysts, humanitarian workers, journalists, retired military officers and academics who focus on Afghanistan, including Porter, sent an open letter to President Obama, warning that a military solution is unrealistic.

With the war now costing the U.S. alone over $120 billion per year and the situation on the ground worsening, they called on Washington to move for a political solution by starting talks with the insurgents, "taking U.S. security interests into account." The analysts said talks need to include Afghanistan's neighbors, as well as representatives of Afghanistan's provinces and local governments.

An even more detailed approach to a political settlement, by author and analyst Daryl Copeland, was posted by Foreign Policy in Focus in September.

Copeland proposes halting all combat operations, announcing the intent to seek a negotiated political solution with economic development as the top priority, and shifting the political lead to the United Nations - which, he says, "while imperfect, is clearly a more suitable choice." An international peace conference under UN auspices would bring together all internal parties, regional states and organizations, and other countries including the U.S., Russia and India, "to rebuild confidence and trust and foster collaboration."

Funds for military operations would be redirected to a "Marshall Plan" for Afghanistan, providing substantial resources to "appropriate" Afghan and international non-governmental organizations, with an initial focus on agriculture, energy and minerals to stimulate employment and growth.

Similar proposals were presented two years ago by Sept. 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, calling for "a swift timetable" for U.S. and NATO withdrawal, an immediate end to air strikes, support for negotiations involving all parties, reforming aid and reconstruction efforts to prioritize Afghan organizations, investing in long-term economic efforts such as sustainable agriculture, and compensation for Afghan families and communities affected by U.S. military actions.

With the tenth anniversary of the war less than a year away, and casualties mounting daily among U.S. and NATO troops and Afghan civilians, it's time to take these proposals seriously, for the sake of all concerned, in Afghanistan and here at home.

Image: American soldiers talk to an Afghan villager. International Security Assistance Force Media // CC BY 2.0

World Notes: Belgium, Canada and more

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:14:00 +0000

Belgium: EU attacks poverty

The European Commission on December 16 unveiled a ten-year plan aimed at reducing the number of Europe's poor from 84 million to 64 million. The new "'EU Platform against Poverty" aspires to coordinate separate national anti-poverty projects. Critics see effective regional action as unlikely in view of national governments' strict control over their own social policies. Observers view the current economic crisis as disproportionately affecting the poor, with high rates of job loss for migrants, young people, and the unskilled. A spokesperson for the European Anti-Poverty Network warned that austerity programs now on the rise will undermine anti-poverty efforts. The anti-poverty plan features micro-financing, belittled on euobserver.com, where the Bangladeshi Prime Minister was quoted. "Sucking blood from the poor," he said of micro-financing.

Canada: a Union takes down Wal-Mart

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union characterized the settlement a Quebec Superior Court announced on December 15 as a free speech victory. Alleging that employees were infringing upon its trademark, Wal-Mart Corporation had sought an injunction 18 months ago against the worker-operated web site www.walmartworkerscanada.ca. Supported by the UFCW union, that site advocates for labor rights, including the right to collective bargaining through a union. UFCW President Wayne Hanley promised his union would continue its ten-year long campaign so that Wal-Mart workers might be able to "exercise their rights as workers in Canada." The victory came about "despite the best efforts of the world's largest corporation to dictate the terms of online communication."

Cuba: Washington is down on dissidents

Recently released Wikileaks documents show Jonathan Farrar, head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, deciding that Cuban opposition groups are "disconnected from society [and are] more worried about taking in money" than broadening their appeal. U.S. diplomats find that "very few" dissidents have a "political vision applicable to a future government." They bemoan "the energy opposition factions use up in undercutting one another" while criticizing friction between exile and internal clients over "positioning themselves for power when the Castros leave." Quoting from documents, Cubadebate highlights U.S. officials' realization that such competition has led to "tens of thousands of euros and dollars [going to] to unknown, disconnected, and greedy characters." Henceforth, they would preferentially support "young bloggers, musicians, and artists."

Venezuela: Statistics show social gains

Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, a UN agency, was interviewed recently by EFE News and Pagina 12 on 2010 economic trends. According to www.vtv.gob.ve/ on December 20, she credited the region for weathering the worldwide global crisis and for prioritizing social investment. Citing the report "Our Democracy" of the Organization of American States, that report went on to praise Venezuela for reducing its poverty rate from 49.4 percent to 27.4 percent from 1999 to 2008; extreme poverty, from 21.7 percent to 9.9 percent. The Gini co-efficient, a measure of income inequalities, fell from 0.498 to 0.412 during the period. Childhood malnutrition fell from 7.7 percent in 1990 to 3.2 percent in 2009.

Israel: African migrant workers are barred

The Israeli government last month began construction of a $360 million, 155 mile long electric fence along the Egyptian border. It also approved plans for a detention facility near the border targeting African migrants seeking work in Israel. Citing a "wave of illegal immigrants," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bemoaned loss of jobs for Israelis. A prison built for Africans "is not only racist, it also contravenes basic tenets of international law," stated Egyptian human rights activist Hafez Abu Saeda, quoted by IPS. Rather than allowing Israeli authorities to rule on migrants' status as political refugees, potentially qualifying them for entry, he prefers UN determination. The migrants come mainly from Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Egyptian border guards have killed over 85 African migrants in three years.

South Africa: World Youth Festival concludes

Some 15,000 delegates from 140 countries gathered in Pretoria on December 13-21 for the 17^th World Youth festival. Taking anti-imperialism as its main theme, the festival paid special honor to Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro. Delegates pronounced in favor of world peace, Korean peace, national self determination, and education for all. They denounced Israeli aggression against Palestinians, the anti-Cuban U.S. blockade, and Moroccan denial of Western Saharan independence. Aili Labinino read a message from her Cuban Five father to the Anti-Imperialist Tribunal, in session at the Festival. The Cuban News Agency quoted Ramon Labinino: "We can build a new society where human beings and not capital or money is at the center." Labinino is a U.S. political prisoner.

Photo: Former employees of the Saguenay, Quebec, Canada Wal-Mart create an unhappy logo face May 6, 2005, when the store closed. Jeannot Levesque/Chicoutimi Le Quotidien/AP

Haiti cholera may have originated with UN peacekeepers

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 11:39:00 +0000

The cholera epidemic that may have killed as more than 2,400 people in Haiti over the last month may have originated with a United Nations peacekeeper camp, according to a French scientist. However, this is being contested, and the UN and World Health Organization are going to undertake a study to try to pinpoint the origins of the outbreak.

The French scientist, Renard Piarroux, an epidemiologist and cholera specialist, appears to have reached his conclusions by a process of elimination, arguing that only poor disposal of human waste, documented at a camp of Nepalese peacekeeping troops in Meille upriver from the Artibonite Valley where the outbreak first occurred, could explain the phenomenon. The U.S. Center for Disease Control had earlier reached the conclusion that the strain of the cholera bacterium found in Haiti was Asian in origin.

UN authorities originally denied that the Nepalese troops could have been the source of the epidemic, as none of them had been sick. However, cholera is endemic in Nepal, which means that people there have a relatively high level of resistance, thus seemingly well people could be carriers. In contrast, there has not been a major cholera outbreak in Haiti for a hundred years, which means that people currently living have no natural resistance to the disease and become very sick very quickly when exposed to the microbe.

Cholera is relatively easily cured when detected and treated quickly. Replacing body fluids, which are drained catastrophically by the diarrhea that comes with the disease, is the one of the most critical early steps. The general disruption of life in Haiti due to the massive earthquake in January, which killed perhaps 300,000 people and left all kinds of infrastructure flattened, has contributed to the death toll by making it hard to get people to treatment in time. The extreme poverty of many people also makes it difficult for them to get soap, clean water and other things essential to preventing more people from being infected.

It is estimated that over 100,000 people have contracted the disease in Haiti in this outbreak. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that, of these, 54,500 have received hospital treatment. Over the last week the epidemic seemed to have slowed a bit, but now the pace has picked up again. And 32 cases have been reported in the Dominican Republic, with which Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola. Dominican authorities have set up mechanisms to check and decontaminate people passing into their country from Haiti.

