Afghan Monitor Says 2010 Worst Year of War
(This article is reposted from Common Dreams.)
This year has been the most violent since the Afghan war began in 2001 and civilian deaths have risen slightly with the increased insecurity, a local rights group said Monday.
A massive US-led increase in troops has failed to quell the Taliban-led insurgency, Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) said.
“In terms of insecurity, 2010 has been the worst year since the demise of the Taliban regime in late 2001,” it said.
“Not only have the number of security incidents increased, the space and depth of the insurgency and counter-insurgency-related violence have maximised dramatically,” ARM said.
In late December, US President Barack Obama ordered an extra 30,000 American troops into Afghanistan as part of a new counter-insurgency strategy designed to reverse the Taliban momentum and speed up an end to the nine-year war.
But ARM’s mid-year report “Civilian Casualties of Conflict” said Obama’s policy of intensifying operations against the Taliban has not disrupted, dismantled or defeated the insurgents.
On the contrary, it says, “the insurgency has become more resilient, multi-structured and deadly”.
About 1,074 civilians were killed and more than 1,500 injured in war-related incidents in the first six months of 2010, compared with 1,059 killed in the same period last year, ARM said.
“Up to 1,200 security incidents were recorded in June, the highest number of incidents compared to any month since 2002,” it said.
Military commanders had warned that boosted troops numbers would lead to more battles, and subsequently higher death tolls.
But ARM said “little or no justification has been offered as to why a defeated Taliban is gaining strength, popularity and the ability to threaten the future of Afghanistan” nine years after being overthrown.
In a breakdown of parties to blame for civilian deaths, ARM says 61 percent were caused by insurgents, 30 percent by US, NATO and Afghan forces, six percent by “criminals and private security firms”, with three percent unknown.
The United States and NATO have more than 140,000 troops in Afghanistan with another 10,000 due in coming weeks as part of the counter-insurgency strategy.
The Taliban’s main weapon, bombs known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), were blamed for most of the Afghan civilian casualties, with suicide attacks the second biggest killer, ARM said.
It said a reduction in air strikes, ordered by the recently sacked commander of foreign forces, US General Stanley McChrystal, had resulted in fewer civilian deaths attributed to US-led forces.
Other country-insurgency measures introduced by McChrystal “were also deemed helpful”, the report said.
Last week NATO apologised for the deaths of six civilians in a mistaken air strike and said that six Afghan soldiers died in a “friendly fire” incident.
Rules of engagement that aim to prevent civilian casualties have come under fire from some quarters, however, with the arrival of McChrystal’s successor, US General David Petraeus, who took command on July 4.
Many soldiers complain they are hamstrung by the rules, attributing to them a spike in deaths and injuries. ISAF officials say the rules will not change.
So far this year, more than 350 foreign soldiers have died in the Afghan war, around 30 for July alone. The total last year was 520.
ARM’s findings echo those of a UN report late last year that found most civilian casualties in 2009 — up 11 percent in the first 10 months of the year over the same 2008 period — were caused by Taliban attacks.
Bloom Open House & Really Really Free Market
1 – 4 p.m. Sat. July 17
671 Davis St. NW, corner of 5th and Davis
Really Really Free Market,
Refreshments, Free used book with new membershipSummer Hours (Starting July 17): Monday 12pm – 6pm, Wednesday 8:30 am – 1pm;
Thursday 1pm – 7pm and Saturday 12pm – 4pm
Last spring, The Bloom Collective packed up its books, DVDs, posters, zines and two comfy sofas. The space which had been generously donated to the collective on Wealthy Street was no longer available and it was time to move on. The transition from a free space to one with rent, lease agreements, insurance and no bookshelves hasn’t been an easy one. Now, that The Bloom is ready to re-open, its core members can’t help but celebrate—and hope their old patrons and new neighbors will join them.
