Protests as Obama accepts Nobel Peace Prize

Euro News, December 11, 2009

US President Barack Obama’s presence in Oslo was not lost on environmentalists who urged him to ‘earn’ his Nobel Peace Prize by getting to grips with global warming.
Plans for a new American military base in Italy also sparked protests in the city and campaigners for the rights of children made their voices heard.
Across the Atlantic in New York, the organiser of an anti-war demonstration claimed awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to a wartime president diminished the honour.
“I think it does diminish the prize and it is a great disappointment and I think it undermines all of the work for peace and justice that really needs to continue happening,” said Frida Berrigan.
Obama’s acceptance of the peace award, just days after opting to escalate US troop levels in Afghanistan, particularly angered protesters.

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The Anti-Empire Report: Yeswecanistan

By William Blum, KillingHope.org, December 9, 2009

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Ah yes, the terrorist danger ... always, everywhere, forever, particularly when it seems the weakest.
How many of the West Point cadets, how many Americans, give thought to the fact that Afghanistan is surrounded by the immense oil reserves of the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions? Or that Afghanistan is ideally situated for oil and gas pipelines to serve much of Europe and south Asia, lines that can deliberately bypass non-allies of the empire, Iran and Russia? If only the Taliban will not attack the lines. "One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south ...", said Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs in 2007. 9
Afghanistan would also serve as the home of American military bases, the better to watch and pressure next-door Iran and the rest of Eurasia. And NATO ... struggling to find a raison d'être since the end of the Cold War. If the alliance is forced to pull out of Afghanistan without clear accomplishments after eight years will its future be even more in doubt?
So, for the present at least, the American War on Terror in Afghanistan continues and regularly and routinely creates new anti-American terrorists, as it has done in Iraq. This is not in dispute even at the Pentagon or the CIA.

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Crackdown in Copenhagen

Socialist Worker, December 9, 2009

Nicole Colson looks at the repression that authorities are preparing in Copenhagen--and why protest is vital to the movement to reduce global carbon emissions.

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Copenhagen: Where Africa Took On Obama

By Naomi Klein, The Nation, December 8, 2009

The highlight of my first day at COP15 was a conversation with the extraordinary Nigerian poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International. We talked about the fact that some of the toughest activists here still pull their punches when it comes to Obama, even as his climate team works tirelessly to do away with the Kyoto Protocol, replacing it with much weaker piecemeal targets.
If George W. Bush had pulled some of the things Obama has done here, he would have been burned in effigy on the steps of the convention center. With Obama, however, even the most timid actions are greeted as historic breakthroughs, or at least a good start.
"Everyone says: 'give Obama time,'" Bassey told me. "But when it comes to climate change, there is no more time." The best analogy, he said, is a soccer game that has gone into overtime. "It's not even injury time, it's sudden death. It's the nick of time, but there is no more extra time."
The solution for Bassey is not carbon trading or sinks but "serious emissions cuts at the source. Leave the oil in the ground, leave the coal in the hole, leave the tar sands in the land."
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For months the African negotiating bloc has been the toughest and most united voice in the climate talks. At a pre-conference negotiation in Barcelona, the African team walked out en masse--a protest against the paltry emissions cuts proposed by the rich world, led by the U.S.
The African bloc has plenty of dodgy actors in it, of course, and standing up on this one issue does not turn a war criminal into a hero. That said, when it comes to climate change, Africa has emerged here as the conscience of the world– and its best hope of avoiding a disastrously weak deal.
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Obama, the son of a Kenyan man, still inspires a great deal of pride among African delegates here, and rightfully so. But the louder message we are hearing is that that the continent has a great many sons and daughters and our collective failure to address the climate crisis is an immediate threat to their survival. As the African delegates chanted at the Bella Center tonight: "We will not die quietly."