A number of countries, including the United States, have sent private or government teams to Haiti to help the country deal with the epidemic. Cuba now has over 900 doctors, nurses and other health workers operating in Haiti. In his regular commentary in the Cuban press, the former Cuban president, Fidel Castro, called attention to the fact that Haitian cholera patients treated by the Cuban teams have a death rate significantly lower than that of those treated by others: "Among those treated by the Cuban mission, the mortality rate [has risen] to 0.83 percent. The mortality rate in other hospital institutions stands at 3.2 percent." Castro attributes this to the Cuban public health practice of proactively sending out health teams even to the smallest and most isolated rural communities.

On Thursday, Dec. 16, the Washington Post reported that the United Nations has announced that it would conduct a more formal investigation into the origins of the epidemic. The head of UN peacekeeping forces, Alain LeRoy, announced that the UN and the WHO would charge an international panel with this task. Also, the General Assembly voted to urge nations who had promised aid to Haiti after the January earthquake to hurry up its delivery so as to enable Haiti to respond adequately to the cholera epidemic.

Image: The United Nations' role in Haiti has been both helpful and problematic. Picture provided by United Nations Photo // CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Pakistan flood victims face harsh winter

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:06:00 +0000

Reports indicate that the hardships from Pakistan's earlier monsoon floods have been exacerbated by the onslaught of winter.

The floods affected 20 million people -- more than 10 percent -- of Pakistan's population of just over 180 million people.

Yet, as the temperature dips, hundreds of thousands of displaced children and adults are susceptible to pneumonia and other cold-related diseases. According to Director of the National Institute of Child Health (Pakistan) Professor Jamal Raza, the flood victims becoming ill from cold related causes, particularly children, could almost double from the current number. Many are living in non-winterized tents, and there are shortages of dry firewood/fuel and other materials, such as adequate clothing, needed to create warmth.

Further, many of the flood ravaged areas from this year's monsoon remain covered in water and millions are still displaced. Concurrently, many displaced are farmers whose fields are still flooded, and they have no source of livelihood. Food distribution is difficult to carry out under the circumstances.

Concerning the children, Raza says that it will be an uphill battle to save many of the them as they are malnourished, and have experienced a great deal of weight loss due to poor diet. Moreover, he says, their capability for immunity is very low and, accordingly, they are susceptible to a wide range of respiratory diseases. Consequently, there is an urgent need for blankets, quilts and better shelter to fight the cold, as well as provisions for the obvious nutritional and medical needs.

Reports out of Pakistan indicate a further danger caused by the floods: the release of stored toxic chemicals into the flood waters. An article in New Scientist reports the floods released an estimated 3,000 tonnes of toxic chemicals into the environment. The chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) include several insect repellents, such as DDT. At the same time, many of them do not biodegrade in nature, and are purportedly linked to hormonal, developmental and reproductive disorders. Pakistan's floods have awakened some nations and scientists to this ongoing threat as changes in weather patterns become more evident.

Reputable organizations currently active in the relief effort in Pakistan include OXFAM, AmeriCares and United Nations Refugee Agency. If you consider helping the people of Pakistan through a contribution to any one of them, be sure to specify that the donation is for Pakistan flood relief.

Photo: A woman and her two children stand in their makeshift shelter in the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Their home was destroyed in the floods that have affected an estimated 2.5 million of the province's 3.5 million residents.
( UN Photo/UNICEF/ZAK/CC)

Honduras ex-prez Zelaya voices anger re Wikileaks revelations

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:03:00 +0000

Most of what has come out of the "Wikileaks" uproar has not told us anything new. In the case of U.S. relations with Latin America, this is also true. Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables have largely confirmed the widely held opinion in the hemisphere that the United States tries to impose its will on Latin American nations by fair means or foul, hates Venezuela and Cuba, and that U.S. embassies are often centers of subversion which connive with local right-wing politicians, military officers and clergy to thwart democratic changes.

Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya angrily blasted the U.S. State Department and especially former U.S. Ambassador Charles A. Ford for comments he is revealed to have made to his successor, Hugo Llorens, in a Bush-era cable, dated May 15, 2008.

Most of what Ford says to Llorens in this cable is simply gossip, vague rumors about corruption and links to the left-wing governments of Cuba and Venezuela, but he does reveal that the United States tried to dictate to Zelaya whom he should name to his cabinet, and to stop him from appointing Jorge Arturo Reina as Honduran Ambassador to the United Nations, because Reina had "lost his U.S. visa because of terrorist connections". Ford also makes clear that the U.S. expressed its displeasure with Zelaya for bringing Honduras into the Petrocaribe organization, which makes Venezuelan oil available to poor Latin American countries at discounted prices. Ford criticizes Zelaya for standing up for Honduran undocumented immigrants in the United States, and for avoiding participating in photo-ops with visiting U.S. dignitaries.

Zelaya, now living in exile in the Dominican Republic since being overthrown by a military coup on June 28, 2009, replied Dec. 12 to the Ford comments in a three-page statement. Zelaya revealed that Ambassador Ford had asked him for a Honduran visa for Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile who is credibly accused of numerous terrorist acts including the blowing up of a Cuban passenger airliner in 1976, with 72 fatalities. Zelaya further said that when he was elected in 2005, Ambassador Ford gave him a list of individuals he expected him to appoint to his presidential cabinet, and became furious when Zelaya did not comply. Also: "[Ford] is the same person who accompanied me to the White House, where Bush railed against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and attacked my friendship with him. And through my whole administration he dedicated himself to defending the frauds [committed by] U.S. petroleum transnationals in Honduras."

According to the former president, the Wikileaks revelations show how the United States "manufactures its enemies" by calculated smear campaigns. "It should powerfully call our attention [to the fact that] the words of Ford are the same as those which have been published for three and a half consecutive years by those who were permanently attacking me from Washington [namely] the Arcadia Foundation run by Otto Reich [a Bush administration official] and Robert Carmona."

As far as the Honduran UN ambassador, Reina, is concerned, his being labeled as having "terrorist" ties seems to derive from his opposition to the CIA's use of Honduras as a staging platform for attacks into Nicaragua and El Salvador during the "Contra Wars" of the 1980s. Reina was never convicted of any terrorist act.

Zelaya had previously issued an angry response to another leaked cable, in which Ambassador Hugo Llorens, Ford's successor, had informed his State Department superiors a month after the 2009 coup that the embassy's analysis showed that the coup was completely illegal and violated the Honduran constitution. Under U.S. law and the charter of the Organization of American States, the United States should have then immediately cut off all support to the coup government and joined other countries of the hemisphere in pressuring it to step down. Instead, the United States vacillated and ended up supporting the results of a deeply flawed election process.

Many other cables embarrassing to the United States and also to some political people in Latin American countries have come out of the Wikileaks revelations, though not all of the 250,000 documents have yet been released.

Image: Zelaya surrounded by Cuban leader Raul Castro and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Bernardo Londoy // CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Sudanese protest lashing of woman

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 13:32:00 +0000

Scores of Sudanese women's rights activists and their allies descended on the offices of Sudan's Ministry of Justice, Dec. 14, to protest the beating of a young woman by laughing police officers that was captured on video and circulated around the world.

The video is available here, but be warned: it is extremely graphic and disturbing.

"The protesters were in the hundreds, planning to present a memorandum to the Minister of Justice," the Sudanese Communist Party said in a statement. "The security forces surrounded the protesters and demanded that they disband immediately. The peaceful protesters refused, demanding that the security forces respect their constitutional rights of peaceful assembly."

Sudan has a troubled political situation. Government-backed militias have targeted and killed many in a bloody civil war in the south, especially around the Darfur region. In certain areas of the country religious extremists have sought to take control.

The current controversy began when police officers found a young woman, covered head-to-toe in an Islamic robe, to be "mixing with men." According to them, this was "un-Islamic," and the woman was immediately lashed. The officers are shown in the video laughing as the woman was attacked.