“My hope for The Bloom is that we will be able to offer a safe space for the community and for other groups organizing in the area, as well as continue to be a valuable resource for radical literature, zines, DVDs and other materials in Grand Rapids,” says core member Emily Donohoe.
The Bloom Collective’s new space is in a lower level room in the Steepletown building, 671 Davis St. NW, at the corner of 5th and Davis. Steepletown is home to several community service organizations, counseling services and alternative healers. While no longer in a store front location, The Bloom will still offer regular hours while increasing focus on partnerships with other groups working on radical social justice issues.
“I think the new space for the Bloom helps to facilitate new partnerships and new possibilities,” says core member Jeff Smith. “We are now in a more working class neighborhood with an increasingly larger Latino population, which will be a challenge for us, but also a great opportunity to develop relationships with people that have been forgotten or marginalized in this city.”
All of The Bloom Collective core members are excited about Saturday’s Open House and Really Really Free Market. During the event, they will be asking visitors to write down ideas on how The Bloom can be more relevant to movement building here in Grand Rapids. As always, people interested in volunteering or becoming core members with The Bloom are encouraged to talk to any core member to get that process started.
(This article is re-posted from OpenSecrets.org.)
Halliburton, the company once headed by former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney contributed $15,500 to federal candidates during June, according to a Center for Responsive Politics review of their political action committee’s most recent campaign finance filing.
That amount represents the third largest month of donations by the PAC this election cycle.
The giving comes at a time when the Texas-based company is weathering a political storm for its involvement on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded on April 20 and sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, causing a massive amount oil to spill into the surrounding waters. Investigations are currently underway to determine how and why the spill occurred — and who should be held responsible — by Congress and the Department of Justice.
In May, Halliburton’s PAC contributed $17,000 to federal lawmakers — the most since last September. And during the second quarter of 2010, Halliburton has contributed $46,500 to federal lawmakers — about one-third of the entire sum it has donated this election cycle, the Center found.
Last month, the energy company cut checks to 10 federal politicians, the Center found. And politicians aren’t eager to talk about the money.
Rebeca Chapa, a spokeswoman for Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D-Texas) — the sole Democrat among the company’s beneficiaries last month — declined to comment for this story.
And of the nine Republican beneficiaries, just two responded to requests for comment.
Contributions from BP, which was operating the now-sunken oil rig, have been viewed as undesirable by many politicians in the past two months, as OpenSecrets Blog previously reported. Yet the Republicans that were reached Friday did not view the money from Halliburton as toxic.
“I welcome the support of all who are interested in job creation,” Arkansas Republican congressional candidate Tim Griffin, who received a $1,000 contribution from Halliburton’s PAC last month, said in a statement e-mailed to OpenSecrets Blog. “The Fayetteville Shale is critical to job creation in Arkansas’s Second District, and Halliburton is a player there in developing our natural gas resource.
“While the investigation continues, I have been abundantly clear that BP and other responsible parties must bear the entire financial burden for the environmental and economic catastrophe in the Gulf,” Griffin added.
Similarly, California Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, who received $5,000 from Halliburton’s PAC in June and received another $2,500 from the PAC back in April, did not shy away from the association with Halliburton.
“Our policy is to evaluate contributions on a case-by-case basis,” said Andrea Saul, Fiorina’s press secretary e-mailed in a statement to OpenSecrets Blog. “Carly has not and will not take donations from BP. We make these decisions based on facts, not speculation, and therefore, at this point, have accepted the contribution from Halliburton.”
The Center found that the other federal-level Republicans to benefit from Halliburton’s cash last month included two members of the Louisiana delegation, two members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one member of the House Natural Resources Committee and several high-profile challengers and open seat candidates.
These recipients were:
U.S. Senate candidate from Colorado Jane Norton: $2,500
U.S. Senate candidate from North Dakota John Hoeven: $1,000
Colorado congressional candidate Cory Gardner: $1,000
Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Penn.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee: $1,000
Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Science Committee and a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee: $1,000
Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), a member of the House Natural Resources and Armed Services Committees: $1,000
Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La.), a member of the House Homeland Security and Transportation and Infrastructure Committees: $1,000
Additionally, Halliburton’s PAC contributed $2,000 to the state-level campaign of incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.
