22nd November, 2003
"I
don't formally recognise George Bush because he was not officially
elected. So we are organising an alternative reception for everybody
who is not George Bush." -Mayor of London Ken Livingstone
inviting the whole human race to his party
European
Parliament rejects Ports Directive
In a huge victory
for the militant workers who organised a series of demonstrations
against the liberalisation and deregulation of Europe’s
port services, the European Parliament this week voted by 229
to 209, with 16 abstentions, to reject ultra-liberal proposals
from the EU Commission.
“The
rejection of the new ports directive by the European Parliament
is a great victory for the workers who would have been affected
by it,” said Erik Meijer, Euro-MP for the Dutch SP and
co-ordinator for transport issues for the United Left Group
(GUE-NGL).
“The directive
would have meant that dock work would have been opened up to
untrained, poorly paid workers. Dock workers from all over Europe
have been demonstrating outside the parliament at each stage
of the debate, and a few weeks ago I participated in a massive
demonstration in Rotterdam against this attempt to steal the
bread out of people’s mouths. I want to send my congratulations
to all who took part, and to all dock workers who will benefit
from this victory.”
Dutch and Belgian
unions feared that Rotterdam would become a playground for cowboy
companies. They maintained the pressure on the European
Parliament to reject the new neoliberal law right up to the
last minute. For Meijer,
the vote represented a historic decision. “It is the first
time that EU legislation has been thrown out as a direct result
of Europe-wide action of this kind.”
European Social Forum
Movements for social justice and against imperialism, militarism
and the destruction of the environment movements gathered last
week at the second European Social Forum, in St Dénis and three
other left-led municipalities on the outskirts of Paris last
week. An estimated 60 000 people from all over Europe and beyond
took part in over three hundred meetings on topics such as Iraq,
minority rights, democracy, resistance to neo-liberalism and
privatisation of public services. Anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism,
labour rights, the new European constitution were also debated.
The forum ended with a major demonstration in central Paris.
You can read
all about the ESF on the Forum’s own website here For transcripts of some of the speeches and
reports of a number of meeting organised by the Trans National
Institute (TNI) go to
here
One of the speakers at the Forum, previously interviewed in
Spectre, was Susan George. She has recently written an excellent
article on “The Paradoxes of Human Rights”: “One
of the paradoxes of the international human rights system is
that international institutions, such as IMF and World Bank,
commit some of the worst violations of the economic, social
and cultural rights. National and international political institutions
could make all human rights a reality yet they lack the political
courage to do so. The world global justice movement is fighting
to force
them to change their minds.” Read the rest at here
The
Emperor visits his province
“Who can
even remember -- it might as well have been the Neolithic age
– the moment when Bill Clinton exuberantly walked the streets
of London high-fiving passers-by near Trafalgar Square (where
demonstrators on Thursday are planning to pull down a 20-foot
high statue of our own Uncurious George)? Only a few years have
passed and yet we've all disappeared down some rabbit hole.
As I write this, Air Force One is descending on London's Heathrow
Airport
and the President
readying himself to step out and be greeted by Prince Charles,
but that description hardly catches the moment. "He"
will arrive with his imperial court and a veritable army of
protectors, advisers, jesters, and spinners. Bush, in fact,
no longer moves anywhere in anything less than an imperial processional.
Like some juggernaut, it literally transforms the landscape
in his path, turning his surroundings either into a series of
Potemkin villages or into a completely sterile environment.
His passages through the world are little less than those of
a planetary ruler -- though in Roman imperial terms, his reign
seems closer to Nero's (without the patronage of the arts) than
to Augustus's.” Read the rest at here
Protests
at the Junta Jefe’s visit were not limited to London. In
Glasgow on Wednesday, over 2000 protestors filled the city centre,
while smaller crowds gathered in other towns and cities in England,
Scotland and Wales. The Glasgow march, which brought rush hour
traffic to a standstill, was addressed by speakers from trade
unions, antiwar groups, religious organisations both Christian
and Muslim, and Members of the Scottish Parliament from the
Scottish Socialist Party, Scottish National Party and Greens.
Many of the protestors later joined buses which left
at midnight for the big London march.
FTAA in Miami
“The Free Trade Area of Americas meeting in Miami gathered
advocates of "free trade", meaning "free for
takeover" by a handful of US banks and corporations. But
since the WTO meeting in Cancun developing countries have learnt
how to build alliances to resist the US pressure.” Saul
Landau explains why the Free Trade Area of the Americas is “Good
for Big US Corporations; Bad for the People” here . John Cavanagh and
Sarah Anderson wonder whether developing countries can continue
to present a united front against a US corporate agenda at here
For ongoing
coverage of the protests accompanying the FTAA Miami gathering,
go to here Progressive
Response has devoted a whole issue to the FTAA at here
Hold On to Your Humanity: An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq
By STAN GOFF (US Army Retired)
Dear American serviceperson in Iraq,
I am a retired veteran of the army, and my own son is among
you, a paratrooper like I was. The changes that are happening
to every one of you--some more extreme than others--are changes
I know very well. So I'm going to say some things to you straight
up in the language to which you are accustomed.