The video sparked outrage around the world, but the fury started in the Sudan itself, forcing even columnists in government newspapers to call for an investigation.

Though done in the name of Islam, Sudanese Muslims seem appalled. In the video, some Muslim passersby told the officers, "God is the only authority" - not police officers.

The Sudanese government answered the protests with repression.

"Without warning, the police attacked the protesters, injuring a number of them and detaining 33 activists," said the Sudanese Communist Party statement. Among the arrested were SCP leaders and members.

As of press time, the protesters were still in prison. The Sudanese Communist Party is looking for international solidarity. Its statement says, "We call upon [you] to immediately protest to the Sudanese [government] or the nearest Sudanese embassy, demanding the immediate release of all detainees and respect [for] women's dignity and their rights and individual freedoms as well as to abolish all the laws that discriminate against Sudanese women.

Image: Scene from the shocking video.

World Notes: Cuba, Bangladesh and more

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 16:08:00 +0000

Cuba: Economic reforms apply to health care

Basing its account on the official document "Necessary Transformations in the Public Health System," Agence France Presse recently reported on governmental plans to re-organize, compact, and regionalize health services. The projected changes parallel overall economic re-adjustment plans calling for the elimination of 500,000 state sector jobs. Between 50,000 and 100,000 of some 600,000 health workers are regarded as "superfluous," although, according to the health minister, doctors are not included in the group. The plans call for health workers either to be relocated to areas of personnel shortage or to accompany health teams working abroad, some programmed to generate income. Health authorities are prioritizing clinical modes of diagnoses while de-emphasizing expensive laboratory investigations. Together, the health and education sectors consume 46.7 percent of Cuba's national budget.

Bangladesh: Textile workers launch massive strike

Police fire killed four textile workers on December 12. Tens of thousands are striking to force owner compliance with a government order raising the minimum monthly wage from $23 to $43. Many senior workers were incensed at still being locked into entry pay levels. Earlier pay increases date back to 2006 and 1994. In one area, foreign owners were forced to close 300 factories. The garment industry employs 3 million Bangladeshis, 80 percent women. Its $12 billion income accounts for 80 percent of the country's export total, reported the Financial Times. On December 13, a fire in a ten-story factory not necessarily connected to the strike caused 24 deaths and wounded dozens. A garment factory fire in February killed more than 20 workers.

Costa Rica: Opposition protests U.S. troops

At the government's request, the Legislative Assembly began consideration on December 13 of renewing permission granted earlier this year for U.S. military operations in Pacific and Caribbean territorial waters. Authority stems from a 1999 bi-national treaty directed toward drug -trafficking. The proposal is for 46 warships, 42 armed helicopters, and at least 4000 troops to undertake patrols for six months beginning January 1, 2011. Docking, long term use of harbors, and crew member shore leaves would be allowed. Representatives of four political parties demonstrated outside the Assembly as deliberations began. Protester Víctor Emilio Granados opined that anti-drug operations don't require such a large military force. "Costa Rica would be converted into the largest U.S. naval base," warned Luis Fishman, quoted by Prensa Latina

Spain: WikiLeaks reveals talks on AFRICOM hosting

On December 8, the El Pais daily released WikiLeaks documents showing that in 2007 former U.S. ambassador Eduardo Aguirre initiated negotiations as to placing the headquarters of AFRICOM, the U.S. military command in Africa, in Spain. On receiving Alan D. Solomont as U.S. ambassador last January, President Jose Luis Zapatero expressed his government's enthusiastic acceptance of increasing U.S. troop presence at its. base in Rota aimed at "serving the objectives of AFRICOM." The Pentagon also seeks access to two additional Spanish ports for nuclear - powered naval vessels that AFRICOM would deploy. The report on Librered.net suggests that Spanish receptivity to hosting AFRICOM represents an attempt to regain U.S. good will lost when Spanish troop were withdrawn from Iraq in 2004.

Japan: Peace Conference centers on removal of foreign bases

The 2010 version of the Japan Peace Conference took place on December 2-5 in Sasebo City, Nagasaki, where a large U.S. naval base is located. Among the 1200 delegates present were peace movement leaders from South Korea, the United States, and the Philippines. Underlying themes of the event were abrogation of the Japan - United States Security Treaty, removal of U. S. bases from Japan, and solidarity with the anti-base movement in Okinawa. Both candidates last month for Okinawa governor took positions opposing U.S. bases on the island, the Japan Press Weekly reported. A full day of the conference was devoted to discussion of the threat to peace posed by belligerent posturing in the Korean Peninsula.

Egypt: Defeated opposition takes to the streets

Members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood and Wafd parties staged street demonstrations in Cairo on December 12. At issue were the results of parliamentary voting on November 28 and December 5 when President Hosni Mubarak's NDP Party took 80 percent of the contested seats. The Muslim Brotherhood gained one seat, in contrast to 2005 when its candidates won 20 percent of the votes. Claiming widespread fraud, verified by neutral observers, both minority parties boycotted second round voting. A group of 100 former parliamentarians have organized a "parallel parliament, "inviting the participation of a wide range of regime opponents. On the agenda, according to Al Jazeera, is the planning of economic and social reforms and actions aimed at de-legitimizing the new parliament.

Photo: Bangladeshi garment workers marching at this year's May Day rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Letters read: "We salute you, May Day." Pavel Rahman/AP

British education cuts: a member of Parliament speaks out

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:43:00 +0000

The author of this article is a Labour Party member of Britain's parliament

Helmeted riot police, shields and batons drawn, welcomed the education protesters in Whitehall last week and ushered them into an immediate kettle.

The same picture was mirrored in Parliament Square and Embankment where the National Union of Students and University and College Union had hoped to rally to express their disdain.

Six hours later the students and their unaffiliated supporters emerged shocked, distressed, exhausted and entirely unempowered in the decision-making process that will determine their future and those of their children - if they can afford to have them.

From the comfort of the Commons, Business Secretary Vince Cable - having turned from economic saint to monetarist ogre in seven months - calmly told the house that state support for higher education teaching would be reduced from 60 per cent to 40 and that the rest would be "made up by the private sector."

This actually amounts to wholesale privatization and an increasing loss of academic independence.

And in the case of arts and humanities the cut is 100 per cent - effectively closing those courses to ordinary people.

The last decade has seen increased access to higher education and a much more socially and ethnically diverse student population.

Tens of thousands of those among the current student population are the first of their family ever to get to university. Tragically they could be the last.

Access to universities is not just determined by the level of fees but also by enabling 16-year-olds to stay on at school or college.

This has been made possible mainly because of plans for the education maintenance allowance, or EMA, which has given students some limited support on the road to university.

The coalition government now plans to take this away too, removing the opportunity for the next generation to have a chance of even getting to the foothills of a university course.

A 2008 NUS survey of 1,205 EMA recipients - conducted four years after its introduction - showed that 61 per cent felt that they would be unable to continue without it. This was when the banking crisis was encouraging the "thinking of the unthinkable."

To its credit, the Labour Party government, which lost power earlier this year, maintained the payment. In the run-up to the election, nobody said they would abolish it - indeed the Tories, as members of the Conservative Party are known, specifically said they would keep it.

The coalition government's massively unpopular decisions will force the next generation of students to either walk into crippling debt or to not pursue higher education at all.

In 2004, the last time this issue was voted on, the Tories and members of the Liberal Democratic Party voted against raising fees to £3,000. On that occasion - and on the first introduction of fees in 1998 - Labour left members of Parliament, or MPs, voted against it. Last week all Labour MPs voted against.

The only consistency in all this has been among those who believe in fee-free higher education.

There is a pattern to the Con-Dem plans for education, which will take Britain back to the 1950s. They constantly assert that "we are all in this together" and at the same time make the largest cuts on the most socially useful areas of spending such as support for higher education, keeping students in school or helping them into work through the future jobs fund.

On top of this the huge cuts in local government spending announced on Monday will cost jobs, deepen the recession and throw the floodgates open for reckless privatization.

We need look only to Greece and Ireland for confirmation of where this leads. And as in Greece the actions of tens of thousands of students have changed the face of British politics.

