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unusualmusiccolorbluela_vie_noireThe department in which she is taking up her position is described as responsible for the development and implementation of social policies which guarantee citizens of Bogota "the ability to exercise their rights, in conditions of equality."
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In the interview Piñero -- who has 13 years experience of managing public resources at district and national levels -- also outlined her priorities as newly-appointed director. They include addressing the needs of children and the elderly in the city, and setting up control points within the department to prevent corruption.
la_vie_noireeccentricyoruba:Billions are being lost, not collected in taxes due to corporate tax evasion throughout Africa. A Study by a Swedish agency, Forum Syd suggests that Money taken illegally from the developing world is worth 10 times annual global aid budgets, according to a recent study.Tax evasions by multinational companies in Africa is so vast that tax analysts believe that if the money were paid, most of the continent would be “developed” by now. But, lacking a sophisticated tax code, or the people qualified to enforce tax laws, many African countries continue to lose money that could solve most of its financial problems.
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This all goes back to weak governing, the state not having competent officials to handle the work in enforcing the tax laws. Just blaming corporations shouldn’t be enough. Some blame has to be directed toward government officials who in many cases allow this to take place. We all know that nothing talks louder than money and bribery is common towards government officials.
la_vie_noireTepco
Against its better judgement, Tepco, Japan’s largest energy company, grossly neglected the structural safety of its atomic power plants in order to cut costs.
Samsung
In its factories, Samsung uses banned and highly-toxic substances without informing and protecting its workers. The result: cancer.
Barclays
Barclays, banking giant and the world’s fastest-growing food speculator, drives up global food prices at the expense of the poorest.
Vale
In the midst of Amazonas rainforest Vale is constructing the Belo-Monte-Dam. 40’000 people are suffering forced eviction.
Syngenta
Despite being banned in Europe Syngenta markets its herbicide Paraquat in the Global South. Thousands of farmers have already died due to the use of the product.
Freeport
For 45 years the US-mining corporation Freeport McMoran pollutes with its mine the environment in West Papua. Those who raise their voice get tortured or killed.
la_vie_noireThe Senate bill, passed unanimously yesterday, would give the president the power starting July 1 to bar foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran’s central bank from having correspondent bank accounts in the U.S. If enacted, it could be much harder for foreign companies to pay for oil imports from Iran, the world’s third-largest crude exporter. The Obama administration opposes the legislation.
A tightening web of sanctions is squeezing Iran’s economy and placing a new burden
on foreign firms wary of incurring hefty fines for violating the complex regulations.
The European Union added 180 people and entities to its Iran sanctions list on Thursday and laid out plans for a possible embargo of Iranian oil in response to mounting concerns over the Opec producer’s nuclear programme.
Sanctions have had an impact on Iran’s economy, experts say, but they have not achieved their aim of stopping work that the West suspects is aimed at developing nuclear weapons. Tehran insists its nuclear activities are peaceful.
“The sanctions are certainly having an impact… The latest US sanctions against the oil industry may further squeeze the room for manoeuvre available to Iranian oil customers, notably India and China,” said Alan Fraser, Middle East analyst with security firm AKE.
unusualmusicAt the time of my visit, though, Seiler was less concerned with people trying to take Uga than he was with people trying to change him. In January 2009, Adam Goldfarb of the Humane Society of the United States told The Augusta Chronicle that bulldogs, often referred to as English bulldogs, are the “poster child for breeding gone awry.” The article came in response to a scathing British documentary, “Pedigree Dogs Exposed,” that highlighted the health and welfare problems of purebred dogs and claimed that breeders and the Kennel Club (the British equivalent of the American Kennel Club) were in denial about the extent of the problem.
Broadcast on the BBC, “Exposed” spawned three independent reports into purebred breeding, each finding that some modern breeding practices — including inbreeding and breeding for “extreme traits,” like the massive and short-faced head of the bulldog — are detrimental to the health and welfare of dogs. Bulldogs were noted in all three reports as a breed in need of an intervention, with one going so far as to question whether it is ethically defensible to continue breeding them at all.
