with Ezili Dantò of HLLN
by Ezili Danto
It's more than two months after the earthquake and the media coverage seemingly has forgotten that the fleecing of aid dollars earmarked for Haiti's earthquake victims happens BEFORE the trickle down aid gets to Haiti. So, instead of focusing on the fact that less than one cent from every aid dollar collected, in the name of Haiti's pain, gets to the Haitian government, the media assist the charity and NGO industry in Haiti by focusing their reporting on the smallest of corruptions, that of the Haitian official who wants a portion of the food, water or tents actually reaching Haiti. The big crooks, the corrupt World Relief organizations, USAID, UN and their NGOs and the 10,000 charities in Haiti masturbating on Black pain in the name of "helping Haitians" get free passes.

Right now, the UN, USAID, US State Department, European Union, everyone, is anxiously weighing in on the game to rebuild Port au Prince, just as they did when Gonaives - the Northern coastal town that got flooded by hurricanes in 2004 and then again in the four back-to-back hurricanes of 2008. For us Haitians it's an old song, just different Haitians suffering and dying, different Haiti town that has crumbled, foreign reconstruction monies never rebuilds where the poorest live. That's a period, not a comma. Remember Katrina. Remember Rawanda, Remember Clinton with Rawanda, Bush with Katrina and don't forget the role of the Red Cross in both.

If one just looks back at the flooding of Gonaives, Haiti in 2004 and 2008, just at that one Haiti example, and calculate how much money was raised by the World Relief Organizations, the NGOs, the UN, US State Department consultancies, the European Union, Canada, et al, in the name of "rebuilding and bringing relief to the people of Gonaives, in those two instances combined, you'll see that conservatively more than $3 billion dollars were collectively raised by these Internationals, their NGOs and private US charities to reconstruct and provide hurricane relief, flood rebuilding, food, water, medicine and shelter to the people Gonaives, Haiti. Today, the people of Gonaives are still walking on muddy roads. Little was rebuilt and the people will tell you they mostly got no help other than food and water in the first couple of weeks when the media cameras where on.

That's why at Ezili HLLN we forgo the UN, USAID, OAS donor conferences on rebuilding and reconstructing Port au Prince.

In a Democracy Now! exclusive, investigative journalist and activist Allan Nairn reveals US-backed Indonesian armed forces carried out a series of assassinations of civilian activists in late 2009.

 

The news comes as the White House moves towards increasing aid to the Indonesian military and lifting a twelve-year ban on the training of the notorious Indonesian military unit known as Kopassus.

 

A US-trained Kopassus general who coordinated the assassinations confirmed to Nairn an Indonesian army role in the killings. [includes rush transcript]

 

Vancouver Island Community Forest Action Network
versus City of Langford

"This case is not just about challenging the destruction of natural heritage," says Zoe Blunt, VIC FAN director. "We're challenging how they go about doing it – the tactics and strategies they use. This case is about putting a stop to these abuses of power."

Walls, checkpoints, and fragmentation in Palestine

Nadia Abu-Zahra is a professor at the University of Ottawa who has written extensively on mobility, human security, and militarisation. Her forthcoming book, Restricting Freedom, will be published by Pluto Press (with Adah Kay).

Semantics and Apartheid
by Kim Petersen
In Canada, support for Zionism and Israeli oppression of Palestinians is deeply entrenched in the political duopoly. Liberal prime minister Paul Martin even proclaimed, “Israel’s values are Canada’s values,” as if Canada had to look elsewhere to determine its own values.

 

Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper tried to one-up his predecessor by boasting that only his party was a “steadfast friend” of Israel. Consequently, some advocates of social justice for Palestinians have pinned their hopes on Canada’s “third” party, the social-capitalist New Democratic Party (NDP).

In the build up to Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), many parliamentarians strode forward to denounce IAW. Yesterday, I received a formulaic response from Jack Layton – leader of the NDP.

 

Of Palestine-Israel, he wrote,

    New Democrats have long been vocal and passionate advocates for a peaceful end to the Israel-Palestine conflict. We have consistently said that Canada can play a positive role in bringing Israeli and Palestinian representatives to the negotiating table in order to chart a path towards a negotiated peace, which ensures Israelis and Palestinians can live safely, side by side, in independent states with secure borders. [italics added]

The proposed project would involve building 17 separate dams and river diversions, over 440 km of power lines, over 250 km of roads and over 100 bridges.

This forum will feature Professor Michael M'Gonigle, George Heyman of Sierra Club, Joe Foy and Gwen Barley of the Wilderness Committee, Aaron  Hill of Watershed Watch Salmon Society, and a spectacular slideshow from Friends of Bute Inlet.

The event is taking place at the University of Victoria Social Science and Math Building, Room A120 from 7:00-9:00 pm.

Please help us spread the word by forwarding this email, inviting your friends to attend the Facebook event, or helping put up posters.

Thanks!

Tria Donaldson | Vancouver Island Outreach Coordinator
Wilderness Committee  

The Pentagon Church Militant and Us

When it comes to our nation’s military affairs, ignorance is not bliss.  What’s remarkable then, given the permanent state of war in which we find ourselves, is how many Americans seem content not to know.

    There are many reasons for this state of affairs.  Our civilian leaders encourage us to be deferential toward our latest commander/savior, whether Tommy Franks in 2003, David Petraeus in 2007, or Stanley McChrystal in 2010.  Our media employs retired officers, most of them multi-starred generals, in a search for expertise that ends in an unconditional surrender to military agendas.  A cloud of secrecy and “black budgets” combine to obscure military matters, ranging from global strategy to war goals to weapons procurement.  The taxpayer, forced to pony up about one trillion dollars yearly to fund our military, national security infrastructure, and wars, is sent a simple message: stay clear and leave it to the experts in uniform.

    The powerlessness of ordinary Americans in military matters is no accident.  Recall the one-word reply -- “So?” -- Dick Cheney offered in March 2008, when asked to comment on popular opposition to the war in Iraq.  The former vice president was certainly far blunter than Washington usually is, and for that we may owe him a measure of thanks.  By highlighting the arrogant dismissiveness of Washington’s warrior-elite when it comes to American public opinion, he revealed more than he intended.

The Real News' Lia Tarachansky spoke to Toufic Haddad, journalist and author of Between the Lines: Israel the Palestinians, and the U.S. "war on terror" about the real reason for these protests. Haddad explains that Israeli colonization over East Jerusalem led to home demolitions, confiscations, and the flourishing of settlements all over the Palestinian Territories. Because these protests are supported by the government, Palestinian protests are systemically repressed, leading to mass arrests, injuries, and sometimes death. Alternative tactics, such as undercover police often lead to the tensions which are expected to rise as the Jerusalem Municipal Police approved another right-wing settler protest for Sunday through the Palestinian East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.