The optimism and determination of the current generation to make sure the next has the same opportunities is an inspiration.

In the first student demonstration the police and Parliament's authorities were surprised by the numbers.

In the second there was the introduction of kittling, the fencing-in of demonstrators, and, last week, 3,000 police were deployed to "control" the outcry.

In Parliament on Monday afternoon, coalition MPs indulged in an orgy of self-righteous indignation about the problems of disorder that followed.

Only a few MPs touched on the highly questionable tactics of imprisoning students and children on the streets without charge for many hours.

Home Secretary Theresa May claimed that anyone was able to leave the cordon if they wished, while outside the reality-distortion bubble of Parliament many were forced to spend a freezing afternoon on the streets, unable to get anywhere near to lobbying their MPs.

Labour's Dennis Skinner pointed out forcefully to May that after only a short time in power the government had already deployed vast numbers of police to try to suppress protest, creating scenes starkly reminiscent of the poll tax demonstrations 20 years ago or the miners' marches five years before that.

The Lib Dems, who are junior partners in the current coalition government, having campaigned so assiduously for the votes of students and their parents by promising the abolition of the fees altogether, have suffered the biggest backlash.

However we should not forget that it is a Tory-led government. The mean-spirited, divisive and uncaring attitudes of Thatcherite Britain are coming back.

While last week's education vote resulted in a coalition majority it was a hollow victory. The education protests are far from over.

The coming battle over EMA will bring more unrest, the weight of which will be bolstered by others equally determined to defend public services such as post offices or hospitals.

Cuts are unnecessary and the attack on services and public employment is nothing less than vindictive and brutal.

It is now up to the Labour Party to learn the lessons of the election defeat and develop policies that maintain full employment and the welfare state.

This means that the yawning gap between the richest and the rest has to be addressed and wealth must be redistributed.

The whole labor movement is obliged now to reconnect with its history and remember the need to speak out for basic principles.

Our young protesters are leading the way.

Jeremy Corbyn is Labour Party member of Britain's Parliament for Islington North. Article reposted from Morning Star newspaper; image by Chris Bennett // CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 "Cleggy" refers to Nick Clegg, leader of Britain's Liberal Democratic Party, which is the junior partner in a Conservative-led coalition governmnet; "wanker" is a rude word.

WikiLeaks spawns OpenLeaks, global whistle-blowing community

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 13:04:00 +0000

The biggest story about WikiLeaks may not be the contents of the documents it is releasing but its upending of secrecy, whistle-blowing and journalism as we know it.

One indication is the impending launch of OpenLeaks, announced this week by former WikiLeaks staff members. They say OpenLeaks will provide technology to allow whistle-blowers to anonymously leak data not just to news media but also to "NGOs, labor unions and other interested entities," BBC News reported.

"We are trying to build a community of various organizations that need or have use for anonymously submitted information," former WikiLeaks member Herbert Snorrason told the BBC.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who was second in command to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said OpenLeaks "aims to provide the technological means to organizations and other entities around the world to be able to accept anonymous submissions in the forms of documents or other information." Sources' identities would be protected along with the documents themselves.

OpenLeaks will begin testing the project with a group of organizations in early 2011, he said, adding, "We are already drowning in applications."

He said OpenLeaks aims to stay out of the spotlight. Wikileaks "has become too much about self-promoting the project and self-promoting people involved with the project," he told the BBC. "We're not aiming for any front pages."

Domscheit-Berg called his project "the next evolutionary step" from WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks leaped to fame in April this year when it published a videotape of U.S. helicopter gunners shooting down Iraqi civilians. That tape was part of a massive leak of U.S. government documents that include military battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the 250,000 State Department cables that have been grabbing headlines for the past few weeks. The U.S. has jailed a disaffected 23-year-old Army intelligence analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, charging him with leaking the files.

WikiLeaks started by publishing documents on its own website. But it moved in a new direction this summer when it turned over the Iraq and Afghanistan files to top mainstream newspapers in the U.S., UK, France and Germany, allowing them to publish news and analysis of the documents. It followed a similar practice with the State Department files. To date it has only published a tiny fraction of these documents on its own site.

New York Times media reporter David Carr sees the WikiLeaks phenomenon as "a new form of hybrid journalism emerging in the space between so-called hacktivists and mainstream media outlets." He calls it "a fruitful collaboration."

Some commentators are dubbing the diplomatic cables leak "Cablegate" - a reference to the 1970s Watergate scandal that brought Richard Nixon's presidency down. So far it appears these leaked cables have not exposed any "shockers." Much of the information made public thus far has been long known and discussed by serious analysts of international affairs, particularly on the left.

But the establishment media often have failed to report these stories unless, as in the WikiLeaks case, the information is thrust upon them.

A project like OpenLeaks could expand the pool of groups that can use and publicize whistle-blowing revelations, to include organizations not tied to big money interests. OpenLeaks leaders say they plan to establish a foundation in Germany to fund the project.

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is in a British jail fighting extradition to Sweden on charges of rape and sexual molestation. He and supporters argue the charges are politically motivated.

At the same time U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is considering whether or not to file criminal charges against Assange for publishing the leaked U.S. documents. The House Judiciary Committee plans to hold a hearing Thursday on the issue.

Legal experts say the U.S. would find it difficult to successfully prosecute Assange under espionage laws or other U.S. statutes. He is an Australian, not a U.S. citizen, never worked for the U.S. government, and has no known links to foreign governments. Moreover, he did not leak the files. He simply published them or gave them to established media outlets.

"Leaks of classified information to the press have only rarely been punished as crimes, and we are aware of no case in which a publisher of information obtained through unauthorized disclosure by a government employee has been prosecuted for publishing it," Jennifer Elsea, an attorney with the Congressional Research Service, wrote in a Dec. 6, 2010, report posted on the Federation of American Scientists website. She added, "There may be First Amendment implications that would make such a prosecution difficult, not to mention political ramifications based on concerns about government censorship."

Jacques Semmelman, a New York lawyer and authority on extradition law, told the BBC that if Assange is charged with espionage, it would be hard for the U.S. to put him on trial. Espionage is seen as a political crime, which is not subject to extradition under U.S.-UK, U.S.-Sweden and UK-Sweden treaties, Semmelman said.

Cancun: Are we running out of time on climate change?

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 12:10:00 +0000

The 2010 UN climate change negotiations in Cancun have concluded, and the most optimistic view is that it wasn't a step back, and that the steps forward, while miniscule compared to the challenges, represent progress of a sort.

Members of government, scientists, and leaders from 194 countries attended this 16th annual UN meeting on climate change, following last year's much higher profile gathering in Copenhagen. In contrast, this year's meeting elicited few if any mentions in the major U.S. news media. As in the past, farmers, peasants and citizen's organizations and their demonstrations were kept far from the negotiations; a march of several thousand mainly agricultural workers was kept miles from the meeting site.

The minor progress made was on two related fronts: one was the establishment of a fund, provided by the major developed countries, to help developing countries adapt to and mitigate the results of climate change. The other front was a related fund focused on subsidizing efforts to stop deforestation.

Even on some of the decisions agreed to in Cancun, many crucial details were postponed at least until next year's round of negotiations.

While this might seem like important progress, no provisions or decisions have been made yet on where or when the money is actually going to come from. This is like claiming a new empty glass is half-full, just because everyone agrees that someone should put water in it. Bolivian president Evo Morales stated that the lack of strong agreements amounted to "ecocide." He led a group of left-leaning Latin American countries that protested their exclusion from many closed-door negotiations.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said that the developed countries should "stop their squandering and irrational consumption of the planet" and that the main causes of climate change are "unsustainable patterns of production and consumption of the developed world." He went on to say "the time to act ... is running out, another year has been lost since the Copenhagen deception ... the peoples cannot wait for the powerful." In contrast, Ban Ki-moon, UN General Secretary, called for compromise, saying, "The world, particularly the poor and vulnerable, cannot afford the luxury of waiting for the perfect agreement."