“There is little doubt that the anatomy of the English bulldog has considerable capacity to cause suffering,” Dr. Nicola Rooney and Dr. David Sargan concluded in one of the reports, “Pedigree Dog Breeding in the U.K.: A Major Welfare Concern?” “The breed is noted to have locomotion difficulties, breathing problems, an inability to mate or give birth without assistance. . . . Many would question whether the breed’s quality of life is so compromised that its breeding should be banned.”
In the United States, some veterinarians, breeders and animal-welfare experts are beginning to wonder the same thing. Last spring, the Humane Society organized its first conference on the topic of purebred-dog health and welfare. The society’s chief executive, Wayne Pacelle, told me the conference signaled the beginning of a new era for his organization, which until recently has been focused on what he calls “more obvious” forms of animal cruelty. “Inbreeding and other reckless breeding practices may not be as bloody as dogfighting or as painful to look at as puppy mills, but they may ultimately cause even more harm to the well-being of dogs,” he said.
Though a number of breeds were discussed at the conference (including the Cavalier King Charles spaniel, which is beset with severe heart and neurological diseases), the bulldog stole the show. “It is the most extreme example of genetic manipulation in the dog-breeding world that results in congenital and hereditary problems,” Pacelle said.
And how do the breeders and owners respond?
unusualmusicAccording to results from the latest poll by GIS XXI, titled ‘Sociology of preferences’, 87% of those consulted, 2000 people, are against teenage abortion.
These results became the basis of an article published in Diario Panorama (footnote 2) against the legalisation of free and voluntary abortion. The article collects a range of opinions through information networks and “representatives’ elected by the people.
Through the National System of Public Media, (SNMP) Venezuelan women are made visible through campaigns such as ‘To the heat of faith’, while the fight for their right to health and to life receives less space on the screen.
Although it is fair to say that a campaign was recently begun towards the prevention of teenage pregnancy, that doesn’t mean that they support the legalisation of free and voluntary abortion, just the opposite, some distinguished spokespeople operate against this socialist struggle.
For Gioconda Mota (footnote 1), teacher and director of the only feminist program broadcast on SNMP, the question raised by the GISXX survey was directed to what is most sensitive in society.
Moto believes that in a certain way, the survey “forces people into a certain position - do you think this problem is solved by abortion?’ And obviously the answer was no”.
But free and voluntary abortion is least common amongst teenagers, something proven by studies carried out in the Mexican capital where abortion is legal.
“For those of us who promote its legalisation, abortion is NOT a contraceptive method,” said Giocanda Mota, explaining that the possibility of unwanted pregnancies is huge and that “they are going to keep occurring”.
“Unwanted pregnancies aren’t just a product of rapes, but also of the irresponsible use of contraceptives, the correct use of contraceptive methods, as well as from situations of interfamily sexual abuse. More than 90% of rapes occur within the family, something that no one talks about.”
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unusualmusicI have just finished reading ‘Terarochin Yanketekete Tiwild’ (The Generation that Shook the Mountains), a compilation of biographies of some of Ethiopia's revolutionaries of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s – young minds that passionately fought against injustice, inequality and oppression, and eventually brought down King Haile Sellasie and dictator Mengistu Hailemariam. Among those amazing, selfless martyrs mentioned in the book is Martha Mebrahtu whose tragic murder not only angered but also inspired thousands of young men and women who stood up and waged a bitter struggle for democracy and gave Ethiopia's oppressed the chance to finally see light at the end of the tunnel.
Martha was the daughter of a brigadier-general who hailed from the province of Eritrea (Eritrea was then part of Ethiopia). She was a beautiful and intelligent medical student at Haile Sellasie I University (now Addis Abeba University) back in the 1970s (or 1960s in the Ethiopian calendar). She entered college when she was only 15 years old. And a few months away from graduating, the government murdered her.
In addition to her academic excellence, Martha was an elected president of the university's medical students' association; one of the fiercest critics of the feudal system that exploited the poor (some years after she died, her father admitted that she always challenged and criticised him for being a part of an oppressive system); an advocate for women's rights (her peers affectionately called her the Angela Davis of Ethiopia); and an active member of the then fledgling university students movement, which gradually matured and became Emperor Haile Sellasie's worst nightmare.
