World News & Views

The Haitian government-under-U.S.-U.N.-occupation has again excluded Haiti’s largest political party from participating in upcoming elections financed, orchestrated and supported by the United States and the international community. This time, it’s the February and March 2010 legislative elections.

When I heard about the revolutionary resistance of our South African brothers and sisters in Abahlai baseMjondolo (The Shack Dwellers Union) in South Africa, who successfully overturned the Slums Act, which would have given South African police the ability to legally demolish, destroy and evict poor people from their shacks without notice, I cried.

Egyptian security forces were attacking protesters in Tahrir Square, at the core of downtown Cairo, after they sat down in the middle of a busy Cairo street, protesting the imprisonment of the people of Gaza. Others were literally barricaded inside their hotel, the entrance surrounded by steel riot barriers. It is pandemonium.

Knowing what we do about Israel, we find it insulting to see the Israeli flag flying above the Belize flag. This is offensive to Belize and Belizeans; in Israel it is illegal for Palestinians to fly their flag. We seriously doubt that anyone could fly any flag above the Israeli flag in Israel.

Despite years and months of intense advocacy and organizing, whole nations and masses of people are facing increased possibilities of drowning, burning and/or starving to extinction. All the progressive forces we have met – inside and outside of the governments – have told us how determined they are to continue our generation’s mandate to reclaim the power from the selfish polluters who threaten the survival of all of us.

During his speech to the 15th United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez slammed the “lack of political will” of the most powerful nations to take serious action to avert climate change and called for systemic change to save the planet.

Faced with mounting issues like melting glaciers and destruction of the rainforests on his home continent, President Morales has called for very necessary measures to lower our world’s temperatures by even more than the recent warnings from most scientists and even our colleagues in G77, Africa Group and AOSIS. “One degree (Centigrade) rise is too much!” says Morales. Negotiators remain at work. Keep calling the Obama administration.

We are too big to fail! Call President Barack Obama to remind him that a bold reinvestment in, recovery for and restoration of our environment is even more critical, and less expensive, than the trillions he has given to prop up Wall Street, the military contractors, capitalist for-profit corporations and now the insurance industry that stands to benefit so greatly from his health care “reform.”

Recently the cold war against Cuba was ratcheted up when an acrimonious debate broke out over the issue of racism in Cuba and for the first time the issue of Brazil was thrown into the mix. The brouhaha began when scores of prominent African Americans, many of whom should have known better, put their names to a petition calling upon the Cuban government to release a dissident from prison.

The U.N. Climate Change Conference entered its final week under a cloud of uncertainty as the Africa Group led a protest of the developing world against a perceived attempt to abandon the Kyoto Protocol. By the middle of the day, the Africa Group’s displeasure had brought official talks to a halt.

Here in the frigid capital of Denmark, we continue our long and difficult work to achieve REPARATIONS NOW! for Afrikan and Indigenous nations and ascendants, women and girls, and everyone in our sacred earth.

With the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) engulfed in bloodshed and terrorism due to the secretive occupation and expansion by the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame, Congo’s President Joseph Kabila has reportedly requested an immediate emergency military intervention from Belgium to crush a growing rebellion sparked by resistance forces in the far Western Congo.

The leak of a so-called “Danish text” that would sideline the U.N. in future climate deals is reverberating around the Copenhagen negotiations. Today I witnessed an unexpected and extraordinary outburst of candor from one of the key players in these negotiations – Lumumba Di-Aping, chief negotiator of the G77 bloc of mostly poor countries.

Thousands of people from around our world – grassroots activists, government delegations, scholars, artists, media and, yes, representatives of capitalist corporations and the national and international police forces who serve them – have assembled in this large, Critical Mass-like 24/7, bicycle-friendly metropolis of Copenhagen. It is said that this Conference of Parties 15th year climate change meeting (COP-15) is the largest United Nations’ gathering ever!

As global awareness grows around the Congo and the silence is finally being broken on the current and historic exploitation of Black people in the heart of Africa, a myriad of Western based “prescriptions” are being proffered. Most of these prescriptions are devoid of social, political, economic and historical context and are marked by remarkable omissions. The conflict mineral approach or efforts emanating from the United States and Europe are no exception to this symptomatic approach which serves more to perpetuate the root causes of Congo’s challenges than to resolve them.

On Friday, Nov. 13, the London Guardian reported a "Huge rise in birth defects in Fallujah," Iraq. I sent the news to KPFA Radio 94.1FM Weekend News anchor Anthony Fest, along with contact info for Bob Nichols, San Francisco Bay View newspaper correspondent and winner of a 2004 Project Censored Award for his reporting on the U.S. military's use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq and consequent radiation poisoning.

The historic city of Rome is known for breathtaking sights from the Vatican to the Coliseum and beyond. However, there are little known areas not far from the historic routes frequented by tourists, areas where large numbers of refugees from a number of African countries reside in poverty but with dignity.

Saint Calogero, an African priest, is the patron saint of the Sicilian town of Agrigento. But in the 21st century, African refugees who traverse the treacherous waters of the Mediterranean Sea find Calogero’s city, indeed the entire country, unwelcoming, even hostile to them.

“Doctor Luther! Doctor Luther, give it to the Honduras oligarchy hard!” Dr. Luther Castillo, who represents the National Resistance Front against the Military Coup in Honduras, brought to San Francisco the echoes of Cuba’s former President Fidel Castro on Thursday night at the Centro del Pueblo. He spoke for almost two hours with passion, conviction and a keen understanding of the savage rule of the minority oligarchic coup government in Honduras.

The universal condemnation of the military coup in Honduras by Latin American governments is unprecedented. If this dictatorship is allowed to stay in power, no democratically elected government is safe. Just as President Obama promised a more respectful relationship between the U.S. and the rest of America – we are faced with another coup with U.S. military complicity.