Many developing countries called for a renewal of the Kyoto Accords, due to expire in 2012. These accords are the only existing legally binding treaty on climate change in existence, and place requirements developed countries. Most major developed countries oppose an extension because it would place no requirements on rapidly developing countries such as China and Brazil. China is now the single largest contributor of current global warming gases, though still much lower per capita and historically than the U.S., Australia, Japan, and Western Europe.

As well, an extension would continue to leave out the U.S., since Congress never ratified the Kyoto Accords. While many U.S. cities and even a few states have committed to abiding by the reduction targets in the accords, the likelihood of senate ratification of any climate change treaty has decreased significantly following Republican gains in the fall 2010 elections. While Republican elected officials almost universally reject the science of climate change, many Democratic senators from coal-producing states also vehemently oppose any limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

This occurs against the backdrop of growing damage to the environment from global warming. 2010 is on track to be the hottest in the 131-year record. Extreme weather events are increasing and increasingly damaging. Sea levels are rising. Ice sheets are melting. The world's oceans are acidifying. Permafrost is thawing, releasing both carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, on top of the escalating releases of greenhouse gases from industrial and farming practices. The Kyoto Accords, despite being legally binding, have not resulted in any slowdown in greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, emissions are growing, due to the rapid industrial development in China, India and other parts of the world, from escalating deforestation and from continued consumption of fossil fuels.

Climate change is creating some unique challenges to the world - for example, the legal quandary posed by small Pacific Island nations that will likely disappear sometime during the course of this century. Some of these countries exist only a few feet above current sea level, and their existing supply of fresh water is being eroded by incursions of rising ocean water, which may force emigration even before their land disappears under rising the oceans. If the peoples of those nations are forced to migrate, does the nation still exist, or will it disappear into whatever country its people migrate into?

The next report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the most authoritative (and some claim, conservative) estimate of climate change, is not due until 2014, but all indications are that the worst case scenarios of the 2007 report will become the most likely scenarios in the next.

Image: From Oxfam International. A giant message in a bottle from millions of the world's poorest people washes up on a Cancun beach. Oxfam is calling for a climate fund to be established in Cancun to help poor communities adapt to a changing climate and to help pave the way to a fair ambitious and binding global deal to tackle climate change. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Colombian repression swells ranks of political prisoners

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 11:06:00 +0000

The growing mass of Colombian political prisoners has gained less international attention than the murdered and "disappeared," than millions displaced from their land, than epidemic spying and fear-mongering.

That may be changing. Fifty lawyers with the Second International Caravan of Jurists were denied entry into Colombian prisons last August. In November 1,000 British academicians wrote President Juan Manuel Santos on behalf of political prisoner Miguel Angel Beltran, being held, they said, "for his political opinions rather than for any crime." British parliamentarians are demanding Beltran's release and that of four other prisoners.

The story of paramilitary commander Jorge Iván Laverde Zapata poses an attention - grabbing contradiction. At his recent trial, he admitted to ordering 4000 civilians killed, arranging for massacres, and murdering 100 people himself. However, the 40-year jail term he earned morphed automatically into an eight year sentence. Under the government's "Justice and Peace Law," paramilitary leaders receive light sentences in return for demobilizing troops and confessing.

Many others, by contrast, go to jail for years without trial for the crime of political dissent. The British Justice for Colombia group catalogues the examples of nine recently released prisoners. Among them were five unionists, two peasant organizers, one indigenous leader, and a human rights worker. Their jail terms ranged from six months to three years. Only one was tried.

Colombia's prison population exceeded 70,000 in 2006, when 22,000 were awaiting trial, according to an Organization of American States survey. Current estimates place political prisoners at 7,500, including captured FARC insurgents. "Delay in the processing of legal cases of political prisoners is notorious," the OAS reports. Yet military officers accused of extra-judicial executions have left jail after three months, taking advantage of a legal requirement that all evidence and charges be presented within that time. That rule is ignored when it comes to political prisoners.

Authorities are accusing most political prisoners of rebellion and terrorism, specifically of ties to the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). As a result of false accusations, persecution, and the prospect of prison, fear and intimidation have mounted. The government has exploited computers seized at a FARC encampment in Ecuador raided by its military on March 1, 2008. Emails supposedly derived from those computers have been used to justify rounding up peace activists and political opponents. The government claims the emails document links to the FARC used to justify rounding up peace activists and political opponents. A high placed police witness has questioned the authenticity of the computer material.

James Jordan, writing on Narco-News, notes that 10 years ago under Plan Colombia, Washington began funding the construction of 11 new prisons to accommodate 24,000 more prisoners. At La Tramacua, the first prison to open, water - "a trickle coming out of a pipe" - is limited to 10 minutes a day. Sanitation is primitive, with "spoiled food found to contain fecal matter." Torture and prisoner abuse are rampant.

In a personal communication, Jordan indicates the two governments "are engaged in an effort to attack, marginalize, intimidate and destroy a peace process in Colombia based on dialogue involving all major parties." Jordan suggests recent Chilean and U.S. government threats against their own Colombia solidarity activists represent a joint effort to extend the Colombian war against dissent beyond its borders.

Miguel Angel Beltran Villegas was engaged in post-doctoral studies in Mexico City, when authorities there seized him on May 22, 2009. His immediate transfer to Colombia was fraught with torture and legal irregularities. Sociologist Beltran's academic studies have focused on the history of popular struggle in Latin American. A judicial hearing on November 25 recessed due to missing evidence.

Liliana Obando, teacher, graduate student, and mother of two served as human rights director for Fensuagro, Colombia's largest agricultural worker. Much of the support following her imprisonment on August 8th 2008 comes from friends she made on worldwide fundraising tours for Fensuagro. Court authorities cut short a November 12 hearing for lack of crucial defense testimony.

David Ravelo, Communist Party leader and head of the CREDHOS human rights group, is a veteran opposition figure in Barrancabermeja. After his arrest on September 14, Ravelo was transferred to a Bogota prison under anti-terrorism statutes. The government used a discredited paramilitary chieftain's accusations against him as rationale.

Other political prisoners are worth noting:

Arrested November 15, 2008 Carmelo Agamez Berrío headed the Sucre office of the human rights group Movement for Victims of State Crimes. He had accused a local official of mismanaging public funds.

Rosalba Gaviria Toro of Armenia is a trade unionist, community leader and human rights campaigner. She was arrested on March 9, 2009. The government says she's a "guerrilla" and "terrorist."

As president of his local human rights committee, Jose Samuel Rojas Mora organized community political education classes. Prior to his arrest on September 10, 2010, the local Army commander harassed him. He too is identified as a guerrilla collaborator.

Lawyer Carolina Rubio Esguerra, was arrested and jailed on November 16, 2010 in Bucaramanga. She is a well-known advocate for political prisoners and officer of the large umbrella human rights coalition, the "Colombian, European, U.S Coordinating Group." Rubio, eight months pregnant, was released two days later to house arrest.

La Tramacua prisoner Felix Roberto Sanabria was imprisoned in 2003. He began a hunger strike on September 17, 2010, demanding that prison authorities separate political prisoners from common criminals and paramilitary inmates.

A letter Miguel Angel Beltran wrote his family from jail is a plea for our solidarity. He - and one assumes, many of his counterparts - "wants to see flourish in our homeland a new Colombia, where children no longer have to weep over the absence of parents killed in the war, where the peasant has a little land and the technical help to work it, where education, health care, and housing is prioritized as a right and not the privilege of a few, where those of us exercising critical thought are not treated as terrorists."

Gbagbo refuses to cede power after elections in Cote d'Ivoire

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 00:17:00 +0000

His term expired five years ago. He postponed elections six times over the past decade. Then after allowing them, he lost on November 28, observers say. However, he blocked official results from being announced, declared a curfew, closed the borders, shut down foreign news sources and had himself sworn into office, after his ally overturned the election results.

The "he" is Laurent Gdagbo of Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). Now Gbagbo faces international condemnation and calls to hand over power to the recognized winner, Alassane Ouattara.