Martha was born in Addis Ababa and as a young girl she had a chance to study in Nigeria and to visit the US as an exchange student. Her US exposure as a high school student, in particular, introduced her to the civil rights and feminist movements, the reasons of the movements and the individuals who spearheaded them, such as Angela Davis. Upon her return and later on joining the university, it was obvious that she would become a passionate advocate for social change.
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Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo - In the lead up to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s second general election since independence in 1960, most analysts have raised the alarm over poor logistical arrangements as well as significant security concerns, due to the continued presence of armed groups in the eastern parts of the country.
Nevertheless, many ordinary citizens of the DRC are looking forward to the elections.
For many, the elections offer a rare opportunity to play a role in who should govern the country, and direct the next phase of their fragile democracy's development.
Al Jazeera’s Azad Essa speaks to residents of Goma and Walikale, both in the North Kivu province in the eastern DRC about why these elections means so much to them.MORe
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unusualmusicTunisian security forces have used teargas and fired live ammunition into the air to disperse a crowd of more than 3,000 protesters in central-west Tunisia, official and union sources said.
Wednesday's violence in the town of Kasserine took place as members of Tunisia's interim government formally resigned following the formation of the country's first-ever elected constituent assembly.
Protesters said that they took to the streets because they felt the country's new authorities had failed to recognise local people's contribution to a revolution earlier this year which inspired the "Arab Spring" uprisings.
The clashes underlined the tough task facing the new government, elected in the country's first democratic vote last month, in meeting expectations for jobs and better living standards in poor provincial towns.
"Young men are burning tyres in the street," one resident, Bouraoui Sadaoui, told the Reuters news agency from the town, which is about 300km southwest of the capital, Tunis. "They are throwing rocks and surrounding the town jail.
"They want to set fire to the prison ... The military fired into the air and are using tear gas to disperse the people," he said. "Several people have been injured by tear gas."MORE
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( Read more... ) BAHRAIN Thousands march in Bahrain to protest against gov't re: report thatpointed out that torture, rape and other nasty methods were used to suppress the uprising earlier this year. Also, pointed out that the uprisees had legitimate grievances.
unusualmusicLast week, the Venezuelan Public Defender’s Office launched a school for human rights education that will be run by the state-funded Juan Vives Suria Foundation in Caracas and will carry out seminars in twelve of the country’s 23 states.
The new school will aim to “dismantle the liberal, reductionist, and individualist vision of human rights”, said Gabriela Ramirez, Venezuela’s chief public defender, during a press conference at the foundation, which is named after a Catholic Priest famed for his activism in defense of human rights.
“Our vision is not just to train the staff of the Public Defender’s Office, but rather to build an enduring culture of human rights, just as our constitution calls for, and that it be the communities themselves that have the capacity and the competence to defend their rights”, said Ramirez.
Social workers and community activists who have already been leading human rights campaigns or who have denounced human rights violations will be the initial participants in the school. While enrolment is free of charge, aspirant students must submit a proposal outlining a social problem in their community and how their human rights education will help them solve it. The school will also offer a certificate of training in the new Anti-Corruption Law for local advocates who can vigil the behaviour of government institutions and of their own communal councils.MORE
unusualmusiceumeliaThe bill represents an amendment to Israel's existing libel law, which would make it possible to sue a newspaper for libel, not only for commensurate compensation for any tangible damage caused by the publication, but for an additional sum of NIS 300,000 − without having to prove damages.
ajnabieh
unusualmusicSALVADOR, Brazil, Nov 8, 2011 (IPS) - The Brazilian government is extending its fight against hunger to the world stage, by inaugurating a Centre of Excellence Against Hunger to transmit its positive experiences to other developing countries with the help of United Nations agencies.
The Centre of Excellence, to be based in Brasilia, the capital, was launched Monday Nov. 7 by Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), and Marco Farani, head of the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), in the presence of José Graziano da Silva, director-general elect of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
The centre has already established partnerships between the WFP and Brazil, Mozambique, East Timor and Haiti.
"We are working together to develop technical cooperation capacities in African, Latin American and Asian countries, so that they can learn about Brazil's experience in combating hunger, and eventually develop their own national school meal programmes and anti-poverty policies," the head of the centre, Daniel Balabán, told IPS.