Halliburton’s PAC ended the quarter with $144,600 in cash on hand. It has contributed $148,100 to federal candidates since January 2009, mostly to Republicans.
Halliburton contractors performed cementing operations to seal the offshore oil well. Some have suggested that faulty cementing contributed to the spill, although Halliburton itself has maintained that its work is not to blame.
Teresa Wong, manager of public relations for Halliburton, said the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico “has had no impact on how the PAC members are distributing the funds.”
“Halliburton’s PAC, supported by the voluntary contributions of company employees, makes contributions to candidates and elected officials from the states where our employees live and work and to those whose business views are aligned with efforts that support the oil and gas industry,” Wong added.
(This article is re-posted from Project Censored.)
We face what appears to be a military industrial media empire so powerful and complex that truth is mostly absent or reported in disconnected segments with little historical context. A case in point: The London Times reported on June 5, 2010, that American troops are now operating in 75 countries. Has President Obama secretly sanctioned a huge increase in the number of US Special Forces carrying out search-and-destroy missions against al-Qaeda around the world? If so, this increase is far in excess of special-forces operations under the Bush administration and reflects how aggressively Obama is pursuing al-Qaeda behind his public rhetoric of global engagement and diplomacy. Somehow this information didn’t make it into the US media.
The US, in cooperation with NATO, is building global occupation forces for the control of international resources in support of Trilateralist—US, Europe, Japan— corporate profits. A New York Times report on the availability of a trillion dollars in mineral wealth in Afghanistan, on top of the need for an oil/gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea, suggests other reasons for U.S objectives in the region.
Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service writes on June 15, 2010, “The timing of the publication of a major New York Times story on the vast untapped mineral wealth that lies beneath Afghanistan’s soil is raising major questions about the intent of the Pentagon…Blake Hounshell, managing editor at Foreign Policy magazine, says that the US Geological Service (USGS) already published a comprehensive inventory of Afghanistan’s non-oil mineral resources on the Internet in 2007, as did the British Geological Survey. Much of their work was based on explorations and surveys undertaken by the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s.”
Given the previous reports, there is nothing new about resources in Afghanistan that the Pentagon and US multinational corporations didn’t already know. On the contrary, the public should consider whether the surfacing of this resource story is a managed-news press release being done at a time of sensitive concerns regarding NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. A deliberate news insertion such as the mineral wealth story is designed to create support for a US/NATO global empire agenda.
Managed news includes both the release of specific stories intended to build public support as well as the deliberate non-coverage of news stories that may undermine US goals. Have you been told about the continuing privatization of this global war? Independent journalist Jeremy Scahill, wrote in The Nation magazine November 23, 2009, how Blackwater (Xe) operatives in the Pakistani port city of Karachi are gathering intelligence and helping to direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign in that country.
There has not been much coverage of the report in Global Research, May 27, 2010, regarding new US capabilities for cyber warfare, announced recently by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as the activation of the Pentagon’s first computer command and the world’s first comprehensive, multi-service military cyber operation. CYBERCOM is based at Fort Meade, Maryland, which also is home to the National Security Agency (NSA).
The US’s Israeli partner in the Middle East demonstrated a skilled manipulation of the global media’s coverage of the May 31 attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Israel controlled the news and images that emerged from the attack on the ships, asserting that the invading Israeli paratroopers were viciously attacked by crewmembers—resulting in the killing of several in “self defense.” Israel sought to divert the focus of public discussion away from the illegitimate use of excessive force against a group of humanitarians– of diverse religious and national affiliations– to the blaming of the victims for causing their own deaths.