Several hours after Gbagbo took the oath of office at the presidential palace, Ouattara invited reporters to his campaign headquarters, a hotel guarded by UN peacekeepers, to witness his own swearing-in ceremony. Both men have appointed cabinets and there are rumors two sets of ambassadors will be named, too.

Former South African president and African Union appointed mediator Thabo Mbeki left Ivory Coast on Dec. 6 after two days of talks with Gbagbo and Outtara. The West African regional grouping ECOWAS plans a special summit in the Nigerian capital of Abuja to consider its response to the Ivorian standoff. And the International Criminal Court has vowed to monitor violence in the country.

At least 17 people have been killed since the elections, including four shot dead by security forces outside an Outtara party office Dec. 1. The UN announced it is moving non-essential staff out of Ivory Coast following similar evacuations by foreign companies.

Gbagbo risks diplomatic isolation and possible economic sanctions, as the UN and Western powers recognize Ouattara as the legitimate president, and the World Bank and African Development Bank threaten to reconsider aid deals. The country's economy has been at a standstill since the election, as exports of cocoa, coffee, palm oil, and other tropical products through the port at Abidjan virtually have ceased. The Ivorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry reports of food shortages in the country and costs of some basic items have skyrocketed.

The elections were meant to reunify the West African nation since its north-south division following a brief civil war in 2002-2003 in which thousands were killed. Instead, Gbagbo's defiance reinforces the divide and potentially may reignite the conflict.

Although relatively peaceful and well-run, according to election monitors, the voting took place in a tense and separated country. The government, based in the national capital of Yamoussokro, controls the southern half of the country; the New Forces rebel group governs the north from the city of Bouaké, and a buffer zone is patrolled by a UN peacekeepers and French troops.

A north-south transitional unity government was inaugurated earlier this year, several weeks after a previous one created in 2007 was dissolved by Gbagbo. But about 10,000 UN peacekeepers remain in Ivory Coast. The prime minister of the unity government and leader of the New Forces, Guillaume Soro, resigned his post in Gbagbo's administration last Saturday. A few hours later, he was re-appointed to the position by Outtara following his rival presidential swearing-in ceremony.

Gbagbo, a former university history professor from the southwest, draws his support from the mostly Christian south whereas Outtarra's base is in the predominately Muslim north and amongst migrant communities in the South.

Gbagbo claims there was massive fraud in the north and the Constitutional Council, responsible for settling disputes in presidential elections, invalidated results from seven northern regions, handing him a victory of 51%. A Gbagbo ally chairs the Constitutional Council.

The original results by the Independent Electoral Commission declared Outtara the winner with 54.1% versus 45.9% percent for Gbagbo.

This once relatively prosperous and ostensibly unified African country, officially known as Côte d'Ivoire, has been torn apart by nationalistic and xenophobic rhetoric initiated in the late 1990s by a series of weak rulers. Gbagbo and his youth militia known as the Young Patriots have perpetuated this vitriol after Gbagbo came to power in the disputed elections of 2000. They accuse Ouattara and his northern supporters of being "foreigners" who threaten "Ivoiritie" ("Ivoirieness") since many of the ethnic groups to which they belong spill over into countries to the north.

They also claim former colonial power France is behind efforts to unseat Gbagbo. Last week the pro-Gbagbo newspaper Notre Voie's ran the headline "Another failed coup d'etat by France. " As he took the oath, Gbagbo declared, "I am charged with defending our sovereignty and I will not negotiate on that. I have never called on someone from outside to put me in office." French interests in Ivory Coast remain considerable and France still maintains a military base there.

Despite the crisis of the past decade, Ivory Coast remains the world's largest producer of cocoa, a cash crop introduced during the colonial era and the primary ingredient in chocolate manufactured largely in the West.

The vast majority of seasonal laborers who work the country's mostly small-scale farms hail from the far less developed northern half of the Ivory Coast and surrounding nations such as Burkina Faso and Mali. Working and living conditions on many cocoa farms are appalling and there is well-documented and widespread use of child - and sometimes - slave labor.

Young people from the north often migrate to southern urban centers like Abidjan to work in the informal economy. Discrimination against northerners - poorer, Muslim, and sometimes with origins one or several generations back in neighboring countries - is widespread and stoked by politicians like Gbagbo. Over the past decade, many northerners complained they were being refused national identity cards necessary to vote in elections.

The irony is that while Gbagbo charges France with neo-colonialist interference, he embraces the rigid boundaries created by the former colonialists to assert an "Ivorian" national identity. Those colonial borders divided ethnic groups across West Africa but, to add further to the absurdity, the French governed Ivory Coast as part of a larger French West Africa federation. In short, Gbagbo is using colonial boundaries to deny fellow Ivorians their political rights while claiming he is being undermined by France. As he whips up anti-northerner and anti-Islamic hysteria, he betrays the socialist politics he once claimed to promote and he undermines the Pan-Africanist program of unity.

These underlying ethnic and religious tensions were masked by the decades-long comparative affluence of Ivory Coast, hailed as a so-called success story by the IMF and World Bank, during the Cold War. It was firmly allied with the West under the autocratic rule of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the country's first and only president until his death in 1993, who encouraged cash-crop expansion and outside investment.

In fact, Ivory Coast was the economic hub of West Africa, surrounded by countries plagued by coups and wars, boasting a sizable expatriate population. The country's prosperity began to decline in the 1980s due to the global recession and regional droughts and its political stability was shattered by coups in 1999 and 2001.

Gbagbo's immediate predecessors, Henri Konan Bédié and Robert Guéï, vastly unpopular and clinging to power, began the campaign against northerners.

Indeed, despite being a former prime minister, Outtarra was prevented from standing in elections in 2000 on the allegation that he was not Ivorian since it was claimed his parents hailed from Burkina Faso. A former official of the International Monetary Fund, Outtara is seen as no progressive, but his presidential campaign this year symbolized the aspirations of northerners who have been marginalized and maligned in the politics of hatred over the past decade.

Now, Outtara waits in an Abidjan hotel to assume the presidency he won in elections deemed largely free and fair by Ivorian and international monitors as his defeated opponent defiantly stays put in the presidential palace.

Photo: Women in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, celebrate International Women's Day, March 8, 2005. (Ky Chung/UN/CC)

Petitioners urge President Obama, Free the Cuban Five!

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 13:33:00 +0000

The Let Cuba Live Committee of Maine has launched a petition drive to put pressure on President Obama to free the Cuban Five political prisoners. Prompted by Amnesty International's appeal in October to Attorney General Eric Holder, the Cuba solidarity group (formed in 1992) launched the campaign on behalf of the political prisoners. A comprehensive report on U.S. judicial failings in the case accompanies the appeal.

Amnesty International is asking the administration to consider clemency. Representatives of organizations already working for the Cuban Five, along with other human rights activists from across the nation, came together with Let Cuba Live's encouragement to plan the petition campaign, which is seen as nationwide in scope. The petition authors envision a good possibility that people of varied political viewpoints will sign on, mainly because the petition follows Amnesty International's lead in focusing on human rights and the rule of law.

Additionally, the petition project has potential use as an educational tool, one informing a general public largely unaware of the Cuban Five case. Toward that end, an information sheet on the case has been fashioned for distribution to people signing the petition, or those who are undecided but wanting more information.

Seeking petition signatures, members of the petition planning group were on hand at Amnesty International's northeast regional meeting in Boston on Nov.13 and at the School of the Americas Watch vigil in Columbus Georgia a week later.

Visit www.letcubalive.org to download PDF versions of the petition and the Case of the Cuban Five Fact Sheet.

World Notes: Cuba, Gaza and more

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 12:07:00 +0000

Nigeria: Bribery investigators accuse Cheney

On Dec. 2, authorities arrested 23 officials of companies accused of paying $180 million in bribes to secure a $6 billion liquefied natural gas contract during the 1990s. They include the Texas-based Halliburton Corporation, the world's second largest oilfield services provider, which was headed from 1995 to 2000 by former U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney. According to globalresearch.ca, an arrest warrant for Cheney "will be issued and transmitted through Interpol." At issue are payments to Gibraltar based Tristar Company that served the consortium of corporations involved with the natural gas project. Last year Albert Stanley, an executive with Halliburton subsidiary KBR, pled guilty to the bribery charge and Halliburton offered a $579 million settlement of the case, which apparently was not the end of the matter.