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North American Indigenous peoples call for strong climate action in Copenhagen

By The Indigenous Environmental Network, Rabble.CA, December 7, 2009

A multi-generational delegation of 21 Indigenous Peoples from North America have arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark this week to advocate for the incorporation of Indigenous Peoples rights in the language of a fair, binding, and science-based global climate treaty at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The delegation is comprised of Native American, Alaskan Native and First Nation activists and leaders from the communities most affected by climate change and fossil fuel development in North America. They represent many Nations including Cree, Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Blackfoot, Ojibwe, Kachiquel Mayan, Pasqua, Gwich'in, Navajo, Mikisew Cree, Inupiaq, Mohawk, Oneida, Zuni, and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.
The delegation, coordinated by the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), are attending the international climate negotiations to speak on behalf of their Nations, communities and future generations in support of strong climate action and also to network with other Indigenous Peoples from across the world.

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Evo Morales still has work to do

By Mike Gonzalez, The Guardian UK, December 7, 2009

Evo Morales, the coca farmers' leader who became Bolivia's president in 2005, has been re-elected with an increased majority of 63% of the country's 5 million voters. His slightly hesitant Spanish is a clue to his immense popularity. A native speaker of Quechua, one of Bolivia's two main indigenous languages, he is the first president who can claim to represent the 65% of Bolivia's population who belong to indigenous communities. The constitution, finally ratified in January of this year enshrines an initial promise to acknowledge, again for the first time, Bolivia's "plurinational" character and its cultural and linguistic diversity.
Morales came to the presidency after several years of intense political activity, beginning with the mass campaign against water privatisation in Cochabamba in early 2000 and later, in 2003, in El Alto, the indigenous city of more than a million people that sits above La Paz, the country's capital. The battle over water was symbolic of a wider struggle to establish control over Bolivia's oil and gas resources and to use the income from them to address the poverty in which the majority of Bolivians lived – after a decade in which Bolivia was described as a "highly successful laboratory for neoliberalism"!
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The rightwing opposition is in disarray at the moment. The corporations are hovering, however; and they will have been encouraged by the repeated insistence of Morales's extremely influential vice-president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, that the Bolivian project is to create an "Andean capitalism". While the past four years have brought great advances in the recognition of indigenous rights and culture, the communities remain poor. The next Morales government has a responsibility to reward their support with a more forceful redistribution of wealth and to continue the progress towards the "21st century Latin American socialism" that he and other Latin American presidents will be attempting to define at next week's conference of Alba, the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America.

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Naomi Klein kick-starts the activism at Copenhagen with call for disobedience

If Seattle was the coming out party, this should be the coming of age party, Klein told the Klimaforum09 last night
By Naomi Klein, The Guardian UK, December 8, 2009

The Copenhagen deal may turn into the worst kind of disaster capitalism, Naomi Klein said last night. In her speech to Klimaforum09, the "people's summit" she told the thousand or so campaigners and activists that this was a chance to carry on building the new convergence, the movement of movements that began "all those years ago in Seattle, fighting against the privatisation of life itself". Here was an opportunity to "continue the conversation that was so rudely interrupted by 9/11".
"Down the road at the Bella Centre [where delegates are meeting] there is the worst case of disaster capitalism that we have ever witnessed. We know that what is being proposed in the Bella Centre doesn't even come close to the deal that is needed. We know the paltry emissions cuts that Obama has proposed; they're insulting. We're the ones who created this crisis... on the basic historical principle of polluters pays, we should pay."

Continue reading 'Naomi Klein kick-starts the activism at Copenhagen with call for disobedience'. . .

Bolivian President Empowered by Re-Election

By Benjamin Dangl, Toward Freedom, December 8, 2009

Bolivian President Evo Morales was re-elected on Sunday, December 6th in a landslide victory. After the polls closed, fireworks, music and celebrations filled the Plaza Murillo in downtown La Paz where Morales supporters chanted "Evo Again! Evo Again!" Addressing the crowd from the presidential palace balcony, Morales said, "The people, with their participation, showed once again that it’s possible to change Bolivia… We have the responsibility to deepen and accelerate this process of change."

