WHAT IS TO BE DONE

 Lots of ideas were discussed on a direction for the climate change movement were batted around at the World Social Forum in Dakar.  Some good ideas, some not so hot, but whatever.  The problem is time is running out.  Got to get a move on.  Interesting stuff in the article below from www.thestrategycenter.org

At WSF Dakar, Ambassador Solon, Bolivians outreach to build climate justice movement for COP17 Durban and Rio+20

by Daniel Kim on Monday, February 28, 2011

In the disorientation of last-minute room changes, cancelled workshops and general logistical dysfunction of this month's World Social Forum in Dakar, one thing you could count on was that--each day--somehow the Bolivians would manage to host or help anchor two or three well-attended climate justice meetings. They were on the move and the diverse sectors of the climate justice movement were cohering around them.

Our Climate Justice Team from the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (led by Tom Goldtooth and Jihan Gearon of the Indigenous Environmental Network) was able to connect with them and with some of the leading South African grassroots environmental justice organizations working to host the alternative summit for COP17 Durban, like the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, Timberwatch and Groundwork.

An ambassador as organizer

For a UN Ambassador, Bolivia's Pablo Solon seems to bring some of the best qualities of a grassroots organizer. Each of his meetings reached out to different audiences yet presented a concerted message, a consistent agenda--whether we were in a packed college amphitheater or one of the many hastily erected, sand-blown tents. Each meeting, his delegation made sure every person walked away with the same pamphlet and book in hand. And each meeting they gathered contact lists and made sure to spend a lot of time listening, really listening.

The message

1. COP16 in Cancun was a serious defeat for Mother Earth; we must regroup.
2. The stakes of the current climate negotiations are very high for the planet. Bolivia stood alone in opposing the accord that came out of Cancun because it would result in only 3% to 17% voluntary (vs. Kyoto's binding) global emissions reductions and, thus a rise in global temperatures of 4°C or more: a planetary catastrophe. Real reductions of 40-50% are needed to stop the planet from burning.
3. Not only does the current "Cancun Accord" set the planet on a path toward catastrophe, but this new accord will be the template and foundation--they call it "synergy"--for all the other negotiating tracks of Rio +20 (climate, water, biodiversity, etc)
4. The deeper negotiating agenda of capitalism and empire is to replace the "sustainable development" paradigm of the original 1992 Rio Earth Summit with the new "green capitalism" paradigm.  (Solon talked about "environmental services" that nature provides!  More on this in a separate blog re: bringing nature's invisible labor to the market).
5. Our fight in the COPs' UNFCCC climate negotiation process must be part of a broader tactical plan for Rio+20.
6. We stopped them at COP15 in Copenhagen and we can stop them at COP17 in Durban but only if the social movements and grassroots ngo's are united, and are building aunited front with governments of the Global South and all progressive forces and institutions of the world.
7. There are new favorable conditions going into Durban. Carbon markets are failingand the climate financing promises that swayed many governments to switch sides from Copenhagen to Cancun are vanishing alongside predictions of capitalism rapid recovery. Even the UN is asking, where is the money? And with every day, more visceral and palpable effects of global warming are landing in people's lives.
8. Our climate justice program should be unified on two demands. First, emissions reductions targets of at least 40% to stop the burning of the planet. Second, no reductions can be allowed through offset schemes (like REDD), market mechanisms (carbon trading, cap and trade) or any other false solution.
9. What about an international Climate Justice Tribunal? In addition to street pressure (mobilizations, direct actions), we must add to our tactical arsenal a point of leverage on governments. What if governments knew that, by failing to reduce emissions adequately, they could be called to an international court to answer foreco-crimes, eco-cide, crimes against nature? There are estimates now that 350,000 are dying every year because of natural disasters due to climate change. Who will be held responsible?

Debating which demand should lead

The question of which demand to lead with is a crucial movement debate to have (a great teacher here calls it "a struggle for clarity"). A common focus on emissions reductions targets is not a given.