Gaza: Report claims humanitarian disaster

Oxfam UK reports that five months after Israel announced the easing of its "illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip," almost no construction material enters Gaza, "humanitarian items, including vital water equipment" are unavailable, and two-thirds of Gaza factories lack raw materials. As a result, 80 percent of the population depends upon international aid. These findings are part of a detailed report jointly released on Nov. 30 by 26 humanitarian aide and human rights groups, including Amnesty International UK, Oxfam International, and Save the Children UK. The report, entitled "Dashed Hopes," calls for a new diplomatic initiative aimed at lifting the blockade, including a UN Security Council meeting, free movement of people, exports and imports across Gaza borders and accountability for human rights violations. See full report.

South Korea: Temp workers on strike, UAW supports

Temporary contract workers began a sit-down strike at Hyundai's Ulsan plant on Nov. 15. The corporation hires one-fifth of its workers for brief terms and thus can get away with "poverty level wages," according to UAW president Bob King. The Supreme Court in July struck down an arrangement by which façade subcontracting companies do the hiring, a practice that nevertheless continues. Temporary workers struck after their subcontractor employer closed down and Hyundai indicated its replacement would rehire only those who had dropped their new membership in the Korean Metal Workers' Union. Korea Times reports the strike has delayed completion of 18,700 autos. The UAW staged a solidarity demonstration at a Hyundai installation in Ann Arbor on Dec. 6. Learn more here.

Cuba: Solidarity with the Cuban Five

"Terrorism was the constant shadow" enveloping the sixth International Colloquium for the Liberation of the Five, held in Holguin Nov. 17 - 21. The Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, celebrating its 50^th anniversary, had organized the event. Andres Gomez, based in Miami and Havana, reports on rebelion.org that 15 Cuban émigrés from the United States attended, along with 325 delegates from 50 countries, in order to build international solidarity with five Cuban men in U.S. jails. Their crime had been to defend Cuba against terror attacks. The conference featured workshops, plenary sessions, informal contacts, interchange with Holguin residents, and a march through the city joined by thousands of students.

Guatemala: Plague of violent deaths continues

The Catholic Archdiocese of Guatemala's Human Rights office (ODHA) reported Nov. 30 that between 1997 and Sept. 2010, the annual average of people killed or disappeared in that country was 4,487. EFE news reports also that when 200,000 Guatemalans died during 36 years of armed conflict, between 1960 and 1996, the comparable figure was 5,556. The annual rate of violent deaths since 2008, when President Álvaro Colom took office, is the highest since 1996. Slightly more than half the respondents to an ODHA-conducted survey link epidemic violence to poverty. Government data indicate 3,000 women have been killed since 2005 - 577 so far this year, with no perpetrator identified in 95 percent of cases.

Spain: U.S. may have meddled in judicial proceedings

Following Wikileaks's release recently of U.S. diplomatic communications, leftist parliamentarians are castigating the Attorney General for failure to prosecute U.S. soldiers accused of killing journalist José Couso in Baghdad in 2003. In 2005, a Spanish court ordered the arrest of three of them. A cable released in May 2007 has U.S. Ambassador Eduardo Aguirre assuring the State Department that the Spanish government had "helped in the wings" so that an appeals process would "end the investigation into the reporter's death." In another communication reported by IPS, Aguirre indicated "behind the scenes we have fought tooth and nail to make the charges disappear." To reporters, Couso's family complained that the government "rather than defend national sovereignty [acts] in the service of a foreign power."

Haitian elections a source of new conflict

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 14:41:00 +0000

The November 28 general elections in Haiti are over, and the votes will probably be counted by December 7. But as many predicted, the task of carrying out a national election may have proved too much for Haiti's administrative infrastructure, in a shambles due to the January 12 earthquake which killed as many as 250,000 people (including government officials), destroyed most public buildings in the country, and forced massive numbers into unsanitary squatter camps.

To the woes of the earthquake have been added those of Hurricane Tomas and a cholera epidemic. Moreover, only a small proportion of promised international aid has actually arrived.

The election was held to choose a new president, 10 of the 30 senators and the entire 99 person lower house of the national legislature. It was originally scheduled for February 28, but was delayed because of the earthquake.

Toward the end of 2009, the Provisional Election Council, C.E.P., had refused to certify the candidates of the largest party in the country, Fanmi Lavalas, which is headed by former president Jean Bertrand Aristide. From his forced exile in South Africa, Aristide sent in a faxed document with his signature endorsing the list of Fanmi Lavalas candidates, but the C.E.P. refused to accept it, saying that Aristide would have had to come to Haiti personally to sign the document. So no Fanmi Lavalas candidates appeared on the ballot, which led to early charges that the election was illegitimate and unrepresentative.

Several other candidates were also knocked off the ballot including rapper Wyclef Jean, ruled ineligible because he resides mostly in the United States.

There is much at stake in these elections. The winning presidential candidate will have a major say in the direction of Haiti's long and short-term development strategy.

The major powers that impact Haiti economically (the United States, France and Canada) want to see a strategy based on direct foreign investment, which means that Haiti should continue to be the location of runaway industry attracted by low wages and taxes.

However, there is an alternative strategy, which would entail integrating Haiti into one or several of the regional multinational bodies which have been developed as a counterweight to US economic and political influence, including the radical ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the People of Our America).

When in power, Aristide had demanded that France reimburse Haiti for the billions it had extorted at gunpoint in the 19^th century, an action that arguably led to his overthrow with French and US support. For some the name of the game is to stop any force that might return Haiti to such radical stances.

On election day, there was massive frustration for as many as hundreds of thousands of Haitians who showed up to vote and were turned away because their names were not on polling lists. There were some complaints of intimidation and ballot stuffing, plus street protests and disturbances leading to at least 2 deaths.

Later on election day, 12 of the 18 candidates listed on the presidential ballot held a news conference in which they denounced the elections as rigged and demanded the results be invalidated. These candidates included Mirlande Manigat (a former first lady), Michel Martelly (a popular rapper), Jean-Henry Céant (backed by many Aristide supporters), plus former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune. To cheers from the audience, they accused the incumbent president, Rene Preval, of deliberate fraud in favor of his Inite (Unity) Party's candidate, construction executive Jude Celestin. Election authorities indignantly denied that there had been more than minor problems.

Preval is highly unpopular because of his perceived mishandling of the earthquake disaster response among other things. Even more unpopular is MINUSTAH, the United Nations military and civilian force which has been in Haiti since Aristide was overthrown for the second time in 2004, and which has had many violent clashes with slum residents.

However, on Monday Manigat and Martelly distanced themselves from the protest, evidently because preliminary results showed them ahead. Ceant was also among the leaders of the vote. Celestin is reportedly doing poorly.

Also on Monday, election observers from the Organization of American States, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and others said that they had found only minor problems and that the results should stand.

It is expected that vote counting will end on December 7. If, as is probable, candidates for any office, including the presidency, do not get fifty percent of the vote, there will be a runoff on January 16.

Photo: Haitians wait in line to cast their vote during general elections in Cap Haitien, Haiti, Nov. 28. Haitians went to the polls in the midst of a cholera epidemic that killed more than 1,600 people and hospitalized thousands as the country was still recovering from a catastrophic Jan. 12 earthquake. Emilio Morenatti/AP

Cuba saves lives in cholera-stricken Haiti

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 12:11:00 +0000

An earthquake killed 250,000 Haitians in January. A hurricane struck Nov. 5, shredding tarpaulins, shelter for 1.3 million homeless. Cholera arrived in mid-October, infecting 80,000 by Nov. 30, and killing almost 2,100. Experts predict that over six months, cholera will sicken half a million.

