World News & Views

Port au Prince, Haiti (Haiti Action.net) – Brazilian soldiers with the U.N. occupation in Haiti (known as MINUSTAH) killed a young man from the neighborhood of Solino immediately after the funeral of Father Gerard Jean Juste June 18 as he was getting ready to board a bus leaving with the cortège headed to the town of Cavaillon, Haiti.

The mood was militant, even joyous, as thousands poured out of the Port-au-Prince Cathedral following the funeral of Father Gérard Jean-Juste on June 18. They merged with rara bands which had been circulating in the streets outside the church during the four hours since the service began at 6 a.m. Then about 10 gunshots rang out. People ran and dove for cover. It all lasted about 30 seconds.

Haiti's largest privately owned TV station, Radio Tele-Ginen, released video footage today that contradicts denials by the U.N. that they only fired shots into the air during the funeral for Catholic priest Father Gerard Jean-Juste on June 18. The footage clearly shows two shots being fired by Brazilian troops from the back of a small pickup truck at crowd level.

What if they held an election and nobody came? That is exactly what happened on Sunday, June 21, when Haiti tried to hold run-offs for 12 of 30 Haitian Senate seats. Polling stations around Haiti had even fewer voters than they had on April 19, when Haitians massively boycotted the election's first round by respecting the Lavalas Family party's call for "Operation Closed Doors, Empty Streets." The CEP had disqualified the party, Haiti's largest, on arbitrary and unjustified technicalities.

Haiti's largest political movement and party, Fanmi Lavalas, organized a second successful boycott of Senate elections yesterday, posing a serious challenge to their credibility. President Rene Preval's handpicked Conseil Electoral Provisoire (CEP) excluded the Fanmi Lavalas party from participation in the elections on a technicality.

The U.N. and the Obama administration continue to endorse and finance a second round of controversial Senate elections in Haiti. The first round was marked by a voter turnout of only 3-4 percent following a successful boycott campaign waged by Fanmi Lavalas.

Today, June 18, U.N. soldiers gunned down Haitian mourners outside the church, Port au Prince Cathedral in Haiti, the largest church in the country, during the funeral for Father Gerard Jean Juste. But undeterred by U.N. guns, Haitians continue to run towards the darkness, using their bodies, breath and soul to light the world – liberty or death! Famous Haitian artist Zap Zap has been reported arbitrarily detained, arrested and transported to an unknown location.

"Look at what Haiti's tyrants did to me!" said the priest who could have been president: The Haitian oligarchy jailed him, the Catholic church denied him health coverage, the hospital denied him care, the Miami Herald denigrated his memory. The Bay Area memorial for Father Jean-Juste is Saturday, June 27, 7 p.m., at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison, Berkeley.

Now while all these militias, rebel groups and armies have been causing horrific wars at great cost to human lives in central Africa, so-called developed countries have been enjoying a lifestyle that is sustained in large part by the resources that come from Africa. The DRC supplies the world's diamonds, coltan, tantalite, oil and so forth.

In 2003, the Canadian cities of Vancouver and Whistler won the bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. Since then, the devastating impacts of the Games have become clear: expanding sport tourism and resource extraction on Indigenous lands; increasing homelessness and gentrification of poor neighborhoods; increasing privatization of public services; exploitative working conditions, especially for migrant labor; fortification of the national security apparatus with the largest military deployment in Canadian history; ballooning public debt as corporate Olympic sponsors get bailed out; and environmental destruction despite promises of “green” Games.

"Have you forgotten the holocaust? Have you forgotten the gulags in Russia? Communism, nazism, fascism did not come from Africa. ... A Western country was the first to use weapons of mass destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those countries have been able to rise. Africa, there is hope," Bishop Tutu assured.

The depth of the crisis and the level of social discontent in Madagascar directly affected a group of soldiers of the Army Corps of Personnel and Administrative and Technical Services who had been ordered to move against protestors on the streets. The soldiers refused to obey orders to fire on the people and repress anti-government demonstrators. Following this, they then declared they would not obey government orders either.

As the temperature of war increases in Iraq and the U.S. increases troops in Afghanistan, an unanswered question looms. Not "what is a nation" so much as "why is this a nation, and when"?

"Due to the media blockout, Americans may not realize that a rise in the price of gas at the pump is related to bloodshed in the Niger Delta," said Daphne Wysham, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. "As one of the largest consumers of Nigerian crude, the United States government cannot stand idly by and watch innocent civilians being killed, starved and maimed."

Haitian priest Father Gerard Jean-Juste was a Jesus-like revolutionary. In jail and out, he preached liberation of the poor, release of prisoners, human rights for all and a fair distribution of wealth. Though he died May 27, he remains present in the hearts of millions. Watch a video he recorded just for SF Bay View.

Shark is a 27-year-old father of five Secwepemc children, from the Ohlone and Chumash nations. He is currently being held for ransom in the Kamloops Regional Correctional Center (KRCC), facing charges stemming from protecting Secwepemc mountains, Skwelkwek'welt.

In spite of the disrespect shown by what Attorney General Eric Holder has correctly called "a nation of cowards [in] race related issues," our movement prevailed. The Durban Declaration and Program of Action, or DDPA, was reaffirmed!

Young Congolese journalist Chouchou Namegabe brought the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to tears when she testified May 13 that the rapes of a half million women and girls in the Congo are "meant to remove the people from their mineral-rich land." Watch the video and read the transcript.

Haitian Americans demand that the Obama administration stop the threatened deportation of some 30,000 Haitians back to their strife and storm battered country and that Haitian migrants be granted Temporary Protected Status.

Two days before the United Nations Durban Review Conference (DRC) officially convened, anti-racist demonstrators from every continent and nearly every struggle in the world filled the streets of downtown Geneva. Most were unaware that for nearly two years, hundreds of militant pro-Israeli activists and the Israeli Foreign Ministry had been coordinating their plans to sabotage the DRC.