One of Ambassador Solon's arguments was that it is the best popular demand for social movements. He said, "How many people know what the Kyoto Protocol is or the technicalities of how it works? But when the main message is that a treaty has 3-17% emissions reductions that will take the planet to 4°C degrees of warming, everyone knows that you can't burn the planet."  The climate justice tribunal process could ground this demand with 1000's of voices from the frontlines of climate change testifying to the damage and endangerment of their communities.  

Counterarguments include those raised by GGJ and many other US grassroots groups in their "Open Letter to 1Sky from Grassroots Organizations." "Targets reinforce the 'carbon fundamentalism' frame that hides the root causes of climate change." The letter also argues that focusing too much on targets "leaves the space open for false solutions."

"And what about raising the issue of climate finance for adaption and mitigation?" asked my colleague Sunyoung Yang. "Especially as we head to Africa for COP17, we have to remember that finance is a key wedge that makes or breaks the stances of so many governments and ngo's of the Global South."

From Cancun's fragmented "spaces" to unity in Durban

One aspect of building unity going into Durban has to do with the physical site itself. In Cancun, the alternative civil society summit was fractured between 3 different sites:

• Klimaforum (mostly European organizations)
• Espacio Mexicano ("EsMex") (larger Mexican networks, larger NGOs, Climate Justice NowInternational, Hemispheric Social Alliance)
• La Via Campesina & the Assembly of Climate Affected Communities in Mexico 

Each site was effectively sealed off from the others. People have talked about how it was logistically impossible to move freely between sites. One attendee said, "If you went to one of the sites, you were basically stuck there for the day." The physical isolation was a material force in impairing coordination, networking and movement building. The separation of the sites also reflected some underlying political disagreements between sectors.

Fortunately, there were good signs in Dakar that the Durban alternative summit space will be more unified. The greater challenge as the COP moves to Africa may be to bridge the mainly Latin- and North-American and European Cochabamba process into a continent, where, as was mentioned in many workshops, many do not even know where Cochabamba is, let alone what happened there last year.

Continuing Cochabamba's consultative, movement-oriented process

Though the Bolivian delegation made a very concerted push in Dakar for the climate justice movement to unite, their approach was also very respectful and open-armed.

At the first workshop, I was struck by how the ambassador, after making his presentation for 20 mins, simply asked, "What do you think? What ideas do you have about what we can do?" and spent most of the remaining hour listening. A question he came back to in many workshops was another good example of their movement-oriented approach: "We are willing to host a second Cochabamba summit. Do you think we should? When would be the most strategic time to hold it? Should it be held in Bolivia or somewhere else?"

Our role in the U.S.

So with Bolivia's organizing plan clear, the challenge is for us to build ours with them. In theGlobal Wellbeing Working Group at GGJ, energy and interest in climate justice work continues to grow.

Almost 10 years ago, here at the Strategy Center, we began forming the Clean Air Campaign to answer the question, "What are we going to do about the United States?" We return from Dakar only clearer that the U.S. government is boldly leading the way to climate catastrophe. Where once it had obstructed and sabotaged progress as it did in Kyoto and Johannesberg, the US in Copenhagen and Cancun has now stepped out on the offensive and is aggressively leading a neocolonial agenda for a new global green capitalism.

There is no time to lose.  The road to Rio+20 is already being laid.  Next week, preparatory meetings for Rio+20 are happening in New York City.

"THANKS, BUT NO THANKS," SAYS LIBYAN REBELS

There wasn't much in the way of oil in Egypt or Tunisia and there wasn't ever any talk of US armed forces swooping in to help out protesters.  There is oil in Libya and there is talk of intervention.  Hey, I'd love to see Gaddafi's killing machine shut down, but I sure as hell don't trust the United States on this one.  I mean do you?  Anyway, there is no call from the Libyan opposition that I can find for such assistance from the U.S. or NATO.



The following is from the Hindu.


Libyan opposition rejects U.S. offer of weapons

Atul Aneja

“This revolution will be completed by our people”

DUBAI: The Libyan opposition has asserted that it is fully capable of toppling Muammar Qadhafi, rebuffing calls from influential quarters in Washington for weapon supplies to hasten the collapse of the regime.

The apparent ambitions of the United States to exercise early control over a nascent shadow leadership and the patriotic aspirations of the opposition for a united Libya seemed to have collided on Sunday.