The Centre of Excellence Against Hunger, created to enable capacity development of national governments in the areas of school lunches, nutrition, and food security, will receive financial, technological and operational resources from Brazilian bodies and from the United Nations.
The goal, according to ABC's Farani, is "to disseminate good practices in the field of school feeding," taking advantage of WFP and Brazilian experience in the design, management and expansion of sustainable school meal programmes, as well as to support existing initiatives.MORE
unusualmusicUNITED NATIONS, Nov 2, 2011 (IPS) - While gender equality ratios have improved in 85 percent of countries over the past six years, economic participation and political empowerment for women has failed to match the steady progress of health and education, says a new report by the World Economic Forum.
The report, Global Gender Gap", PDF compiled by Ricardo Hausmann from Harvard University, Laura Tyson from University of California, Berkeley and Saadia Zahidi from the World Economic Forum, illustrates the gender-disparity gap between men and women across 135 countries.
Using an international index and data from several organisations such as the International Labour Organisation, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Health Organisation, the report measures the percentage of the gap between men and women across economic, political, educational and health-based criteria.
On average, health and education had the strongest rate of progress, with 96 percent of the health gap closed and 93 percent of the education gap closed. But economic participation only closed 59 percent of the gap and political empowerment closed a mere 18 percent of the gap.
"While it is heartening to note that education and health gaps between the sexes seem to be getting overcome, the same is not true for gaps in economic and political participation and it is important to note that equal access to education does not in itself solve the problems of gender inequality," Yasmeen Hassan, global director at Equality Now in New York, told the IPS.
"In fact, education systems may perpetuate and further entrench gender stereotypes and practices that promote gender inequality," she said. "I'm not surprised that many countries have regressed on gender equality. The global economic recession and rising fundamentalisms has resulted in a feeling of insecurity that manifests itself in a resurgence of patriarchal values and systems and a cutback of women's rights and freedoms." MORE
unusualmusicRIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 4, 2011 (IPS) - News that the government of South Africa was inspired by Brazil's health system in setting up its own universal coverage scheme might meet with scepticism in this South American country.
Sociologist Walkiria Dutra de Oliveira was one of the many Brazilians who had a negative opinion of the country's public healthcare system. But she was in for a surprise when she visited a public health clinic in a middle-class neighbourhood in São Paulo.
Oliveira, who had been diagnosed with diabetes eight years earlier and was facing financial problems, decided to seek free insulin from the public health system.
The "prompt, efficient" attention she was given completely changed the image she had of the Sistema Único de Saúde or Single Health System (SUS), which was shaped during the 1980s when the system was restructured to make healthcare a universal right.
Besides insulin, Oliveira was given free medication for her hypothyroidism, she told IPS.
Reports of patients dying because of a lack of hospital beds, months-long waits for surgery, serious medical errors, malpractice cases and corruption scandals gave the system a terrible reputation.
But Dr. Nivaldo Gomes, who has worked in public hospitals and clinics since the 1970s, told IPS that "although there have been some problems in implementation, the idea is excellent and legitimate."
The government is fighting a battle in parliament to create new sources of financing for the SUS, but in Gomes' view, "the problems are due to political and administrative issues, not a shortage of money."
There is a lack of political will to fully implement the principles underlying the SUS, said Gomes and his colleague, Dr. Dilene do Nascimento, a researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), Brazil's leading biomedical research institute.
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unusualmusicTRIPOLI, Nov 5, 2011 (IPS) - "We’ve walked all the way here to tell everybody that we are being treated like dogs," said 23-year old Hamuda Bubakar, among a couple of hundred black refugees protesting at Martyrs Square in Tripoli. "I’d rather be killed here. I wouldn’t be the first, or the last."
The refugees came to protest early this week from the barracks of Tarik Matar, a makeshift camp on the outskirts of Tripoli. "We’ve already spent more than two months in those horrible barracks," said Aisha who preferred not to give her full name.
A few days back, she said, "guerrilla fighters from Misrata (90 kilometres east of Tripoli) entered our place and took seven young guys with them. We still know nothing about them." Several women at the camp have been abducted and raped in recent weeks, she said.