Managed news creates a Truth Emergency for the public inside the US/NATO Military Industrial Media Empire. Deliberate news management undermines the freedom of information on the doings of the powerful military/corporate entities though overt censorship, mass distractions, and artificial news— including stories timed for release to influence public opinion (i.e., propaganda).
A Truth Emergency is the lack of purity in news brought about by this propaganda and distraction. It is the state in which people, despite potentially being awash in a sea of information, lack the power of discernment resulting in a knowinglessness about what is going on in the world. In short, we are living in a time where people do not know whom to trust for accurate information and yearn for the truth.
One antidote to the ongoing Truth Emergency is the creation of validated independent news by colleges and universities around the globe where students and professors use research skills and databases to fact check and verify information that is reported to the public. For more about this, and what we can all do to counter managed news, see Project Censored International’s new website at http://mediafreedominternational.org. Together, we can build accountability in our media and breathe life back into our withering republic.
(This article is re-posted from Environment News Service.)
Climate change is a serious health hazard that the United States must prepare for, according to government and university scientists from across the country.
They advised Thursday that climate models show that global warming will increase air pollution and trigger more heat waves, floods and droughts, all of which will threaten human health.
“Climate change is a quintessential public health problem,” said Michael McGeehin, director of the Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency of the federal government.
“Heat waves are a public health disaster. They kill, and they kill the most vulnerable members of our society,” McGeehin warned. “The fact that climate change is going to increase the number and intensity of heat waves is something we need to prepare for.”
McGeehin was one of several scientists who briefed reporters on a teleconference held by the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists.
Climate change models show that the kind of heat waves some parts of the country have been suffering through in recent weeks will occur more often and at closer intervals, and last longer, said David Easterling, a climatologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center.
“The current spate of heat waves could be a harbinger of things to come,” he said, pointing out that from January through May, this year has been the hottest on record for global average temperatures.
Climate change could even make regions of the Earth uninhabitable, according to Matthew Huber, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University. His research on the effects of heat stress, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calculated the highest temperature-humidity combination that humans can withstand.
Huber’s findings show that if emissions from burning fossil fuels continue unabated, extremely high temperature and humidity levels could make much of the world essentially uninhabitable for human beings.
Over the long term, perhaps 200 or 300 years, the planet could experience an increase of average global temperatures of 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit.
Under that scenario, much of the world, including Australia, many Mediterranean countries, and parts of Africa, Brazil, China, India and the United States, would be so hot and humid that people would not be able to survive outside during heatwaves for more than a few hours.
“We can still decide to try to avoid that” by dramatically reducing the heat-trapping emissions that cause global warming, Huber said. “And from our calculations, it is something we should try to avoid.”
Jonathan Patz, director of global environmental health at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said that while climate change is a health threat, tackling it is a major public health opportunity.
He pointed out that the World Health Organization reports about one million people annually die prematurely from air pollution. He says that cutting global warming emissions also would reduce certain kinds of pollution, especially ground-level ozone.
“If we can reduce air pollution,” Patz said, “we can save lives.”
Patz’s latest research found that cutting down on the number short car trips and reducing the number of miles driven by about 20 percent would save hundreds of lives, avoid hundreds of thousands of hospital admissions, and save billions of dollars in healthcare costs in the Midwest alone.
If drivers got out of their cars and either walked or rode a bicycle, Patz added, “we could probably double those health care cost savings.”
Climate scientist Brenda Ekwurzel with the Union of Concerned Scientists, who moderated the press briefing, noted that addressing climate change is not all about saving polar bears and other faraway creatures and habitats.
“More and more, studies demonstrate that the health care impact and health care costs related to climate change,” she said, “are directly related to us.”
This Tuesday, July 13 (7pm), the City of Grand Rapids will be holding a public hearing on the proposal to change the current city ordinance, which does not allow residence to have chickens. The public hearing will be held at City Hall on the 9th floor and people who are supportive of having chickens in the city should attend.