At a press conference in Benghazi to announce the formation of the Libyan National Transitional Council, Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, who described himself as the organisation's spokesman, said the opposition could do without American intervention in its affairs.

“We are against any foreign intervention or military intervention in our internal affairs,” said Mr. Ghoga. “This revolution will be completed by our people with the liberation of the rest of Libyan territory controlled by Qadhafi's forces.”

Mr. Ghoga, a human rights lawyer, confirmed that around 2,000 volunteers had left for Tripoli by-passing Surt, Mr. Qadhafi's hometown, by taking a desert detour of hundreds of kilometres.

Mr. Qadhafi retains his stranglehold over most of Tripoli city, but the suburb of Tajoura, where protesters on Sunday chanted that they would prevail, has become restive. In the coastal city of Mistrata, dissidents repelled a pro-government assault.

Mr. Ghoga's emphasis on self-reliance followed remarks by the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offering dissidents “any kind of assistance”. Appearing on CNN, U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman compared the Libyan situation to the one in the Balkans in the 1990s when the U.S. “intervened to stop a genocide against Bosnians”. “And the first we did was to provide them the arms to defend themselves. That's what I think we ought to do in Libya.”

But reinforcing Mr. Ghoga's contention, and asserting that Libya was different, a former Libyan General with the opposition, Ahmed El-Gatrani, stressed foreign military support was unnecessary.

“We don't need foreign help as we moved on our own, on orders from no one outside.”

General Gatrani said that the opposition was also protecting Libya's precious oil resources, including the oil and product terminals of El-Brega and Ras Lanuf. New York Times is quoting Hassan Bulifa, who is on the committee of the Arabian Gulf Oil Company, the country's largest oil producer, that the company had resumed oil shipments on Sunday. It had loaded two tankers — one bound for China and another for Austria — at a port in Tobruk

Analysts say the U.S. inclination to work with a hastily formed provisional government that would fill the political vacuum in Tripoli following Mr. Qadhafi's anticipated exit was also not being appreciated in Benghazi.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu

JUNTA ON TRIAL FOR BABY STEALING

I apparently missed this despicable crap when it was occurring or my memory has just deleted it.  Either is possible.  Whatever, the case may be trial is too good for the likes of these fascist creeps.

The below is from Prensa Latina.

Former Argentine Dictators on Trial for Stealing Babies

Buenos Aires, Feb 28 (Prensa Latina) Trial begins Monday for former Argentine dictators Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, as well as former Gen. Santiago Omar Riveros, accused of systematically stealing babies during the last military dictatorship.   The trial will be broadcast on television, and former navy captain Jorge "El Tigre" Acosta, former admiral Antonio Vañek, and former mayor Jorge Antonio Azic will appear in court as well. Former marine Ruben Franco, and the doctor of the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), Jose Luis Magnacco, are also charged for stealing babies at Campo de Mayo and other clandestine detention centers. Among the 34 cases included in the case are the granddaughter of Uruguayan poet Juan Gelman, and the grandson of the founder of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Estela de Carlotto. Nearly 370 witnesses will testify in the first hearing about the alleged existence of a systematic plan to steal the newborn babies of pregnant women who were kidnapped and taken to illegal detention centers. hr/rab/dig/mpm

Modificado el ( lunes, 28 de febrero de 2011 )

PIPERS AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY

Okay, I'll be honest with you, before I read the following article I wasn't the least bit sure what pipers even were.  I figured though, if they were fighting white supremacists, this group of pipers was all right by me.  I was right.

The following is from Standuptohate.blogspot.com

Pipers unite against white supremacists (France)

Yannick Martin

Pipe players of Brittany on Sunday united against a group of US based white supremacists who are campaigning to discredit the French region's top piper, who happens to be a black man. 

Hundreds of traditional musicians from Brittany's top pipe bands, known as Bagadoù, convened on the town of Brest for the region's most prestigious championships on Sunday.

They were joined by thousands of fans in showing their support for Yannick Martin, a 24-year old virtuoso of the bombard, a double reed instrument from the oboe family, who has twice been crowned Brittany's champion player.