Cuban doctors led in responding to earthquake injuries. They've now cared for 40 percent of cholera victims. Over 900 doctors and other health workers are staffing 36 cholera treatment centers. UN spokesperson Niguel Fisher reports that Cubans are operating most of these CTCs throughout Haiti.

They've saved lives. Overall, 2.3 percent of 69,776 infected people have died, but of the 25,521 of infected persons attended by Cuban doctors, less than one percent died. As of Nov. 27, the Cuban teams had gone seven days without a cholera death. Argentinean physician Emiliano Marisca, trained in Cuba and working in Haiti, attributes success to trust Cuban doctors have earned by serving in Haiti for 12 years and by spreading out into remote areas to provide care.

Physicians associated with Doctors without Borders are in Cuba also. Joined by Haitian technicians and aides and staffing urban hospitals and 20 CTC's, 150 of them had cared for 16,500 cholera patients by mid-November. Chief of mission Stefano Zannini expressed "concern that after five weeks, two actors were providing 80 percent of the medical attention," meaning the Cubans and his own group.

UN humanitarian relief specialist Valerie Amos put out a call Nov. 24 for 350 more physicians and 2,000 nurses. Cuba announced that 300 members of the Henry Reeve medical brigade, disaster relief specialists, would go to Haiti to provide coverage for 12 additional CTCs. Their involvement will bring the total number of Cuban medical professionals combating the epidemic to 1,300, including dozens of Latin American School of Medicine graduates from 18 countries, Haitians among them. Several hundred additional Cuban doctors serve in Haiti on long-term assignments.

Norway, Venezuela and Brazil have supported the Cuban medical teams, contributing or paying for supplies.

The corporate media's' silence on the Cuban response annoys Angel Guerra Cabrera, writing in the Mexico City daily La Jornada: "I've lost count of the dozens of reports and interviews with ... NGOs inside and outside Haiti in which Cuban collaboration forms no part of the story."

Cholera aside, the Haitian people are living in the direst circumstances. Only two percent of earthquake rubble has been removed from Port au Prince. Most Haitians, jobless, lacking in formal education and prey to preventable deaths, endure extreme poverty. Hopes raised by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's decisive electoral victory in 2000 were dashed by his removal through a US-backed coup four years later. Since then, 9,000 United Nations soldiers and police have enforced a ban on Aristide's Lavalas Party, in the process killing over 1,000 Aristide supporters.

Of $5.3 billion promised for earthquake reconstruction in March, rich nations have delivered only two percent. Washington is delinquent on its entire $1.15 billion commitment. As of mid November, donors had supplied only $5 million of $164 million requested by the UN for cholera relief.

They've been under the gun before: in 1915 - 1934, during U.S. military occupation; in 1957 - 1987, during the U.S.-backed Duvalier father-son dictatorship; and two centuries ago. Reacting then to slaves having achieved independent nationhood, Thomas Jefferson sought to "confine the plague to the island." He set the stage for decades of commercial isolation.

Weeks before his death on Sept. 7, the Pastors for Peace leader Lucius Walker asked former Cuban President Fidel Castro about solutions for Haiti. Castro wrote, "Without losing a second, I told him, 'In the present world there's no solution, Lucius, in the future of which I speak, there is indeed.'"

LSAM graduate Dr. Emiliano Mariscal is of that future. "Each young person," he observes, "besides being anti-imperialist, loves liberty, dreams of peace, [and] abhors ... the death of little people, diverse people at the hands of well fed giants. Youth are reborn as 'Our Americans.' The future is in our hands. From action, comes collective welfare." He calls for "undying struggle" and unity.

Image: British Red Cross // CC BY-NC 2.0

WikiLeaks puts U.S. on the spot

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 12:05:00 +0000

This week's WikiLeaks release of more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables lifts the veil that cloaks the seemingly prim and proper world of international diplomacy.

The massive leak includes 243,270 reports sent by U.S. embassies around the world to the State Department, and 8,017 directives sent to them by the State Department. A vast mix of political assessments, reports of private talks with foreign officials, hearsay and gossip - including unflattering comments about leaders allied with the U.S. - the leaked cables have become a major embarrassment to the U.S. and especially Hillary Clinton's State Department.

WikiLeaks provided the documents to six major world newspapers: the New York Times, the UK Guardian, Spain's El Pais, France's Le Monde and Germany's Der Spiegel. As with previous WikiLeaks document "dumps" about Iraq and Afghanistan, we have to rely on analyses by journalists at these publications for much of the information about what the mass of documents contains.

Among the most widely noted revelations so far is the extent to which some leaders of Arab countries, in particular Saudi Arabia, have, behind the scenes, pressed for a U.S. military attack against Iran.

The hostility of Saudi and other Arab rulers to Iran is not news. However, an analyst at Tehran Bureau, associated with Iran's domestic opposition movement, says the cables show "the amount of pressure the United States has to resist from its allies who see a military strike as the answer to their concerns."

BBC world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds says what the documents show "is not that the U.S. secretly wants to go to war with Iran but that the U.S. has resisted pressure to do so from Israel and Arab leaders."

A former Israeli national security official said, as quoted by Der Spiegel: "These leaks show that Arab countries like Saudi Arabia are far more interested in Iran than they are in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Some suggest Israel and reactionary Arab regimes are satisfied to have each other as silent allies against Iran.

More embarrassing to the U.S., but also likely to produce further turmoil in Yemen, an emerging Middle East flashpoint, is documentation that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to conceal controversial U.S. air strikes in Yemen, which have killed civilians, by saying his government was doing the bombing. The leaked cables quote Saleh as saying, "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours."

On another global hotspot, leaked files report on conversations among U.S. and South Korean diplomats discussing the possibility of North Korea dissolving and the two Koreas reunifying. There are also reports of comments by Chinese diplomats indicating dissatisfaction with provocative North Korean actions but also insisting on calming tensions there. Some of these reports are second-hand, although Chinese officials in Europe have confirmed their essence, the Guardian reported yesterday.

The most explosive WikiLeaks revelation may be a classified July 2009 State Department directive, under Hillary Clinton's name, that asked U.S. diplomatic staff at the United Nations to obtain credit card numbers, computer passwords and encryption codes, frequent-flyer account details, even "biographic and biometric information" (such as DNA, fingerprints, etc.), for UN officials, including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and Security Council representatives, and also for personnel of nongovernmental agencies.

UN officials and other diplomats were taken aback by the "unusual extent" of the U.S. intelligence efforts, but also said "espionage does not come as a surprise here," the Guardian reported.

Carne Ross, a former British diplomat at the UN who resigned in the lead-up to the Iraq war, speaking on the Democracy Now show, called the effort to collect diplomats' DNA "extraordinary," saying, "I can't quite myself see how your saliva on a coffee cup is going help you learn the intentions of the UN or the government of country xyz."

Nevertheless, he said, "Everybody is spying on everybody else at the UN, including on Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. The British Development Secretary Claire Short, who also resigned over the Iraq war, has said publicly that the UK authorities were bugging the phones of Kofi Annan when he was Secretary-General. So I don't think that this will come as a great revelation to people at the UN. It will, however, be rather embarrassing for the U.S. diplomats currently practicing at the UN."

Certainly the revelation of over-the-top U.S. spying at the UN is an embarrassment for the Obama administration, which has emphasized its desire to close the door on the Bush era and make the U.S. a cooperative member of the world community.

Overall, the Guardian said, the leaked cables "reveal how the U.S. uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network."

Those who recall the Cold War and more recent history realize this is nothing new, and it's not just the U.S. who plays this secret game.

So far these files do not reveal much about top-level U.S. foreign policy strategy, nor point to any shattering scandal.

Perhaps the most interesting take comes from Der Spiegel. In an article titled "A Superpower's View of the World," the paper's staff suggests that from the thousands of documents "an image emerges of a superpower that can no longer truly be certain of its allies," is consumed by fear of terrorism, no longer has "the world on a leash," and is often "reduced to becoming a plaything of diverse interests."

Over the next few weeks many tidbits will be coming out as researchers go through the documents. It will take months and probably years to see what it all really means.

Photo: AP/Oliver Lang/dapd