The latest on Dandelion Salad28 March, 2010 — Dandelion Salad
Veteran New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges has covered conflicts in Bosnia, El Salvador and Israel. Tune in for this thought-provoking lecture based on his best selling book that argues life is lived most intensely in times of war, often with tragic consequences. UCTV – University of California Television 11/1/2004, 59 minutes
16 March, 2010 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
In an indication that the climate justice movement is broadening, deepening and going local, there is now intense opposition to a climate-destroying energy loan for South Africa. The campaign is led by community activists in black townships allied with environmentalists, trade unionists and international climate activists.
The World Bank is trying to lend nearly US$4 billion to the Johannesburg-based state-owned electricity utility Eskom, the world’s fourth-largest power company and Africa’s largest carbon emitter (with 40% of South Africa’s total emissions). The loan is mainly for constructing the world’s fourth most CO2-intensive coal-fired power plant, Medupi, in the ecologically sensitive Waterberg area north of the capital of Pretoria.
The World Bank also aims to finance privatised power generation, notwithstanding the abject failure of public-private partnerships in South African infrastructure, including in electricity and water. More than 200 organisations have signed up in protest.
28 March, 2010 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
In January 2000 Fatima Meer enraged ANC leaders by opposing the eviction of destitute families from council flats in Chatsworth, Durban. The ANC’s objective was to sell off the council housing. Meer helped to establish the Concerned Citizens’ Group to organise protests against the ANC’s anti-poor policies like privatisation and cost-recovery, which had led to violent evictions and water cutoffs. The ANC deputy mayor of Durban Trevor Bonhomme called Meer a counter-revolutionary. Watch the video to hear her response.
On March 12, 2010, Fatima Meer passed away at the age of 82, the result of a stroke she suffered two weeks before. Meer was a long-time fighter against apartheid, racism and social injustice, both before and after the fall of the white minority regime in South Africa in 1994. Despite being a veteran of the ANC movement, and the author of the definitive biography of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela (Higher than Hope, Penguin 1988), when the ANC in government embraced neoliberalism Meer threw in her lot with poor and oppressed who, despite the change of government, continued to bear the brunt of inequality and exploitation. Below, Patrick Bond and Orlean Naidoo pay tribute.
28 March, 2010 – RT.com
NATO and Russia have failed to reach a consensus in a tug of war over tackling the Afghan drug problem. The alliance has rejected Moscow’s appeal to eradicate opium poppy fields in the Islamic Republic.
20 March, 2010 – Stop NATO
The world’s oldest extant military bloc (formed 61 years ago) and the largest in history (twenty eight full members and as many partners on five continents), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, counts among its major member states all of Africa’s former colonial powers: Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany and Belgium.
After World War II and the groundswell of anti-colonial sentiment throughout Africa and Asia, the European powers were forced to withdraw from most of the African continent, though Portugal retained its possessions until the 1970s.
Most new African nations adopted some model of socialist-oriented economic and political development and the continent as a whole more closely aligned itself with the Soviet Union, which moreover had for decades supported the anti-colonial struggles in Africa, than with the West, both Western Europe and the United States.
28 March, 2010 — Stop NATO
U.S. and NATO military expansion along Russia’s western and southern flanks diminishes the need for Cold War era nuclear arsenals and long-range delivery systems appreciably. Washington can well afford to reduce the number of its nuclear weapons and still maintain decisive worldwide strategic superiority, especially with the deployment of an international interceptor missile system, unilateral militarization of space, and super stealth strategic bombers and the Pentagon’s Prompt Global Strike plans for conventional warheads with the velocity and range of intercontinental ballistic missiles to destroy other nations’ nuclear forces with non-nuclear attacks.
On March 26th U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev reached an agreement on a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START 1) of 1991.
The new accord, if it is ratified by the U.S. Senate, will reportedly reduce U.S. and Russian active nuclear weapons by 30 per cent and effect a comparable reduction in the two nations’ delivery systems: Intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic long-range bombers and ballistic missile submarines.
After a phone conversation between the two heads of state to ‘seal the deal,’ Obama touted it as ‘the most comprehensive arms control agreement in nearly two decades.’ [1]
Like much of Mr Rozoff’s work, this reads like it was written 15 years ago. It is the simplistic American world view of the immediately post-cold war years. America “won” the cold war and is destined to rule the world for the rest of eternity! At a time when the American Empire is falling apart on every front, it sounds very silly! Defeated in Iraq, defeated in Afghanistan, NATO discredited, Israel a pariah state, forced to attack the EU and the euro openly and God alone knows how many other supposed “allies” are being similarly blackmailed, humiliated by its inability to provide its own people with jobs, health care or good education, its economy collapsing, unable to undermine Russian democracy or hype up a new cold war, terrified of China’s economic might … Not a pretty picture! I doubt therefore if the Russians are “deferring” to the US on anything! They are simply taking advantage of the growing weakness of the US to get arms reduction going without appearing to humiliate the US (which would start the rednecks screaming!). I’m guessing that Mr Rozoff’s purpose was to divert attention from the US collapse by claiming that the world is still the way it always was, with America always winning!
27 March, 2010
The theme of this year’s annual policy conference for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was ‘Israel: Tell the Story.’ And it was quite a story that AIPAC wanted to tell.
The conference aimed at imparting to the over 7000 attendees ‘an intimate understanding of the many ways that Israel is making the world a better place,’ with a focus on peacemaking and innovation. According to the AIPAC web site, conference goers will also ‘meet Israelis who rush to the scene of natural disasters in far away lands because they believe that to save one life is to save the whole world.’ No mention was made of the 1400 people killed during the Israeli assault on Gaza.
Against a backdrop of creative blends of US and Israeli flags and icons, the three-day conference in Washington DC included plenary speeches by former Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom, according to journalist MJ Rosenberg, delegates were warned in advance not to boo or hiss. Workshops varied from self-serving questions such as ‘Are Settlements An Obstacle to Peace?’ and ‘Is Israel Treated Unfairly in the Press?’ to ‘The Gaza Dilemma’ and ‘Inside Iran.’
Military Resistance 8C17: Marines “Can Barely Conceal Their Contempt For The Afghan Soldiers Who Live Alongside The Americans”
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26 March, 2010 – CounterCurrents
As a historian, Carolyn Baker has a keen eye for current events that are indicators of the collapse we’re seeing all around us. But she’s also a psychologist concerned about how we personally navigate the turbulence and find meaning within it. The author of Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse, she describes the old story that isn’t working anymore (humans are separate from nature), and the new story we must live by for real sustainability. Her Speaking Truth to Power website is a rich collection of articles reflecting both collapse and preparedness action. (carolynbaker.net/site). Listen to audio. Read Janaia’s journal about this conversation.
MichaelKenny 14:18 on March 28, 2010 Permalink
Not a bad analysis, but the last paragraph is absurd. The idea that any European country dreams of “going back” to the colonial era is just plain silly! Americans never seem to be able to get their heads around the idea of a world in perpetual movement, where things don’t just go around in a permanent circle. Also, as he has done in other articles, the author falls into the “America always wins” trap. Both of those are aspects of the now discredited “end of history” theory.