Mr Martin has been the target of a hate campaign by a Houston-based white supremacist website called Breiz Atao (Brittany Forever), the name of a Breton nationalist journal that supported Nazism in the second world war.

In a post called "le biniou et la bombarde" (a play on words for bagpipe and "wog"), commentators claimed that "an extra-European will never be a real Breton. Whether it pleases people or not, we've never seen black Celts." The site also included a provocative video later removed.

Mr Martin, born in Columbia but adopted and raised by a Breton family, has filed for charges of "racial discrimination". His brother, adopted and raised by a different family is also a top pipe player. Both play in one of the region's most acclaimed bands, Kemper, which competed in Brest yesterday.

Read this item in full at Telegraph

HOMELESS ON THE WALK OF STARS

As the beautiful people gather to collect their gold statues at the Oscars, the truly beautiful people wander the streets nearby looking for a place to sleep.  This is America.


From The Nation.

Homeless in Hollywood

Richard Pollak | February 24, 2011

Winter’s Bone, one of ten nominees for best picture at the Academy Awards, is not likely to win. It deals with a drug-addicted father who abandons his poverty-stricken family, leaving them on the edge of homelessness—subjects that rarely, if ever, prevail at Hollywood’s annual exercise in self-congratulation, where less troubling features like True Grit, The King’s Speech or The Social Network are favored to take the top prize. And when Hollywood’s haut monde arrives on waves of couture on February 27, it will not be fretting much about living in the nation’s “meanest” city in treating the homeless as criminals.
Los Angeles earned this distinction in 2009 when the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty surveyed 273 cities in the country. They based their report, “Homes Not Handcuffs [1],” on the number of anti-homeless laws in a city, the enforcement of those laws and the general political climate, among other factors. Los Angeles emerged on top because of its strategy of ticketing, arresting and occasionally brutalizing or just ignoring many of its homeless—tactics that local social service agencies and civil rights leaders had been decrying for years as not only inhumane but also financially counterproductive.
The so-called “Safe City Initiative,” for example, assigned a police contingent of fifty to tackle crime on Skid Row, a fifty-square-block area east of downtown that has been a homeless domain for decades. This crackdown cost an estimated $6 million a year, at a time when the city was budgeting just $5.7 million to serve the homeless. As “Homes Not Handcuffs” reports, “Advocates found that during [an] 11-month period 24 people were arrested 201 times, at a cost of $3.6 million for use of police, the jail system, prosecutors, public defenders and the courts.” By some estimates, that money could have provided housing for 225 people.
Politicians have made the usual promises to furnish more housing and services for the homeless, and some progress has been made since the 2009 report. But LA remains the homeless capital of the country, suffering certainly from the national economic travail but perhaps more from a continuing lack of urgency on the part of many well-housed and well-fed local and state officials. Last year, some 254,000 men, women and children were homeless in Los Angeles County (population 10 million) at some point, and 82,000 were on the streets on any given night. Not surprisingly, almost half of them were African-American, though blacks constitute just 9 percent of the county’s population; Latinos make up 47 percent of the county and 33 percent of its homeless. As many as 75 percent of people on the streets are not receiving the public benefits to which they are entitled. Some 20 percent are physically disabled, 25 percent mentally so.
Not long after I arrived here in January for an extended stay, I came upon one man who was both. He had rolled his wheelchair into the middle of Fifth Street and, gripping a fistful of bills in one hand while trying to keep a soiled brown blanket from slipping off his lap with the other, he yelled like a deranged maestro at cars streaming out of an alley. “Go, go, go! What’s wrong with you motherfuckers? Can’t you see my signals? Go, go, go!” When the light changed down the block and Fifth Street traffic came at him, he grabbed his wheels and scurried to the sidewalk, the decibels of his shrill directions rising as a gallery of fellow derelicts watched impassively.
This scene was played out not on Skid Row but a few steps from Pershing Square, in the heart of downtown. More homeless men and women occupied every corner of this landmark park, panhandling, cadging cigarettes, shuffling aimlessly, huddling under blankets on benches or the hard earth. In the center of this oasis of defeat, skaters glided and twirled cheerfully on the seasonal rink. In the evening, after the sanitized, guarded office buildings empty out and the concert- and theatergoers drive off into the city’s vast sprawl, the homeless take over the downtown like wraiths in a haunted encampment.
I am used to seeing a few homeless men and women in the main branch of New York’s public library, where I have spent many hours over the years. LA’s Central Library is more like a dedicated shelter, where dozens of the city’s down-and-out souls daily seek refuge, slouching at the tables and staring with glazed eyes at books and magazines, sleeping in the carrels, hanging out in the bathrooms or forcing their conversation on the patient librarians. “Many of them haven’t bathed in days, they reek,” one told me, looking at once irritated by the invaders and embarrassed by his judgment.
The problem reaches into every corner of the county. Driving to Santa Monica one morning, I encountered six ragged men at freeway off-ramps and at street intersections, all bearing signs reading “Homeless” or “Veteran” and pleading for food or money. In the seaside community itself, which has its own government but is part of Greater Los Angeles, scores of homeless have occupied the beachfront park for years. Joggers, cyclists, dog walkers and strollers weave around them as if they were merely palm trees, seeming to regard the strip’s denizens as permanent as the upscale shops along the Third Street mall three blocks away.
At the end of January, volunteers from several agencies, public and private, conducted a count of the homeless throughout the more than 4,000 square miles of Los Angeles County. The hope is that the efforts of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which leads this biannual census, and the many others groups and individuals who have been battling on behalf of the homeless, will show a significant reduction in their numbers. The results won’t be known until later this year.
While we wait, perhaps it would be useful if, after next Sunday’s glitter fades, the motion picture academy held a special screening (dress optional) of features that might focus Hollywood’s mind a bit. The Grapes of Wrath comes to mind, for starters. Other proposals welcome.