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Malalai's story

By Malalai Joya and Derrick O'Keefe, Rabble.CA, December 27, 2009

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Excerpt from A Woman Among Warlords:The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice by Malalai Joya and Derrick O'Keefe published by Scribner 2009.

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Copenhagen Climate Summit: The gulf between rhetoric and reality

By Peter Symonds, World Socialist Web Site, December 7, 2009

Even before the two-week climate summit begins today in Copenhagen, Denmark, the goal of a legally binding international treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions has been ruled out. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol is due to expire in 2012 and Copenhagen was widely touted as the venue where a replacement document would be agreed. The more limited aim of a political consensus to meet the benchmarks of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is also highly unlikely.

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Climate Camp sets up at Trafalgar Square, England

Camp for Climate Action, December 5, 2009

Hundreds of climate activists have set up a Climate Camp at Trafalgar Square in the run up to the COP15 talks in Copenhagen next week.
The ‘COP out, Camp out’, organised by a group of people who met at the Camp for Climate Action in Blackheath this summer, is taking place after thousands of people marched through the capital as part of ‘The Wave.’
Tracy Worthy from the Camp for Climate Action said: “We are here with the Parliament in view to highlight that the elitist and undemocratic talks in Copenhagen are part of a political and economic system that puts corporate profits before the needs of people. We need system change, not climate change.”
“The false solutions being pushed in Copenhagen, such as carbon trading, will not solve the climate crisis. For the bankers, corporations and politicians who brought us the financial crisis, Copenhagen is no more than business as usual.”
The location of the camp was kept secret until the last minute, when the target was announced through mass text-messaging. The activists met up at Jubilee Gardens (outside the Shell Building) and marched on to Trafalgar Square. Tracy Worthy commented, "The camp will be a space for people to get inspired and prepared for taking action during the COP15 talks."

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Repackaging Copenhagen: Will There Be a Global Climate Agreement?

By Brian Tokar, ZNet, December 5, 2009

On the eve of the UN's long-awaited Copenhagen climate summit, officials are pulling out all the stops to spin the conference as a success, no matter what actually happens. Barack Obama's announcement that he will briefly pass through Copenhagen was a headline story, as was China's commitment to reduce their economy's "carbon intensity," merely lowering their rate of increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Some are proclaiming the advantages of a non- binding "political" or "operational" agreement, as an incremental step toward reducing worldwide emissions. Others are preoccupied with the manufactured scandal stemming from some UK climate researchers' stolen emails (see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack) . It's everything but what was once promised: the setting for a new binding global treaty to forestall catastrophic climate changes.
It wasn't supposed to be that way.

Continue reading 'Repackaging Copenhagen: Will There Be a Global Climate Agreement?'. . .

Can the right make a comeback?

By Lance Selfa, Socialist Worker, December 4, 2009

The question seemed outlandish just a few months ago--but these days, not so much.

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Paul Street on Obama's West Point Imperial War Speech

By Paul Street, ZNet, December 3, 2009

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If there was anything surprising about Obama's December 1st address, it was the extent to which he was willing to distort history on behalf of his militaristic policy.

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The Real Mother Earth: 10 Inspirational Women Fighting for a Cleaner, Kinder Planet

Call it ecofeminism or self-defense or just plain common sense.
By Mickey Z., Planet Green, December 2, 2009

What's the connection between gender and the environment? According to Women's Voices for the Earth, "When surveyed, women consistently rate the environment as one of their greatest concerns—in numbers greater than men ... When an environmental threat affects a community's health, most often it is women who take on these issues. Frequently they do so in isolation, far from established conservation groups and with few resources."
The word ecofeminism has been called a new term for an ancient wisdom. The women you're about to meet have shared and/or continue to share such wisdom.
10 Powerful Women Dedicated to a Cleaner, Kinder Planet
1. Rachel Carson
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2. Lois Marie Gibbs
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3. Arundhati Roy
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4. Julia Butterfly Hill
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5. Helen Caldicott
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6. Maria Cherkavosa
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7. Vandana Shiva
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8. Wangari Maathai
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9. Judi Bari
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10. Zoe Blunt