Some of those who oppose the ordinance change have already expressed their opposition and are likely to be present again on Tuesday. The main opposition so far, according to a few City Commissioners we have spoke with is from Herbrucks, a large egg producer based in Saranac, MI. (This picture shows how chickens “live” at the Herbrucks facility.)
We reported last year that Herbrucks was part of public relations campaign designed to promote Michigan agri-business, a campaign that was backed by the Center for Food Integrity (CFI). CFI is a food industry front group that was created in 2007 in order to counteract the influence that Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation had on public opinion.
It should come as no surprise that a company like Herbrucks would fight against such an effort to allow Grand Rapids residents to have chickens on their property, since they would see this as a threat to their profits.
However, City Commissioners told us that so far they have heard more from opposition than they have from those in favor. There is a well-organized campaign to change the ordinance, a campaign that held numerous meetings with some City Commissioners. Their proposal is simple:
“The City of Grand Rapids should amend the current ordinance(s) to allow for the raising and owning of laying hens. Specifically we ask that the ordinance(s) be amended such that:
1) laying hens no longer categorized as “livestock” which are currently banned from the city
2) laying hens be treated with all the same rights and restrictions as other allowed animals or pets (i.e. cats and dogs which do not require inspection by the housing department nor permission from neighbors)”.
There is a growing list of cities across the country, that allow residents to have chickens and there are numerous cities that are currently debating the topic. If Grand Rapids is to join the list of those which favor chickens in an urban setting then people will need to either contact City Hall in the next few days or show up in big numbers on Tuesday to demonstrate the idea has popular support.
Fifa Forbids Free Speech At World Cup Fan Fest
(This article is re-posted from ZNet.)
Acting against our alleged ‘ambush marketing’ and ‘incitement’ (sic), the South African Police Service, newly augmented with 40,000 additional cadre for the World Cup, detained several of us here in Durban last weekend.
We were simply exercising freedom of expression at our favorite local venue, the South Beach Fan Fest, whose half-million visitors is a record.
Wearing hidden microphones so as to tape discussions with police leadership, what we learned was chilling, for they have received orders from Durban City Manager Mike Sutcliffe that the property rights of the world soccer body, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa), overrule our foundational Constitutional rights.
“We can charge you and detain you until the 11th of July, [when] Fifa is over!,” a top officer shouted at me during my second interrogation, on Saturday.
Sutcliffe is preparing a draft bid for Durban to host the 2020 Olympics, to present to the International Olympics Committee soon after the World Cup final in Johannesburg on Sunday night. Durban is the lead candidate from South Africa due to its warm August winter, sea-level location and recent construction of athletic facilities throughout a sports precinct stretching across from the new $390 million Moses Mabhida Stadium to the ‘Golden Mile’ beachfront..
The Durban Social Forum has come out against an Olympic Bid ‘which will create yet more debt and inequality’, given how much damage Fifa has done to the city’s poor and working people, the economy and the environment – damage not successfully offset by high national pride and profits for a few South African elites.
One barrier to a successful Olympic Bid, we hope, is the perennial, growing concern about the city’s commitment to democracy, solidarity and sovereignty.
To illustrate, my University of KwaZulu-Natal colleague Baruti Amisi, a Congolese refugee, received this email reply from Sutcliffe to a polite request for use of City Hall steps for last Saturday’s anti-xenophobia rally: “It appears you are not a South African and are clearly uninformed about the role of Fifa. In brief, we are an independent country and except for the stadium precinct, Fifa have no role in running the city.”
That’s not true, because even before the World Cup began in June, South African police were investigating an extraordinary 50,000 incidents of ambush marketing well beyond stadium areas. Fifa’s copyrighted protection of even place names (e.g., ‘Durban 2010’ on merchandise) was used to charge non-sponsors penalties in the range of $30,000 in the event that for-profit product sales mentioned Fifa’s monopolized terminology.