In 1970, I was assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade, then
based in northern Binh Dinh Province in what was then the Republic
of Vietnam. When I went there, I had my head full of shit: shit
from the news media, shit from movies, shit about what it supposedly
mean to be a man, and shit from a lot of my know-nothing neighbors
who would tell you plenty about Vietnam even though they'd never
been there, or to war at all.
The essence of all this shit was that we had to "stay the
course in Vietnam," and that we were on some mission to
save good Vietnamese from bad Vietnamese, and to keep the bad
Vietnamese from hitting beachheads outside of Oakland. We stayed
the course until 58,000 Americans were dead and lots more maimed
for life, and 3,000,000 Southeast Asians were dead. Ex-military
people and even many on active duty played a big part in finally
bringing that crime to a halt.
When I started hearing about weapons of mass destruction that
threatened the United States from Iraq, a shattered country
that had endured almost a decade of trench war followed by an
invasion and twelve years of sanctions, my first question was
how in the hell can anyone believe that this suffering country
presents a threat to the United States? But then I remembered
how many people had believed Vietnam threatened the United States.
Including me.”
Read the rest
of Stan Goff’s moving, disturbing account of his Vietnam
experiences and their relevance for today’s conflict in
Iraq at
here
WTO sets
up new website on intellectual property and public health
The WTO website now includes a dedicated page for member governments
to make known their use (or intention to use) provisions allowing
cheaper pharmaceutical products to be traded more easily across
borders under compulsory licensing.
Go to here
to find out who’s
going to get the drugs they need at a price they can pay and
who’s not.
Year
One of the Prestige Oil Spill
The Prestige
oil tanker sank on November 13th, 2002. But this Thursday marks
not the one year anniversary of an accident, but year one of
a decade-long disaster. Despite this, criminally little has
been done to prevent the recurrence of a similar catastrophe.
Read a Greenpeace update at here
Khodorkovsky
“The
Russian oligarch Khodorkovsky has tried to establish a dialogue
with the people directly in an attempt to free himself from
dependence on the state. But the owner of a major corporation
who is trying to hang on to his slice of the pie taken from
the people back in the early 1990s is one thing; a politician
who has issued a challenge to the regime is another thing entirely.”
Read all about the only Russian billionaire not contemplating
buying an English football club. For the moment he has more
pressing concerns. Read Boris Kagarlitsky on “Comparing
Khodorvsky” at here
Noam Chomsky: Invasion
as Marketing Problem
“Establishment critics of the war on Iraq restricted
their comments regarding the attack to the administration arguments
they took to be seriously intended: disarmament, deterrence,
and links to terrorism. They scarcely made reference to liberation,
democratization of the Middle
East, and other matters that would render irrelevant the weapons
inspections and indeed everything that took place at the Security
Council or within governmental domains. The reason, perhaps,
is that they recognized that lofty rhetoric is the obligatory
accompaniment of virtually any resort to force and therefore
carries no information. The rhetoric is doubly hard to take
seriously in the light of the display of contempt for democracy
that accompanied it, not to speak of the past record and current
practices.” Go to here
read the rest.
War Times:
Iraqi Women Besieged by the Occupation; Sexual Violence, Unemployment
Rising
Fearing for
the safety of conference participants, the United Nations Development
Fund for Women (UNIFEM), canceled a planned symposium following
the Aug. 19 bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad that killed
22 people and injured 150 others.
That cancellation symbolizes the fallen hopes of Iraqi women
since the U.S. invasion. President Bush promised that a U.S.
war would improve the situation of women in Iraq. Instead, Iraqi
women have been besieged by violence, unemployment and other
crises set off by the occupation.
"The situation for women is worse now than before the war,"
said Eman Ahmed Khammas who directs the Occupation Watch Center
in Baghdad. "Because of the security situation, it's really
very difficult to move around and very dangerous. Families are
afraid for their daughters and don't allow them to be outside
on their own. Two weeks ago, they found a bomb in front of the
gate of my daughter's school. And there are many kidnappings
and rapes. I know a girl who was kidnapped just a few days ago."
Yanar Mohammed, co-founder of a new Iraqi group called the Organization
of Women's Freedom, agrees that women are worse off under the
U.S. occupation. "Organized gangs are kidnapping women,
to be exploited and sometimes to be sold. This has created fear
and horror for women. Many families now have prevented their
girls from going to school."
The above is an extract
from Andrea Buffa’s look at the situation of women in Iraq,
one of the many fine articles in the new edition of the US anti-war
publication War Times. To read the rest, and make sure others
do, if you live in the US you can request free bundles for distribution
in your area (in multiples of 25. Contact distribution@war-times.com.
Tell them how many you want and where to send them. If you live
outside the US, go to here
for more information. You should also visit this site to find
out how to make a donation to keep this votal initiative going.