SOLIDARITY WITH FORT LAUDERDALE FOOD NOT BOMBS

Food Not Bombs is a local grassroots collective that shares hot meals with anyone who wishes to join, every Friday at 3 p.m. in downtown Fort Lauderdale. The purpose of Food Not Bombs is to create an environment of community for members of society that are displaced, as well set an example based on human needs and solidarity. Every gathering is a potluck picnic that is cooked from food that would have otherwise been thrown away, stressing the need for a culture of sharing and equality.  


Believe it or not, the authorities in Fort Lauderdale have decided to crack down on this dangerous bunch of food sharing criminals.  Earth First Newswire reports, 

An unwarranted Fort Lauderdale Police Department raid at a collective house leased by local Food Not Bombs members has raised the latest wave of official intimidation against the homeless community and its advocates to near tsunami levels. The raid, during which police kicked in an unlocked door and allegedly groped a female guest, appears to have been politically motivated as tenants and guests were barraged with insinuations of affiliation with black bloc anarchism and queried as to whether the residence was “a militant training camp,” and whether guests were “terrorists”.

The following is from Broward County New Times Blog. 

Food Not Bombs Clashes With Fort Lauderdale Police

By Michael J. Mooney, Fri., Feb. 25 2011 @ 7:02AM

Categories: Activism, Breaking News

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​The local collective of Food Not Bombs, an international group dedicated to ending hunger and war, says that members of the group have been harassed recently by Fort Lauderdale police. The group claims that police recently raided a house illegally and that officers are making a concerted effort to stop them from feeding homeless people in Stranahan Park. 

A police representative said that the group is misrepresenting the details of several incidents, that most of the issues in Stranahan Park have been about local businesses complaining, and that the group is "certainly free to serve food however they want." Police are looking into the claims, and more information will be available soon.

Meanwhile, the local activists -- many of whom identify themselves as anarchists -- are still without electricity in the Fort Lauderdale house they share. They say that last week, an FPL inspection led to the power being shut off, even though the bill was paid. Not long after the power went off, the activists say, a dozen or show police officers showed up in eight or nine squad cars and raided the house. They say that police brought a K-9 unit, that a male officer inappropriately frisked a female in the house, and that officers repeatedly inquired about the political leanings of the house residents.

They detail the story more here.

The group will hold a "solidarity march" today in Stranahan Park at 4 p.m. and will give a letter to city officials decrying what they see as police intimidation and a violation of their civil liberties.

Check back for more details shortly.