"Raise your head, you're a free Libyan", the group chanted before a stage set up for the recent celebrations. That’s the very slogan that became almost an anthem for the rebels who rose against Gaddafi.
Tempers flared amid the group of armed soldiers guarding the central square. "I should kill you all for what you did to us in Misrata," shouted a young man in camouflage fatigues. The protesters are from Tawargha, 60 km south of Misrata, that was known as a Gaddafist base.
The armed men at the square, and angry honking soon split up the group.
"Not only do they call us Gaddafists, they hate us for the colour of our skin," said Abdulkarim Rahman. "All blacks in Libya are going through very hard times lately." MORE
unusualmusicCHANGWON, South Korea, Nov 1, 2011 (Tierramérica) - Berlin is a big capital city of a country famed for making excellent automobiles, but it can no longer afford roads and is now moving people by transit, bike and especially through walking.
Berlin is not alone. Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, Bogotá, New York City and other major cities simply cannot afford the cost, the pollution, the noise and the congestion of more cars. They are embracing a new concept called EcoMobility - mobility without private cars.
"EcoMobility is not only walking, cycling and public transportation. It is about these three systems clicking together: connectivity is the key," Gil Peñalosa, former director of parks and recreation in Bogotá, Colombia, told those attending the EcoMobility Changwon 2011 congress.
The congress on Mobility for the Future of Sustainable Cities was organised by the South Korean city of Changwon and ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability, an association of local government members from more than 1,220 cities in 70 countries.
"The famous Times Square in New York City is now a permanent pedestrian mall. Who would have believed that could happen just three years ago?" Peñalosa commented to Tierramérica.
"Five years ago who would have thought Paris would have over 22,000 bikes as part of a tremendously successful bike sharing system?" added Peñalosa, who is now the executive director of 8-80 Cities, an NGO based in Toronto that promotes walking, cycling, parks and urban trails to improve the public life of cities. MORE
unusualmusicSANAA, Yemen (AP) — Hundreds of Yemeni women have set fire to a pile of female face and body veils on a main street in Sanaa to protest the government's brutal crackdown against the country's popular uprising.
The act of women burning their clothing is a symbolic Bedouin tribal gesture signifying an appeal for help to tribesmen.
Wednesday's protest comes as clashes intensify between forces loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh and renegade fighters who have sided with the opposition in demands that the president step down.
Medical and local officials say up to 25 civilians, tribal fighters and government soldiers died overnight in Sanaa and the city of Taiz despite Saleh's ceasefire announcement late Tuesday.
Saleh has clung to power in the face of more than nine months of massive protests against his rule.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Yemen's president on Tuesday called in the U.S. ambassador and told him he would sign a deal to step down, a U.S. official said. The embattled leader, who has made that pledge several times before, spoke as violence shook his capital.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh informed Ambassador Gerald Feierstein of a new cease-fire, but clashes on the streets threw that into doubt. Activists said seven protesters were killed and 10 wounded.MORE
unusualmusicMany Australians have questioned the need for an Occupy movement of our own. In contrast to the US, we’re not struggling in quite the same way, economically, having never slipped into recession or been caught up in the Eurozone debt crisis. There are no largescale cuts to public jobs as in Europe or the U.S. At The Referral, Kimberley Ramplin points out that the Australian economy is quite healthy, comparatively speaking:
5.2 per cent unemployment in September 2011. As the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Measures of Australia’s Progress 2011 report shows, pretty much everything (barring productivity) has improved since 2000. Including unemployment. The bad news? That increase applies to threatened animal species due to climate change. The average weekly income per full-time employed adult is $1,305. The average hourly income is between $29.70 and$33.10 (the disparity? Female wages c.f. men) (Source: ABS)I’ve lived in Australia and the U.S and I know from personal experience that the substantially lower standard of living in the U.S is something few Australians can truly understand. Things are not perfect in Australia economically – not with the astronomical housing prices – but we can’t say that the middle class has collapsed in the same way as in the U.S.