But this protection also extends into non-profit terrain, as we learned on Friday. Indeed, several incidents illustrated the clash of society and police authority that night. In the country’s fifth-biggest city, Port Elizabeth, hotel heiress Paris Hilton appeared in court for being in the vicinity of a friend smoking marijuana. Oops.
In Johannesburg, ten hawkers were arrested near Soccer City: “Some were trading in goods that they did not have permit to sell while others had no permit at all to sell at the stadium,” according to a police superintendent. These survivalist-entrepreneurs now will pay $200 (half their typical monthly earnings) to have confiscated goods released.
Here in Durban, the next day’s anti-xenophobia rally was considered an important way to generate consciousness, networking solidarity and concrete plans for safety in the event of a repeat of the May 2008 attacks. We thought that because Ghana was playing Uruguay later that night, the Fan Fest was an excellent place to draw upon African ubuntu spirit and welcome soccer fans into solidarity activism.
Getting Sutcliffe’s permission for the rally was, as ever, like pulling teeth. The police were informed in writing on June 19 but it was only on Friday afternoon before rally approval was granted to a coalition that included the KwaZulu-Natal Refugee Council (which Amisi heads), the Diakonia progressive church alliance, the Durban Social Forum and our Centre for Civil Society.
A group quickly brought 1000 fliers to the beach to let people know, handing out the information at half-time during the Netherlands-Brazil game. Minutes later, visiting doctoral candidate and filmmaker Giuliano Martiniello, research student Samantha Sencer-Mura and I were accused of ambush marketing and incitement, and dragged off to the nearest police station.
Indeed, I was detained for hours during both Friday’s and Saturday’s early games’ half-times, missing (thank goodness) the pain of seeing my favourite Latin American teams clobbered by Europeans. The top-heavy security force included police generals, Crime Intelligence, the Commercial Branch and even the National Intelligence Agency.
I’d gone back the next day with a pamphlet about free speech, to test whether the police really would lock me up for days simply for exercising Constitutional rights.
All of us are, of course, lovers of World Cup soccer and haters of Fifa, like most people who give this distinction a moment’s consideration.
The Zurich crew will take home $3.2 billion in profits, pay no taxes, ignore exchange controls, trickle nothing down, commercialize all aspects of the game, copyright words like ‘World Cup’, overcharge for everything, declare ‘exclusion zones’ that stretch for miles, muffle journalists with no-criticism accreditation requirements, and trample on our freedom of expression.
(If you don’t care about these issues because you’re a soccer purist, never mind, you’ll still join the many bitter players and fans who believe Fifa president Sepp Blatter’s main legacy is the quaint refusal – or, hinted Lord David Triesman of the English Football Association a few weeks ago, bribe-friendly tactic?, following which Triesman was forced to resign – to adopt ‘goal-line technology’. Photographic and communications equipment is direly needed to correct repeated and often egregious referee errors, nearly every observer agrees. Blatter instead, apparently, focuses all Fifa’s camera-power on potential ambush-marketers in the crowd.)
Illustrating how constrained our rights are, I asked one police superintendent (name withheld), “What if I say ‘Viva Argentina!’ in the fan park? No problem? What if I say ‘Phansi Fifa phansi!’?” (Down with Fifa!)
“Then you’re wrong,” the policeman answered. “You can’t say, ‘Phansi Fifa phansi’.”
Sutcliffe’s control fetish appears to be the central barrier. As a police superintendent put it, “He’s the one who has instructed us that we must enforce. He comes in our meetings.”
“And what does he say?,” I asked. “He says he doesn’t want any anti-xenophobia?”
Replied the police superintendent, “No distribution of pamphlets, especially which mention xenophobia.”
Ah, the underlying problem had emerged. The reason the pamphlet was banned was not just procedural, it was political.
The police superintendent continued: “You are reminding [people] of xenophobia. Even myself I had forgot about that thing, but now you write it down.” (He was referring to Friday’s pamphlet.)
“Do you think it is not a problem?,” I asked.