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Barack Obama, you are cordially invited to live out your years as a distinguished resident of the Fletcher Memorial Home

"The Fletcher Memorial Home" by Pink Floyd
The 1983 Pink Floyd album that this song was on, The Final Cut, was dedicated to Roger Waters' father, Eric Fletcher Waters, who died in combat serving in the British military.
I dedicate this song today to President Barack Obama.

take all your overgrown infants away somewhere
and build them a home a little place of their own
the fletcher memorial
home for incurable tyrants and kings
and they can appear to themselves every day
on closed circuit t.v.
to make sure they're still real
it's the only connection they feel
"ladies and gentlemen, please welcome reagan and haig
mr. begin and friend mrs. thatcher and paisley
mr. brezhnev and party
the ghost of mccarthy
the memories of nixon
and now adding colour a group of anonymous latin
american meat packing glitterati"
did they expect us to treat them with any respect
they can polish their medals and sharpen their
smiles, and amuse themselves playing games for a while
boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead
safe in the permanent gaze of a cold glass eye
with their favourite toys
they'll be good girls and boys
in the fletcher memorial home for colonial
wasters of life and limb
is everyone in?
are you having a nice time?
now the final solution can be applied

`Climategate' emails: Scientists defend science

By Renfrey Clarke, Green Left Weekly, November 28, 2009

Climate change deniers, conservative politicians and right-wing newspaper columnists were all but incontinent with delight. Flooding the internet in mid-November were thousands of documents and private emails that had been exchanged over more than a decade by prominent climate scientists.

Continue reading '`Climategate' emails: Scientists defend science'. . .

Climate change denial is the new article of faith for the far right

Despite a complete lack of evidence, the leaked emails hysteria has encouraged more deniers to emerge from the shadows
By Bob Ward, The Guardian UK, December 2, 2009

It is now 12 days since the hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia first appeared online, and the propaganda machine for the climate change denial lobby is in overdrive.
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Nevertheless, the denial lobby – and it is denial rather than scepticism because they reject all of the evidence they don't like and embrace any alternative theory no matter how flaky – is claiming victory. And to some extent they have succeeded – by confusing the public and perhaps reducing public pressure on politicians to reach a strong and effective agreement at Copenhagen climate talks this month.
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Who knows where this will end. The denial lobby is determined to make this story drag on for as long as possible, and some are even claiming that it contributed to the failure of Australian climate change legislation this week and the ousting of the opposition leader. But when is all is said and done, the climate will still be changing and the risks will be mounting.

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Swiss cities march against minaret ban

Swiss Info, December 2, 2009

Up to 8,000 people in the French-speaking part of Switzerland took to the streets on Tuesday evening to protest against the minaret ban.
Voters accepted a ban on the construction of minarets in a referendum on Sunday by 57.5 per cent.
A march in Lausanne attracted up to 5,000 supporters, while a demonstration in Geneva was attended by more than 2,000 people, with smaller protests taking place in other towns.
In Lausanne the crowd marched from the cathedral to the mosque shouting "no to exclusion" and "no to discrimination".
In front of the mosque, representatives of the Muslim community thanked the four cantons – Basel City, Geneva, Vaud and Neuchâtel – which voted against the minaret ban. "You warmed our hearts," they said.
The protests were organised by the Movement Against Racism with support from the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim communities.
Candlelit vigils of several hundred people were organised in the French-speaking towns of Fribourg, Biel, Neuchâtel and Sion.

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US military suicides reach new high

By James Cogan, World Socialist Web Site, December 2, 2009

The number of serving American military personnel who took their lives in 2009 has already exceeded last year’s record. These suicides are first of all tragic. Secondly, they indicate the immense psychological harm that the neo-colonial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have inflicted on members of the armed forces.

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