We do ourselves no favours when we uncritically mimic American models without changing them to suit local conditions. The cultural cringe is no more useful in activism than it is in other areas. The 99/1% slogan is powerful stuff indeed but doesn’t adequately address the income distribution of Australia as accurately in the United States. Activism must respond to local needs to be successful.
So what's wrong with Australia? A lot, as it turns out
unusualmusicI know a lot of people skip titles of posts. Please read the title of this one.
I had an argument with someone at school on Thursday and it's still sitting with me. I think this is because we'd had an earlier argument on a similar subject on Tuesday. As you can probably imagine, it was about disability, or more specifically, about how disabled people have existed and advocated for themselves since long before the mainstream folks started paying attention, and well before I ever started paying attention.
The argument on Thursday was about my colleague's disagreement with the abstract for a master's research paper on disability discrimination in the Montreal Metro System. I'm not from Montreal, so the place this system has in Montreal was a bit much for me to grasp. Apparently it's a big thing, a progress thing. A thing about how Montreal has been advancing into the future. When it was opened in 1966, it was opened to everyone.
Everyone, of course, except people who can't walk up and down stairs.
The presentation and follow-up short video talked explicitly about ableist constructions of public spaces. She called it out very bluntly: this is discriminatory. This has always been discriminatory.
The part that others tend not to get, the part my colleague at the university didn't get, is that the people at the time knew this.MORE from trouble
unusualmusicMuammar Gaddafi has been killed after National Transitional Council fighters overran loyalist defences in Sirte, the toppled Libyan leader's hometown and final stronghold.
"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Gaddafi has been killed," Mahmoud Jibril, the de facto Libyan prime minister, told reporters on Thursday in Tripoli, the capital.
Crowds took to the streets of Sirte, Tripoli and Benghazi, the eastern city that spearheaded the uprising against Gaddafi's 42-year rule in February, to celebrate the news, with some firing guns and waving Libya's new flag.
Abdul Hakim Belhaj, an NTC military chief, said Gaddafi had died of his wounds after being captured on Thursday.
The body of the former Libyan leader was taken to a location which is being kept secret for security reasons, Mohamed Abdel Kafi, an NTC official in the city of Misrata, told the Reuters news agency.
Earlier, Abdel Majid, another NTC official, said the toppled leader had been wounded in both legs.
Sirte captured
The news came shortly after the NTC captured Sirte after weeks of fierce fighting.
Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley reports from Sirte
Fighters flashing V for victory took to the streets in pick-ups blaring out patriotic music.
"Thank God they have caught this person. In one hour, Sirte was liberated," a fighter said.
Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley, reporting from Sirte, said Libyans there celebrating the beginning of a "new Libya".
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"Kampala 'mute' as Gaddafi falls," is how the opposition paper summed up the mood of this capital the morning after. Whether they mourn or celebrate, an unmistakable sense of trauma marks the African response to the fall of Gaddafi.
Both in the longevity of his rule and in his style of governance, Gaddafi may have been extreme. But he was not exceptional. The longer they stay in power, the more African presidents seek to personalise power. Their success erodes the institutional basis of the state. The Carribean thinker C L R James once remarked on the contrast between Nyerere and Nkrumah, analysing why the former survived until he resigned but the latter did not: "Dr Julius Nyerere in theory and practice laid the basis of an African state, which Nkrumah failed to do."
The African strongmen are going the way of Nkrumah, and in extreme cases Gaddafi, not Nyerere. The societies they lead are marked by growing internal divisions. In this, too, they are reminiscent of Libya under Gaddafi more than Egypt under Mubarak or Tunisia under Ben Ali.
Whereas the fall of Mubarak and Ben Ali directed our attention to internal social forces, the fall of Gaddafi has brought a new equation to the forefront: the connection between internal opposition and external governments. Even if those who cheer focus on the former and those who mourn are preoccupied with the latter, none can deny that the change in Tripoli would have been unlikely without a confluence of external intervention and internal revolt.
More interventions to come
The conditions making for external intervention in Africa are growing, not diminishing. The continent is today the site of a growing contention between dominant global powers and new challengers. The Chinese role on the continent has grown dramatically. Whether in Sudan and Zimbawe, or in Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria, that role is primarily economic, focused on two main activities: building infrastructure and extracting raw materials. For its part, the Indian state is content to support Indian mega-corporations; it has yet to develop a coherent state strategy. But the Indian focus too is mainly economic.