Surely Durban police know that a city councilor – Vusi Khoza of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) – is among those still being tried for the January 2009 murders of a Tanzanian and Zimbabwean, and that the streets and worksites are thick with tension and insults against immigrants and refugees. (Last November, during one of the injured victims’ testimony, Khoza reportedly laughed as the Zimbabwean described a fall of six floors from a window he was pushed from, landing on his two friends’ corpses, for they had not survived the attack.)
The senior police officer’s rebuttal: “It happened. Then government stopped it there.”
“I’m sure you know that Jacob Zuma said xenophobia’s a problem,” I rebutted. After all, when meeting his African National Congress (ANC) national executive in May, “President Zuma said the ANC branches must work against xenophobia,” I reminded the superintendent.
“There is no xenophobia”, he insisted – but nervously.
Such denialism parrots leading ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu’s extraordinary written statement earlier that day: “The reported xenophobic attacks by South Africans on foreign nationals, particularly from the African continent, after the conclusion of the 2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa, is baseless and without any rational” (sic).
Added ANC National Chairperson, Baleka Mbethe, “These reports are irrational have no basis whatsoever” (sic).
And yet the army is now occupying the town of Denoon not far from Cape Town, precisely because threats could explode into 2008-type violence. A steady stream of new refugees has been pouring out of many Cape Town and Pretoria townships in search of safety over the past week, fearful of what may happen on July 11 at 10:15pm, when the last game comes to an end.
Aside from xenophobia, an overarching problem of civil and political rights for South Africans was also evident from our discussions with police. For behind Sutcliffe’s arrogance in declaring such a large Constitution-free geographical zone, was the Constitution drafters’ own ambiguity: our Bill of Rights – considered amongst the world’s most progressive – is potentially interpreted as allowing corporate property rights to trump human rights. Section 8(4) gives foundational rights to ‘juristic persons’, i.e., institutions including for-profit businesses like Fifa.
In 1996, alongside former ANC Member of Parliament Langa Zita and Darlene Miller (a sociologist at the Human Sciences Research Council), and aided by US citizens’ advocate Ralph Nader, we formally warned a Constitutional Court certification hearing that this provision could “undermine the constitutional rights of natural persons to freedom of expression, freedom of association in organs of civil society, access to information, the rights to life, security of the person, and a safe environment.”
So it seems we were right, sadly. Likewise, in the US, a similar degeneration of political rights occurred this year when the Supreme Court lifted limits on corporate spending to influence elections. In the US, the increasingly important group Nader cofounded, Public Citizen (led by Robert Weissman), is tackling the ‘Citizens United’ case and its implications, but we have not yet developed such strong anti-corporate sensibility here in South Africa.
Indeed, according to professors Chris Roederer and Darrel Moellendorf – in their 2004 book Jurisprudence – our 1996 case against corporate rights is an example “of the law serving to stabilize capitalist property relations” because “the final Constitution contains no assurance that when the rights of juristic persons conflict with those of natural persons, the rights of the latter shall prevail.”
On the other hand, the 1996 Constitutional Court ruling against us did at least concede that section 8(4) “recognises that the nature of a juristic person may be taken into account in determining whether a particular right is available to such a person or not.”
That’s why the stance of the City Manager and his police honchos is so counter-revolutionary, against the ANC’s professed democratic values. The right to inform South Africans and visitors about a municipally-approved xenophobia rally during a halftime break surely should be declared a ‘particular right’ overriding Fifa’s exclusions, given how much is at stake.
If they don’t come to their senses, will we again face police detention as we leaflet the Fan Fest and stadium crowds demanding, firstly, our Constitutional rights restored; secondly, that Fifa finance some new township soccer pitches before they leave town with all that cash; and thirdly, that they adopt goal-line technology, already!?
Patrick Bond directs the UKZN Centre for Civil Society, which has a World Cup Watch and anti-xenophobia project, at http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs
What We Are Reading
Below is a list of books that we have read in the past month. The comments are not a review of the books, instead sort of an endorsement of ideas and investigations that can provide solid analysis and even inspiration in the struggle for change. All these books are available at The Bloom Collective, so check them out and stimulate your mind.
Re:Imagining Change: How to use story-based strategy to win campaigns, build movements, and change the world, by Patrick Reinsborough & Doyle Canning. An excellent resource for people working on social justice issues that discusses the importance of framing and ways to communicate what you are doing with campaigns or actions in your community. This book is based on the work of the smartMeme and has several case studies of social change campaigns that have worked because of good story-based strategies.
Self-Defense for Radicals: A-Z Guide for Subversive Struggle, by Mickey Z. This was a delightful little booklet put together by longtime activist and radical historian Mickey Z. Along with cartoon illustrations, this booklet provides not only humorous, but practical self-defense tips through the lens of radical, political activist. It may save your life, protect you from cops or just make you laugh.
No Rain in the Amazon: How South America’s Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet, by Nikolas Kozloff. If you ever thought that all you needed to do in the fight against global warming was take care of matters in your own community, then this book will smash those illusions. Kozloff provides readers with a ton of evidence and examples of how protecting the Amazon from further deforestation and contamination should be part of our struggle for survival. Another thing that makes this book so important is the fact that some of the current deforestation in the Amazon is due to corporate and government projects that promote bio-fuels. Must reading for anyone concerned about climate justice.
The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obamas, by Tom Engelhardt. Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tom’s Dispatch, has done a wonderful job of providing some detailed analysis of the recent history of US intervention abroad. Engelhardt helps us all see the smooth transition from the Bush administration to the Obama administration and how there has been little difference in foreign policy, besides the rhetoric. A useful resource for anti-war activists and anyone concerned with imperialism.
Shop ‘Til You Drop The Crisis of Consumerism, by the Media Education Foundation. Are we too materialistic? Are we willfully trashing the planet in our pursuit of things? And what’s the source of all this frenetic consumer energy and desire anyway? In a fast-paced tour of the ecological and psychological terrain of American consumer culture, Shop ‘Til You Drop challenges us to confront these questions head-on. Taking aim at the high-stress, high-octane pace of fast-lane materialism, the film moves beneath the seductive surfaces of the commercial world to show how the flip side of accumulation is depletion — the slow, steady erosion of both natural resources and basic human values. In the end, Shop ‘Til You Drop helps us make sense of the economic turbulence of the moment, providing an unflinching, riveting look at the relationship between the limits of consumerism and our never-ending pursuit of happiness.
Government Bans Reporters in Gulf
(This article is re-posted from PRwatch.)
The U.S. Coast Guard put in place a new rule slapping journalists with felony charges, a $40,000 fine and one to five years in prison for coming too close to oil spill clean-up efforts without permission. Anderson Cooper of CNN says the new rule makes it “very easy to hide incompetence or failure.”
The Coast Guard rule prohibits vessels from coming within 20 meters (65 feet) of booming operations, boom or oil spill response operations “under penalty of law.” But since oil spill cleanup operations are being conducted on most of the beaches, the rule bans reporters from just about everywhere they need to be.
The new rule contradicts a statement made by Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen in June, when he promised that “Media will have uninhibited access anywhere we’re doing operations, except for two things — if it’s a security or safety problem.” Anderson Cooper, commenting on the new rule, said ‘”Those of us down here trying to accurately show what is happening — we are not the enemy. I’ve not heard about any journalist who’s disrupted relief efforts; no journalist wants to be seen as having slowed down the cleanup or made things worse. If a Coast Guard official asked me to move, I’d move. But to create a blanket rule that everyone has to stay 65 feet away from boom and boats, that doesn’t sound like transparency.”
Author Challenges Green Capitalism
In this short video, Heather Rogers, author of Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy is Undermining the Environmental Revolution, briefly discusses what is problematic with so-called green consumerism. Rogers book is one of the best critiques of Green Capitalism in recent years.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 