The contrast with Western powers, particularly the US and France, could not be sharper. The cutting edge of Western intervention is military. France's search for opportunities for military intervention, at first in Tunisia, then Cote d'Ivoire, and then Libya, has been above board and the subject of much discussion. Of greater significance is the growth of Africom, the institutional arm of US military intervention on the African continent.
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unusualmusicMost Americans love roads: Ours is a country of roads with a network of highways that rivals any other. So too does the U.S. government love roads. When the Obama administration passed its epic $787 billion stimulus plan just weeks after taking office, where did much of the money go? Into fixing and upgrading our highways.
When U.S. aid agencies look to poorer nations, they too love to fund the building of roads that can deliver crops to markets and ports and bring “progress” to remote areas. After all, who could be against a road?
In our stay in Trinidad and Tobago, the two-island nation off the coast of Venezuela, we discover that more people than we expected are opposed to a particular road. Their reasons turn the prevailing view of progress on its head and add to our understanding of “rooted” communities.
As we prepare to travel to Trinidad, we notice something strange on maps of the island: The coastal road that goes almost entirely around Trinidad stops for a 17-mile stretch in the center of the northern coast. Our research reveals that government promises and plans to complete the road go back to 1962 when the country gained independence. Some five decades later, still no road.
Not only does the couple not want a road, they want the entire mountain region to be declared a protected area to be stewarded by the people who live around it and in it.This intrigues us. So we travel to three towns that surround the no-road area in part to see what life is like at the end of the road and to find out the “what,” “why” and “how” of the unfinished project.
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unusualmusicAt this moment, unbeknownst to most of the world, the government of El Salvador is in the midst of a decision that could make it the first country in the world to ban gold mining. Corporate eyes are trained on this tiny nation, hoping it will decide that mining revenues are too lucrative to forgo. So too should those of us who believe that people and their ecosystems come first be doing our part to make sure that corporate interests do not determine what should be a democratic decision among Salvadorans.
Earlier this year, we traveled to El Salvador for The Nation to learn more about how the first progressive government (led by the FMLN party) in El Salvador in decades was deliberating over its choices. As part of its 2009 election promises, the government of Mauricio Funes had announced it would grant no new mining permits during its five-year term and that it was considering a permanent ban. Once elected, the Funes government initiated a major “strategic environmental review” to help set longer-term national policy on mining.
So, we found ourselves at the Ministry of the Economy, which along with the Environment Ministry, is leading the review. (Can you imagine the U.S. Treasury Department and EPA joining forces to do a collaborative review of U.S. policy?) With us was the man overseeing the review process from the economy ministry: engineer Carlos Duarte. Duarte explained that the goal was to do a “scientific” analysis, with the help of a Spanish consulting firm.
We pushed further, trying to understand how a technical analysis could capture the two sides of such a high-stakes issue. On one hand, El Salvador is a country of deep poverty, with people desperately in need of jobs. How could it not be tempted by visions of earnings from gold exports, especially now that gold’s price had skyrocketed from under $300 an ounce a decade ago to over $1,500 an ounce at the time of our meeting with Duarte? This view is perhaps best epitomized by former Salvadoran finance minister and mining company economic adviser Manuel Hinds, who said that “renouncing gold mining would be unjustifiable and globally unprecedented.”
On the other hand, there is the environmental cost. Here we quoted to Duarte from Maria Silvia Guillen, the head of the Salvadoran human rights group FESPAD: “El Salvador is a small beach with a big river that runs through it. If the river dies, the entire country dies.”MORE
unusualmusicThis year's Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded jointly to three women - Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman of Yemen.
They were recognised for their "non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work".
Mrs Sirleaf is Africa's first female elected head of state, Ms Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist and Ms Karman is a leading figure in Yemen's pro-democracy movement.
"We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women achieve the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society," said Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland in Oslo.
Reading from the prize citation, he said the committee hoped the prize would "help to bring an end to the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries, and to realise the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent".
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